Beyond Revolution and Repression: U.S. Foreign Policy and Latin American Democracy, 1980-1989
Evan Daniel McCormick Charlottesville, VA
Bachelor of Arts, Boston University, 2003 Master of Arts, Yale University, 2007
A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Department of History
University of Virginia August, 2015
Beyond Revolution and Repression: U.S. Foreign Policy and Latin American Democracy, 1980-1989
Evan D. McCormick
Table of Contents
Introduction...... ………………………………………………………. 1
Ideology, Politics, and Power: The Reagan Administration Confronts Latin America, 1981-1982……...………………38
“Silent Partners” or Explicit Allies? The Failure of U.S. Quiet Diplomacy and Human Rights in Latin America, 1981-1983………………………………………..89
“The Map of Democracy is the Map of Human Rights” Global Change and Democratic Openings in Latin America, 1983-1984………...……133
“A Golden Opportunity to Break with Statism” The Dilemmas of Democracy Promotion Programs, 1984-1987……………………….203
Freedom Fighters and Comandantes: Perceptions of Democracy in the Central American Crisis, 1985-1988…………...... 251
Conclusion: Beyond Revolution and Repression?…………………………………………...... 298
Archives and Bibliography.…...………………………..………………………………………320
1
Introduction
On September 3, 1980, in the midst of the presidential campaign season, NBC aired a ninety minute primetime documentary titled White Paper: The Castro Connection that investigated Cuban involvement in revolutionary violence in Central America. Filled with grainy and gruesome footage of bloodshed in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, the special concluded with a segment on the disagreements between presidential candidates over the proper
U.S. response. Appearing in place of President Jimmy Carter, Deputy Secretary of State Warren
Christopher explained in measured tones that the Carter administration believed that Nicaragua was not a “lost cause.” U.S. aid, he insisted, could steer the revolution there toward a moderate outcome, while advocating for human rights protections might forestall further violations in
Guatemala and El Salvador.1
Clad in a blue suit and a broad tie, presidential candidate Ronald Reagan responded more dramatically. Political violence was not a human rights problem, Reagan averred, but the result of U.S. failure to aid regional allies in their fight against Cuban-inspired revolution. “We have had a tendency to abandon these more-or-less rightist governments,” the candidate asserted in a polished, scripted tone, “because. . .we feel that they violate our standards of human rights. But it’s pretty hard to find governments that live up to our ideals completely.” Now, he warned, the consequences of U.S. abandonment were rippling through the hemisphere. Americans were witnessing nothing short of a “domino policy” engineered by the Soviet Union. A confident smile spread across Reagan’s face as he eased into a well-worn campaign line: “I think it’s time that people in the United States realize that under the domino theory,” he said, pausing for effect,
“we’re the last domino.”
1 NBC White Paper, “The Castro Connection,” originally aired September 3, 1980.
2
Sitting across from Reagan, NBC correspondent Marvin Kalb seized on Reagan’s statement. “Do you envisage, as part of your policy, the use of American forces in that part of the world?” he pressed. Reagan’s smile disappeared. The normally polished candidate looked flustered, his eyes searching away from the camera as he stammered uncharacteristically: “well, that’s the one that I say I don’t think anyone could answer in advance. You would hope. . . that would never be necessary, but,” he paused again, shaking his head before looking back to the camera “you would, you could, never say never.”
For many Americans in the middle of the 1980 presidential campaign, the idea of falling dominos in Central America eliciting an armed intervention by U.S. forces would have invoked that precise response: “never.” And yet, over the next decade, Latin America became a geopolitical flashpoint that dominated debates over Reagan’s foreign policy of confrontation with the Soviet Union in the Third World, and became the center of a scandal that nearly doomed his presidency. In 1980, there was little reason to suggest that this would be so. Reagan had not demonstrated an intense or personal interest in Latin America throughout his political career. The region did not figure in “the speech”—Reagan’s tirelessly rehearsed and well-honed political statement dating to his years as a spokesman for General Electric. In his writings and speeches during the 1970s, Latin America had arisen only intermittently, such as when he lamented
Carter’s signing of the Panama Canal treaties, and the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua.2
Yet, during the campaign and Reagan’s two terms, Latin America took on dramatic importance as a point of acute conflict with the Soviet Union, and a looming threat to U.S. national security. Why was this so? In this study I posit that the explanation begins with Ronald
Reagan’s ideology of moral and geopolitical anti-communism, which supposed that the Soviet
2 See Ronald Reagan, “Cuba,” March 6, 1979 and other addresses on the Panama Canal and Cuban involvement in Kiron Skinner, Annelise Anderson, and Martin Anderson, eds. Reagan In his Own Hand, (New York: The Free Press, 2001), pp. 158-59 and 198-212.
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Union, an inherently expansionist power, would aggressively challenge the United States wherever it saw vulnerabilities. This ideology had deep roots in Reagan’s own political experiences, as well as American foreign policy thinking that identified national security in terms of maintaining U.S. leadership of a liberal international system and access to free markets abroad.3 In Reagan’s worldview, Central America represented a crucial battlefield on which the
Soviets were actively expanding the appeal of communist revolution, both by direct support and through Cuban proxies. “No area of the world should have a higher priority than the place where we live, the Western Hemisphere,” Reagan stated in one campaign speech.4 In another, he lamented that Cuba had become a “[military] base in this hemisphere for the Soviets,” and asked:
“must we let Grenada, Nicaragua, El Salvador all become additional ‘Cubas,’ eventual outposts for Soviet combat brigades? Will the next push of the Moscow-Havana axis be Northward to
Guatemala and thence to Mexico, and South to Puerto Rico and Panama?”5 Reagan warned that
Soviet advances threatened U.S. access to vital natural resources, asking one campaign audience,
3 The scholarship on ideology and foreign relations is wide-ranging and contentious. For a concise introduction to the disagreements over the meaning of the term “ideology” and the consequences of those disagreements for ideology as a category of analysis, see Terry Eagleton, Ideology: an Introduction (London: Verso, 1991). My use of the term ideology reflects a functional definition best described by Michael Hunt as “an interrelated set of convictions or assumptions that reduces the complexities of a particular slice of reality into easily comprehensible terms and suggests appropriate ways of dealing with that reality.” Michael H. Hunt, “Ideology,” in Michael J. Hogan and Thomas G. Paterson eds, Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 222. As Eagleton points out, overly functional definitions of ideology risk divorcing the concept from inequities of power that Marxian scholars see as fundamental to the very term “ideology” and its uses at the hands of elites. While recognizing these concerns, I wish to portray the way that ideological frameworks determined the approaches of both state and non-state actors alike, making certain policy choices more appealing while foreclosing others. For further explorations of the role of ideology in U.S. foreign policy in the 20th century, see Michael H. Hunt, Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987) and Frank A. Ninkovich, Modernity and Power: a History of the Domino Theory in the Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). 4 Ronald Reagan “A Strategy for Peace in the ‘80s,” 19 October 1980. Televised address, text available online via the Ronald Reagan Library (hereafter RRL).
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“is it just coincidence that Cuban and Soviet-trained terrorists are bringing civil war to Central
American countries in close proximity to the rich oil fields of Venezuela and Mexico?”6
Reagan’s anti-communist ideology led him to see the specter of Marxist revolution in the hemisphere as a direct outgrowth of receding U.S. power and the strategic fecklessness of his predecessors. The revolutionary government in Nicaragua and active guerrilla movements in El
Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras represented the most visible examples of the failures of
Democratic and Republican foreign policies during the last two decades. Reagan rejected the policies of détente pursued by his predecessors, and touted the superiority of American values over those of the Soviet system.7 Richard Nixon’s and Gerald Ford’s attempts to negotiate a peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union had jeopardized U.S. security and invited Soviet challenge by gutting the United States of its economic and military advantages, Reagan believed.8 And whereas Carter argued that an “inordinate fear of communism” clouded
America’s perception of its national interest abroad, Reagan believed that ignoring evidence of
6 Ronald Reagan, “Peace: Restoring the Margin of Safety,” Speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention, Chicago, Ill., August 18, 1980, RRL.
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Soviet expansionism had invited the U.S.S.R. to confront the United States aggressively.9 In a campaign speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in August, 1980, Reagan warned that advances by Soviet proxies throughout the developing world were part of a concerted effort to challenge
U.S. access to oil and other natural resources necessary to industrial economies. “All over the world,” Reagan said, “we can see that in the face of declining American power, the Soviets and their friends are advancing. Yet the Carter Administration seems totally oblivious.”10
Forget Carter
The Reagan administration initially pursued a foreign policy guided by ideological anti- communism, which emphasized military cooperation to protect U.S. security interests while downplaying human rights in the Western Hemisphere. In this introductory section, I preface the broader argument of the dissertation by showing how Reagan officials crafted their regional policy in response to the perceived failure of the Carter administration to protect U.S. interests in the region.
During the 1970s in Latin America, internally-driven surges of revolutionary aspiration and counterrevolutionary repression met with global economic change to produce a particularly violent decade. In the Southern Cone, the overthrow of democratically elected leaders by military elites—most notably the murder of Chilean socialist president Salvador Allende in
1973— revitalized urban leftist guerrilla movements. The leaders of these revolutionary leftist groups used violence against state and capitalist targets—assassinations, kidnappings, and bank robberies were common in the early 1970s—in attempts to gain followers and provoke general uprisings. This in turn elicited a broad crackdown coordinated by military governments in the
9 Jimmy Carter, “University of Notre Dame: Address at Commencement Exercises at the University,” 22 May 1977 (Santa Barbara, California: UCSB Presidency Project).
6 region that adhered to National Security Doctrine, an ideology of intense counterinsurgency repression originally taught and supported by U.S. military trainers.11 Throughout the hemisphere as a whole, the 1970s also witnessed a serious—if at times incoherent—challenge to
U.S. hegemony by Latin American governments in the wake of Vietnam and the dislocations of the international economic system.12 But newfound diplomatic assertiveness by Latin American military regimes often masked administrative frailty and economic mismanagement. In Central
America particularly, economic development over the previous decade had wrought social transformations in the form of urbanization and the creation of a broadening middle class. In most countries, the increasing demand for economic opportunity and political rights were circumscribed by weak state structures and entrenched political forces.13 In these conditions guerrilla movements capitalized on discontent among rural peasants over growing economic exclusion, along with more organized opposition in urban areas, to swell their ranks. In response, traditional forces of the military—often at the behest of oligarchic economic elites—responded with increasingly brutal violence.
Carter had attempted to balance a grave concern for human rights with a policy of non- intervention that would redress historical U.S. paternalism toward Latin America.14 Carter’s turn
11 Hal Brands highlights the “fundamental interdependence of left- and right-wing extremism” during the late 1960s and 1970s. See Hal Brands, Latin America’s Cold War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), pp. 96-97, 97 for quote. His argument has been challenged by others, namely Stephen Rabe and Greg Grandin, who emphasize American hegemony and the decisive role of U.S. National Security Doctrine in shaping violence during this period. See Stephen G. Rabe, The Killing Zone: the United States Wages Cold War In Latin America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012) and Grandin’s introductory essay in Greg Grandin and Gilbert M. Joseph. A Century of Revolution: Insurgent and Counterinsurgent Violence during Latin America's Long Cold War. For a broader account that emphasizes changes to socioeconomic structures in Latin America during the 1970s, exacerbated by American hegemony, see Tulio Halperín Donghi and John Charles Chasteen, The Contemporary History of Latin America (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1993) pp. 338-42. 12 Brands, Latin America’s Cold War pp. 130-31. 13 For a summary see Halperín Donghi, Contemporary History, pp. 338-400. 14 For a full treatment of Carter’s human rights-based foreign policy and the contradictions between non- intervention and human rights concerns, see Kathryn Sikkink, Mixed Signals: U.S. Human Rights Policy in Latin America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004) and Vanessa Walker, “At the End of Influence: The Letelier Assassination, Human Rights, and Rethinking Intervention in US-Latin American Relations,” Journal of
7 to human rights had not been entirely moralistic, being equally motivated by an attempt to grapple with changes that he saw weakening U.S. international power—what Carter called a
“political awakening” in the Global South. If the United States did not adapt to these changes, he asserted, it would abdicate its leadership. But in practice, the Carter administration found it difficult to integrate values into its foreign policies. Internal disagreements among Carter’s advisers—as well as between U.S. diplomats and the newly created human rights bureau at the
State Department—rendered human rights policies incoherent, and often obfuscated their relation to U.S. national security objectives.15 At the same time, the U.S. influence underlying
Carter’s human rights policies met with a backlash among Latin American regimes eager to emphasize their own sovereignty in the face of U.S. power.
In Nicaragua, the Carter administration’s preoccupation with human rights eventually led it to withdraw U.S. support for embattled dictator Antonio Somoza Debayle, long a reliable anti- communist ally. Nicaraguan political unrest came on the heels of two decades of sustained economic growth, fueled by steady production and diversified agricultural trade.16 Economic success led to improved infrastructure and education under Somoza, but deepened income inequality in urban and rural areas.17 The greatest beneficiary of national economic growth was
Contemporary History vol. 46 no. 1 (Jan. 2011), pp. 109-135. For a discussion of human rights and non- interventionism within the larger framework of Carter’s foreign policy, see Betty Glad, An Outsider in the White House: Jimmy Carter, His Advisors, and the Making of American Foreign Policy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), pp. 70-72. For an early historical analysis of Carter’s foreign policy motivations, which explains the disconnect between Carter’s individual values and his international leadership, see Gaddis Smith, Morality, Reason, and Power: American Diplomacy in the Carter Years (New York: Hill and Wang, 1986). 15 Gaddis Smith, called American policy a “grim comedy of mixed signals,” a theme elaborated on by Sikkink in Mixed Signals. 16 Although the average rate of growth for Nicaragua’s GDP dropped slightly from 7.2 percent annually in the 1960s to 5.8 percent from 1970-1977, economic growth remained near the average among middle income countries, and was the highest among Central American countries during that period with the exception of Guatemala. See the World Bank International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, World Development Report 1979 (Oxford: Oxford University press, 1979), pp. 128-29. 17 Robert Pastor, Not Condemned to Repetition (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2002), pp. 36-37. Pastor notes that despite the Sandinista claims of economic catastrophe, the two decades prior to the revolution witnessed more social and economic progress than it had seen in the previous two hundred years.
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Somoza himself, as the corrupt dictator amassed huge sums of personal wealth during this period.18 On the Left, opposition forces allied under the Sandinista National Liberation Front
(FSLN, Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional) were riven by disagreements over whether to pursue revolution by fomenting a popular insurrection, or to develop a military structure behind a
Marxist-led workers’ party vanguard.19 While middle-class and private sector elements sought to loosen Somoza’s hold on politics through moderate channels, the dictator used the feared
National Guard to put down any challenge to the regime with a reign of state terror.
General opposition to Somoza swelled in 1978 following a particularly heinous series of government murders, culminating with the assassination of Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, editor of the liberal opposition newspaper La Prensa. Chamorro’s murder sparked the creation of a broad opposition front in which leftist factions featured prominently. The Carter administration struggled to respond to these developments, disagreeing internally over the desirability of ushering Somoza’s fall, and about the wisdom of intervening in Nicaraguan affairs. Carter sought unsuccessfully to steer a middle path, to “encourage freedom and democracy in
Nicaragua and minimize bloodshed,” without directly calling for Somoza’s resignation.20
Moderate opposition forces in Nicaragua became disillusioned with U.S. intentions and shifted their support to the FSLN. The FSLN—now dominated by a pragmatist “Third Way” (tercerista) faction led by Daniel and Humberto Ortega and benefitting from Cuban support—demonstrated outsized political clout through a series of dramatic armed actions in the preceding decade. The
Carter administration meekly urged the FSLN to include moderate officials in its plans for a
18 Even Jeane Kirkpatrick noted that Somoza’s wealth was “no doubt appropriated from the general revenues.” See “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” in Jeane Kirkpatrick, Dictatorships and Double Standards: Rationalism and Reason in Politics, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982), p. 25. 19 The sharp division between those in the Prolonged Popular War (GPP) and Proletarian Tendency (TP) factions had its origins in the late 1960s. For more on this division, see Sergio Ramirez, Adiós Muchachos: A Memoir of the Sandinista Revolution, translated by Alba D. Skar (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012 (originally printed in 1999 in Spanish)), pp. 56-57. 20 For Smith quote and Carter quote, see Smith, Morality, pp. 119-20.
9 post-revolutionary state. The terceristas—unlike other FSLN ideologues—were willing to work with private sector elites and other members of the “bourgeois” opposition. But now the rapid momentum of anti-Somoza activity empowered the Sandinistas’ vision of a truly popular general insurrection. On July 17, 1979, a defeated Somoza departed Nicaragua for exile in Miami. The
Sandinistas formed a junta that incorporated moderate opposition leaders, but they acknowledged privately that this was merely a temporary alliance. Real direction would come from the FSLN’s national directorate.21 The eventuality that the Carter administration had belatedly sought to avoid—a complete victory by the Sandinistas—became a reality. 22
Political and social upheaval were not confined to Nicaragua in the 1970s and, indeed, the example of the Nicaraguan revolutionary struggle renewed the aspirations of the region’s revolutionary groups. In El Salvador, for most of the 20th century, political stability had been preserved via a tacit political arrangement between the military and the coffee-growing oligarchy.23 The military’s dual role as the guarantor of elite power and the agent of repression lent a cyclical rhythm to Salvadoran politics: periodically, young military officers would overthrow the civilian government, forming a new regime committed to economic and social reforms along with broad participation to undermine the threat of revolution. Over time, younger officers would come to perceive those juntas as protectors of conservative interests, and the cycle would replay.24 When a group of young military officers toppled the government in October
1979, two factors seemed to make the coup unique. The first was the leading role of the Christian
21 For a summary of the Sandinistas’ adaptations, see Katherine Hoyt, The Many Faces of Sandinista Democracy (Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1997), p. 14. 22 Pastor, Not Condemned, p. 27. 23 In this arrangement, military leaders oversaw the low agricultural wages and unequal land tenure that supported the prosperity of the oligarchs. Dario Moreno The Struggle for Peace in Central America (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994), pp. 31-32. 24 Brian J. Bosch, The Salvadoran Officer Corps and the Final Offensive of 1981 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1999), p. 8.
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Democrats, under José Napoleón Duarte, in the governing junta after January 1980.25 As a broad-based party previously victimized by military repression, and as an advocate of major land and banking reforms, the Christian Democrats’ role in the junta made it “highly acceptable” to the Carter administration.26 Second was a fierce political-military challenge by the Left. Guerilla insurgents united under the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN, Frente
Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional) went on the offensive in 1979, threatening to topple the Salvadoran government. In addition to destroying the consensus that had emerged within the military officer corps in support of moderate reform, the FMLN also drew moderate-
Left political support away from the junta by forging an alliance with the Democratic
Revolutionary Front (FDR, Frente Democrático)—the FMLN’s de facto political wing led by
Social Democrat Guillermo Ungo.27 While the civilian elements of the new government, led by
Duarte, made progress on agrarian reform and bank nationalization, right wing elements within the military remained distrustful of the reform agenda. They pursued widespread repression and retribution against insurgents and perceived foes.28 Political assassinations and the widening toll of civil war violence gained widespread international attention in 1980, particularly the murder on March 24 of Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero, killed by an assassin’s bullet while celebrating mass. Although state terrorism was typically carried out by ambiguous “death squads,” the brutal campaign to repress the Left was designed and approved at the highest levels
25 The incorporation of Duarte in the junta came after the original cabinet formed by the October group— representing the full range of opposition to the Romero government—resigned due to ongoing military violence and lack of progress on reform efforts. 26 William M. LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, 1977-1992 (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), p. 43. 27 On the creation of the FDR and its alliance with the FMLN, see the celebratory biography by Roberto Turcios, Guillermo Manuel Ungo: Una Vida por la Democracia y la Paz (San Salvador, El Salvador: Fundación Dr. Guillermo Ungo, 2012), pp. 200-13. 28 LeoGrande., Our own Backyard, p. 42.
11 of the military.29 This commitment to liquidate the left by force paralyzed the reformist elements in the government and further unified the guerilla opposition.30 Rising oil prices, plummeting values of agricultural exports, and soaring interest rates on foreign debt amplified the effects of political unrest in El Salvador and throughout Central America.31
Events in El Salvador soon forced Carter’s hand. In late December 1980, the FMLN guerillas publicly announced plans for a “final offensive” aimed at toppling the civilian-military junta. On January 6 a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) report presented the Carter administration with evidence that the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua was providing aid to the
FMLN. Support for guerrillas would jeopardize the $75 million in economic support that Carter had granted to Nicaragua following the revolution. Carter’s aides met in the hopes of once again finding an “intermediate step,” but the gravity of events forced Carter to reverse course.32
Military aid to El Salvador, cut off only a month before, was urgently reconsidered. “The situation for the El Salvadoran forces is critical,” a decision memo for Carter read, “they
29 This judgment has been confirmed by several recent decisions in U.S. immigration courts that have resulted in the expulsion of former military officials living in the United States. See Julia Preston, “U.S. Deports Salvadoran for Role in '80s Killings,” The New York Times, 9 April 2015, p. A8. 30 LeoGrande, Our own Backyard, pp. 49-51. 31 Each country in Central America struggled with a unique version of social, political, and economic tension that played out in the region during the 1970s. Costa Rica’s decision to increase defense spending put its social welfare state on the brink, prompting capital flight and social unrest. Honduras—lacking the ethnic and economic inequalities of its neighbors—had remained stable under the leadership of a reformist military regime that had promised democratic elections, but the country was traditionally suspicious of its neighbors, Nicaragua and El Salvador, and would soon become central to U.S. support for paramilitary activities to topple the Sandinistas. Finally, Central America’s most violently divided society, Guatemala, which is discussed in depth in chapter 2, was mired in a brutal, decades-long counterinsurgency against Leftist guerillas. Under the leadership of authoritarian Fernando Romeo Lucas Garcia, the state’s attempts to undermine communist support among Guatemala’s indigenous population led to intense state-directed campaign of violence where, as one scholar notes, “anti- communism met racism in overlapping circles of death.” On Costa Rica, see Juan Carlos Zarate, Forging Democracy: A Comparative Study of the Effects of U.S. Foreign Policy on Central American Democratization (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1994), p. 46; on Honduras see Jack R. Binns, The United States in Honduras, 1980-1981: An Ambassador’s Memoir (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2000) pp. 11-13; on Honduras’ role with the Contras, see Pastor, Not Condemned, p. 177; on Guatemala, see Virginia Garrard-Burnett, Terror in the Land of the Holy Spirit: Guatemala under General Efraín Ríos Montt, 1982-1983 (Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 15. 32 Kagan, Twilight Struggle, pp. 123-64; Pastor, Not Condemned, pp. 183-87.
