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War Continues: Central America

By Evan Douthit

The first four months of 1988 have been a time of rapid developments in Central America, as years of maturing contradictions began to come to a head. The result has been a fiasco for Reagan Administration policy on almost every front.

In Nicaragua, the U.S. financed and trained Contras were forced to the negotiating table by a combination of factors. Congressional unwillingness to throw more money down the Contra rat hole at a time of mammoth deficits, big Sandinista victories on the battlefield, and the weakening of the paraplegic duck administration as Reagan gets into his last 9 months in office. Realizing that seeming to stymy peace in Central America was more than even the U.S. Congress can stomach and seeing their bargaining power slip away with each passing month, the Contras stuck a deal and seem to have surrendered. (Until the U.S. government finally grasps reality in Central America, there is always some chance that the negotiation might be undone.) About all the Contras have won as a result has been he pledge from the Nicaraguan government that they will not be arrested or punished when those of them who are Nicaraguans return to Nicaragua after putting down their arms. The Contras also got a wad of severance pay from Congress after this, and this led some of the more stupid of the Contra commanders to dream on continuing to make money by sending their goons out of kill more peasants.

The decisive moment came when the Sandinistas struck hard at Contra bases near the Nicaraguan-Honduran border. President Reagan went into his standard war dance equating fighting near the border between the Sandinistas and Contras (who are illegally based in Honduras) with an invasion and 3,500 U.S. troops were dispatched even before Honduras got the hint and requested U.S. military assistance. But Congress did not fall for the routine. The Contras took another brutal drubbing, as always happened when they had to fight soldiers instead of cooperative farm peasants or health workers. Seeing the failure of Reagan to get them money, they cased in and gave up while U.S. troops were still in Honduras. At almost the same moment they were surrendering, the U.S. Congress began to get word of what has been known everywhere else for years, that the Contras have been up to their armpits in the international drug trade to finance themselves. Good timing, Congress!

In El Salvador the U.S. policy received another body blow when the extreme right wing fascists of ARENA won the municipal and legislative elections in which only 30% of the potential voting population took part. The voters, disgusted by the Christian Democrat corruption, and by the heavy Christian Democratic supported repression, either boycotted or voted for ARENA. They figured that Robert D'Aubisson, universally considered a founder of the death squads and one of the main plotters of the murder of Archbishop Romero in 1980. Could not kill or steal that much more than the Christian Democrats were.

The result is that the legislature in El Salvador is controlled by a group which the Reagan Administration itself found to be so right-wing and murderous that it went to tremendous lengths to engineer Duarte's victory over them in 1984.

Meanwhile the FMLN guerrillas are striking at will throughout the country and the army's morale is falling to an all-time low. The economic crisis shows no sign of abating. The regime has been receiving $2 million a day in U.S. aid, and to survive it probably needs to have that figure increased, a shaky prospect in an ear of looking budget cuts in the U.S.

Honduras was supposed to be the stable base area for the U.S. Central America, the place from which the U.S. could move into El Salvador, Nicaragua or Guatemala as conditions required. But Honduran anger at U.S. policies boiled over after the 3,500 U.S. troops arrived to threaten Nicaragua. When the U.S. forced Honduras to extradite a Honduran to the U.S. in spite of the fact that extradition is forbidden by the Honduran constitution, thousands rioted and burned down the U.S. consulate across the street from the U.S. embassy.

The Panamanian crises heated up considerably as well as the U.S. government went all out to oust General Noriega, head of the Panamanian Defense Forces. The Administration applied every form of pressure it could short of open military assault, and failed! As this article is being written, Noriega has won; even right-wing frothing bullies like Pat Buchanon are whining for retreat.

The Administration has been claiming the Noriega is involved in international drug traffic, and the U.S. press has so far ignored the many letters and commendations the DEA and other U.S. agencies had sent to Noriega in the past praising him for his efforts against the drug trade. The fact is that the main reason for this offensive against Noriega is that the U.S. government hopes to overturn the Panama Canal Treaty which returns the Canal to Panamanian control at the end of the century and which would lead to the withdrawal of most U.S. troops and bases in Panama.

The Reagan Administration is also punishing Noriega for not cooperating in U.S. plans to invade Nicaragua. They are also attempting to split the Group of Eight ( Mexico, Panama, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, the block of Latin American countries which have been coalescing in opposition to U.S. policies on Central America, the foreign debt, and trade) The Administration is also trying to draw attention from the well-documented role played by the Contras in the drug trade ( a role that leads to George Bush himself).

Colombia also held municipal elections in which the progressive Union Patriotica ( see article about Pedro Alcantara) did very well. Up-supported candidates were elected mayor in 109 of 1009 Colombian municipalities, very impressive for a political party which has only been in existence for two and a half years. Even more impressive is the fact that this was achieved in the face of massive terror, as death squads have murdered 500 UP members in the last two years, including two senators. Just before and after the elections the terror escalated, with 33 people being butchered at an Easter celebration and dozens of banana workers being murdered in Uruba.

As one surveys these developments, one would understand if a sense of despair had begun to pervade the Reagan Administration, through the Latin American section of the Reagan foreign policy apparatus may be too stupid to even realize how desperate their situation is. The Contras, U.S. mercenaries though they are, have thrown in the towel, the Christion Democrats in El Salvador were beaten in the elections by the political equivalent of a psychopathic motorbicycle gang while the guerrillas see victory on the horizon, the Hondurans are burning down our diplomatic buildings, the Panamanians, who should be as vulnerable as anyone could be to U.S. economic, diplomatic and political pressure have taken the worst the U.S. could throw at them and are laughing. Colombians are marching through bullets to the polls to vote for the last political party the U.S. would want to see do well. Meanwhile Reagan is reduced to hoping that Gorbachov will be nice to him, and Congress routinely overrides his vetos and ignores his requests, and even George Bush pretends to have his own personality. No wonder Reagan has decided to try and start a war in the Persian Gulf.

—Evan Douthit
Editor, Central America News Update