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Central American Peace Plan

By Evan Douthit

The most spectacular recent event in Central America has been the signing of the peace plan for Central America by the presidents of Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras during their summit meeting in Guatemala August 6-7. The treaty, which was based on a plan proposed last spring by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez, is a desperate attempt by the Central American presidents to avoid total "Lebanonization" of the region, and its singing is probably the most serious diplomatic defeat even inflicted on the U.S. in Latin America. This defeat is even more humiliation in that the Reagan Administration proposed its own "peace" plan on the very eve of the Central American summit. Not only did President Ortega of Nicaragua embarrass the U.S. by immediately proposing to meet with the U.S. to discuss the plan (causing Secretary of State Schultz to run away shrieking that they did not mean to discuss the plan with Nicaragua!) but President Arias of Costa Rica regressed even to allow the Reagan plan to be put on the agenda of the summit meeting.

The Reagan Administration wasted no time in making its attitude clear. While "welcoming" the plan, Reagan made clear he would not accept it unless he thought it was in the interest of the U.S. and that he would not abandon the Contras. A week after the singing, U.S. envoy to Central America, Phillip Habib, resigned, apparently in disgust wight he Reagan Administration's determination to sabotage the plan. This is another blow to Reagan's plans, since Habib was probably the only reason U.S. policy did not blow up years ago. Who will Reagan send in now, Elliot Abrams?

The heart of the peace plan the Central American presidents adopted is that the countries of Central America agreed not to materially support "irregular" armed movements in other countries of the region, not to allow such forces to operate from their territories into any other countries, and that countries where there is fighting going on will seek a cease fire and dialogue with the unarmed opposition, and that there will be elections under UN and Organization of American States observation to be held in each Central American country at the end of each government's legally mandated term in office. The plan is insulting to the FMLN guerrillas in EL Salvador and to the URNG guerrillas in Guatemala, in that it equates them with the U.S. paid, armed and directed Contra mercenaries operating out of Honduras against Nicaragua. This is because the FMLN and URNG are entirely based in their own countries, and get all of their supplies and equipment within their own countries (the U.S. has not intercepted a single arms shipment from Nicaragua to the Salvadoran guerrillas since 1981). But the fact is that if the treaty is implemented, the Contras are dead while the FMLN and URNG will hardly be toughed by the treaty provisions.

Furthermore, UN and OAS observed elections in Guatemala and El Salvador, if honest, would contain some nasty surprises for the governments of these countries, both of which won elections in which the left half of the political spectrum was excluded by terror. On the other hand, the Sandinista government in Nicaragua should probably be able to win its next election without any great difficulties.

This is also why the U.S. government tried so hard to prevent the signing of this plan, twice arranging for the summit to be postponed, and presenting its alternative plan at the last minute.

The question is why did such pro-American governments as the governments of Guatemala, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Honduras, especially the last two, come up with and sign such a plan. The U.S. press coverage of Central America has been atrocious and most people reading it would have only the dimmest notion of the severity of the political, economic and social crisis racking every nation of the region. Unemployment and underemployment is over 50% in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvado, and prices of the major commodities produced by the Central American countries are at an all-time low.

The guerrilla war has reached the point in El Salvador that the Army has to send out 10,000-man columns into the main guerrilla areas, while the FMLN guerrillas have been extending their traffic stoppages into the capital San Salvador itself. More American soldiers are also being killed. Six U.S. advisors died when their helicopter "accidentally" crashed as they were on their way to pick up an American solider "accidentally" shot by a Salvadoran sergeant during a clash with the guerrillas.

Anti-government demonstrations are almost daily events in San Salvador now and President Duarte of El Salvador is under savage attack from every direction. When Duarte carried out U.S. orders to postpone the summit in June, even the ultra-rightist ARENA party (whose leader Roberto D'Aubuison is best know for arranging the murder of Archbishop Romero in 1980) attacked him for selling out the country's sovereignty and for allowing Philip Habib to run Salvador's foreign policy.

In Guatemala the guerrillas are showing new strength, and the government has taken to asking for U.S. logistical support, while U.S. planes are engaging in mysterious herbicide spraying flights (Agent Orange?) over the areas where the guerrillas are now active. Labor and peasant unrest is threading to become "explosive" in spite of stepped up death squad murders and kidnappings. In Honduras, at least four different armed insurgent groups are operating against the government, while the border with Nicaragua has been in turmoil as a result of the Contra presence. The Contras have driven thousands of peasants from their farms and homes, and have been used in Honduras to murder and threaten political and union activists opposed to them. The Contras are so universally despised in Honduras that even rightists in the Honduran Congress have been proposed that they be forcibly expelled.

The presence of thousands of U.S. troops has not been much more popular, especially after it became clear that the U.S. troops had turned the cities near their bases into brothels and were spreading AIDS (a lethal threat in a country with so poor a medical infrastructure as Honduras) and after reports surfaced last year that U.S. troops were sexually abusing Honduran children.

The situation in Costa Rica is somewhat better, but still troubling. It is therefore easy to see why the governments of Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Honduras would come to see that U.S. policy was/is not working and cannot work, and can only get them killed. The fact that Honduras would mutiny shows how desperate the situation is, and I think that the Honduran stand was the key here. Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua have all clearly been willing to sign this treaty since spring. Apparently it was Honduras that broke ranks with the U.S. and Duarte of El Salvador was forced to go along or be totally isolated domestically and internationally. Honduras must have decided it was getting too little for its paints ($200 million in U.S. aid a year against $700 million for El Salvador) and it must have been told the Reagan Administration was so desperate to get the summit canceled or at least delayed, because if Honduras had been in its pocket they could always have counted on Honduras and El Salvador wrecking any summit. But Reagan's policy has been so discredited in the U.S. that he has been in no position to get more money for the Hondurans.

What now? The war will probably continue. Reagan will fund the Contras as long as he can get money out of the Congress, but the Contras are increasingly meaningless. They have been reduced to several thousand men, their leaders having stolen everything and dealt as much cocaine as they could, and can only manage hit and run attacks on smaller and smaller targets. They treaty does give some impetus to negotiations in Guatemala and El Salvador where the guerrillas have always made clear their willingness to talk, but as long as Reagan is determined on a military victory and as long as Congress is willing to continue escalating U.S. aid to El Salvador (from $14 million in 1980 to $700 this year), the fighting will continue, barring a total government collapse and FMLN-FDR victory. It is doubtful that the Guatemalan army will ever lose its habit of slaughtering whomever it does not like until someone destroys the Guatemalan army, so the war will probably continue as well.

The Nicaraguans are hurting economically under the pressure of the general economic crisis facing the 3rd World and Latin America, the U.S. embargo and the at least $500 million that U.S. has spent in the last year to destabilize them (given that the Nicaraguan GNP is about $2 billion a year, it should be clear why this should cause a problem). But the Sandinistas show no sign of collapsing, and Reagan shows no sign of being able to get the political support domestically and internationally he would need to be able to send in hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops. It is doubtful that Reagan could even get the support for sending in troops to El Salvador to save Duarte's regime.

Even before Iran-Contra-gate Reagan probably lacked the material and political resources to simply send the U.S. army into battle in Central America and force his will on the people there, but peace will not come to the region soon unless the U.S. ceases to promote war there, and ceases to fund and prop up governments which have no popular support. But Central America is only the most acute manifestation of the general political, social, and economic crisis in Latin America, and that crisis may soon get so severe (as anyone who has been following events in Columbia, Peru, Brazil, Chile, Haiti, and Mexico can see) that the U.S. government will forget that there is such a place as Central America.