12 reportedly have only one week’s supply of ammunition.”33 Prompted by the imminent prospect of a Marxist victory, Carter decided to resume military assistance to the Salvadoran junta and to suspend aid payments to Nicaragua temporarily. Carter’s decisions ensured that Nicaragua’s involvement in El Salvador would be one of the first issues facing the Reagan administration.34
Reagan officials bemoaned the effect that Carter’s outspoken human rights policies had on traditional regional alliances founded on shared national security interests. In countries like
Guatemala, Argentina, and Chile, Carter administration officials and Democratic legislators had turned to the language of human rights to protest practices of political murder, torture, and disappearance that became common state tactics in the late 1970s. In addition to voicing criticism of human rights violations, the Carter administration instigated or backed several laws barring U.S. military aid to abusive regimes.35 These Latin American countries in turn rejected
U.S. attention to human rights as interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states. Military governments in Guatemala and Argentina, for example, opted to foreswear U.S. military aid rather than submit to conditions on human rights.36 The effect on bilateral relationships was not just rhetorical. In February 1980, Argentina touted its violation of a U.S. grain embargo on the
Soviet Union as retribution for U.S. human rights criticism. The chairman of Argentina’s largest grain exporting concern stated that “[u]nless the United States feels that it can make a significant change in the human rights area, then the Argentine military are in no mood to cooperate on the
33 “Minutes of the Special Coordinating Committee Meeting,” White House Memorandum, January 12, 1981, Declassified Document Repository System (hereafter DDRS) #CK3100106127. 34 LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard, p. 69. LeoGrande claims that “circumstances forced Carter into policy decisions that were, if not alien, at least uncomfortable,” noting that Reagan would pursue them “with relish” and on an “unimaginable scale.” 35 For an excellent summary of the effect that this had on Chile, see John R. Bawden, “Cutting off the Dictator: The United States Arms Embargo of the Pinochet Regime, 1974-1988,” Journal of Latin American Studies 45, pp. 513- 14. 36 This dynamic and the referenced legislation are discussed in chapter 2.
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37 grain embargo.” During the campaign Reagan officials seized on these effects to blast Carter for sacrificing U.S. power in the region. “In four years,” Reagan stated in a televised campaign address in October, 1980, “Mr. Carter’s administration has managed to alienate our friends in the hemisphere, to encourage the destabilization of governments, and to permit Cuban and Soviet influence to grow.”38
Reagan’s anti-communist ideology had deep roots in American Cold War thinking and, in particular, historical U.S. hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. From the late 1940s on, U.S. leaders had interpreted nationalist revolutionary movements as symptoms of spreading international communism, had characterized them as threats to economic and security interests in the region, and supported military efforts to destroy those movements.39 Reagan’s understanding of Latin America—at least the way he described it publicly—was entirely dependent on Cold
War tropes regarding Soviet and Cuban behavior in the international arena. His belief in the fundamental incompatibility of Marxist socialism and western democratic capitalism conditioned his perception that the region was under threat.
How did Reagan’s rhetoric correspond to reality? The administration was correct that
Cuba and the Soviet Union saw the revolution in Nicaragua and insurgencies in Central America as important opportunities to expand their own ideological influence. Castro was instrumental in uniting the various leftist forces of the Nicaraguan opposition behind the nine-man Sandinista national directorate that now dominated the government. And though Castro had initially gone to
37 For quote see “Argentina Expects to Profit from Grain Embargo,” The New York Times, 1 February 1980 and for a good summary of these events, see Betty Glad, Outsider in the White House, pp. 242-47. 38 Reagan, “Strategy for Peace” 39 For a general account of U.S. policies during the Cold War, see Rabe, Killing Zone and Westad, Global Cold War, pp. 146-49, 201, and 338-43. On Dwight Eisenhower’s policies, see Stephen G. Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America: the Foreign Policy of Anticommunism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988). On Kennedy, see Rabe, The Most Dangerous Area in the World: John F. Kennedy Confronts Communist Revolution in Latin America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999). On Nixon, see Tanya Harmer, Allende’s Chile and the Inter-American Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011).
14 lengths to appear uninvolved with the Sandinistas, by 1981, he was feeling validated by the momentum of events in the region.40 Following a trip to Nicaragua in June 1980, Castro told a
Cuban audience that “Our relations [with Nicaragua] are really very close, but based on mutual respect, on confidence. The imperialists are frightened by what is going to happen in Guatemala,
El Salvador and other places. The same is the case with the reactionaries. We are not frightened.”41 The head of the Latin American directorate of the Soviet Foreign Ministry, Yuri
Pavlov, later wrote that Moscow and Havana “cooperated closely” in training and equipping
Sandinista forces, as well as providing economic aid. Even in the period before the Sandinistas had solidified links with the Soviet Union, a modus vivendi with the United States seemed remote, as their restructuring of Nicaraguan economy and society was animated by strong anti- imperialist rhetoric.42 The Sandinistas hoped that their revolution would spread across borders throughout Central America, and they actively worked to supply and bolster the FMLN.43
But Reagan’s anti-communism vastly oversimplified the dynamics in the region, failing to account for local sources of discontent that broadened the appeal of nationalist reform beyond ideological allegiances. On the level of interstate relations, Reagan’s ideology ignored constraints that weakened foreign support for leftist forces in the region.44 While Cuban
40 See illuminating research on Castro’s discussions with East Germany’s Eric Honecker regarding Central America in Schweitzer, Reagan’s War, pp. 112-13. On Castro distancing see U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, “Cuban Support for Central American Guerrilla Groups,” May 2, 1979, in Congressional Record, May 19, 1980, pp. 11653- 55, as cited in Leogrande, Our Own Backyard, p. 25. 41 Fidel Castro, “27th Anniversary of the Assault on the Moncada Army Barracks,” Latin American Network Information Center, University of Texas Austin
15 objectives in Latin America generally coincided with those of the Soviet Union, the means of achieving them had become a source of friction by the late 1970s.45 Castro was emphatic that revolutionary movements must maintain a military struggle, while Moscow emphasized the political aspects of revolution. When Daniel Ortega sought Soviet aid to defend and export its revolution in 1979, Moscow was ambivalent about the prospects of such support.46 The risks of openly challenging the United States in the region were unappealing to Soviet decision makers, particularly while bogged down in Afghanistan.47 On the other hand, the Sandinista regime offered an opportunity to affirm the Brezhnev Doctrine in support of national liberation, and to counter Castro’s sole leadership of international revolution.48
Although KGB officials had helped to train Sandinista forces, Moscow watched the
Nicaraguan revolution largely from the sidelines, unconvinced that it would end in Sandinista victory.49 In May 1980, the Sandinistas again approached the Soviet Union, seeking substantial military aid. The Soviets assented in principle but cautiously postponed a detailed agreement.50
Unlike the image painted by Reagan—of allies fanning the flames of revolution—the Soviets and Cubans cooperated only hesitantly in the Western Hemisphere. Castro, for his part, was
45 See Danuta Paszyn, The Soviet Attitude to Political and Social Change in Central America, 1979-90: Case Studies on Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), p. 2; Piero Gleijeses, The Cuban Drumbeat: Castro's Worldview: Cuban Foreign Policy In a Hostile World (London: Seagull, 2009). 46 See Leonev’s account, detailed in Andrew and Mitrokhin, Going Our Way, p. 117. 47 A State Department secret report produced in January 1980 concluded that “caution, borne out of respect for US power, and acknowledgment that the US views dimly any change in the balance of power in a neighboring region, has been the main guide to Soviet policies in the Western hemisphere.” However, the report went on to warn: “Moscow will increasingly test and probe for US limits,” using the Nicaraguan revolution to “build up its presence in legitimate ways wherever possible.” See “The Soviets in Latin America: Trends and Prospects,” State Department secret Report, January 25, 1980, DNSA Nicaragua collection. 48 See Yuri Pavlov, Soviet-Cuban Alliance 1959-1991 (Miami: University of Miami and Transaction Publishers, 1994), p. 99. Pavlov, the Soviet Ambassador to Costa Rica from 1982-1987, argues that there was disagreement between Cuba and Soviet leadership over the efficacy of confronting the United States in Latin America. Détente had provided the Soviets with the opportunity to limit a costly arms race, to weaken U.S. influence in Western Europe, and to promote national liberation movements in the third world. While the Cubans and Soviets agreed on the third objective, Soviet leaders were much more keenly aware that aggressive support for revolution in Latin America could jeopardize more important goals. Castro was frustrated by such prudence. 49 See Mitrokin and Andrews, Going Our Way, p. 117 regarding training; also Paszyn, Soviet Attitude, pp. 24-25. 50 Pavlov, Soviet-Cuban Alliance, p. 123.
16 eager to maintain the role of a “senior partner” in the region, and did not willingly share details of Cuban plans with Soviet officials.51 Cuba was not a surrogate for Soviet policy in the region, but instead served merely as what one historian has characterized as “a partner, an influencer, and a source of reliable advice.”52 Cuba pursued its own policy goals and attached more importance—strategically and ideologically—to the revolutionary struggles in Latin America than did the Kremlin.
More importantly, the Reagan administration’s ideological obsession with Soviet and
Cuban interference in the region limited its appreciation of the socioeconomic causes of political unrest, and led it to excuse the brutal violence that regimes had employed to repress it. The
Carter administration had sought to address the causes of polarization first and foremost by acknowledging them, and then denying regimes the legitimacy and support needed to carry out campaigns of violent repression. To the Reagan administration, tying military aid to human rights assessments erased a more basic distinction between allies and enemies in a struggle against global communism.53 Placing abstract American moralism above calculations of geopolitical interest had been reckless, they believed. Thus, the essence of the Reagan critique of
Carter’s foreign policy—particularly in Latin America—was to ridicule its lack of realism.54
During the campaign, Reagan lambasted Carter’s idealistic “policies of vacillation, alienation,
51 Pavlov says that “political cooperation between Cuba and the USSR in Latin America and the Caribbean was of a more limited nature and scope than would have been expected.” Cuba was “trying, in effect, to guide Soviet policy in Latin America by sharing generously with Moscow their assessment of situations in particular countries but were much less prepared to provide detailed information on their own policy in the region.” Pavlov, Soviet-Cuban Alliance, p. 99. 52 Paszyn, Soviet Attitudes, pp. 2 and 6. 53 Interview with Elliott Abrams, “Reagan’s Leadership: Mystery Man or Ideological Guide,” in Kenneth W. Thompson, ed., Foreign Policy in the Reagan Administration: Nine Intimate Perspectives, Vol. 3 of the Miller Center Reagan Oral History Series (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1993), p. 185. 54 See, for example, Reagan, “A Strategy for Peace,” which stated that “My administration will forge a new, more realistic policy toward our own hemisphere.”
17 and neglect,” and instead argued that hemispheric relations must be “solidly based on shared economic and security interests, not upon mutual recrimination and insult.”55
In spite of Reagan’s appeals to pragmatic realism, his own judgment of the threats, risks and opportunities that abounded in Latin America was completely affected by ideological anti- communism. The inseparability of ideology and the administration’s national security thinking in
Latin America was best illustrated by Jeane Kirkpatrick, a Latin America specialist at
Georgetown University. Kirkpatrick shared Reagan’s belief that Latin America was crucial to
American national security, and as a former Democrat, went further than any other official in devising the language to excoriate President Carter for jeopardizing U.S interests there.56 In her most famous exposition, an article penned for Commentary magazine during the campaign entitled “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” Kirkpatrick described the fundamental weakness of Carter’s human rights-based foreign policy. Guided by a rationalist, liberal ideology, the
Carter administration had incorrectly perceived Marxist-Leninist revolutions as constructive social change. “Carter was, par excellence,” she wrote, “the kind of liberal most likely to confound revolution with idealism, change with progress, idealism with virtue.”57 The result was a double standard toward totalitarian regimes of the left and the right, which had forsaken
American interests and furthered Soviet objectives. In Iran and Nicaragua, she wrote, “the Carter administration actively collaborated in the replacement of moderate autocrats friendly to
American interests with less friendly autocrats of extremist persuasions.” The Somoza regime had been repressive, Kirkpatrick acknowledged, but it was nonetheless a reliable ally of the
55 Reagan, “A Strategy for Peace.” 56 See Roy Gutman, Banana Diplomacy: the Making of American Policy In Nicaragua, 1981-1987 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), pp. 30-31. 57 Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” reprinted in Dictatorships and Double Standards: Rationalism and Reason in Politics (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982), p. 45.
18
United States. History provided little evidence, she argued, that leftist regimes would willingly embrace liberal democratic principles.
Kirkpatrick’s skepticism revealed a paradox that inhered in Reagan’s ideological anti- communism, which so often posited democratic freedom as a foil to Marxist totalitarianism. On one hand, believing that Soviets and Cubans were working through Nicaragua to expand their revolutionary reach, Reagan was inclined to support reliable, anti-communist regimes. Unlike
Carter, he promised to do right by those who supported American objectives, repairing relationships—namely through the resumption of military aid and cooperation—that had been ruptured by human rights criticism. But, at the same time, Reagan made clear that he believed the United States had a historical mission to support democratic values abroad. By the time that
Reagan took office, there was no confusion about the fact that Central and South American military regimes were among the most repressive in the world, with official policies of torture and extrajudicial killing a matter of public record. If Reagan’s worldview envisioned communism as the greatest threat to democratic values, how did he handle the contradiction of supporting non-democratic governments?
Reagan never dismissed the role of idealism in confronting the Soviet Union. To the contrary, Reagan believed that American ideals would serve as the foundation for confronting opposing ideologies, particularly in Latin America. Outlining his vision for the hemisphere during the campaign, Reagan said that “for our long-term strategy, the communication of our ideals must become part of our strategy for peace.” When Reagan was asked whether he shared
Carter’s religious belief in human rights, he replied “I think that all of us in this country are dedicated to the belief in human rights.”58 Reagan’s campaign aide for Latin American affairs,
58 Ronald Reagan, “The President-Elect's News Conference in Los Angeles,” November 6, 1980 (UCSB Presidency Project).
19
Roger Fontaine—a future National Security Council (NSC) staffer—told The New York Times in
September 1980 that “the preoccupation with human rights didn’t begin with the Carter administration, and it won’t end with it.” However, to Reagan and his followers on the eve of taking office, it was axiomatic that those ideals should never trump national security concerns in maintaining alliances with Cold War allies. Reagan would “work just as vigorously as Carter for it, but he won’t push governments back into a corner.” Fontaine continued: “We believe more in private diplomacy. It gives us more credibility and in the end will help us move the hemisphere in the direction we want more effectively. . . . The United States cannot be the judge of the whole world and of the Americas in particular.”59
Confidence in American values was central to the administration’s national security thinking, but officials made clear that promoting democracy would be secondary to wielding military power when confronting the perceived threat of communist subversion. While Reagan favored democracy, Fontaine said, “democracy can in some cases be instituted too rapidly.”60
Even Kirkpatrick argued that, “Despite a good deal of myth-making to the contrary, Americans have always believed that democracy is the best government for everyone.”61 In “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” she had tepidly suggested that traditional societies would be more likely to undergo liberalization than communist regimes: “It is not impossible that U.S. policy could effectively encourage this process of liberalization and democratization,” she wrote, “. . . provided that the effort is not made at a time when the incumbent government is fighting for its life against violent adversaries.”62
59 Warren Hoge, “Reagan Aides, in South America, Say he Would Not Favor Dictators,” The New York Times, 22 September 22 1980. 60 Ibid. 61 Jeane Kirkpatrick, “U.S. Security & Latin America,” Commentary, vol. 71, no. 1 (January, 1981), p. 40. 62 Ibid., p. 51.
20
Kirkpatrick’s argument serves as a useful picture of the administration’s ideology on the eve of taking office. Reagan, his advisers, and most of his cabinet made clear in the months leading up to his inauguration that insofar as the spread of liberty was an objective of U.S. foreign policy, it was secondary to the goal of defeating communism. Reagan succinctly captured these priorities during the campaign, when he was asked about El Salvador’s stalled land reform program. “You do not try to fight a civil war and institute reforms at the same time,”
Reagan told the Time magazine interviewer.63
Dissertation Summary
My dissertation offers a new look at the history of U.S.-Latin American relations during the Reagan years that moves away from a sole emphasis on covert action and military support. I argue that, in spite of the Reagan administration’s national security ideology that urged it to meet the threat of communist subversion by pursuing the military defeat of armed leftist insurgencies, over time it adopted a strategy emphasizing elections and the development of liberal democratic institutions. This strategy was designed as a political means of legitimizing regional allies, undermining the Latin American revolutionary Left, and rebuffing domestic political opponents.
While critiquing the Reagan administration’s ideological support for violent military counterinsurgency efforts, my project shows how U.S. political interventions dovetailed with the efforts of Latin American actors who simultaneously sought a return to democracy. Reagan officials embraced and promoted democratization in the region, even when those transitions weakened the conservative forces with which Reagan was most comfortable.
I am not the first scholar to explore the Reagan administration’s unlikely emphasis on democracy promotion. Most often, however, historians have dismissed the emphasis on elections
63 Laurence I. Barrett, “An Interview with Ronald Reagan,” Time, 5 January 1981, p. 32.
21 as secondary to military policy, portraying it as a rhetorical trope used to justify unpalatable policies of intervention to the American public. At best, they argue, Latin American elections provided political cover for brutal counterinsurgency campaigns and the support of traditional economic and military elites. These arguments have merit. Reagan officials did respond to the harsh criticism elicited by their policies in Latin America, and they went to great lengths to describe policies in democratic terms in order to stunt that opposition.
But to dismiss the political aspects of Reagan’s intervention in Latin America as a sideshow is to miss one of the most enduring legacies of that period, not only for U.S. foreign policy, but for the region as a whole. During the 1980s, Reagan Republicans transformed from critics of Carter’s idealistic foreign policies to vocal promoters of American ideals in Latin
America—albeit a brand of idealism that was tightly focused on the pragmatic exercise of liberal democracy and support for free markets. How did this happen? First, I trace the political and bureaucratic reasons for the adoption of a democracy promotion strategy. Emerging from the
1970s, liberal Democrats in the U.S. Congress leveraged a growing network of transnational human rights organizations to raise the political costs of providing military aid to anti-communist regimes in El Salvador, Guatemala, Argentina, and Chile. By conditioning military aid on political and social progress, its opponents encouraged the administration to endorse democratization as a central component of U.S. human rights policy while excluding other socioeconomic aspects of reform. In turn, these domestic political battles over Latin America policy empowered a cadre of U.S. officials and diplomats who stressed the importance of civilian governance and even human rights in spite of the administration’s earlier dismissal of those themes. I show how these officials sought to develop a Latin American “Center” through official and quasi-official agencies like the U.S. Agency for International Development and the newly
22 created National Endowment for Democracy. These agencies channeled U.S. funding and expertise to Latin American actors involved in democratic transitions, sometimes alongside U.S. military cooperation and covert action.
Most important—and central to this study—is the fact that political changes in Latin
America challenged policymakers’ assumptions about U.S. interests in the region and shaped the evolution of their policy. While the 1980s is typically remembered as a period of upheaval and violence, it also witnessed the resurgence of civilian politics under authoritarian regimes across the region. That process was driven by local forces which presented the administration with new potential allies. I argue that, often in contradiction to their interest in courting military elites,
Reagan officials embraced democratic politics through a strategy that emphasized elections and institution-building. In El Salvador, for example, where the administration opposed negotiations with the FLMN, it provided financial and technical support to elections in 1982 and 1984, and lent its support to the Salvadoran Christian Democratic Party’s reforms aimed at broadening political participation beyond traditional oligarchic structures. Following a similar strategy, the administration supported the election of reformist parties in Guatemala and Argentina, and pressured the Chilean regime to accept an early return to democratic elections. Although these regimes were not successful in alleviating the socioeconomic sources of civil conflict, their limited political efforts encouraged the administration—and, importantly, Reagan himself—to seize on popular elections as a means of overcoming intractable civil conflict and promoting development while preserving the military aspects of cooperation.
The resulting U.S. strategy was laden with contradictions. At the same time that Reagan applauded a “freedom tide” in the region, human rights NGOs protested that U.S. military aid was supporting right-wing repression and limiting the power of elected officials. In Nicaragua,
23 the administration was so fixated on supporting the paramilitary “Contras” that it disingenuously portrayed them as democratic, while the Contras abused human rights and offered no coherent political program. Regional peace processes, such as the Contadora negotiations and Esquipulas agreements—which similarly endorsed democratization as a key principle for ending political conflict—received little U.S. support. Nonetheless, bringing together developments in
Washington with those processes of violence and political change that played out across the hemisphere, my dissertation shows how the civil wars of the 1980s prompted a major evolution in U.S. policy in which Reagan came to support the spread of liberal democracy throughout much of the region.
Hemispheric Historiographies
My project seeks to contribute to current literature on the history of U.S. foreign relations that reconceptualizes the role of the United States in the world. This scholarship has been characterized by an increased focus on local, non-state, and transnational actors, the recovery of previously ignored voices, and a broad conception of U.S. power and resistance to it, particularly in the so-called Third World during the Cold War. Leading this approach have been scholars who have taken advantage of newly declassified and discovered sources, and who have broken down disciplinary barriers to construct histories of international relations that do not revolve around Pennsylvania Avenue and Foggy Bottom.64
64 On the emergence of U.S. and the world scholarship from traditional diplomatic history, see Melvyn P. Leffler, “New Approaches, Old Interpretations, and Prospective Reconfigurations,” Diplomatic History vol. 19 no. 2 (Spring 1995). For recent examples of the new scholarship regarding the Cold War, see Westad, Global Cold War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007) and Robert J. McMahon, ed., The Cold War in the Third World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). On the trajectory of this scholarship regarding U.S.-Latin American Relations, see Mark T. Gilderhus, “Founding Father: Samuel Flagg Bemis and the study of U.S.-Latin American Relations” Diplomatic History Vol. 21, No. 1 (Winter 1997) and “Max Paul Friedman, “Retiring the Puppets, Bringing Latin America Back In,” Diplomatic History vol. 27 no. 5, pp. 621-36. For recent exemplary studies on the history of U.S.-Latin American relations, see Brands, Latin America’s Cold War; Harmer, Allende’s Chile; Virginia
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For scholars of U.S. relations in the Western Hemisphere, this turn has been aided by the efforts of Latin Americanists who have, in recent years, placed a renewed emphasis on the political.65 Their efforts—more so than those of historians writing in the diplomatic tradition— have presented a deeply-textured framework for understanding the relationship between international power and local processes of violence and state-formation that have played out in the region in the last century. Writing from a variety of disciplines, these scholars responded to a shift in the Latin American historiography from the social to the cultural—to the symbols, meanings, and significance found in everyday lives, power-laden encounters, and memory.
