12.Ruhl Pp.137-51.Pmd

CURBING CENTRAL AMERICA’S MILITARIES J. Mark Ruhl J. Mark Ruhl is the Glenn and Mary Todd Professor of Political Sci- ence at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He has written extensively on democratization and civil-military relations in Latin America and specializes in the Central American region. The military has traditionally been a formidable obstacle to democratization in Central America. Having ruled for decades in El Salvador and Guatemala, the armed forces continued to be the most powerful actors under elected civilian governments in the 1980s. In Honduras, the army attained political hegemony in the 1960s and long maintained a high level of influence over elected officials. In Nicaragua, the Sandinista Popular Army (EPS)—a product of the country’s 1979 revolution against the right-wing dictator Anastasio Somoza—defended the left-wing authoritarianism of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) and became an influential political force largely outside civilian control after that regime’s electoral defeat in 1990. Costa Rica is the sole exception, having abolished its army after the 1948 civil war. In the 1980s and early 1990s, analysts of Central America expected the armed forces to retain significant political power indefinitely. Nev- ertheless, in the last decade or so, democratically chosen leaders in all four nations have largely subordinated the military to civilian control and curbed its political influence. The armed forces in the region have had to accept major reductions in their budgets and structures, and have been stripped of many of their customary privileges. This dramatic change in civil-military relations has been brought about by domestic and external pressures that in the 1990s combined to weaken the armed forces in each of these countries. The change in U.S. policy after the end of the Cold War, along with increased domestic opposition to the armed forces, fundamentally altered the Central American political landscape, send- ing military influence into a steep decline. The military’s acceptance of civilian authority has significantly Journal of Democracy Volume 15, Number 3 July 2004 138 Journal of Democracy boosted Central America’s potential to consolidate democracy. But the process of democratizing civil-military relations remains incomplete. Although the armed forces no longer interfere in civilian policy making, they enjoy an institutional autonomy that would be considered unac- ceptable in advanced democracies, and are subject to little effective oversight by civilian defense ministries or legislative committees. More- over, military establishments still play unduly large internal-security roles and continue to dominate intelligence gathering throughout the region—functions that involve them too deeply in domestic politics. Military officers also have not yet been held fully accountable to the rule of law, particularly with respect to past human rights abuses. In the 1980s and early 1990s, all the Central American armies were key political players. The Guatemalan army, nearly 50,000 strong in a country of 13 million, became infamous for its brutal attacks on the nation’s indigenous population during a counterinsurgency campaign against Marxist guerrillas. Even after the army set in motion a transition to civilian government in the mid-1980s, its high command maintained control of Guatemala behind a democratic façade. The Honduran army, numbering about 26,000 in a country of about six million, used “dirty- war” tactics to defeat a smaller revolutionary movement, and retained a veto over civilian policy making even after returning to the barracks in the early 1980s. The Salvadoran army, with a force that grew to well over 60,000 soldiers (in a country of six million), carried out campaigns of heavy repression against leftist civilian groups, but proved unable to defeat the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) guerrillas. Nonetheless, the military retained control of national-security policy and continued to enjoy traditional prerogatives while in alliance with elected civilian governments during the 1980s. With a force of over 100,000 soldiers in a country of less than five million, Nicaragua’s Sandinista Popular Army (EPS) became the largest military institution in the region. In contrast to the other three Central American armies, the EPS was leftist in orientation and obedient to civilian authority. Sup- ported by the Soviet Union and Cuba, the EPS successfully defended the Sandinista regime against counterrevolutionary guerrillas, although U.S. pressure ultimately forced the Sandinistas into a losing electoral contest that ended the Nicaraguan Revolution.1 The Military’s Unexpected Decline The military’s unexpected political decline over the past decade has been the product of external and internal pressures, broadly similar in all four countries. The United States has long been the most important foreign actor in Central America: During the 1980s, it cultivated right- wing military allies throughout the region in order to tackle the communist threat posed by the Sandinista regime and Marxist guerrilla J. Mark Ruhl 139 groups. In Nicaragua, the United States organized and financed the Contras, anti-Sandinista guerrillas who operated primarily from bases in Honduras. Guatemala’s extremely poor human rights record made it difficult for the Reagan and Bush administrations to provide more than indirect support to that country’s military, but Washington showered the Salvadoran and Honduran armed forces with aid and training. With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, the United States no longer needed its former Central Ameri- can military partners. Indeed, U.S. policy makers quickly recognized the armed forces of Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala as costly and corrupt obstacles to democratization. The United States slashed military aid to Honduras, and in 1991 the U.S. ambassador to Tegucigalpa spear- headed a national campaign against military impunity that encouraged Honduran civil society and political actors to contest the armed forces’ traditional privileges. In early 1992, the United States forced the Salva- doran military, which had become completely dependent on U.S. funding, to accept a peace agreement with the FMLN that required a purge of the officer corps as well as drastic reductions in the army’s role in Salva- doran society. Although the United States had much less leverage over the Guatemalan military, the threat to abolish Guatemala’s privileged trade status, along with other regional and international pressures, helped squash a 1993 attempt by civilian President Jorge Serrano and his allies in the military high command to establish an authoritarian regime in imitation of the “institutional coup” successfully carried out the year before by President Alberto Fujimori in Peru. The United States later collaborated with the United Nations and other external actors to pro- mote the 1996 Guatemalan peace accords, which required important concessions by the armed forces. Finally, the United States government also brought its economic power to bear on postrevolutionary Nicaragua by suspending critical financial aid to President Violeta Chamorro’s government, elected in 1990, until she promised to retire General Humberto Ortega, brother of electorally defeated Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega, and to bring the EPS under greater civilian control. In each of these countries, the external pressure applied by the United States was matched by the efforts of domestic actors to curtail the military’s political influence. The conservative Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), elected to office in El Salvador in the late 1980s, signed a peace agreement that put an end to the army’s political influence. Pragmatic private-sector politicians ascendant in ARENA favored this negotiated end to the civil war because they were confident of their ability to win future free elections and because they recognized that the FMLN posed far less of a threat in the post–Cold War context.2 In fact, ARENA leaders seemed quite willing to sacrifice their military allies’ interests in the hope of restoring political stability and economic growth. The army’s dreadful record of human rights abuse and corruption, and 140 Journal of Democracy CENTRAL AMERICA Gulf of Mexico MEXICO BELIZE Caribbean Sea GUATEMALA Guatemala✪ HONDURAS City Tegucigalpa ✪ ✪ EL SALVADOR NICARAGUA San Salvador Lago de Managua ✪ Managua Lago de Nicaragua COSTA RICA ✪ Pacific Ocean San José PANAMA its inability to defeat the FMLN, also weakened its bargaining position. Salvadoran civil society, which had begun to reemerge in the later years of the war, welcomed the demilitarization of the country’s political life. Domestic actors played a major role in reducing military influence in Honduras and Guatemala. As political space gradually expanded with limited democratization in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the armed forces in both countries came under attack from a more assertive civil society, a freer press, and bolder civilian politicians. There were exposés of human rights abuses and other misdeeds, such as corruption and criminal activity, committed by military officers during the 1980s. In calling for the reduc- tion of military prerogatives, centrist and leftist groups were often joined by the army’s former private-sector allies, who resented the armed forces’ privileged position and no longer needed the military to protect them from revolution. In Guatemala,

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