Embracing this shift but determined to reject the supposed ideological void wrought by the end of the Cold War, these scholars have highlighted the unequal power relations that persist in Latin
America due to economic, geopolitical, and military pressures from the North.66 Their political- cultural approach has opened up new lines of inquiry into state violence, political economy, and the Cold War at the precise time that scholars of U.S. foreign relations have intensified their interest in topics like race, gender, religion, memory, and human rights.67
Garrard-Burnett, Mark Atwood Lawrence, and Julio E. Moreno, eds. Beyond the Eagle’s Shadow: New Histories of Latin America’s Cold War (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2013); William Michael Schmidli, The Fate of Freedom Elsewhere: Human Rights and U.S. Cold War Policy Toward Argentina (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013); and Alan McPherson, The Invaded: How Latin Americans and their Allies Fought and Ended U.S. Occupations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). 65 The best depiction of these efforts is found in Gilbert M. Joseph, ed., Reclaiming the Political in Latin American History: Essays from the North (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001) which draws upon scholarship featured at a Yale conference honoring the work of Brazilian Historian Emilia Viotti da Costa. 66 For the best historiographical summaries, see Gilbert M. Joseph, “Reclaiming the Political at the Turn of the Millenium,” and Steve J. Stern, “Between Tragedy and Promise: The Politics of Writing Latin American History in the Late Twentieth Century” in Joseph, ed., Reclaiming the Political, pp. 3-16 and 32-80 respectively. 67 For illustrations of how scholars writing cultural history have tackled the political, see Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniel Nugent, eds. Everyday forms of State Formation Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994); Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniela Spenser, eds., In from the Cold: Latin America’s New Encounter with the Cold War (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008); and Grandin and Joseph, eds., A Century of Revolution: Insurgent and Counterinsurgent Violence during Latin America's Long Cold War (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010). On Guatemala, see Greg Grandin, Blood of Guatemala: a History of Race and Nation (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000). On Chile, see Steve J. Stern, Battling for Hearts and Minds: Memory Struggles in Pinochet’s Chile, 1973-1988 (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2006). On El Salvador, see Jeffrey L, Gould and Aldo Lauria-Santiago, To Rise in Darkness: Revolution, Repression, and Memory In El Salvador, 1920-1932 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008). On Argentina, see David M.K.
25
To many young scholars this blurring of lines is refreshing precisely because it challenges the traditional and often teleological frameworks for understanding power in international relations that long dominated the writing of history of U.S. foreign policy. Once canonical questions regarding the reality of the “communist threat” in the Western Hemisphere, the definition of U.S. empire, and responsibility for Latin America’s supposed underdevelopment have been overtaken by new inquiries that are as complicating as they are significant. Blending cultural and political history to investigate imperial encounters, transnational linkages, and neoliberal structures, this recent wave of scholarship on U.S.-Latin American relations offers new ways of understanding how U.S. power was negotiated and challenged, while ultimately playing a determining factor in the region’s trajectory. Some of the best of this writing has focused on Latin America’s experience during the Cold War, providing “multilayered and multivocal” histories that link local power struggles to global conflict by illuminating ideologies that exacerbated violence, invited military and economic intervention, and facilitated transnational solidarity through claims to human rights.68
The final years of the Cold War, however, have remained conspicuously outside of this historical reframing. Scholarship on U.S-Latin American relations during the age of Reagan remains characterized by deep divisions over the role of U.S. policies in causing and sustaining the political violence that played out during those years. On the U.S. side, this is largely explained by a formative literature—the massive outpouring of scholarship in the 1980s—that
Sheinin, Consent of the Damned: Ordinary Argentinians in the Dirty War (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2012). 68 For quote, see Joseph and Spenser eds., In from the Cold, p. vii. For a good example of scholarship that achieves these aims, see Westad, Global Cold War. For a recent historiographical summary of this literature on Latin America’s Cold War that stresses agency and multi-vocal approaches, see Andrew J. Kirkendall, “Cold War Latin America: The State of the Field,” H-Diplo State of the Field Essay No. 119, 14 November 2014.
26 was overtly polemical, aimed at rallying either opposition to or support for U.S. intervention in
Latin American civil conflicts.69 With the end of those conflicts in the 1990s, scholars of U.S. foreign relations attempted to place the administration’s policies in a more scholarly context, but these works—which largely shared in policymaking and bureaucratic-centric approaches— similarly divided along critical lines.70 Books like William LeoGrande’s Our Own Backyard:
The United States in Central America, 1977-1992 criticized the administration’s support for dictatorial regimes, arguing that Reagan’s pro-democracy stance was merely rhetorical.
Meanwhile, scholars like Robert Kagan and Thomas Carothers provided more approving assessments of the role of Reagan’s policies in overcoming Marxist challenges and fostering democratic change in the region.71 Notably, these authors were involved personally in the events during the 1980s, and their standard accounts bear the imprint of each author’s position in the debate—not to mention a myopic focus on top-level policymaking.72
Among Latin Americanists, the reluctance to revisit the 1980s is more deeply-founded, given that many historians and sociologists working or researching in the region during the
1970s and 1980s were personally affected by state violence. In the view of those writing explicitly from the Left, U.S. support was decisive in propagating military power that eliminated
69 For an example of the first wave of scholarship produced during the 1980s, see E. Bradford Burns, At War in Nicaragua: the Reagan Doctrine and the Politics of Nostalgia (New York: Harper & Row, 1987). For early investigative approaches, see Gutman, Banana Diplomacy; Bob Woodward, Veil: the Secret Wars of the CIA (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987). 70 For examples of more balanced academic histories produced after Reagan’s presidency, see Moreno, Struggle for Peace; James M. Scott, Deciding to Intervene: The Reagan Doctrine and American Foreign Policy, (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996) chapters 1 and 6; and a more critical account in John H. Coatsworth, Central America and the United States: the Clients and the Colossus (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1994). 71 For critical works, see LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard and Cynthia J. Arnson, Crossroads: Congress, the President, and Central America 1976-1993 (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993). For more approving accounts see Robert Kagan, Twilight Struggle; Thomas Carothers, In the Name of Democracy: U.S. Policy toward Latin America in the Reagan Years (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). 72 Robert Kagan worked under George Shultz and Elliott Abrams at the State Department and was an enthusiastic architect of the Reagan Doctrine. William LeoGrande and Cynthia Arnson were both congressional staffers during Reagan’s tenure. Thomas Carothers, a self-described “peripheral insider” on democratization policy at State.
27 political opposition among indigenous communities, unions, and in universities. Thus, for reasons that were both scholarly and viscerally experiential, the Latin American studies profession has typically viewed the transitions to democracy that occurred in the 1980s as a continuance of state counterinsurgency strategies, and U.S. support for those transitions as either meaningless or politically calculated. The return of democratic politics did not challenge the structural power of military and economic elites, the scholarship generally argues, and the political democracy it produced ignored social justice and human rights in favor of a neoliberal market-oriented ideology.73 The consensus among these scholars is that U.S. support for democracy served to mask the ongoing military power behind the status quo, and to facilitate the arrival of the so-called Washington Consensus around free market reform in post-Cold War
Latin America.
My focus on U.S. policymakers’ relation to the political changes of the 1980s, and the limits of U.S. power vis-à-vis internal Latin American factors is not to pardon the Reagan administration’s involvement in armed conflicts that claimed more than 200,000 lives in that decade alone.74 Indeed, the scale of violence demands that historians do more to investigate how officials understood and justified the relationship between political liberalization and violence, and how U.S. policies affected those dynamics. If recent literature suggests that the relationship between U.S. power and Latin American politics is more complex than previously accounted for, and if new documentary evidence can give voice to the multivalent experience of political
73 On this point, see Greg Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), p.75, and Gilbert M. Joseph, “What we Know and Should Know,” in Gilbert and Spenser, eds., In from the Cold, p. 27. 74 Coatsworth, Clients and the Colossus, p. 166.
28 violence in Latin America’s Cold War, then should not the same be true for the re-emergence of civilian politics that occurred at the end of that conflict?75
Particularly in the present moment, as the Latin American Left and various populist social movements have proven successful at navigating the electoral arena—the FMLN and
FSLN are currently in office in El Salvador and Nicaragua, respectively, and anti-imperialist populist parties remain in power in Ecuador, Venezuela, and Bolivia—it seems appropriate to return to the historical moment in which ideological conflict gave way to an apparent consensus around democratic politics. Doing so involves re-envisioning the final decade of Cold War violence as a broader, hemispheric struggle over the meaning, shape, and boundaries of democratic governance. Indeed, as recent scholarship has shown, even under authoritarian regimes the opening of political space during the 1980s set off national and transnational struggles over memory, identity, and human rights.76 To members of communist parties, guerrilla groups, paramilitary death squads, and oligarchic elites, these struggles carried revolutionary implications. But to a great many other Latin Americans, the return of civilian politics meant the end of the authoritarian rule of the previous decades, and presented opportunities to reformulate relations between the citizens and the state.
The Reagan administration was not as aloof from these changes as many scholars have supposed. Instead, U.S. policymakers and diplomats waded into these political struggles, reacting to unpredictable events by embracing new candidates and political parties, providing U.S. support to limited economic and judicial reforms, and facilitating structural electoral change. In
75 For evidence of the resistance to any such revision, see the strong reaction of Latin Americanists to Brands’ Latin America’s Cold War, which argued that cyclical violence between revolutionary and counterrevolutionary forces limited and distorted the effectiveness of U.S. policy. Brands’ argument that the Latin American Left and Right shared equally in the brutal violence of the Cold War period has been sharply criticized by scholars who claim such equivocation obscures the U.S. role in assisting state terror. See Stephen G. Rabe, “Human Rights, Latin America, and the Cold War,” Diplomatic History vol. 36 no. 1 (January 2012). 76 In addition to Stern, Battling for Hearts and Minds, see Cynthia Arnson, In the Wake of War: Democratization and Internal Armed Conflict in Latin America (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2012).
29 doing so, they demonstrated that U.S. Cold War ideology was far more malleable and less prescriptive through the 1980s than most scholars of Latin America assume. To be sure, the
Reagan administration committed vast financial and political resources to support the goal of militarily defeating leftist insurgents.77 But, in simultaneously pursuing goals of political and economic development, they drew upon another powerful—and often contradictory—ideological impulse: spreading American values. Explaining why U.S. policy was multivalent and at times incoherent not only illuminates how U.S. power was contested by local and transnational forces in the hemisphere, but places the development of U.S.-Latin American relations during the
Reagan presidency in the longer trajectory of global change that began in the 1970s and beyond the end of the Cold War.78
Dissertation Structure
The study is structured chronologically, with a particular emphasis on U.S. relations in five specific case studies: El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Chile, and Argentina. Rather than proceed on one level of analysis, I weave together a narrative of high policymaking in
Washington with national and local developments in Latin America. Combining extensive research in U.S. archives with new and previously unseen documents from Central and South
77 Scholarship on U.S. policy in Latin America is dominated by accounts that emphasize the role of U.S. covert action, military assistance, and military training. On covert action, see John Prados, Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the C.I.A. (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2006). On the role of U.S. military assistance in prosecuting counterinsurgency campaigns, see Greg Grandin, Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006). On U.S. military training, see the firsthand accounts of U.S. Defense Attaches in William R. Meara, Contra Cross: Insurgency and Tyranny in Central America, 1979-1989 (Annapolis, Maryland: 2006) and Timothy C. Brown, The Real Contra War: Highlander Peasant Resistance In Nicaragua (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001). See also the specific literature on U.S. military training provided to Latin American officers at the School for Americas in Lesley Gill, The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the Americas (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004). 78 On the history of human rights, see Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010); Akira Iriye, Petra Goedde, and William I Hitchcock., eds., The Human Rights Revolution : an International History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); and Micheline Ishay, History of Human Rights: From Ancient Times to the Globalization Era (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006).
30
American archives, my analysis highlights the diverse ways that U.S. power intersected with political change during this period. While proceeding chronologically, each chapter highlights a specific thematic issue, or set of issues, that was salient to U.S.-Latin American relations during particular moments of the 1980s. These individual chapters lock together to form a narrative that illuminates the evolution of U.S. foreign policy amidst the Latin American struggle to replace authoritarianism with democracy in the final decade of the Cold War.
The first two chapters highlight the anti-communist ideology that shaped Reagan’s initial approach to Latin America, and which led the administration to employ democratic rhetoric as a mere political expedient for achieving national security objectives. Chapter one focuses on
Reagan’s early attempts to support the Salvadoran military to defeat an externally-supported
Marxist insurgency. Using declassified U.S. documents, along with NGO and congressional records, I show how domestic U.S. opposition encouraged mid-level bureaucrats and diplomats to re-define U.S. objectives as political, culminating in support for the constituent assembly elections in El Salvador in 1982. Chapter two places those initial policies in the larger context of political violence in Central and South America and the Reagan administration’s failed policy of
“quiet diplomacy” on human rights between 1981 and 1983. Focusing on Argentina, Chile, and
Guatemala—and using newly uncovered documents from archives in those countries—I show how military regimes perceived the Reagan administration’s commitment to address human rights privately as a sign of U.S. support for their counterinsurgency efforts. This perception weakened U.S. influence and exposed tension between Reagan’s policies of unqualified support for authoritarian regimes and U.S. strategic goals.
Chapters three and four illuminate the evolution of policy that occurred in the middle years of the decade, in which the administration began to perceive democratization in Latin
31
America as an endogenous trend worthy of U.S. support. By early 1983, the administration recognized that its earlier anti-communist policies had purchased only waning influence in the region and growing political opposition at home. In chapter three, I trace Reagan’s rhetorical shift away from defending dictators to arguing that they could manage peaceful transitions to democracy. Importantly, this shift coincided with significant political changes underway in
Central and South America, where debt, economic malfeasance, and repression had undermined the legitimacy of military regimes and diminished the appeal of the armed Left. Democratic elections in Argentina in 1983, El Salvador in 1984, and Guatemala in 1985 taught the administration that support for political liberalization could allow it to undercut the Left without jeopardizing its economic and security objectives. Chapter four examines the transnational linkages that accompanied the re-emergence of civilian politics in Latin America. In the papers of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and Latin American foreign ministries, I document the ways that various political interest groups with competing visions of democracy sought to shape the resumption of politics during the 1980s from below—in many cases courting
U.S. support for their grassroots activities.
The final chapter and conclusion explore the contradictions and limits inherent in
Reagan’s newfound support for political democracy, which elided the socio-economic causes of conflict in Latin America. Chapter five addresses Reagan’s aggressive policy of armed intervention against Nicaragua, which remained the single greatest exception to his embrace of democracy promotion, and yet one that he described using exaggerated democratic rhetoric. I juxtapose the Iran-Contra scandal on one hand—highlighting Reagan’s failed efforts to paint the
Contras as a democratic ally—with the Esquipulas negotiations on the other. Esquipulas, a successful Central American peacemaking effort led by Costa Rican president Óscar Arias
32
Sánchez after 1986, also made democratic elections the central element of peace in the region, but elicited an ambivalent response from Reagan. Throughout much of the region, the administration defended the legitimacy of democratically elected governments, even as these regimes gently challenged U.S. power in their responses to domestic and regional questions of security, debt, and social inequality. But in Nicaragua, the administration was unwilling to sacrifice its power and prestige to allow a revolutionary government to undertake independent reforms. In the conclusion I highlight these contradictions by returning to the case of Chile, where the administration played a vital role in ending the Pinochet regime in 1989 in spite of
Reagan’s affinity for the general. I grapple with the question of how the administration, which in
1981 had promised a regional strategy based on empowering anti-communist regional allies, had instead coalesced around a strategy of democracy promotion.
Throughout this analysis, individual actors were central to the course of events, not only in formulating broad policies but in implementing and challenging them as well. As U.S. power engaged with processes of local and national political development, the agency of individuals played a key role across geographic space, within institutions, and through networks. I highlight these connections not to employ a transnational framework for its own sake, but because my research suggests that U.S. and Latin American policymakers, while pursuing their own political and bureaucratic agendas, interacted in unpredictable ways. Tracing these individuals and their impact on events is central to my project of understanding how the Reagan administration’s national security orientation in Latin America led to a strategy that sought to move beyond the binary choices of revolution and repression.
Some officials are well known. At the highest levels of the U.S. government, for example, Alexander Haig and his successor as secretary of state, George Shultz, were crucial in
33 determining the broad framework of U.S. foreign policy. Yet Haig and Shultz were different. A military aide to Henry Kissinger and subsequent Supreme Allied Commander of NATO under
Ford and Carter, Haig saw himself as a consummate realist. His appointment by Reagan was a nod to Ford Republicans that was viewed skeptically by Reagan insiders. Although Haig shared
Reagan’s anti-communist worldview, his belief in the power of constructive diplomacy to achieve U.S. interests put him at odds with Reagan’s National Security Council and political advisers. Nonetheless, it was Haig who dominated Latin America policymaking in the first year, committing some of the administration’s most aggressive rhetoric, even while he dealt with events on the ground in a pragmatic fashion.
Shultz, who replaced Haig in 1982, considered himself a more thoughtful statesman, and was determined to overcome the conflicts within Reagan’s cabinet that had limited Haig’s effectiveness as the president’s key foreign policy adviser. Shultz shared the Reaganites’ perception that revolutionary movements in Latin America presented a serious national security threat. But his attention to East-West relations and the U.S.-Soviet relationship encouraged him to see Latin American conflicts as costly imbroglios that would undermine U.S. power and impede its economic global leadership. Shultz’s European focus distanced him from the NSC’s fixation on Latin American communism, and helped him to envision unrest in Latin America as an outgrowth of social and economic inequality to a greater degree than Haig.
While Haig and Shultz differed in their approach to Latin America, they both fought hard to preserve the State Department’s role as the central foreign policy institution amidst a Reagan administration awash in discord and intrigue. Reagan’s advisers were inclined to ideological posturing and attracted to political machination. The major figures in Reagan’s presidential campaign—Richard Allen, William Casey, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and Robert McFarlane—became
34 fixated on national security threats in Latin America and used their administration posts to press their agenda for the region. The NSC was a particular problem in this regard. Officials like
Oliver North, Constantine Menges, and Roger Fontaine, who served on the staff of Reagan’s national security advisors, seized on the region’s importance in order to exercise an outsized influence on the policy process. Throughout Reagan’s two terms, conflict between the NSC and
State Department was incessant, as each agency viewed itself as the true guarantor of the president’s foreign policy vision, particularly in Latin America.
This dissertation also highlights another set of individuals who have previously been relegated to the margins: mid-level officials in the State Department and ambassadors in Latin
America. I pay special attention to two of Reagan’s assistant secretaries of state for inter-
American affairs, Tom Enders and Elliot Abrams. The latter, a Democrat-turned-Republican and self-styled neoconservative, was at the center of the transformation of administration policy in
Latin America. Abrams, more so than any other administration figure, identified democracy as central to the Reagan administration’s conception of human rights and as the key to defeating the threat of revolutionary Marxism in Latin America. Even as Abrams remained obsessed with overthrowing the Nicaraguan regime by force, he became the administration’s most forceful advocate for using U.S. pressure to unseat military dictators of the Right in Chile, Guatemala, and elsewhere. Abrams tangled with ambassadors like Fred Chapin in Guatemala (1982-85) and
James Theberge in Chile (1982-85), who represented the strident thread of the Reagan administration’s anti-communism. From their posts in the region they questioned evidence of government repression and tried to revitalize the U.S. relationship with conservative military and economic elites. Over time, however, other ambassadors like Tom Pickering (1983-85) in El
35
Salvador and Harry Barnes in Chile (1985-88) proved more receptive to an emphasis on human rights and worked closely with local political actors to facilitate the return to democracy.
Latin American actors were key to the political developments that took place throughout the region. While not accepting the Reagan administration’s optimistic discourse of a
“democratic wave” sweeping through the region, I nonetheless acknowledge that, during the
1980s, Central and South American actors sought to navigate the realities of Cold War ideological conflict. They, too, employed discourses of democracy, but in ways that often diverged from U.S. aims. This was true even of the most autocratic of Latin American leaders, like Guatemala’s General Jose Efraín Ríos Montt and Chile’s General Augusto Pinochet. In their dealings with U.S. officials, both leaders appealed to shared anti-communist values and democratic ideals simultaneously, in order to court U.S. support while resisting pressure to improve respect for human rights.79 Over time, other leaders emerged who genuinely embraced democratic change as the best alternative to repression and revolution. In El Salvador, José
Napoleón Duarte, a Notre Dame-educated leader of the Christian Democratic Party who had been kidnapped and denied the presidency after being elected in 1972, attempted a delicate balancing act: seeking democratic political legitimacy to pursue a meaningful social reform agenda while relying on U.S. to protect himself from the power of the extreme Right. 80 In
Argentina, too, elections in 1983 ushered in an end to military rule at the hands of Raul Alfonsín,
79 Rios-Montt, who oversaw a genocidal counter-insurgency campaign against Guatemala’s indigenous populations in the country’s highlands from 1982-83, employed rhetoric infused with appeals for social reform, and played to U.S. themes of improving human rights. In the most infamous American endorsement, after meeting with Ríos Montt at the height of the Guatemalan genocide in 1982, Reagan told local reporters that he found the general “[a] man of great personal integrity and commitment” who was “totally committed to democracy.” See Richard J. Meislin, “Guatemalan Chief Says War is Over,” The New York Times, 11 December 1982. See also Kathryn Sikkink, Mixed Signals: U.S. Human Rights Policy in Latin America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004), pp. 167-68. In Chile the iron-fisted General Augusto Pinochet cracked down on all political opposition after 1973, under the pretense that Chile was unprepared—economically and politically—to handle the responsibilities of democracy. While American officials initially sought to support Pinochet, his continual delaying of a transition led to vocal American criticism of his regime, and a direct U.S. role in the plebiscite that unseated him in 1988. This transformation is discussed in chapters 3, 4, and 5 in this dissertation. 80 José Napoleón Duarte, Duarte: My Story (New York: Putnam, 1986).
36 a lawyer for the country’s moderate-Left Radical Civic Union party. Over the next six years,
Alfonsín tried to re-establish democratic institutions in Argentina while simultaneously overseeing the prosecution of military officials responsible for human rights violations under the dictatorship.81
If this study begins with Reagan’s worldview and its role in the unfolding of hemispheric conflict, it ends with actors whose visions for the hemisphere were determinant in the achievement of peace and the transition to political democracy. Óscar Arias Sánchez, elected president of Costa Rica in 1986, confronted not only the U.S.-backed contra forces launching attacks from Costa Rican soil, but also the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Arias was unique in the
1980s for promulgating a vision of peace that hinged on shared interests of, and challenges facing, the Central American countries rather than the threat of external subversion. The regional peace crafted by Arias in 1987, the Esquipulas II agreements, incorporated Reagan’s premise that democratic elections were the central element of peace in the region. Meanwhile in Chile, a diverse coalition of political groups coalesced behind a strategy to end the Pinochet regime by defeating the general in a constitutionally-mandated plebiscite. These groups found an unexpected ally in Reagan officials like Elliott Abrams and Harry Barnes, who actively pressured the Chilean government not to interfere in the campaign, as well in U.S.-funded groups that provided vital technical assistance to assist the plebiscite.
Reagan stood at the center of the evolution of U.S. Latin America policy in the 1980s, but his role remained paradoxical throughout. Rather than support Arias’s peace plan, Reagan officials worked consistently to undermine it, opting instead to continue aiding the Contra paramilitary forces on the specious ground that they were true democrats. Reagan chose
81 Raúl Alfonsín, Ahora, Mi Propuesta Política (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Sudamericana/Planeta, 1983) and Inédito: Una Batalla Contra La Dictadura, 1966-1972 (Buenos Aires: Editorial Legasa, 1986).
37 confrontation because the persistence of anti-communist ideology within his administration prevented him from relinquishing the conviction that the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua posed a national security threat to the United States. Over time, this fear became increasingly dissonant with evolving administration policies that openly backed democratic transitions and national reconciliation elsewhere in the hemisphere, and as improving U.S.-Soviet relations weakened the salience of Cold War tensions. Yet by 1989, ongoing confrontation with Nicaragua remained an important reminder of the contradictions and limits that defined Reagan’s attempts to move U.S.-
Latin American relations beyond the threats of revolution and repression.
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Chapter 1
Ideology, Politics, and Power: The Reagan Administration Confronts Latin America, 1981-1982
January 20, 1981, the morning of Reagan’s inaugural, was cold and overcast. The president-elect stood on the western front of the U.S. capitol building—the first president to speak from that position. Flanked by two American flags—an original with thirteen stars and the current, familiar flag with fifty—Reagan issued a sweeping call for national renewal. Drenched in symbolism designed to connect Reagan with common citizens and the nation’s heroic past, the speech called upon Americans to shed the uncertainty of the previous decade and to realize the potential of the world’s greatest economic, military, and moral power. That power required first attending to challenges at home. “As we renew ourselves here in our own land,” Reagan told the crowd, “we will be seen as having greater strength throughout the world. We will again be the exemplar of freedom and a beacon of hope for those who do not now have freedom.”1
The president’s invocation of grand ideals belied an agenda tightly focused on what one biographer has called “a tripartite creed of reduced government spending, enhanced military defense, and substantially lowered tax rates.”2 The renewal of American strength that would flow from these priorities required strong, decisive leadership. The president and his inner circle turned first to economics, where Reagan set out immediately to confront inflation, unemployment, and the budgetary imbalance that, in his view, had been caused by government waste and over-regulation.3 The president’s political staff believed that bold action to invigorate
1 Ronald Reagan, “Inaugural Address,” in Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, ed. The American Presidency Project [online]. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=38688; Justin D. Garrison, “An Empire of Ideals”: the Chimeric Imagination of Ronald Reagan (New York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 3-5. 2 Lou Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York: Public Affairs, 2000), p. 93. 3 See Kenneth W. Thompson, Leadership In the Reagan Presidency (Lanham, Maryland.: Madison Books , 1992), 126-128; Leonard Silk, “The Reagan Priorities,” The New York Times, 16 January, 1981; and President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York: Public Affairs, 2000), p. 107.
39 the economy would demonstrate leadership and Reagan’s resolve to act on free-market ideas, distancing the president from the indecision of Carter’s first hundred days.4
If economic renewal was foremost among Reagan’s priorities when taking office, it was tightly linked to his goals for foreign and defense policy. In these areas too, Reagan believed, decisive leadership was necessary to guide America toward its destiny as an exceptionally powerful nation, uncowed by foreign challengers. In the inaugural, Reagan had issued a stern declaration: “When action is required to preserve our national security, we will act. We will maintain sufficient strength to prevail if need be, knowing that if we do so we have the best chance of never having to use that strength.”5 These ideas echoed through years of Reagan’s speeches and writings, both public and private, in which he had emphasized the need for the
United States to achieve “peace through strength.”
Standing opposite the United States in this vision was the Soviet Union, which represented a military, economic, and ideological threat. To Reagan, the U.S.S.R was a godless state with imperial ambitions, and the engine of international communist revolution. Reagan warned repeatedly that the goal of Soviet foreign policy was to seek a one-party international state and, believing this to be true, his advisers considered rivalry and confrontation unavoidable.6 But the president-elect also saw a fundamental weakness in the Soviet system: its inferiority to American capitalism in providing for the material needs of its people.7 Reagan had made clear during the campaign that he intended to exploit this weakness, pursuing an aggressive military buildup and requiring reciprocity from the Soviet Union before negotiating issues like
4 Hedrick Smith, “Reagan’s Plan: Reality Sets In,” The New York Times, 9 January, 1981, p. A1. 5 Ronald Reagan, “Inaugural Address.” 6 See Beth A. Fischer, The Reagan Reversal: Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997), p. 17 for Reagan statements on Soviet aims. 7 This view was shared by Haig, who claims that he stressed Soviet structural weaknesses to Reagan early on. See Haig, Caveat, p. 29.
40
East-West trade and arms control.8
In light of Reagan’s broad vision for U.S. foreign policy, this chapter seeks to explain how and why the administration became involved so rapidly and deeply in Central America, where, over the next eight years, Reagan would commit more than $4 billion in economic and military aid to El Salvador’s civil war, invite major political criticism by courting military dictators, and break U.S. law to fight a proxy war in Nicaragua. I argue that the Reagan administration’s anti-communist ideology played a crucial role in determining how it responded to a complex matrix of challenges in the Western Hemisphere in 1981: an armed insurgent movement in El Salvador, a revolutionary Nicaraguan government, Cuban interference in
Central America, and Soviet support for the spread of leftist revolution in the Third World. Anti- communism was the key factor that led Reagan officials to perceive insurgency and instability in
Central America as threats to U.S. national security. Seeking to avoid a repeat of Carter’s policies in Nicaragua, the Reagan administration moved to provide military aid to regional allies threatened by revolutionary movements—particularly El Salvador—and to repair relations with other ostracized military governments by resuming the sale of weapons and military hardware.
Motivated by anti-communism, the Reagan administration dismissed the importance of human rights, discounted evidence of state terrorism, and watched as political freedoms were trampled in those countries.
Anti-communist ideology turned out to be an inadequate guide for policy, however.
While there was broad agreement among Reagan officials on the need to take decisive action to
“draw the line” against communism in Central America, this unanimity of vision obscured a
8 Fischer, Reversal, pp. 16-29.
41 diverse set of allegiances and policy preferences among key officials.9 Decisionmakers like Al
Haig and Caspar Weinberger were acutely aware of the need for pragmatism and took steps early on that blunted the administration’s ideological approach to foreign policy.10 Throughout 1981,
Reagan officials struggled to come to grips with the political costs of adopting a militaristic policy in Central America due to the increasingly vocal opposition of liberal Democrats in congress. This chapter shows how this opposition, together with events in El Salvador and
Nicaragua, impelled policymakers at U.S. embassies and within the State Department to shift their focus to the political aspects of the conflict in El Salvador and in Central America more broadly. For Reagan officials, this emphasis on democratization—specifically U.S. support for
9 Although Reagan’s rhetoric set the ideological tone for U.S. foreign policy, and though he wrote prolifically on international issues, during the campaign he had not articulated specific foreign policy priorities. This task was left largely to his advisers during the campaign and, after the inauguration to his cabinet members. See Cannon, Role of a Lifetime, p. 94. 10 Both Weinberger and Haig took actions during the first weeks of 1981 that seemed to confuse—and in some cases, displease—Reagan’s most hawkish supporters. Weinberger, the new secretary of defense, was a close adviser to Reagan and a former director of the Office of Management and Budget. Weinberger wanted to build up American military strength while cutting financial waste. “What he needed, what we needed,” he later remembered, “was to restore our military deterrent capability—to get a capability that would make it quite clear to the Soviets that they couldn’t win a war against us.” While Weinberger shared the administration’s Manichean view of leftist revolutions in Central America, his focus on restoring American military power made him vocally wary of U.S. military involvement overseas. When Weinberger appointed former Carter official Frank Carlucci as deputy secretary, Washington Post columnists Robert Novak and Rowland Evans noted a wave of panic among the “Reaganauts.” Secretary of State Haig took the leadership in shaping the administration’s foreign policy priorities. As an outsider to Reagan’s inner circle, however, Haig proved eager to re-assert the secretary’s traditional role in foreign policy decision making, and to temper the administration’s enthusiasm with deference to foreign service officer expertise. When Haig oversaw a housecleaning of the State Department’s bureau of inter-American affairs that wiped out nearly all of Carter’s officials from ambassadorial and desk positions in Central America, it was widely perceived as an ideological purge. But rather than drawing from political ranks, Haig sought to surround himself with a “ring of professionals . . . in key jobs” that would reinforce the seriousness of State’s guidance within the administration. Days after receiving the reports from their departments’ respective transition teams, staffed by Conservative “young Turks” –activist legislative aides out to limit the influence of Ford Republicans—both Haig and Weinberger dismissed the teams, raising hackles among conservative insiders. Though Haig later downplayed the episode, it illustrated the ways in which politics, personality, and bureaucracy complicated the ideological approach to foreign policy that the administration publicly espoused. On “Reaganauts” See Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, “Antidotes to Weinberger,” The Washington Post, 19 January 1981. On Weinberger, see Gail E. S. Yoshitani, Reagan On War: a Reappraisal of the Weinberger Doctrine, 1980-1984 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2012); Lou Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York: Public Affairs, 2000), pp. 301- 302; and for Weinberger quote, Miller Center, Interview with Caspar Weinberger (Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 2005)
42 the 1982 constituent assembly elections in El Salvador—initially emerged as a practical way of ensuring the survival of the Salvadoran regime, while simultaneously shoring up domestic political support for its policies. However, the U.S. foray into Salvadoran politics described here contributed to the administration’s developing view that elections could be an effective instrument for undermining the appeal of the Central American Left, a tenet that would shape the administration’s strategic approach to the region during Reagan’s two terms.
The “Russians Are Coming” Syndrome?
The potential for revolutionary change made El Salvador a national security priority for the Reagan administration before it even set foot in the White House.11 In the waning days of
1980, with Cuban backing and arms secured from sympathetic communist states abroad, the
Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN, Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación
Nacional) launched a “final offensive” against the civilian-military government.12 The timing was deliberately designed to preempt Reagan’s likely decision to increase military aid to the junta and, the FMLN hoped, broaden the revolution into a popular insurrection. On December
27, 1980, FMLN commander Fermán Cienfuegos had confidently predicted that “Mr. Reagan
[would] find an irreversible situation in El Salvador by the time he reaches the Presidency,” cautioning, “the situation will be red hot by the time Mr. Reagan arrives.”13 He was half right.
The final offensive fell short of overthrowing the El Salvadoran government and exposed a lack
11 An internal transition memo listed El Salvador as the 2nd priority behind the Iranian hostages. Underneath the heading, the memo read, “military aid (can it wait until January 21st?)” Poland was the third priority. “Urgent Foreign Policy Decisions,” Box 15, 3020 Group Transition Folder, Fred Iklé Papers, Hoover Institution Archives. 12 In the year leading up the offensive, FMLN official Shafik Handal had gone on a worldwide trip to acquire arms, at the urging of KGB officials. On the role of the KGB in facilitating El Salvador’s arms purchases from East European and Vietnamese governments, see Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The World was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World (New York: Basic Books, 2005), pp. 122-24. 13 Alan Riding, “Salvadoran Rebel Predicts Final Push: Says Offensive Will Begin Before Reagan Takes Office Jan. 20,’” The New York Times, Dec 27, 1980, p. A1.
43 of broad popular support for the FMLN’s armed revolution. But the risk it posed to the government prompted the Carter administration to resume lethal aid to the government on a temporary basis. That decision, in effect, prioritized assistance to El Salvador for the incoming
Reagan administration.
Secretary Haig wasted no time in setting the terms of the administration’s foreign policy in opposition to those of Carter. In his first press conference, the secretary announced that
“international terrorism [would] take the place of human rights” as the core focus of U.S. foreign policy. Insisting that there was “no de-emphasis, but a change in priority,” Haig told reporters that dwelling on human rights produced “distortions” of U.S. interests.14 To be certain, Haig’s statement referred primarily to the Iranian hostage crisis, but it was in Central America where the declaration was first put to the test.15
In its approach to the region, the administration was guided by an anti-communist ideology, which led it to interpret the existence of armed revolutionary movements as proof of external subversion by the Soviet Union and its Cuban proxy, rather than the result of endogenous political aspirations.16 In its first week, the administration began crafting a presidential declaration that would formally accuse Nicaragua of transiting shipments of Soviet and Cuban arms into El Salvador, justifying a cut-off of economic aid to the Sandinista regime.
But the administration had very little verifiable intelligence to demonstrate Nicaraguan or
Cuban—much less Soviet—support for the Salvadoran guerrillas. This owed largely to the
14 Don Oberdorfer, “Haig Calls Terrorism Top Priority: Human Rights Goals Demoted as Concern of Foreign Policy,” The Washington Post, January 29, 1981, p. A1. 15 Amidst a busy first week in office, Reagan recorded several of his first presidential diary entries on terrorism and communism. On January 26th, Reagan wrote: “A meeting on terrorism with heads of the F.B.I.—S.S.—C.I.A., Sec’s of State, defense & others. Have ordered they be given back their ability to function.” Ronald Reagan and Douglas Brinkley, The Reagan Diaries: Part I, January 1981-October 1985, Douglas Brinkley, ed. (New York: Harper Collins, 2009), p. 15. 16 On the 27th, Reagan met with the returning hostages and their families. The following day, after meeting with the Jamaican prime minister, Reagan wrote, “I think we can help him & gradually take back the Caribbean which was becoming a “‘Red’ lake.” Reagan and Brinkley, Reagan Diaries I, p. 15.
44 diminishing of U.S. intelligence-gathering capabilities in Latin America during the Carter administration. Haig instructed William Casey, Reagan’s director of central intelligence, to remedy this problem immediately.17 In spite of the lack of evidence, the administration felt confident that evidence of Cuban and Russian involvement in Central America would bear out its public claims.18
When it came to defining the goals that would counter the perceived threat of Leftist incursion in the region, the administration balked.19 Hampered by poor intelligence, internal disagreements over the extent of communist infiltration in the hemisphere, and political caution, the administration proceeded hesitantly. On January 26, Haig wrote to the president: “We are continuing to assemble and assess the evidence of Nicaraguan Government involvement in El
Salvador. The evidence of Nicaraguan culpability is substantial.”20 However, he cautioned that there were reasons to delay the recall of assistance to Nicaragua.21 Haig outlined the administration’s goals: “The key consideration is that we want Nicaraguan support for the insurgents in El Salvador and the ability of Cuba to use Nicaraguan territory to stop and stay stopped. Our treatment of the determination should be part of a strategy to meet that objective.”22
At a series of National Security Council (NSC) meetings remembered by Haig as
17 Casey’s approach to intelligence was a romantic one, culled in the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. His experiences gave him a contempt for bureaucratic oversight and a brash confidence in the effectiveness of covert action—tendencies that Casey was most apt to explore in Latin America. See Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows: the Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents and how They Won the Cold War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), p. 242. 18 John Bushnell, the acting assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs during the final days of the Carter administration, and who continued in the post under Reagan, recalled that Haig’s “instincts” suggested Soviet and Cuban involvement. Bushnell later remembered that “Haig wanted to blame the Salvadoran all-out offensive, the Salvadoran insurgency, and the Nicaraguan takeover 100 percent on Cuba and 70 percent on Russia.” Yet, because of a lack of “hard evidence,” he admitted the administration “didn't know just what role Cuba and the Soviets had played in training and equipping the guerrillas.” Interview with John A. Bushnell, December 19, 1997, (Washington, DC: The Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training), p. 506. 19 Haig, Caveat, p. 127. 20 “Determination Considering Nicaraguan Support for Acts of Violence in other Countries,” Memo from Haig to the President, January 26th, 1981, DNSA, El Salvador Collection. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid.
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“anguishing,” internal differences emerged over how the administration could respond to the sense of crisis in El Salvador.23 The NSC met on February 5 to discuss the scope of the regional threat. Reagan’s advisers agreed on the proximate cause of regional instability: Cuban interference, personally directed by Castro, in the support of Central and South American communist parties and revolutionary movements.24 While Haig acknowledged that support for the revolutionary struggle had socio-economic roots, he emphasized that “these countries could manage if it were not for Cuba.” The NSC considered various ways that it could deal with the
“the Cuban problem,” and its manifestation in El Salvador. Caspar Weinberger agreed that “the problem stems from Cuba” and argued for covert action to “disrupt Cuban activities.” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General David Jones, told the NSC, “we need to let the Latin
Americans know that we can be helpful” by increasing military cooperation and improving
American cooperation in the areas of “intelligence, a psychological warfare program, and an ability to impede guerrilla activities.”25
From the outset, the administration’s national security decisionmakers saw El Salvador as an opportunity to wield American power to actively confront the spread of Marxism and turn back the leftist tide in Central America. There was trepidation over the political viability of military intervention, however. “The worst thing,” Haig told the NSC, “would be to have the US dragged into another draining experience like Vietnam.” But decisive action would give meaning to the foreign policy rhetoric that Reagan had wielded during the campaign. El Salvador was “a good starting point. A victory there could set an example,” Reagan said. Later in that
23 Pastor attributes the administration’s slow response to its focus “on a limited agenda” and its failure to speedily appoint officials to key decision-making positions. See Robert Pastor, Not Condemned to Repetition (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2002), p. 190. 24 Richard Allen memo, “National Security Council Meeting,” 5 February, 1981. Box 91282, White House Staff and Office Files: Executive Secretariat, National Security Council (hereafter Exec Sec NSC) Meeting Files, RRL. 25 Minutes of February 5, 1981 NSC Meeting, Box 91282, White House Staff and Office Files: Exec Sec NSC: Meeting Files, RRL.
46
NSC meeting, Reagan declared resolutely, “We can’t afford a defeat. El Salvador is the place for victory.”26
In Nicaragua, the administration found its options more “delicate.” The administration perceived accurately that the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN, Frente de Sandinista
Liberación Nacional) was crowding out moderate factions within the national government and facilitating arms shipments to the Salvadoran guerrillas. Yet policymakers feared that acting too dramatically against Nicaragua might push the regime even further to the left and isolate those remaining moderates. “We probably have enough evidence on hand about Nicaraguan support for El Salvadoran revolutionaries to cut off aid to Nicaragua,” Haig told the NSC. “The first order of business is to show the Nicaraguans that we will not tolerate violations as did the past administration.”27 But the administration’s own rhetoric, which portrayed Nicaragua as having been “lost” by the Carter administration, restricted its options for constructively dealing with the
Sandinistas and empowering moderate elements that still operated with some freedom within the
Nicaraguan state. Administration officials opted quietly to pressure the Nicaraguan government to cease arms shipments to El Salvador, but they questioned the assurances they received, lacking sufficient intelligence to verify them.
At a second NSC meeting on February 11, the group turned its attention to the options for acting in Central America. On the table was a proposal for Reagan to issue a presidential determination that substantiated Nicaraguan arms shipments to Salvadoran guerrillas. The CIA had at last collected “conclusive evidence” of Nicaraguan involvement in shipping arms to El
Salvador, and now the NSC debated whether Reagan should issue the determination
26 Minutes of February 5, 1981 NSC Meeting. 27 Ibid.
47 immediately, or delay in hopes of encouraging cooperation with the Nicaraguan government.28
The paper attempted to lay out the interrelated U.S. goals in the region: in El Salvador, “to preserve the current government hopefully without U.S. intervention”; in Nicaragua, “to prevent complete domination of the country by the pro-Cuban and pro-Soviet factions”; and, more generally, “containing Cuban activities harmful to our interests.”29
At the meeting, however, disagreements persisted over where and how the administration should apply U.S. power. Haig proposed an aggressive strategy that would —as he later put it—
“carry the consequences” of Cuban-Soviet meddling “directly to Moscow and Havana, and through the application of a full range of economic, political, and security measures, convince them to put an end to Havana’s bloody activities in the hemisphere and elsewhere in the world.”30 Haig believed that going “to the source” would forestall the possibility of U.S. intervention in El Salvador. But to others, a policy of confrontation with Castro was risky and not guaranteed to work. An NSC options paper prepared by interagency policymakers for the
February 11 meeting acknowledged that “the US had a relatively small amount of direct leverage on Cuba.”31 Although the NSC contemplated economic and propaganda operations that might
“[increase] the cost of Cuban adventurism,” the memo noted that these measures “probably would not cause Castro to cease his support for Salvadoran insurgents.”32
The NSC’s planning efforts were also hampered by disagreements over the political costs of a policy of confrontation in Central America. When Reagan pressed Haig on military options that the U.S. might pursue, Haig suggested the United States might consider a naval blockade
28 NSC paper for 11 February meeting “The Nicaraguan Finding and Central America/Cuban Policy,” Box 91282, White House Staff and Office Files: Exec Sec NSC Meeting Files, RRL. 29 “The Nicaraguan Finding and Central America/Cuban Policy.” 30 Haig, Caveat, p. 122. 31 NSC Paper “Possible US Options for Cuba,” 5 February 1981, Box 91282, White House Staff and Office Files: Exec Sec NSC Meeting Files, RRL. 32 National Security Council Meeting Minutes 11 February 1981, Box 91282, White House Staff and Office Files: Exec Sec NSC Meeting Files, RRL.
48 and potentially mining Cuban harbors. Haig speculated that, “if the Soviets move into Poland, we must get them somewhere else first, and that means Cuba.” But Haig admitted that that few foreign leaders—and few members of the American public—understood the extent of Cuban interference. Thus, there was an “educational job to be done” in getting U.S. “foolproof evidence” in front of foreign leaders before such actions were considered. 33
These were bellicose recommendations from the secretary, but Reagan believed that high stakes required bold action. The president stressed that, “if the Junta falls in El Salvador, it will be seen as an American defeat . . . . [W]e must not let Central America become another Cuba on the mainland. It cannot happen.”34 Thus, Reagan opted for an immediate presidential determination regarding Nicaraguan interference in El Salvador.35 Some advisers worried that confrontation would fuel fears of direct American intervention, in turn inviting political criticism of Reagan. But on the whole, the NSC advised that action was worth the risk: “The president will be criticized more at home and abroad if another Central American nation is taken over by the
Communists while the USG stands by,” NSC staffers Roger Fontaine and Robert Schweitzer wrote to Richard Allen.36
What form, precisely, would U.S. support for El Salvador take? Reagan’s advisers agreed that a drastic increase in military aid was necessary, but more important would be direct
U.S. involvement in training Salvadoran troops to more effectively fight against FMLN guerrillas. Again disagreements arose. Haig and Weinberger believed that providing training to
Salvadoran military outside of that country could avoid the potential backlash against sending
33 National Security Council Meeting Minutes 11 February 1981, Box 91282, White House Staff and Office Files: Exec Sec NSC: Meeting Files, RRL. 34 Ibid. 35 For options, see “The Nicaragua Finding and Central American/Cuban Policy,” State Department Briefing Paper, DNSA El Salvador Collection. 36 Schweitzer and Fontaine memo to Allen, “NSC Meeting 25 February; SIG Paper on El Salvador,” 24 February, 1981, Box 30, White House Staff and Office Files: Exec Sec NSC Country Files, Latin America, RRL.
49
U.S. officers to a foreign country. But Reagan’s NSC staff dissented, arguing that direct military training in El Salvador would lift the army’s morale and, they argued, promote better discipline by Salvadoran troops. As internal debates dragged on, policymakers lamented the lack of action.
“We had a game plan, [but] [n]ow we are starting to vacillate,” Roger Fontaine wrote to Richard
Allen, “and in a way characteristic of the last administration.”37 Realizing an anti-communist policy different from that of Carter had turned out harder than Reagan officials anticipated.
Part of the reason for the delay was the enduring fear of the domestic political backlash that military involvement in El Salvador would bring. Reagan’s advisers reckoned that a “public information” campaign would help it to defray those political costs. In late February, the administration released a white paper justifying an increase in military aid and the dispatch of fifty-five military advisors to El Salvador. The white paper summarized the State Department’s evidence that Salvadoran guerrillas were using arms funneled from outside the country. Calling it a “strikingly familiar case of Soviet, Cuban, and other Communist military involvement in a politically troubled Third World country,” the document alleged a “well-coordinated, covert effort to bring about the overthrow of El Salvador's established government and to impose in its place a Communist regime with no popular support.” While the paper applauded the governing junta’s reform program, it explicitly identified the U.S. objective as ending external meddling, and did not identify a U.S. concern with regard to the political outcome of the Salvadoran conflict.38
As Reagan’s political advisers had feared, the paper garnered massive criticism, detracting attention from Reagan’s domestic economic initiatives. The Washington Post called
37 Schweitzer and Fontaine memo to Allen, “NSC Meeting 25 February; SIG Paper on El Salvador,” 24 February, 1981, Box 30, White House Staff and Office Files: Exec Sec NSC Country Files, Latin America, RRL 38 “US White Paper on El Salvador,” The Christian Science Monitor, 26 February 1981.
50 the reaction to the White Paper the “first test” of Reagan’s presidency.39 Mexican author Carlos
Fuentes, writing in The New York Times, characterized the white paper as “gruyere-like” for its many holes. Calling the army the “unlimited custodian of colonialism in El Salvador,” he warned that U.S. military aid would allow it to “kill unlimitedly.”40 Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) urged the United States to commit itself to “a political solution” that included overseeing a “military truce” between the Government and the guerrillas, assuring no increase in military supplies to either side, and arranging a conference between “all political elements committed to a long-term peaceful solution.’”41 The public debate escalated in the weeks that followed, with Reagan officials publicly suggesting that U.S. military action against Cuba was possible, as was the potential introduction of U.S. troops into El Salvador.42
In spite of this public criticism, the white paper served its basic purpose for the administration of justifying a series of policy moves that demonstrated the U.S. commitment to aiding the Salvadoran military in its battle against the FMLN. In March, the administration approved $20 million in emergency funds and $5 million in foreign military sales (FMS) credits to help the Salvadoran military acquire new equipment. Additional military advisers in El
Salvador sought to boost the Salvadoran intelligence and command capabilities, and also aided in the training of new “rapid reaction” battalions. The administration also developed plans that would later bring 500 Salvadoran officer candidates to Fort Benning, Georgia for training by
U.S. military officers. These were policies meant to “draw the line” against Marxist revolution in
39 Josh M. Goshko, “U.S. Prepares to Aid Salvador in First Test of Reagan Policy; Salvador May Be First Test of Reagan Policy” The Washington Post, 14 February 1981. 40 Carlos Fuentes, “Latins’ Pressing Questions,” The New York Times, 5 March 1981. 41 Juan de Onis, “Reagan Aide Refuses to Rule Out Action Against Cuba on Salvador,” The New York Times, 23 February 1981. 42 Chief of Staff Ed Meese spoke publicly about the possibility of quarantining Cuba, while Senator Charles Percy gave the administration full-throated support for resuming military aid. While he deferred questions on troop involvement, he declined to ''rule out any options.” Bernard Gwertzman, “More Salvador Aid Backed in Congress,” The New York Times, 18 February 1981.
51
Central America, and yet the administration remained highly sensitive to their political costs.
Reagan remained relatively silent regarding the El Salvador white paper, reflecting the fears of his political advisors that presidential concern over Central America was deflecting attention from higher priority issues like tax cuts and military re-armament. Comparisons to Vietnam remained at the forefront of policymakers’ minds. National Security Advisor Richard V. Allen wrote to Counselor Ed Meese and Chief of Staff Jim Baker alerting them to “try not to mention the word Vietnam; even its use may tend to validate the thesis” that the United States was embarking on a similar military adventure.43
In the spring of 1981, the administration’s Central America policy remained muddled.
On March 19, Haig’s undersecretary of state for political affairs, Walter Stoessel, told the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee that the administration was considering all options—including military force—to halt the flow of arms from Cuba to Central America. Under questioning from
Senator Dodd (D-CT), Haig affirmed that the administration saw Cuba as “the platform, the instigator, and the operative leadership behind the situation in El Salvador.” The administration intended to “take this problem to the source” but, he insisted, the administration had “no approved game plan” regarding the use of force.44 Under intense questioning, Haig insisted that the administration was not suffering from a so-called “‘Russians are coming’ Syndrome.”45
What the administration was suffering from was an increasingly divisive rift among
Reagan’s foreign policy advisers on the specific topic of Latin America. Press leaks fueled public speculation that a fundamental disagreement had developed within the administration.
These accounts alleged that “hardliners” like Haig, Kirkpatrick, and Casey were adhering to an
43 Allen memo to Meese and Baker, “Why El Salvador isn’t Vietnam,” 25 February, 1981, Box 30, Exec Sec NSC Country File, Latin America, RRL 44 Foreign Assistance Authorization for Fiscal year 1982, Hearing before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Ninety-Seventh Congress, (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1981): pp. 3-4. 45 Foreign Assistance Authorization for FY82, House FAC hearing, p. 164.
52 ideological stance that required Reagan to draw the line against Cuban-sponsored revolution in
El Salvador. Meanwhile, more pragmatic bureaucrats at the State Department shared with the congressional opposition a sense that economic and social inequalities lay at the root of the
Central American conflict.46
In reality, in the early months of 1981, the gulf between State Department bureaucrats and national security decisionmakers was not so wide. Instead, an administration that had come to office ideologically disposed to portray the Salvadoran civil war as a Russian-Cuban proxy conflict and to aggressively confront that threat had found it difficult to formulate feasible policies for doing so, as well as to absorb the political costs of those policies. While divisions among top officials did surface early in 1981, they were predominantly over questions of political tactics and not ideological vision. Indeed, Reagan’s political advisers—Edwin Meese,
James Baker, Michael Deaver, and Nancy Reagan—emerged as the staunchest opponents of confrontational policies, fearing that they would sap Reagan’s popularity.47
In early 1981, Reagan remained suspended between the various factions, seemingly oblivious to the causes of friction. Haig retained the president’s support as lead foreign policymaker, but when he voiced concerns about the State Department being marginalized,
Reagan recorded privately that the general was “seeing things that aren’t there.”48 This lacuna of leadership was exacerbated only a few days later, when the president was struck by a bullet fired
46 Carothers, In the Name of Democracy, pp. 17-19. 47 Michael Deaver confirmed in his 1987 memoir that Nancy “favored a diplomatic solution in Nicaragua,” and skillfully influenced the president’s thinking on the issue. See Michael K. Deaver with Mickey Herskowitz, Behind the Scenes: in which the Author Talks about Ronald and Nancy Reagan…and Himself (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1987), pp. 41-42. Deaver also recalled that on his first day of work, James Baker cautioned him that “those guys down in the National Security Council want to get us into a war in Central America. Now, we’ll be out of here so fast it’ll make your head swim if we get ourselves involved in a war down there.” The two reportedly made a “pact” to stifle the belligerent overtures of the NSC. See Interview with Michael Deaver, September 12, 2002 (Miller Center: Ronald Reagan Oral History Project).
53 by would-be assassin John Hinckley. In the immediate aftermath of the assault, Haig made a bumbling attempt to reassure the public, infamously announcing, “I’m in control here”—a mischaracterization of the presidential chain of command. Haig was publicly lampooned, and later explained that he only meant “control” in immediate, practical terms. But the gaffe was ironic in light of the many influences—ideological, political, and pragmatic—that were competing to push the self-styled “vicar of foreign policy” off course, particularly in Latin
America.
“The Saliva Test”: Courting Political and Military Allies
That El Salvador had become the defining foreign policy issue for the Reagan administration owed equally to the pace of events unfolding in Central America and to the administration’s ideological approach, which led it to meet a perceived grave threat to U.S. security in dramatic terms. The administration’s early policy actions in Central America— publicly emphasizing Soviet and Cuban aid to guerrillas and stressing the need to provide military support to wipe out the insurgents—were part of a broader strategy that linked the preservation of anti-communist regimes in the hemisphere to U.S. national security, and sought to rejuvenate relationships with militaries engaged in conflict with Marxist insurgencies. Publicly and privately, the administration acknowledged that doing so required removing human rights issues from the foreign policy agenda. “We must change the attitude of our diplomatic corps so that we don’t bring down governments in the name of human rights,” Reagan told the NSC.
“None of them are as guilty of human rights violations as are Cuba and the USSR. We don’t throw out our friends just because they can’t pass the ‘saliva test’ on human rights.”49
49 NSC Memo “Summary of Conclusions,” 6 February, 1981, Box 91282, White House Staff and Office Files: Exec Sec NSC Meeting Files, RRL.
54
The administration had signaled this course correction to allies during Reagan’s campaign, and in the early months of 1981, it took initial steps to enact this broader hemispheric strategy. In February, the State Department lifted the prohibition on Export-Import Bank financing for Chile and approved an invitation for the Chilean military to attend the 1981
UNITAS joint military exercises. In doing so, Haig reasoned that relations with Chile were
“uniquely encumbered by congressional and executive sanctions” for human rights violations.50
To the repressive military governments in Chile and Argentina, the administration signaled that it was willing to normalize relations by seeking to repeal congressional restrictions placed on military cooperation, without seeking “specific commitments” in return.51 Chilean officials in
Washington received unofficial assurances from Jeane Kirkpatrick that, “in the future, Chile would be treated in a different manner” than it had been under Carter.52 The Chilean foreign ministry instructed its embassy in Washington that Reagan’s election represented a “fundamental diplomatic change” that would create “propitious conditions to establish close political and economic relations” with the United States.53
The Reagan administration’s opposition to human rights restrictions on aid to Latin
American allies was not prompted by realist expediency—sacrificing ideals for a short term security objective. Instead, as its broad application throughout the region shows, this initial approach to human rights was a direct outgrowth of Reagan’s ideological anti-communism. For in addition to supporting the counterinsurgency effort against Marxist guerrillas—as was the
50 Haig to Reagan, 16 February, 1981, Box 20, White House Staff and Office Files: Exec Sec NSC, Country Files, Latin America, RRL. 51 Bushnell memo to Interagency Group, “Report of February 23 Interagency Group meeting on Argentina,” 24 February, 1981, Box 008-Argentine Republic, White House Office of Records Management (WHORM) Subject Files, Country File, RRL. 52 Telex Recibido (Received Telex) #39, “Meeting with Jeane Kirkpatrick,” 26 January 1981, Central Archive of the Chilean Foreign Ministry (hereafter Chile RREE). Unless otherwise noted, foreign sources are translated by the author. 53 Oficio Secreto Enviado (Secret Transmitted Memo) #3, Chilean Foreign Ministry Memo to Chile Embassy Washington, 5 February 1981, Chile RREE.
55 case in El Salvador—the administration also judged that military aid would court influence with like-minded military elites who wielded inordinate power in Latin American political regimes.
Between 1981 and 1982, the prospect of legalized arms sales became the central element in the
Reagan administration’s attempts to normalize relations with a host of Latin American governments—even when those governments were not engaged in active counterinsurgency operations. The legal restrictions, which had been put in place during the 1970s as a means of curbing state terrorism, were rejected by the Reagan administration as an obstacle to resisting the legitimate threat of foreign subversion. Reagan policymakers appealed to anti-communist ideology as a shared set of values that would restore U.S. influence with governing elites in the
Western Hemisphere.
Perhaps most notable in this regard was Reagan’s early attempt to resume military sales to the Guatemalan regime of Fernando Romeo Lucas García, whose record on human rights was known to be abysmal. Lucas García’s predecessor had actively renounced U.S. military aid in
1977 on the grounds that U.S. human rights legislation constituted a violation Guatemalan sovereignty. But the cutoff in U.S. supplies had done little to quell state violence and, in 1980,
U.S. intelligence agencies acknowledged that the government’s campaign of violence against unionists, students, and leftists was “far more repressive” than previously judged. Under Lucas,
“anticriminal ‘death squads’ have flourished,” one Defense Department report noted, citing
“mounting evidence of Government complicity in political murders and disappearances” carried out by those groups.54
Diplomats in Latin America, like the U.S. chargé in Guatemala, Melvin Sinn, experienced the dilemma of U.S. human rights policy firsthand. Sinn, a career foreign service
54 “Military Intelligence Summary (MIS), Volume VIII,” DNSA Guatemala Collection. See also Guatemala City to State Department, “Alleged Massacre Near San Martin Jilotepeque,” March 9, 1981, DNSA Guatemala Collection, for Sinn’s account of “preemptive repression and intimidation.”
56 officer who retired after his tour in Guatemala, openly acknowledged the scale of political murder carried out by the Lucas regime, but found U.S. criticism of the government on human rights grounds to be futile. In March 1981, he cabled Washington that the Guatemalan government had ignored the State Department’s most recent report on human rights. Although the embassy “[did] not recall being challenged about the facts,” he reported, government officials protested the intervention in internal affairs. Sinn believed that U.S. reporting neither curtailed human rights abuses nor encouraged government forces to change their behavior: “Groups bearing the brunt of the institutional violence have taken little comfort from the reports,” which they accuse of saying too little, or not serving as “effective prod to reform,” he wrote.55
Sinn was no apologist for the Lucas regime. “We ourselves sense the reality to be far worse that what our reports portray,” he lamented.56 However, he continued,
The HR reports have worked against our national interests in Guatemala. They have won us few friends, but have contributed to the development of a mentality which has limited our access and, performance, our influence with governing sectors; made it easier for extreme views to prevail; and fostered a sense of desperation leading to more institutional abuses and public alienation adverse to U.S. security interests. If the Lucas government has demonstrated anything it is the low priority it accords its international image, so on that score the reports must be counted, at minimum, as an irrelevance if not a failure.57
Sinn argued that human rights criticism should not be a matter of public diplomacy. Instead, he suggested that evidence should be collected and reported by the embassy, while pressure was applied in ways that recognized the realities of the weakened U.S.-Guatemalan relationship.
“Even goons and scoundrels develop a sense of offended dignity,” Sinn wrote. “We must recognize this if we hope to shape their actions.”58
55 Guatemala City to State Department, “Annual Human Rights Reports,” 2 March 1981, DNSA Guatemala Collection. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid.
57
But to anti-communist Reagan advisers in Washington, toning down human rights criticism was not a means of making that criticism more effective; it was an instrument for resuming military aid as quickly as possible. In May, Deputy Secretary of State William “Judge”
Clark met with Guatemalan foreign minister Lino Gutiérrez in Washington to discuss bilateral issues, including human rights. Gutiérrez urged Clark to let the Guatemalans “do their own thing” inside their borders. Clark assured Gutiérrez that, in spite of “many pressures on the subject of human rights,” the Reagan administration “had a different style [than the Carter administration] and did not believe in public castigation of human rights offenders.”59 But
Clark’s meeting with Gutiérrez revealed that the administration had little interest in pursuing any sort of private castigation, either. Clark told Gutiérrez that “human rights were a private matter” that should not stand in the way of improved relations.60 For their part, Guatemalan officials welcomed the change. An internal Guatemalan foreign ministry memo circulated in January
1981 noted optimism that Reagan would cease the “interventionist acts against Guatemala,” and prove that Reagan was not “bent, as was the Carter administration, on helping groups of the Left in taking power in Central American countries.”61
In El Salvador as well, the junta welcomed U.S. policies that would allow it to “do its own thing” without human rights scrutiny. The Salvadoran military command was proud of its defeat of the FMLN’s “final offensive” in January 1981, but that campaign had demonstrated alarming asymmetries between the guerrillas and military forces.62 While guerrilla ranks
59 “Guatemalan Foreign Minister Calls on Deputy Secretary Clark,” Memorandum of Conversation, 8 May 1981, Guatemala Collection, DNSA. 60 Ibid. 61 Guatemalan Foreign Ministry, “Perspectives of a New U.S. Policy towards Central America, the Caribbean and Consequently towards Guatemala in the Wake of Reagan’s Election,” January 1981, Dirección General de Relaciones Internacionales y Bilaterales (DIGRIB) 1987, Archive of the Guatemalan Foreign Ministry (hereafter Guatemala MRE). 62 See Brian J. Bosch, The Salvadoran Officer Corps and the Final Offensive of 1981 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 1999), pp. 109-112.
58 numbered only 3,500 to 4,000 soldiers occupying limited territory, the Salvadoran armed forces numbered 17,000—a four-to-one ratio that the U.S. ambassador deemed “impossible” for decisively ending the insurgency.63 Military planners feared that guerrillas would launch another major offensive during the spring, drawing on sophisticated weapons being infiltrated into the country. U.S. officers noted that the guerrillas’ intelligence and command structure trumped the outdated military system. Civilian members of the Salvadoran junta recognized that long-term stability required a political strategy for drawing popular support away from the insurgents. This view was not shared in the military. As one CIA report stated, the military command believed
“the lasting solution to the extreme leftist problem should be military rather than political.”64
U.S. military support, unrestricted by human rights obligations, would allow the Salvadoran military to fight the war it wanted.
Reagan’s decision in March 1981 to send additional military advisers to El Salvador provoked fierce domestic opposition that was committed to protesting Reagan’s policy on human rights grounds. During the 1970s, members of Congress had begun working with international human rights NGOs to criticize and undermine U.S. foreign policies that supported regimes responsible for human rights violations. Restrictions on foreign assistance had emerged as an effective strategy of restraining executive power while also drawing attention to U.S. complicity in abuses by police and military forces abroad.65 Although Reagan retained significant power on foreign policy matters in the newly Republican Senate, in the House, liberal Democrats remained intent on challenging the administration on the issue of human rights. Having successfully
63 For numbers and quote see Cable San Salvador to State, “Military Estimate of Rebel/Government Strength/Weakness as of February 18,” DNSA El Salvador Collection. See also Central Intelligence Agency Special Analysis, “El Salvador: The Significance of Popular Support,” 27 February 1981, DNSA El Salvador 1980-1994 Collection. 64 “El Salvador: The Significance of Popular Support.” 65 Arnson, Crossroads, pp. 24-25.
59 pursued human rights concerns during the Ford and Carter years, congressmen like Michael
Barnes (D-MD), Edward Boland (D-MA), and Clarence Long (D-MD) continued to wield substantial influence on subcommittees overseeing U.S.-Latin American relations.66 Reagan’s confrontational rhetoric with regard to the Soviet Union had eroded much of his initial political capital with Democratic legislators, who now sought to oppose what they saw as an aggressive policy that was fixated on a military solution in El Salvador.
The Reagan administration opposed a negotiated end to the Salvadoran conflict because it believed that peace talks would give the FMLN guerrillas an opportunity to claim legitimacy and power beyond what they rightfully deserved. For this reason, in 1981, most Reagan officials were inclined to see the military dimension of the conflict as more salient than the political issues at stake in the civil war. But some advisers saw the need for a political strategy that could justify support ongoing military operations. Haig believed that elections in El Salvador could serve as the pivot for administration policy. “We should strongly support elections as the most plausible long-term political solution to the crisis,” Haig wrote to Reagan. President Duarte’s proposal to hold multi-party negotiations over the specific issue of electoral participation would allow the
United States to back negotiations while not sanctioning the political power of the Left. “In short,” Haig advised the president, “our public and private positions should strongly favor elections. All parties should be invited to end violence and discuss the steps necessary to bring about elections.”67 This policy maneuver appealed to Reagan. On the cover sheet transmitted by
National Security Advisor Richard Allen, the president scrawled “I like elections.”68
Haig wanted to undermine the FMLN’s strategy of gaining political legitimacy through
66 Arnson, Crossroads, p. 57. For a specific example see Jim Wright, Worth it All: My War for Peace (Washington: Brassey's, 1993), p. 49. 67 Haig memo to Reagan, “Elections or Negotiations in El Salvador,” 27 February, 1981 and Allen memo to Haig, 18 March 1981, Box 30, Exec Sec NSC, Country File, Latin America, RRL. 68 Ibid.
60 armed struggle and international linkages. With the FMLN-FDR leadership operating out of
Managua, and its military forces concentrated in the north and northeastern part of the country, the FMLN relied on political and economic sabotage to maintain popular support for an eventual insurrection. FMLN leaders recognized that U.S.-backed elections would siphon away potential supporters of the revolutionary cause.69 In the view of the FMLN and its international supporters, civilian members of the junta were either powerless to hold the military in check or, worse yet, were complicit in the paramilitary violence that eliminated opposition members at appalling rates.
State violence came in both official and unofficial forms. The armed forces—including the security forces of the National Police, Treasury Police, and National Guard—carried out repressive acts designed to silence alleged and potential sympathizers of the left. Meanwhile,
“death squads” comprised of plainclothes security officers operating at the behest of those organizations, targeted moderate bureaucrats and political officials with grisly, terroristic violence.70
In private and public discourse, Reagan officials described Salvadoran violence in terms that depicted state security forces defending against the threat of regular, identifiable guerrilla forces. But U.S. intelligence reports confirmed that state counterinsurgency strategy was being applied broadly to smother potential leftist support among the general population. The embassy reported in July 1981 that nearly 100 Salvadorans were dying in political violence each week.71
Salvadoran military officials in some cases acknowledged the responsibility of the armed forces
69 Alberto Martín Álvarez, From War to Democratic Revolution: The Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) in El Salvador (Berlin, Germany: Berghof Conflict Resources, 2010), p. 19. 70 For an account of the origins and function of the death squads, see Christopher Dickey, “Behind the Death Squads,” The New Republic, 26 December 1983. 71 Cable San Salvador to State, “Summary of Developments in El Salvador no. 11,” 9 July 1981, DNSA El Salvador Collection.
61 for major human rights violations, but assured U.S. officials they were engaged in efforts to professionalize their institutions and curb such transgressions.72 Reagan officials shared these goals and believed optimistically that U.S. military assistance and training could professionalize counterinsurgency, making it more responsive to civilian oversight. In an April meeting with
Vice President George H.W. Bush, the Salvadoran Bishop Arturo Rivera y Damas applauded
U.S. support for elections but urged that “military aid be conditioned on progress toward a political dialogue.”73 Rivera y Damas told Bush that fair elections were impossible under the current power structure: “[T]he Junta’s problem is that the real power. . . [is] in the hands of the military,” to which Bush responded, “the problem was then to get the military to support the
Center.”74
In the absence of an overarching strategy, the Reagan administration had very little sense of how it might exert pressure on the military to support the “Center”—or what groups and individuals comprised such a thing. Providing military assistance had been a reactive measure meant to ensure the survival of the armed forces in the face of the FMLN offensive. But when it came to backing the civilian leaders on the governing junta, particularly José Napoleón Duarte of the Christian Democratic Party (PDC, Partido Demócrata Cristiano), Reagan’s advisers were more skeptical. The junta was opposed not just by the Salvadoran Left, but among private sector elites, in particular El Salvador’s powerful oligarchy of coffee growing families.75 These business elites, who had for years operated in close coordination with the military and security
72 Cable State to San Salvador, “Trip report of LTG Gordon Sumner to El Salvador,” July 6, 1981, DNSA El Salvador Collection. 73 Allen to the Vice President, “Summary of Your Meeting with Bishop Arturo Rivera y Damas,” 15 April 1981, Box 0046-El Salvador, WHORM Subject File: Country file, RRL. 74 Ibid. 75 El Salvador’s tightly-knit group of coffee producing families opposed the 1979 decree that had nationalized coffee production, and in they came to see Duarte, in particular, as a political nemesis. On the coffee oligarchy’s views, see Jeffery M. Paige, Coffee and Power: Revolution and the Rise of Democracy in Central America, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1997), pp. 210-11.
62 forces, detested the junta’s land and banking reforms, and feared Duarte would rig any potential election to ensure the PDC’s power. Duarte used this opposition as a credential, marketing himself as a true moderate with a historic claim to the presidency and as the logical beneficiary of bipartisan U.S. and international support.76
Privately, Reagan officials questioned whether Duarte’s reforms aligned with their own policy objectives. In an April cable, Ambassador Fred Chapin suggested that the United States should consider supporting a coup. Duarte was “[t]he best we have, but the only thing we have got,” Chapin wrote, “unless the USG is willing to take the flak for a business/military interim junta or government to carry out elections for a constituent assembly.” While Chapin believed the United States ultimately had no choice but to support Duarte, he registered strong objections regarding the disagreements between the junta’s political program and the Reagan administration’s vision and objectives in Central America:
Let us be clear on one point. While the USG may have to support Duarte because he is all there is and hence has to support his PDC [Christian Democratic Party], the PDC is way to the left in our political spectrum and in supporting Duarte the USG has endorsed massive social engineering programs (not just “reforms”) which bear little relation to the prohibition on the deprivation of property without due process of law in the fifth amendment of the US constitution and which violate article 138 of the Salvadoran constitution, before the latter was brushed aside by the basic decree of the first junta on October 15, 1979. Whether this constitution was violated by previous governments, the decrees which establish the much vaunted “reforms” have no constitutional basis but rest solely on the assumption of legislative and executive power by the junta immediately following the revolution.77
To most Salvadorans, the inseparability of the military and political dimensions of the conflict was an inescapable reality. Yet only gradually did Reagan officials realize that their objective of defeating the threat of leftist revolution required a strategy that incorporated popular political support. In the spring of 1981, the embassy noted the gap between Reagan’s ideological
76 Cable from San Salvador to State, 17 April, 1981, Box 30, Exec Sec, NSC Country File, RRL. 77 Ibid.
63 preference for supporting an anti-communist regime and a practical willingness to support the candidate most likely to win a democratic election. “[W]e have growing reservations about any kind of U.S. diplomatic or publicity campaign that ties our policy toward El Salvador to particular dates or particular formats for this country’s holding elections,” Ambassador Chapin wrote in one memo. His solution was to hedge U.S. bets by emphasizing process over outcome:
“On reflection,” he wrote, “it looks better for us to endorse the process without fixing on a single specific, so that we do not find ourselves on a limb that might get sawed off.”78 Following a visit to El Salvador in June, Lieutenant General Gordon Sumner cabled Secretary Haig, stating, “[t]he impact of the political environment on the security situation simply cannot be ignored.” The challenge for the United States was to “lend its weight to forge a political consensus in order to support the army in the field and to prevent a coup.”79 To do so, Sumner argued, the United
States would have to do more to support Duarte and to improve the image of the junta in domestic and international media. Newly-appointed Assistant Secretary of State for inter-
American Affairs Tom Enders wrote to Haig on June 10th, urging that the State Department facilitate a Duarte visit to the United States. “Washington exposure,” he wrote, would “enhance
Duarte’s authority, thereby strengthening the alliance with the armed forces and improving prospects for the elections process.”80
The simmering crisis in Central America in the summer of 1981 lent urgency to the
Reagan’s national security team’s efforts to consolidate support for the Salvadoran regime. After months of intelligence indicating that Nicaragua may have curbed arms shipments to the FMLN, new reports revealed the arrival in Nicaragua of Soviet-made tanks transited through Algeria.
Although U.S. military advisers insisted that the tanks would be of no use on Central American
78 Cable from San Salvador to State, 3 May 1981, Box 30, Exec Sec NSC, Country File, RRL. 79 “Trip Report of LTG Gordon Sumner to El Salvador.” 80 Enders to Haig, “Visit of Salvadoran President Duarte,” 10 June 1981, DNSA El Salvador Collection.
64 terrain, the administration portrayed the tanks’ arrival as a dramatic act of escalation. “[W]e cannot allow the Soviets to militarize Central America with sophisticated systems which radically change the balance and threaten neighboring countries as well as the Panama Canal,”
Richard Allen wrote to the president.81
In Washington, halfway through Reagan’s first year, Al Haig continued to bemoan the lack of a comprehensive strategy for Central America. For this task, the secretary turned to assistant secretary Enders. Enders’s appointment had come after a long delay by conservative
Senators—primarily Jesse Helms (R-N.C.)—who feared Enders was not sufficiently hawkish .
Like Haig, Enders—a Yale-educated diplomat who had previously served as Chief of Mission in
Phnom Penh, Cambodia during the Vietnam War—approached Latin America policy with a sense of independence from the ideological orientation of the administration, but with a lack of allies within it as well. Enders had spent the time before his appointment cultivating relationships with diverse insiders, including General Vernon Walters, the ambassador-at-large who would undertake several trips as Reagan’s “cat’s paw” in the region, and conservative Senate aide John
Carbaugh—despite the fact that Carbaugh had engineered Senator Helms’s delay of Enders’ appointment.82 Enders hoped these links would foster a consensus for making actionable policy in Central America, yet above all Enders valued his close relationship with Haig.
Haig wrote to the president on July 6, telling Reagan that he was “concerned” by developments in El Salvador that might threaten “the survival of the Duarte government.”
Mindful of congressional Democrats’ plans to oppose additional military aid to El Salvador,
Haig told Reagan that he had dispatched Enders to make a “clear statement of our position which will reiterate our purposes and our commitment to a democratic settlement of the Salvadoran
81 Allen to Reagan, “Nicaraguan Militarization Update,” 6 June 1981, DNSA CIA Covert Action Collection. 82 For a summary of Enders’s politicking in the months leading up to his taking office, see Gutman, Banana Diplomacy, pp. 33-34, which relies on interviews with Carbaugh, Enders, and Haig.
65 crisis.83 Enders addressed the World Affairs Council on July 16, 1981.84 In the speech, titled “El
Salvador: the Search for Peace,” Enders continued to portray U.S. policy as driven by response to foreign subversion: “today, as in the past,” he stated, “the basic policy of the United States is to try to help resolve the problems of frail government institutions, of poverty, and of underdevelopment that create vulnerabilities to this form of aggression.”85 Beyond that, however, the speech marked a major policy development by stating that U.S. objectives required the
United States to involve itself in the internal divisions that existed among Salvadorans—not just between the revolutionary Left and the violent Right, but among those in the middle who saw
“the need to develop participatory institutions and those who maintain[ed] that there [was] no alternative to the old personalistic politics.” Under this logic, the United States would support democratic political reform in El Salvador, Enders said,
not out of blind sentiment, not out of a desire to reproduce everywhere a political system that has served Americans so extraordinarily well, and certainly not because we underestimate the difficulties involved. Rather, we believe that the solution must be democratic because only a genuinely pluralistic approach can enable a profoundly divided society to live with itself without violent convulsions gradually overcoming its differences.86
The policy outlined by Enders represented a shift from the militaristic discourse that had marked the administration’s public statements early in 1981. Indeed, in calling for a strategy of political action, the speech registered a continuation of Carter’s policy of liberalization. Some historians have explained the shift as mere lip service, an attempt to harness the “language of human rights and social justice” in order to win support for a more militaristic policy advocated
83 Arnson claims that the Enders speech was explicitly designed to pre-empt the congressional initiatives underway to require “certification” of political progress in El Salvador. I have found the evidence of congressional pressure on Haig and Enders to be only peripheral. See Arnson, Crossroads, p. 67. 84 “El Salvador: the Search for Peace” Thomas Enders Speech before the World Affairs Council, July 16, 1981. DNSA El Salvador Collection. 85 Enders, “El Salvador: the Search for Peace,” p. 2. 86 Ibid.
66 by Reagan’s inner circle.87 Nonetheless, Enders’s preference for a solution to the civil conflict based on democratization represented the first step of a significant turn by the Reagan administration. During the campaign, Reagan averred that “you do not try to fight a civil war and institute reforms at the same time.”88 Now the administration’s leading voice on Central
American affairs was suggesting the opposite. Internal political reform, Enders insisted, was necessary to ensure the Salvadoran regime’s survival.
Enders’s speech represented the administration’s most public endorsement of the Duarte government, along with the PDC’s social and political reform agenda. In San Salvador, Duarte applauded the speech, agreeing with the view that political reconciliation was necessary in order to implement land and banking reforms already underway.89 While the speech may have strengthened Duarte’s hand within the Christian Democratic Party, his opponents rejected it as political interference. Though the Left was unlikely to participate in elections in any case, U.S. endorsement led the FMLN to criticize political reforms as part of a military counterinsurgency effort to eliminate popular support for their cause.90 Tellingly, at the precise moment that the
U.S. State Department urged an investment in a democratic process, only Duarte’s Christian
Democrats—the party who stood to gain the most from such elections—seemed to embrace the legitimacy of that process.91
87 For quote, see Greg Grandin, Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), p. 84. 88 Laurence I. Barrett, “An Interview with Ronald Reagan,” Time, 5 January 1981, p. 32. 89 Foreign Broadcast Information Service (hereafter FBIS), “Duarte Views Private Sector, Backs Enders Speech,” vol. VI, 22 July 1981, translation of Agence France-Presse, 18 July 1981. 90 FBIS, “Venceremos Reports Enders’s Speech on Aid to Regime,” vol. VI, 26 July 1981, trans. Radio Venceremos, 19 July 1981. 91 The official Memoria document of the Central Elections Commission admitted that the impetus to overcome violence by pursuing a democratic path had come primarily from within the state. See Consejo Central de Elecciones, El Salvador: Elecciones Marzo 1982 (San Salvador, El Salvador: Secretaria de Informacion de la Presencia de la Republica, 1982).
67
The Road to Elections
U.S. support for the Salvadoran constituent assembly elections of March 1982 emerged, somewhat ambivalently, as the most practical option for Reagan officials to reinforce the legitimacy of the beleaguered Salvadoran government. And yet, during the second half of 1981, the Reagan administration consistently deepened its involvement in the political dimensions of the Central American crisis, to the point that Salvadoran elections became a watershed moment for Reagan’s regional policy. Initially the interest in Salvadoran democracy did not signify endorsement of a “political solution” along the lines preferred by Democrats in Congress, as they sought a negotiated end to the conflict. Nor did support for the electoral process represent a moralistic endorsement of human freedom as the basis for U.S. foreign policy, as some sympathetic Reagan historians have argued. Instead, in 1981, the Reagan administration saw the holding of Salvadoran elections as the best means to marginalize the Left while ensuring the continual flow of military aid in the face of increasing congressional opposition. This initial, instrumental turn to electoral assistance laid the groundwork for the evolution of the administration’s policy, which became inextricably linked with support for procedurally fair and functional democratic elections throughout the region.
Internally, the administration continued to harbor doubts about whether the civilian- military junta was committed to holding such elections. The State Department expected major disruptions to the timetable by which the junta planned to hold elections for the constituent assembly—the body that would in turn write a new Salvadoran constitution—in March 1982.
Some of the problems noted by diplomats were political. While Duarte asserted that the PDC was firmly committed to democratic elections, challenges came from all sides, including the independent Central Elections Commission (Consejo Central de Elecciones, CCE) itself, which
68 questioned the PDC’s tolerance of political competition.92 On the same day as Enders’s speech, the CCE produced a temporary law that would govern the restoration of political parties in advance of the 1982 elections. But the political system had been so deeply affected by military violence that the observers questioned whether a party system would function. Violent polarization in El Salvador had imbued people with a “deep and abiding—and amply justified— distrust” of the political system that could potentially limit voter turnout, Ambassador Hinton explained in one perceptive cable. Most politicians viewed success by parties other than their own as a threat to their well-being and security. Campesinos feared that a right-wing victory would turn back the modest progress made on land reform programs by the governing junta.
Private sector groups, meanwhile, worried that a PDC victory would usher in a “tyranny of the majority.” They attempted to expand their role within the current military-political government.
Meanwhile, the armed Left remained intransigent in its opposition to elections that were not part of a comprehensive agreement that included guaranteed political freedoms and the prosecution of security forces involved in disappearances.
Up to this point U.S. policy had remained studiously unengaged with specific solutions for managing the electoral process, yielding to the wishes of the junta that the United States not interfere with internal political matters. But Enders’s public endorsement of elections as a key component of the administration’s strategy in El Salvador paved the way for further U.S. involvement to keep the electoral process on track. “If asked by the GOES [government of El
Salvador] and requested by the parties, the USG is prepared to facilitate contacts on electoral issues between political parties, and between political parties and the Central Electoral
92 The CCE had been created in March by the Junta as an independent body to oversee the implementation of the electoral process. In addition to its intermittent criticism of Duarte, the CCE was seen by many as an extension of the PDC. For a substantial critique see that of the Salvadoran Federation of Lawyer Associations (FEDAES) in Consejo Central de Elecciones, El Salvador: Elecciones Marzo 1982, pp. 23-27.
69
Commission and the GOES,” one embassy cable read.93 Ambassador Hinton stressed the technical nature of U.S. support, designed to bolster credible elections that would build momentum towards presidential elections and foster lasting legitimacy. But support was not entirely apolitical, since U.S. officials acknowledged that excising the radical Left from the elections supported U.S. goals. “It is probably only the non-participation of these sectors that will permit the important condition to be met that neither side in an election will lose its shirt as well as its candidacy,” Hinton candidly wrote Haig.94
The most acute dilemma facing U.S. policymakers as they waded into Salvadoran politics, however, was violence. Political murder was endemic in El Salvador, as the administration acknowledged. Reagan administration officials estimated more than 20,000 deaths in the preceding eighteen months alone. Although they claimed that those deaths could not “be attributed with any degree of reliability,” they simultaneously acknowledged the role of the government in at least some of those cases.95
Anti-communist ideology best explains U.S. officials’ reactions to Salvadoran violence.
Officials believed that violence was instigated by Cuban- and Soviet-supported revolutionaries.
The El Salvador government’s repressive reactions were seen as apolitical problem that had to be solved by shaping perceptions in Washington.96 Mounting body counts, together with the testimonies of refugees and survivors that confirmed the military’s role in mass murder, incited rage among Reagan’s critics at home and abroad. But Reagan officials believed that to shame the junta publicly for its human rights violations would replay the results of the Carter era.
93 San Salvador to State, “Summary of Developments in El Salvador No. 12,” DNSA El Salvador Collection. 94 “Summary of Developments in El Salvador No. 12.” 95 Internal State Department Memo, “Detailed Evidence of Government Violence Against Non Guerrilla Elements,” 1 August 1981, DNSA El Salvador Collection. 96 A September CIA report that estimated that “Central America’s slide toward increasing instability probably will accelerate in the next 12-15 months” as Cuban and Soviet forces continued to fuel political polarization and economic turmoil. CIA Report, “Insurgency and Instability in Central America,” September 1981, DNSA CIA Covert Action Collection.
70
Publicly acknowledging the state’s role in fomenting violence would jeopardize congressional votes for military aid to incumbent regimes. In August, Haig wrote Reagan, “we may not be able to hold the congress for more than a year if massacre stories continue to be frequent.” He assured
Reagan that through private pressure the administration could tamp down on extralegal killings by state security forces. “We can only do this by persuasion—and better control by the army over the other services,” he wrote.97
U.S. attempts to marginalize the Left were stymied not only by public knowledge of the violence, but by the FMLN’s efforts to internationalize the civil war. In late August, the governments of France and Mexico jointly recognized the FMLN and urged the junta to engage with them in comprehensive peace negotiations. The Salvadoran military and like-minded authoritarian governments throughout the region interpreted the event as an affront to Salvadoran sovereignty, but Duarte recognized that such international pressure posed an opportunity. In response, he unveiled the “political thesis”—a speech meant to demonstrate the junta’s commitment to a political solution rather than merely a counterinsurgent victory. Speaking to a crowd on the anniversary of Central American independence on September 15, Duarte rejected calls for negotiations with the guerrillas that would “arbitrarily [grant] them a representation which the Salvadoran people deny them daily.” In the speech, he called on leftist political parties to join in an open dialogue about the electoral process, and he invited foreign observers to meet with political parties and the Central Electoral Commission about political reforms that were underway. Duarte’s speech was calculated to undermine the FMLN’s international push for support.98 On September 22, Rubén Zamora, a spokesman for the FMLN’s political wing, the
97 Haig to Reagan, “The Risk of Losing in El Salvador and What can be Done about It,” 11 August, 1981, Box 91282, White House Staff and Office Files: Exec Sec NSC, Meeting Files, RRL. 98 FBIS, “Duarte’s Central American Independence Day Speech,” vol, VI. 16 September 1981, trans. San Salvador Domestic Service, 16 September 1981.
71
Democratic Revolutionary Front (FDR-FMLN), declared that the armed groups would not participate in elections as the junta had laid them out. So long as leftists were being brutally murdered, he said, they would not accept the junta’s electoral rules of the game. To the FMLN, the elections were merely a “solution to the political standstill in which [the junta] finds itself and to the national and international isolation it is experiencing.”99
Enders’s speech and Duarte’s “political thesis” further shifted the focus of U.S. policymakers to the political dimensions of its Central America policy. But Reagan’s opponents remained skeptical that these nods to liberalization were anything more than cover for deepening military intervention. In September, Congress passed an amendment to the Foreign Assistance
Act that required the administration to submit a biannual certification that the government of El
Salvador was making progress in six categories, including human rights, political liberalization, and economic and social reform.100 Democrats argued that strict accountability was necessary to ensure that U.S. tax dollars did not fund state violence that had already claimed both American and Salvadoran lives. The administration complained that requiring a semi-annual review of military aid would allow the guerrillas to control the momentum of the conflict. Although the certification requirement that Reagan signed into law did not grant Congress a veto over military assistance, it had two important results. First, it challenged the administration to more directly address its policies to the internal factors in the Salvadoran conflict.101 Second, it forced the administration to grapple with the domestic political costs of supporting the Salvadoran regime.
Haig, along with most of Reagan’s advisers, was seriously concerned that the amendment would
99 FBIS, “FDR-FMLN to reject Duarte’s Call to Elections,” vol. VI. 22 September 1981, trans. Cadena Ecuador Radio, 18 September 1981. 100 For the certification language, see section 728 of The International Security and Development Cooperation Act of 1981, Public Law 97-113, 97th Congress, 1st session, 29 December 1981 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office), pp. 1555-59. 101 Cynthia J. Arnson, Crossroads, pp. 67-69.
72 jeopardize the administration’s larger strategy. “What we need above all is strong White House help in removing disabling El Salvador amendments now attached to the Foreign Assistance
Act,” he wrote to Reagan. These “would at a minimum embarrass, at a maximum abort our programs.” He suggested that bringing Duarte to the United States might help bolster support for eliminating the amendment. “You would only need to give him a photo opportunity,” Haig noted.102
For Duarte, the visit to the United States in September 1981 was more than a photo opportunity. Duarte recognized that U.S. military aid had weakened his position within the country, giving the U.S. ambassador more leverage over the military than Duarte himself.103 By appealing directly with the Congress, Duarte hoped to gain international support independent of the White House and strengthen his political legitimacy at home.104 For the Reagan administration, the visit crystallized Duarte’s importance to its evolving political strategy in El
Salvador. “We strongly support the Duarte government as the best, indeed probably the only, hope for a peaceful, moderate solution to El Salvador’s political problems,” Haig wrote to
Reagan before the meeting in September. Vocally backing Duarte could strengthen the civilian
Center against the military and Left. “Duarte has thus far been ineffective in confronting the military or curtailing their excesses,” Haig wrote. “His meeting with you will go far toward strengthening his hand with the military.”105 Following Reagan’s meeting with Duarte, Richard
Allen wrote the president, stressing a positive development: “the Duarte government is fully intent on a major, indeed unique, political reform in the history of El Salvador, namely honest
102 “The Risk of Losing in El Salvador.” 103 José Napoleón Duarte, Duarte: My Story (New York: Putnam, 1986), p. 172 104 Ibid., pp. 168-69 and 172. 105 Haig to Reagan, “Your Meeting at the White House with President Napoleon Duarte of El Salvador, 11:30am, Monday, September 21, 1981,” 19 September 1981, Box 30, White House Staff and Office Files, Exec Sec NSC, Country Files, RRL.
73 elections.”106 Reagan and his top foreign policy advisers grasped that supporting Duarte could be the means to pursue a “political solution” that did not involve negotiating power with the armed
Left, and would be politically acceptable to congressional opponents.
Committing U.S. policy toward the objective of democratic elections required policymakers to immerse themselves in an electoral process that they had already acknowledged to be corrupt and unlikely to succeed.107 Over the next several months, Ambassador Hinton and embassy officials cooperated closely with Duarte, members of the Salvadoran junta, and the
CCE to ensure the electoral process remained on track. The chairman of the CCE, Jorge
Bustamante, feared that El Salvador lacked the resources to attract international observers and to verify the registration of voters, and he asked Hinton to arrange a discreet meeting with the U.S.
Federal Elections Commission (FEC).108 Beginning in September, the U.S. embassy contracted with William Kimberling of the FEC to meet with Salvadoran political parties and to make recommendations about technical assistance and resources necessary to ensure the elections proceeded as planned. The State Department retained Kimberling through April and used his guidance—together with that of outside experts from conservative think tanks—to advise the
CCE on how to prevent electoral fraud. In general, the consultations placed a heavy emphasis on procedure, with the goal of “achieving the greatest possible national and international public confidence in the election process and outcome.”109 But even technical expertise was sufficiently sensitive to necessitate the involvement of intelligence agencies. On the
106 Allen to Haig, “Positive Points on El Salvador,” 21 September 1981, Box 30, White House Staff and Office Files, Exec Sec, NSC, Country Files, Latin America, RRL. 107 On these meetings, which took place on September 4th and 5th, see San Salvador to State, “Discussion with GOES about Elections, etc.,” 5 September 1981 and “Draft GOES response on Elections,” 5 September 1981, DNSA El Salvador Collection. 108 Bustamante asked Hinton to keep the visit discreet so as to avoid the appearance of “made in the U.S.A. elections.” San Salvador to State, “Elections Developments: Talk with Bustamante,” 17 September 1981, DNSA El Salvador Collection. 109 William Kimberling, “Notes on the Upcoming Election in El Salvador,” Memo to State Department, 5 November 1981, DNSA El Salvador.
74 administration’s advice, the State Department arranged for a $200,000 purchase and delivery by the CIA of finger dye that the CCE would use to identify Salvadoran voters and reduce multiple- vote fraud.110 Against the backdrop of public discourse emphasizing battlefield developments, diplomats and mid-level officials increasingly viewed the success of U.S. policy as hinging on events in the political sphere.
With the State Department controlling Central America policy, Haig saw an opportunity to make similar political progress in Nicaragua. In August, Enders tried to reach an accommodation with the Nicaraguan government. Though Enders received the blessing of Haig,
Senator Helms, and others in Washington, the initiative had no official backing from Reagan’s other national security advisors. The failure of Enders’s six-week effort demonstrated that ideological anti-communism distorted the administration’s goals in opposing the Sandinistas. In negotiations, Enders assured the Nicaraguans that the United States was willing to honor the results of the revolution, respecting Nicaraguan sovereignty within its borders so long as the government ceased its military buildup and its external support for guerrillas in El Salvador and
Guatemala. To the Sandinistas, this bid for conciliation came loaded with intimidation, carrying the threat of a U.S. invasion should the Sandinistas not comply. Enders told Daniel Ortega of the
Nicaraguan Junta in their final meeting that the United States recognized their revolution as irreversible. “Just as the revolution is a reality,” Ortega replied, “the United States is an enormous reality.” The arms buildup, Ortega argued, was his government’s response to aggressive U.S. behavior in Central America, and a defense against exiles training for invasion on U.S. soil. The United States was willing to consider dealing with these problems, Enders said, and might even provide aid to Nicaragua if the FSLN took action to curb the arms buildup and
110 “Salvadoran Elections,” CIA Document, 22 January 1982, DNSA El Salvador Collection.
75 flow of material into El Salvador.111 So long as Nicaragua did not serve as a proxy to further revolutionary activity, Enders suggested, the United States could learn to live with the Sandinista regime.
Enders’s attempts to broker a modus vivendi collapsed amidst the prevailing anti- communism of Reagan’s inner circle and the anti-imperialism that guided the FSLN’s foreign policy. Haig and Enders believed that the State Department’s, pragmatic approach was wise: in
El Salvador, blending military support to defeat the FMLN with political support to engage moderate political parties in a consensual, stable electoral arrangement; in Nicaragua, negotiating to contain the Sandinistas while not alienating a still vibrant political opposition.112 Other Reagan policymakers, however—particularly staff members at the NSC—believed that negotiations signaled acceptance of Sandinista rule in Nicaragua, which would only perpetuate the threat of
Cuban and Soviet interference. After returning to the United States, hardliners criticized Enders, arguing that U.S. security goals required it to actively pressure Nicaragua to liberalize the regime. In particular, the NSC urged the State Department to demand that the Nicaraguans return their Soviet-purchased tanks, a point which the FSLN leadership would not consider in light of increasing U.S. arms deliveries to El Salvador.
For their part, the Sandinistas were wary of negotiations as well. Since the 1979 revolution, the FSLN had solidified its control of the governing junta, embarked on a major land reform effort, and developed international links with key allies who provided economic and military aid. Reading the political scene in 1981, the FSLN believed it had more to gain by
111 This account relies on the interviews and details in Gutman, Banana Diplomacy, pp. 66-73. 112 This distinction was grasped by the Nicaraguan side. In the memoir of Sergio Ramírez, an FSLN directorate member and one of the Nicaraguan negotiators who met with Enders, he remembers that while Haig’s realist view “left the Conservative military dictatorships in peace,” it also “afforded a margin of tolerance to a revolutionary government such as ours, as long as it was contained within its own space and with a list of forbidden friends.” See Sergio Ramírez, Adiós Muchachos: A Memoir of the Sandinista Revolution trans. by Stacey Alba D. Skar (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012), p. 100.
76 developing its vision of popular democracy in Nicaragua than submitting to negotiations with the
United States.113 Aware of the internal divisions among the Reagan team, the Sandinistas did not believe Enders’s negotiations were being made in good faith.114 Enders drafted a series of notes in September that outlined U.S. proposals to make good on promises of reconciliation, but these were scuttled by a U.S.-led military exercise off the coast of Honduras, clearly designed to intimidate the Sandinistas.
Despite the fact that State Department’s gambit was skewed in favor of U.S. interests and unlikely to work, its failure elicited a fierce backlash from so-called “hardliners” within the administration. Richard Allen, Bill Casey, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and the NSC staff worked concertedly to impel Reagan to increase pressure on the Sandinistas. These discussions intensified the administration’s sense of crisis surrounding the U.S.-Nicaraguan confrontation, and increased Reagan’s sensitivity to events in the region. In his diary, the president noted that an NSC discussion over intervention in Nicaragua left him with “the most profound decision I’ve ever had to make.” Central America is “really the world’s next hotspot. Nicaragua is an armed camp supplied by Cuba and threatening communist takeover of all Central America”115
National security officials wanted to abort further negotiations with the Sandinistas and increase pressure on Nicaragua via covert support of the Nicaraguan counterrevolutionary forces
(Contras). The Contras, led by former officers of Somoza’s National Guard, were being trained and supported primarily by the Argentine military government.116 To Bill Casey, the Contras’ links to Nicaraguan expatriates in Miami, along with connections to U.S. intelligence agencies,
113 Katherine Hoyt, The Many Faces of Sandinista Democracy (Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1997), p. 22. 114 Bayardo Arce, quoted in Roy Gutman, Banana Diplomacy: the Making of American Policy In Nicaragua, 1981- 1987 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), pp. 72-73. 115 October 16th, Brinkley, ed., Reagan’s Diaries, Vol. 1, p. 85. 116 On Argentina’s formative role in supporting the Contras, see Ariel C. Armony, Argentina, the United States, and the Anti-communist Crusade in Central America, 1977-1984 (Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1997).
77 made them a logical instrument with which to harass the Sandinistas. While Casey engineered the CIA’s initial overtures to the Contras, he succeeded in convincing Reagan and Weinberger that covert support for “third force” would give the United States a means to destabilize the
FSLN. 117 To others, the prospects of covert action were ill-advised. Haig dismissed Casey’s proposal for covert Contra support as a “halfway measure.”118
NSC officials aired their differing opinions at a meeting on November 10, where the administration continued to try and integrate various Central American events into a coherent policy framework. Haig urged the NSC to keep the focus on Cuba, using “any kind of pressure to succeed” in compelling Castro to stop his support for Central American revolution. “Invasion is the trigger for a serious Soviet response,” he said, “[u]p to that point there is a free play area.”
Weinberger disagreed, arguing that the administration needed to focus its efforts on Central
America, building broad support to isolate Nicaragua. Kirkpatrick urged that the administration take the offensive. “We can use covert action. We can employ proxy forces,” she told the group.
Casey liked the sound of that, but insisted that Nicaragua should be the principal target.
Kirkpatrick disagreed yet again, arguing that “El Salvador has to be stabilized first. Then we should move onto Nicaragua and let the others do the work for us.” Haig warned against creating an insurgency in Nicaragua if the administration was unwilling to support the insurgency going
“all the way.” Silent through most of the meeting, Reagan weighed in during the final minutes.
Lamenting the state of public and congressional opinion, he called the prospect of military invasion “an impossible option” and hesitantly endorsed Casey and Vice President Bush’s calls for covert action against Nicaragua. “I don’t want to back down,” Reagan concluded, repeating a
117 On Casey’s development of this plan, see Gates, From the Shadows, pp. 244-45. 118 Ibid., p. 245.
78 vague but common theme: “I don’t want to accept defeat.”119
By approving covert aid to the Contras, Reagan seemed to endorse the views of multiple advisers at once, while resolving none of the discrepancies inherent in those views. The result was to ultimately prolong the disagreements that existed among Reagan’s top advisers by avoiding a public debate on the issue of the administration’s goals in Nicaragua. As it would do time and again in Nicaragua, the administration returned to the idea that a public information campaign which highlighted the Sandinistas’ transgressions—rather than a meaningful debate over the threat posed by the regime, or its objectives in opposing it—would justify its administration’s actions.
Thus National Security Decision Directive 17 (NSDD-17), the document that formally approved U.S. covert support for the Contras, was filled with as much obfuscation as it was policy direction. NSDD-17 echoed the pro-democracy stance that the State department had voiced earlier in the year by stating that the first objective of U.S. policy was to provide “strong support for those nations which embrace the principles of democracy and freedom for their people in a stable and peaceful environment.”120 But the other decisions entailed in NSDD-17 made clear that this rhetorical commitment to democracy was merely an instrumental one.
Reagan officials, motivated by anti-communism, prioritized security goals—namely “defeating the insurgency in El Salvador” while using covert action to prevent Cuba or Nicaragua from manipulating the struggle—that undermined their commitment to democratic freedoms.121
Even the approval of covert assistance to the Contras was cloaked in the rhetoric of supporting “democratic forces in Nicaragua.” This emphasis on the Contras’ democratic
119 National Security Council Meeting Minutes, “Strategy Toward Cuba and Central America,” 10 November 1981, Box 3, White House Staff and Office Files, Exec Sec, NSC: Meeting Files, RRL. 120 “National Security Decision Directive on Cuba and Central America,” 17 November 17 1981, Federation of
79 credentials had less to do with the makeup of the counterrevolutionary forces than with officials’ ongoing confusion over their role in U.S. policy. Although Reagan officials disagreed on the goals of its policy in Nicaragua—a negotiated settlement, regime change, or merely the cessation of support to the FMLN--they agreed that the Contras represented their best means of pressuring the Sandinistas.122 Thus, for strategic reasons, the administration portrayed the paramilitaries as a legitimate democratic alternative to the FSLN.123 On the other hand, the administration—and
Reagan in particular—was acutely aware that support for paramilitaries would entail serious political costs at home. By emphasizing the political objectives of Contra aid—“to build popular support. . . that will be nationalistic, anti-Cuban, and anti-Somoza”—the administration could portray covert policies as supporting political reconciliation. There was virtually no discussion of how the Contras might play a role in Nicaragua’s political future. In short, while the approval of covert aid to the Contras was a pivotal moment for U.S. policy, NSDD-17 made clear that the policy was most appealing because it allowed Reagan not to “back down” while confronting the
Sandinistas in a low cost and politically low-risk manner.124
Liberal Democrats in the Congress remained ready to contest the administration’s emphasis on military intervention. The administration’s first certification deadline for El
Salvador in January provided a propitious opportunity to do so. The administration’s brief report perfunctorily addressed each of the requirements of the congressional process, concluding that the Salvadoran government “is making a concerted and significant effort to comply with internationally recognized human rights.” Reagan certified that the regime was gaining
“substantial control” over the armed forces, “so as to bring an end to the indiscriminate torture
122 Arnson, Crossroads, p. 79. 123 Kagan, Twilight Struggle, pp. 202-203. 124 On Reagan’s aim to bring the FSLN to the negotiation table, see LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard, 285. On the “lowball option,” see Kagan, Twilight Struggle, pp. 200-207.
80 and murder of Salvadoran citizens.” Finally, it certified that the government was making progress implementing political and economic reforms and was committed to holding democratic elections “at an early date.”125
Mainstream media reports of a massacre of over one thousand innocent civilians in the city of El Mozote by the Salvadoran military demonstrated the shallowness of the administration’s claims.126 U.S. officials first reacted by disputing the claims, concluding in private analysis that the civilians either had been killed inadvertently in crossfire between the government forces and the FMLN, or that they were armed and legitimate targets.127 Soon the confrontation over certification shifted from editorial pages to committee hearing rooms. In a series of contentious sessions that stretched from January into March, House and Senate committees heard testimony from more than ten panels of government witnesses, congressmen, academics, and human rights advocates. Democrats masterfully used the hearings to demonstrate that human rights criticism remained a potent political force even in absence of Carter’s foreign policy vision. Chairman of the House subcommittee on Inter-American affairs Michael D.
Barnes (D-MD) set the tone, announcing his disappointment “that the President of the United
States would put his signature on this document.”128 He disputed the evidence that the
Salvadoran government was making progress: “The good intentions described in the certification are overwhelmed,” he said, by outside evidence pointing to massive and serious human rights
125 Memorandum for the Secretary of State, “Presidential Determination 82-4: Determination to Authorize Continued Assistance for El Salvador,” 28 January 1981, DNSA, El Salvador. 126 See Barabara Crossettes, “U.S. Disputes Report of 926 Killed in El Salvador,” The New York Times, 2 February 1982. 127 See Deane R. Hinton, Confidential Cable #00773 from United States Embassy San Salvador to United States Department of State, Washington, 31 January 1982, DNSA El Salvador Collection, and discussion by Leigh Binford, The El Mozote Massacre: Anthropology and Human Rights (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996), pp. 50-52. 128 “Presidential Certification on El Salvador” Hearings before the Subcommittee on Inter-American Affairs of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, Ninety-Seventh Congress (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1982), pp. 11-13.
81 transgressions.129 On a point-by-point basis, Barnes deconstructed the case for certification put forward by Reagan’s advisers. The administration’s report, Barnes explained, had sapped the certification process of the precise power that its architects had envisioned—using public oversight to gain leverage against the Salvadoran military in order to reduce its power relative to civilian officials.130 Fifty-five members of Congress sent Reagan a letter stating that “extensive documentation” contradicted his certification, and they asked him to withdraw it.131
The administration had attempted to use certification to its advantage by arguing that El
Salvador was managing moderate improvements in human rights. Reagan’s opposition signaled that it could not accept signs of democratic progress in El Salvador so long as the military continued to play a dominant role in politics. The chairman of the House subcommittee on
Human Rights, Don Bonker (D-WA), testified that even if Duarte was “committed to bringing about policies that we can support,” the civilian members of the junta did not control events in El
Salvador. To Bonker, “all those attempts at institutional changes and improvements have little bearing upon the actual fact that atrocities continue.”132 In testimony to the House, Enders tried to respond to these arguments by admitting that the human rights situation was “deeply troubled” and fueled by violence on the left and the right. Alleging inaccurate information on the part of human rights organizations, Enders argued that the number of violations by the government had dropped by nearly half.133 These were unconvincing arguments. When asked by the committee whether the junta’s planned elections might end the war, Enders sounded cautious: “The idea is to take a step toward legitimacy by the only means that can confer that; that is, open
129 “Presidential Certification on El Salvador.” 130 Ibid., pp. 38-39. 131 Ibid., p. 20. 132 Ibid., p. 17. 133 Ibid., pp. 24-25, and p. 27.
82 elections.”134 Enders assured the committee that Reagan’s certification was not a mark of satisfaction, but a confirmation that gradual progress was underway. Over the applause of human rights protesters attending the hearing, congressman Gerry Studds (D-MA) lambasted Enders.
“You take empty rhetoric and call it reform,” Studds scolded. Representative Stephen Solarz (D-
NY) called the administration’s manipulation of terms “Orwellian.”135
Because Congress could not vote down the certification itself, the hearings did not affect the administration’s plans to provide additional military and economic aid to El Salvador. They did, however, make judgments about political progress and human rights in El Salvador the central contention between the administration and its opponents. The NSC considered how the president might break the political impasse, or at least draw attention away from the military aspects of its policies. As the administration deliberated about the risks and benefits of a major address on Central America, Reagan recorded in his diary that “worry of the no’s is that I’ll sound like we’re going to war over El Salvador or Cuba. I finally said I thought we should do a speech about [the] need to bring the Americas together in a solid alliance.”136 Reagan’s subsequent unveiling of the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) constituted the first in a series of presidential addresses in which Reagan appealed to shared liberal values as the key to Pan-
American cooperation, primarily as a way to defuse the domestic political blowback from its policies of military intervention. CBI, a comprehensive aid program for Caribbean and Central
American states, was ostensibly a program that linked U.S. development funding to free market economic reforms. But in the address Reagan made a broader appeal that connected free markets, democratic institutions, and national security: “Our neighbors need time to develop representative and responsive institutions,” Reagan said,
134 “Presidential Certification on El Salvador,” p. 41. 135 Ibid., p. 61. 136 Reagan and Brinkley, Reagan’s Diaries, Vol I, p. 108.
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which are the guarantors of the democracy and justice that freedom's foes seek to stamp out. They also need the opportunity to achieve economic progress and improve their standard of living. Finally, they need the means to defend themselves against attempts by externally-supported minorities to impose an alien, hostile and unworkable system upon them by force. The alternative is further expansion of political violence from the extreme left and the extreme right, resulting in the imposition of dictatorships and—inevitably— more economic decline, and more human suffering and dislocation.137
The administration’s rhetorical support for democracy was soon put to the test during constituent assembly elections in El Salvador in March. Publicly, officials touted the run-up to the elections as evidence of progress in El Salvador. Privately, they worried about the potential results of the elections. An embassy cable in March reported that right-wing parties were running ahead of Duarte’s Christian Democrats, but that the undecided vote could “easily swing” the results.138 In a March 8, 1982, memorandum for the president, Haig stressed the significance of the election in the context of global events:
Developments in Poland and El Salvador teach us three important lessons in politics: 1) there are growing pressures for political change in communist and authoritarian countries alike; 2) if we want democratic forces to win, they need practical training and financial assistance to become as effective as the communists in the struggle to maintain power; and 3) the United States is organized to give economic and military assistance, but we have no institutions devoted to political training and funding.
Not typically prone to such idealism, Haig made the connection between democratic values and the administration’s geopolitical interests explicit: “Ultimately a truly stable, cooperative and open international system requires societies based on freedom of choice and legitimacy rather than force and oppression.” Haig pointed out that moderate democratic forces were the best
“long term protection” against communism.139
Although Haig—like the rest of Reagan’s advisers—continued to ignore the contradiction
137 Ronald Reagan, “Remarks on the Caribbean Basin Initiative to the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States” UCSB Presidency Project.
84 between providing military aid and promoting moderate democratic parties in Latin American countries like El Salvador and Guatemala, the memo nonetheless featured a strategic justification for encouraging political reform that went beyond selling policies to Congress. The rise of the
Solidarity movement in Poland in 1981, and its swift repression by the Communist Party, suggested a strategic value in promoting democracy rather than supporting an authoritarian status quo. “We can help to keep the Soviets preoccupied with problems inside their existing empire. . . by giving practical assistance to democratic and nationalistic forces and thus going on your own political offensive,” Haig wrote to Reagan. “The use of this political tool is no less effective than the military and economic leverage, and is much less costly and risky” he pointed out wrote.140
The memo pointed to the ideological implications as well: “Launching a program to support democracy now,” Haig explained, “can help provide a new focus for our idealism, give the successor generation here and in Europe something other than nuclear disarmament as a goal, gain bipartisan support, and give your administration a positive, freedom-oriented face.”141
Ironically, these visions of democratic grandeur were almost derailed by the constituent assembly election itself. Although the U.S.-preferred Christian Democrats won a plurality of seats—twenty-four of the available sixty—the right-wing National Republican Alliance
(ARENA) party formed a coalition to trump the PDC’s gains. ARENA presented problems for
U.S. policy because the presence of its leader, Roberto D’Aubuisson—a ruthless ex-military officer with widely publicized links to Salvadoran death squads—totally contradicted U.S. claims of human rights improvements. U.S. officials, wary of D’Aubuisson’s growing popular support, had already weighed the costs of his political success. In late 1981, Ambassador Hinton had cabled the State Department urging an “open door stance” in case of an ARENA victory: “If
140 Haig, Memorandum to the President. For a brief summary of the rise of Solidarity, and the ensuing Communist crackdown, see Tony Judt, Postwar:a History of Europe since 1945 (New York: Penguin Press, 2005), pp. 587-89. 141 Haig, Memorandum to the President.
85 we are wrong let us bite the bullet, even though Major Roberto D’Aubuisson is not your model democrat and would, if he came to power, give us fits.”142
Bite the bullet they did. U.S. officials emphasized procedural legitimacy and high voter tout to argue that the elections had been a success in form if not result. Images of popular participation by Salvadoran citizens struck a powerful chord with American audiences. The usually combative news commentator Sam Donaldson hinted at the political power of the elections when he concluded a question to the president by saying, “before we begin inviting trouble . . . we, all of us, should have been a little bit inspired by what took place there in that election.”143
* * *
Most importantly, Reagan himself was personally moved by the experience of the
Salvadoran election, and he quickly absorbed the events into his rhetorical framework. In a speech to the British Parliament on June 8, 1982, Reagan described the Cold War as a struggle between democracies and authoritarian-totalitarian regimes. Echoing Churchill, Reagan identified an Achilles heel in the Communist empire: “From Stettin on the Baltic to Varna on the
Black Sea, the regimes planted by totalitarianism have had more than 30 years to establish their legitimacy. But none—not one regime—has yet been able to risk free elections. Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root.”144 “It is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history,”
Reagan stated, “by denying human freedom and human dignity to its citizens.”145 By hand, the president inserted into the speech an anecdote on the elections in El Salvador: “One day those
142 Cable San Salvador to Washington, DC, 15 December 1981, DNSA El Salvador Collection. 143 Ronald Reagan, “The President’s News Conference,” 31 March 1982, UCSB Presidency Project.
86 silent, suffering people were offered a chance to vote, to choose the kind of government they wanted. Suddenly the freedom-fighters in the hills were exposed for what they really are—
Cuban-backed guerrillas who want power for themselves, and their backers, not democracy for the people.”146
Some historians have cited this speech’s emphasis on ideals as an example of a profound transformation in Reagan’s thought.147 Others have emphasized the purely rhetorical nature of the episode, suggesting that Reagan remained personally unwilling to embrace a strategy of promoting democratic change in foreign countries.148 The most likely explanation is that the elections in El Salvador neither altered Reagan’s beliefs nor challenged his political inclinations.
Instead, from 1981 to early 1982, U.S. policymakers had become increasingly interested in the practical success of the elections because they represented the most feasible way of ensuring the
Salvadoran regime’s survival while not jeopardizing their core objective of providing military support. This shift in emphasis, which had been managed largely by the State Department, had not been accompanied by any serious rethinking of the administration’s essentially military goal of defeating the FMLN’s challenge on the battlefield, overcoming the challenge of revolutionary movements in neighboring states, and weakening the Nicaraguan government. For Reagan, the
Salvadoran elections resonated with a basic faith in the appeal of human freedom, which seemed to exist—ambiguously, to be sure—alongside his conviction in the right of anti-communist forces to use whatever force necessary to destroy their Marxist foes. Reagan had hinted at the
146 For Reagan’s insertion, see Ariel David Adesnik, Reagan’s Democratic Crusade: Presidential Rhetoric and the Remaking of American Foreign Policy (Ph.D. Diss. Oxford University, 2006), pp. 191-92. 147 David Adesnik writes that after the success of elections in El Salvador “Instead of thinking about America’s democratic values as a burden that prevented it from fighting Communism more effectively, Reagan began to think of America’s values as the most potent weapons in its anti-Communist arsenal. In short, Reagan converted himself to the Wilsonian faith of Democratic Cold Warriors such as Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy.” In keeping with his main thesis, Adesnik caveats: “At times, Reagan’s instincts came into conflict with his newfound faith and prevented him from behaving as one might expect of a true Wilsonian.” Adesnik, Democratic Crusade, p. 192. 148 Kagan, Twilight Struggle, p. 213.
87 tension inherent in this view when he stated in a 1978 radio broadcast that, “the ideological struggle dividing the world is between communism and our own belief in freedom to the greatest extent possible consistent with an orderly society.”149
Through 1981, an ideological anti-communism shared by key members of the Reagan administration essentially drove the perception of national security threats in Central America and the making of policies to meet those threats. At the same time, a number of factors worked to weaken the appeal of ideology. Publicly committed to combating Cuban and Soviet influence in
Latin America, key figures struggled to design a viable strategy for doing so, and shied from the domestic political costs of overtly wielding U.S. power in the region. And yet, despite rhetorical flirtations with themes of political liberalization, Reagan decisionmakers struggled to find common ground with their domestic foes, who demanded that the administration do more to address the mounting evidence of human rights violations in El Salvador as part of any such political reform. The administration had thrown serious support behind the Salvadoran constituent assembly elections, and the Christian Democrats in particular, only to witness the victory of the right-wing ARENA party. Critics took the ARENA victory as evidence of the shallowness of the administration’s concern for human rights. But, in fact, during the months that followed, the administration doubled down on its support for Duarte’s PDC to ensure that
ARENA would not win the presidential elections in 1984.
Ironically, Reagan turned to an emphasis on U.S. ideals and democratization only when local events and political realities in the United States seemed to require a more pragmatic approach. Notwithstanding their militaristic rhetoric, Reagan officials in their first year found it costly to pursue policies that ignored assaults on human rights, and closed off the possibility of political reconciliation. In El Salvador the administration—led by the State Department—had
149 Italics added. “Two Worlds,” in Skinner, Anderson, and Anderson eds., In His Own Hand, p. 13.
88 begun to forge a remarkable degree of continuity with Carter’s policies that had linked civil conflict with the need for political reform. Obsessed with the national security threats in Central
America, the administration had proven unable to grasp whether U.S. goals in those respective realms were complementary or contradictory.
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Chapter 2
“Silent Partners” or Explicit Allies? The Failure of U.S. Quiet Diplomacy and Human Rights in Latin America, 1981-1983
Between 1981 and 1983, violence was the language of politics throughout most of Latin
America. Repressive military regimes, motivated by an ideology of anti-communism, used all tools of state power to eradicate the perceived threat posed by Marxist groups. Armed leftist movements throughout the region, facing the overwhelming power of the state, desperately sought to generate popular support for their struggles. In response, authoritarian regimes wielded policies of terror that silenced moderate parties and targeted innocent civilians—especially those belonging to the working class and Latin America’s indigenous communities—in horrific numbers. State violence crushed the human rights of citizens and activists. Claims to those rights, which had formed the basis of a vibrant political discourse in the nineteen sixties and early seventies, were rooted out by regimes that saw calls for socioeconomic improvements as an outgrowth of international Marxism.1 Democratic politics, social reform, and economic improvement were trampled by state and extra-legal forces that liquidated anyone opposed to the anti-communist status quo.
This chapter examines the Reagan administration’s response to political violence in Latin
America. Adopting a policy of “quiet diplomacy,” Reagan officials abandoned public criticism of military regimes’ human rights records. Instead, they appealed privately to Latin American officials to reduce human rights violations in order to help the administration convince the U.S.
1 On postwar liberalism in Latin American, see Leslie Bethell and Ian Roxborough, “Latin America between the Second World War and the Cold War: Some Reflections on the 1945-8 Conjuncture,” Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 20, No. 1 (May, 1988), pp. 167-189. On human rights claims and the military response, see, for example, William Michael Schmidli, The Fate of Freedom Elsewhere: Human Rights and U.S. Cold War Policy Toward Argentina (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013); Stephen G. Rabe The Killing Zone: the United States Wages Cold War In Latin America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).
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Congress to approve the resumption of military aid. I examine this policy in three specific cases—Argentina, Chile, and Guatemala—where the Reagan administration sought to circumvent or overturn legislation that restricted the provision of military aid and materiel to repressive governments on human rights grounds. The policy failed because Central and South
American governments interpreted quiet diplomacy as unqualified U.S. approval for their political and military campaigns to crush the Left. Meanwhile, the Reagan administration, desperate to show that its policies were working, echoed the specious claims of military governments that respect for human rights was growing in Latin America improving, even as independent reports—and their own intelligence—suggested otherwise.
This chapter contributes to a growing literature on the role of human rights in U.S. foreign policy by showing how the failure of quiet diplomacy led to a shift in the standards by which the Reagan administration—and, to a lesser degree, Congress—judged human rights in foreign countries. Premised on the idea that U.S. engagement with—rather than criticism of-- anti-communist regimes would help advance U.S. national security interests, Reagan’s backing actually encouraged military regimes to pursue politically costly and ineffective policies that undermined those goals. The failure of quiet diplomacy led the administration to shift the rhetorical and political basis of its policies.2 By the end of 1982, as evidence of state aggression, political murder, and genocide became undeniable, Reagan’s continued defense of conservative regimes invited new congressional opposition to the administration’s regional programs. I contend that the administration turned increasingly to an argument that emphasized democratization as the basis for human rights improvement. While other scholars have noted this
2 For the best account of human rights and foreign policy under Reagan, and one that highlights Latin America, see Kathryn Sikkink, Mixed Signals: U.S. Human Rights Policy in Latin America (New York: Cornell University Press, 2004) pp. 148-80. While I agree with Sikkink’s portrayal of a reorientation away from a blatant dismissal of human rights beginning in 1983, I believe the adoption of a human rights policy focused on democracy promotion was more complicated than her account of that reorientation suggests.
91 shift in emphasis to democracy, particularly during Reagan’s second term, my research suggests that it was the erosion of U.S. influence that led to Reagan’s unlikely embrace of democracy promotion.
Political Violence in Latin America’s Cold War
The period of militarized rule and civil war that spanned the 1970s and the 1980s was arguably the most horrific chapter in Latin America’s long historical experience with state violence designed to proscribe the expansion of political and social rights.3 The onset of the Cold
War had fractured the post-World War II promise of democratic reform offered by moderate nationalist political movements.4 In the 1950s, perceiving social reformism as an extension of
Soviet-backed communism, regional military officials supported by the United States seized power—most notably in Guatemala in 1954—or otherwise partnered with conservative forces to drive groups that they perceived as socialist underground. The success of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 further militarized the ideological conflict between forces of the status quo and those aspiring to effect revolutionary change. In the 1960s, leftist groups faced with the counterrevolutionary power of the state doubled down on strategies of guerrilla warfare to win supporters for the cause of social and economic liberation.5 Professional military forces played a newly assertive role in responding to this challenge. Embarrassed by the failure of civilian
3 Throughout the 20th century, the efforts of elites to consolidate and exert social and economic control routinely had put the state at odds with groups that resisted its efforts to incorporate them into, or exclude them from, a vision of national progress. This summary draws on the framework put forth in Greg Grandin and G. M Joseph. A Century of Revolution : Insurgent and Counterinsurgent Violence During Latin America's Long Cold War (Durham, North Carolina): Duke University Press, 2010. See also Tulio Haleprín Donghi and John Charles Chasteen, The Contemporary History of Latin America (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993). 4 On the possibility of social reform at the end of World War II, see Bethell and Roxborough, “Latin America between the Second World War and the Cold War,” and Bethell an Roxborough eds., Latin America Between the Second World War and the Cold War, 1944-1948 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 5 For a film that captured the ideology of Latin America’s revolutionary Left, see La Hora de los Hornos: Notas y Testimonios Sobre el Neocolonialismo, la Violencia y la Liberación, dir. by Octavio Getino and Fernando Solanas, (Argentina: Grupo Cine Liberacion, 1968).
92 politics to check the growth of armed leftist movements, military officers in the Southern Cone developed their own comprehensive plan for combatting the threat of Marxism. This strategy, known as the National Security Doctrine, fused a paranoid fear of communist subversion with a commitment to use all means necessary to eliminate that threat. Disseminated among South
American military officials and supported by U.S. trainers at military educational institutions in the 1960s, National Security Doctrine not only expanded the military’s role in combatting communist organizations, but also justified its efforts to reshape the relationship between state and citizen so as to prevent further threats of subversion.6
Throughout the hemisphere in the 1970s and 1980s, military regimes used bald violence and discreet terrorism to eliminate opponents and to stifle political dissent. Although anti- communist governments varied widely in their specific counterinsurgency tactics, the regimes discussed in this chapter shared a belief that the threat of communism had been invited by the failure of open, civilian politics.7 While they often justified violent policies in terms of defending traditional mores and democratic values, military regimes in fact reimagined democracy in a way
6 On National Security Doctrine, see Hal Brands, Latin America’s Cold War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), pp. 73-78. Although there was also a strong discourse of non-militant, civilian liberalism in Latin America in the 1960s, the ideological power of the military Right and the context of armed struggle throughout Latin America in the 1960s dominated the political sphere, justifying political violence on a horrific scale. Perhaps the most historically significant discourse was that of Dependency Theorists, who argued against Western-led modernization theory in the 1960s by stating that the lack of development in Latin America was due to unequal power relations between the region and the United States. See Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto, Dependency and Development in Latin America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979) and Stanley H. Stein and Barbara J. Stein, The Colonial Heritage of Latin America: Essays on Economic Dependence in Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970). 7 On the rationality of violence, see Hannah Arendt, On Violence (New York: Harcourt Brace Javanovich), pp. 63- 65. See also Grandin, “Living in Revolutionary Time: Coming to Terms with Violence in Latin America’s Long Cold War,” in Grandin and Joseph, eds., A Century of Revolution, pp. 4 and 11. Grandin writes: “Escalating political violence was made possible by the provision, coordination, and enthusiasm provided by the United States. Yet its animal spirit was driven by a domestic reaction against the democratization of the region’s status hierarchy that had steadily advanced since the decades prior to independence.” For views on the justness of violence, see Brands, Latin America’s Cold War, p. 99.
93 that excluded those who did not submit to their violent logic.8 State security forces used violence and fear to discourage political participation. As military governments in Argentina, Chile,
Guatemala, and elsewhere calibrated their policies—political, social, and economic—to the end of internal security, they closed avenues to moderate reform and silenced democratic political discourse.9
In Chile, a country that boasted a lengthy tradition of democratic rule and civic tranquility, the coup of September 11th, 1973 drew stark battle lines between supporters of the
Allende government’s socialist project and those who believed that socialism must be destroyed in the name of patriotic values.10 The coup’s leader, General Augusto Pinochet—once a reserved, dutiful army officer—was energized by power, undertaking repression with a special relish. To
Pinochet and his military colleagues, the Allende years were a tragic episode in Chilean history, enabled by the failure of the traditional political class.11 The number of Chileans who faced torture and death at the hands of the Pinochet regime was relatively small compared to other states, but the regime was far more successful at decimating the remnants of Allende’s support, institutionalizing fear, and hiding its violent excesses. Through 1975, the military secret police, the Dirección Inteligencia Nacional (DINA), targeted former Allende functionaries with torture, murder, and forced disappearance to drive the remnants of the Left underground. Military power was central to the regime’s identity, underwriting a dictatorial legal apparatus that restricted even
8 See Edelberto Torres-Rivas, “Notes on Terror, Violence, Fear and Democracy,” in Kees Koonings and Dirk Kruijt, eds., Societies of Fear: The Legacy of Civil War, Violence, and Terror in Latin America (New York: Zed Books, 1999) pp. 285-86. 9 Torres-Rivas, “Notes on Terror,” p. 286. 10 On how the memory of the Allende years shaped Chile’s experience under Pinochet, see Steve J. Stern, Battling for Hearts and Minds: Memory Struggles In Pinochet's Chile, 1973-1988 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006) and Pamela Constable and Arturo Valenzuela, A Nation of Enemies: Chile Under Pinochet (New York: W.W. Norton, 1991), pp. 69-73. 11 In the 1960s, the moderate-left regime of President Eduardo Frei Montalva had split the Chilean right, allowing Allende to win the 1970 election with a mere 33 percent of the vote. For a summary of how Allende’s victory and subsequent domestic policies were viewed as a threat and an opportunity in Washington and Havana respectively, see Tanya Harmer, Allende’s Chile and the Inter-American Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011).
94 the most basic of political activities. Political repression was matched by an aggressive dismantling of Allende’s economic and social programs. Stripping the state of its role as an agent of development and economic redistribution, Pinochet’s policies crushed Chile’s poor, who suffered terrible unemployment and inflation even during the best years of the Chilean economy in the late 1970s.12
From the earliest days of his rule, Pinochet justified his dictatorship by identifying a return to democracy as the regime’s ultimate goal. A constitutional referendum held in 1980 ostensibly confirmed the popularity of this vision, as more than two-thirds of voters agreed to grant the regime more powers and eight years of additional rule before returning to elections.13 In reality, believing that the western liberal model of democracy was in crisis, Pinochet moved to de-politicize the Chilean system by marginalizing parties, silencing unions, and expanding the role of the military. The 1980 Constitution and the apparent success of economic reform gave the
Pinochet regime a sense of legitimacy in spite of intense pressure from international human rights groups.
Violence took a higher toll in Argentina, where the death of populist leader Juan Perón in
1974 gave way to a “dirty war.” Militant supporters on both the Left and the Right took up arms to press their claims for the Peronist vision of the future of the Argentinian state. An increase in guerilla attacks in the early 1970s by the People’s Revolutionary Army (ERP)—a militant branch of the Workers Revolutionary Party (PRT)—and the Montoneros guerrilla faction reflected a
12 For a more critical essay that seeks to place Pinochet’s neoliberalism in the longer history of Chilean political economy, see Marcus Taylor, “From National Development to ‘Growth with Equity’: Nation-Building in Chile, 1950-2000,” Third World Quarterly , Vol. 27, No. 1. The goal of Pinochet’s economic policies, Taylor argues, was to “depoliticize” society by allowing all relationships to be governed by the impartial market and by exchanges between private individuals: “Within the new nation envisaged by the dictatorship, the state would be disembedded from functions that had previously enmeshed it within political struggles in diverse social realms, ranging from production conflicts in state-owned enterprises to struggles over social reproduction within the various institutions of the welfare state.” Quote from p. 78. 13 Carlos Huneeus, The Pinochet Regime (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007), p. 175.
95 conviction among leftist groups that Perón had left Argentina on the precipice of a popular insurrection that could strike a true victory for communist revolution. But, increased radicalism brought swift, brutal reprisals by military officials who feared creeping political chaos and radical change.
A 1976 coup ushered in a three-person military junta that sought to stamp out the chaos with iron-fisted rule and relentless use of state terror. Governing under a “Statute for the Process of National Reorganization,” the junta—colloquially known as el Proceso—clamped down on
Argentina’s traditionally vibrant political and intellectual culture, intimidating the press, gutting the leadership of unions and universities, and stacking the supreme court with military appointees. Like its Chilean counterpart, the mission of el Proceso was to annihilate all traces of subversion in the country, and it waged a hidden war to do so.14 Argentine security forces targeted suspected leftists and collaborators for kidnappings, holding them in secret detention centers, usually military buildings. State forces tortured the disappeared (desaparecidos) systematically, subjecting them to physically degradation and often rape. Those who survived were scarred permanently by the experience—a deliberate effect of the government policies that sought to silence and intimidate all dissent against the regime’s anti-communist ideals. Many more—as many as 30,000 by the end of the conflict—faced unspeakable deaths, including infamous cases in which suspects were drugged and dropped into the murky, turbulent waters of the Río de la Plata.15 Although disappearances decreased markedly after 1979, the government still restricted any form of democratic politics. The dirty war left little room for neutrality.
14 See Antonius Robben, “The Fear of Indifference: Combatants’ Anxieties about Political Identity of Civilians During Argentina’s Dirty War,” in Kooning and Kruijt, eds., Societies of Fear, pp. 129-32. 15 For the official account of crimes perpetrated by the state against citizens, see Nunca Mas: the Report of the Argentine National Commission on the Disappeared; with an Introduction by Ronald Dworkin (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1986), pp. 10-75.
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Combatants on both sides—state security forces and revolutionary groups—espoused ideologies that sought total victory; non-allegiance was seen as weakness or defeat.16
The blood ran deepest in Guatemala, which had been wracked by civil war since 1954, when a United States-backed coup toppled the reformist government of Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán.
With the U.S.-backed military wielding power in the name of anti-communism, the hope of social democratic reform was quickly replaced by what one author has called “the grotesquerie of a counterinsurgent terror regime.”17 A closed political system, routinized government murder, and declining economic growth prompted opponents to take up arms in the 1970s. Guerrilla war intensified after the Panzós Massacre of 1978 set off a series of insurgent reprisals.18 While the regime of General Fernando Romeo Lucas García targeted the leadership of unions, universities, and political parties for assassination, Guatemalan revolutionaries sought to build the basis for popular insurrection among indigenous communities in the country’s central highlands.19 The various revolutionary groups pursued violent strategies of their own, targeting infrastructure, wealthy landowners, and state officials in rural areas. This rural indigenous strategy, together with Cuban support, helped to unite and refocus the revolutionary effort.20 But beginning in
1981, the Guatemalan government countered the strategy by eradicating support for insurgents among the indigenous population. The ensuing violence left as many as 100,000 Guatemalans dead between 1981 and 1983 alone, with likely 85 percent of those deaths perpetrated by forces
16 See Robben, “The Fear of Indifference,” pp. 125-40. 17 Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004/2011), p. 14. 18 On the Panzós massacre, see ibid., pp. 155-67. 19 Brands, synthesizing several other estimates, suggests that the Guatemalan insurgents numbered between 6,000 to 10,000 in the early 1980s, with “hundreds of thousands of supporters.” Brands, Latin America’s Cold War, p. 194. 20 “National Security Council Meeting,” Briefing Memo, Richard Allen to NSC Principals, Feb 5, 1981, box 91282, White House Staff and Office Files, Executive Secretariat, NSC (Hereafter Exec Sec NSC), Meeting Files, Ronald Reagan Library (Hereafter RRL).
97 linked to the state.21 The violence was as depraved as it was widespread. Rapes, mutilations, hackings, bludgeonings, and incinerations were common fates for individuals. As many as 400 villages simply were wiped off the map.22
Getting the Doctrine Straight: Crafting a Reaganite Human Rights Policy
Reagan and his advisers did not perceive the political violence that plagued Latin
America as a problem in its own right. Reagan believed that regional insurgencies were the product of Cuban and Soviet meddling, and that an abstract concern for human rights should not drive U.S. foreign policy. Nonetheless, the administration did make efforts in 1981 to incorporate human rights into its global strategy. These initial policies—characterized as the “K
Doctrine” because they took shape under Jeane Kirkpatrick at the U.S. delegation to the United
Nations—were a deliberate attempt to re-shape the standards of human rights discourse in international forums. Building on Kirkpatrick’s earlier argument about the need to eliminate double standards in the treatment of totalitarian regimes of the left and right, her hand-picked team of neoconservative intellectuals sought to restore “balance” by highlighting violations in communist countries while deflecting criticism of Cold War allies.23
21 Brands, Latin America’s Cold War, p. 207. 22 Ibid., p. 206. 23 The incipient attempts at working out a conservative human rights policy early in 1981 were led by Carnes Lord of the National Security Council under the direction of National Security Advisor Richard Allen. The outcome of this effort is unclear, and has not been cited as an influence on the later thinking of Elliott Abrams. See memorandum, Lord to Allen, “Talking Points on Human Rights” February 19, 1981, White House Office of Records Management (WHORM) Subject File, Human Rights, RRL. On the K Doctrine, see Robert Cox, “Timmerman Shows that ‘Authoritarian Generals’ are Keepers, Captors of ‘A Totalitarian Beast’” The New York Times, 9 June 1981, p. A15. Kirkpatrick’s team included including Michael Novak and Joseph Shattan in New York, and Richard Schifter at the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva. Schifter says, “With our mandate from Jeane, and her access to the President, we were able to speak for the Administration. We drafted our own speeches and then went through the formalities of getting our speech drafts cleared. But we did not ask for policy direction from offices that had not as yet gotten a clear policy signal from the top.” See Richard Schifter Oral History Interview, Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, Arlington, VA.
98
In spite of Kirkpatrick’s efforts at the United Nations, the administration’s human rights policy was marked by confusion. Upon taking office, Reagan appointees had threatened to eliminate the human rights bureau created by Carter, in spite of the fact that its existence was mandated by law.24 Its leadership remained vacant for much of 1981, as Reagan’s nominee for that post, Ernest Lefever, was rejected by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in part for his stated opposition to any role for human rights in foreign policy.25 Lefever’s defeat seemed to further insulate the administration from the growing political clamor surrounding human rights.26
By the end of 1981, as human rights became a more contentious aspect of U.S. action in Latin
America, the administration continued to operate without a specific policy, just “a critique of the
Carter policy, combined with an instinctive distrust of the phrase, crowd, and community associated with it.”27
24 Sikkink cites early rumors of its elimination from an interview with Carter’s appointee to that post, Patricia Derrian. See Sikkink, Mixed Signals, p. 148. 25 Judith Miller, “Rebuffed in Senate, Lefever Pulls Out as Rights Nominee,” The New York Times, 6 June 1981, p. A1. 26 “Haig May Abolish Rights Job,” The New York Times, 7 July 1981, p. A5. 27 Quote is from Sikkink interview with Elliott Abrams as cited in Sikkink, Mixed Signals, p. 148. Abrams further discusses this point in “Reagan’s Leadership: Mystery Man or Ideological Guide,” in Kenneth W. Thompson, ed., Foreign Policy in the Reagan Administration: Nine Intimate Perspectives, Vol. 3 of the Miller Center Reagan Oral History Series (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1993). In that interview, Abrams recalled that “there really was no human rights policy in the first year.” (p. 185). The White House’s attempt to dismiss the importance of human rights in foreign policy was rendered futile by the transnational human rights movement’s simultaneous emphasis on the importance of human rights in international relations. Having blossomed in the wake of the Helsinki accords in the 1970s, the network of international, regional, and local NGOs made Latin American state violence central to its advocacy in the 1980s, and aggressively targeted Reagan’s foreign policies in the first year. NGOs like Americas Watch, the Washington Office on Latin America, and Amnesty International combined broad popular organization with targeted lobbying to spur congressional opposition to Reagan’s attempts to provide military aid and trainers to El Salvador. These NGOs in turn worked with local human rights organizations in Latin America that provided legal services to victims of government repression while compiling and disseminating general information on the extent of human rights violations. Meanwhile, religious organizations in the United States mobilized thousands of Americans to participate in grassroots demonstrations and shows of solidarity with Central and South American counterparts. For a good summary of the human rights literature that places the activism of the 1970s in the broader historical context of claims on rights, See William I. Hitchcock, “The Rise and Fall of Human Rights?: Searching for a Narrative from the Cold War to the 9/11 Era,” Human Rights Quarterly vol. 37 iss. 1 (2015): pp. 80-106; Micheline Ishay, History of Human Rights: From Ancient Times to the Globalization Era (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), pp. 248-53; and Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010). On the role of U.S. religious organizations, see Christian Smith, Resisting Reagan: The U.S. Central America Peace Movement (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996). It was also true that the State Department remained somewhat
99
The Reagan administration remained without a formal human rights policy until the appointment of Elliott Abrams to lead the state department bureau. In the fall of 1981, Deputy
Secretary of State William Clark asked Elliot Abrams, then serving as assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs, to suggest a replacement after Lefever withdrew his nomination. Abrams recommended himself, and was confirmed in December.28 Abrams later remembered how he viewed the task at hand: “it took us a while to get our doctrine straight . . . .
We had to figure out what a Reaganite human rights policy would look like,” he wrote. The effort faced an obstacle in the person of Secretary Haig. “I may be being unfair to him,” Abrams reflected, “but I believe he viewed human rights as a rather foolish subject.”29
Abrams and Haig could hardly have been more different. The thirty-three-year-old
Abrams already had served as counsel to Democratic senators Henry “Scoop” Jackson and
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and was considered a rising star of the neoconservative movement. In
1976, Abrams had written in a Commentary symposium on American political ideology that
“fidelity to liberal principles” required reprising “America’s role in resisting totalitarianism around the globe.” Mid-century U.S. liberals, Abrams believed, had risen to the challenge of championing the cause of freedom against totalitarianism. The New Left had sapped American liberals of this resolve, leading them to question the superiority of American values over communist ones. For Abrams, there was no such equivocation. Liberty, America’s fundamental
insulated from the White House’s attitude on human rights. While the department fulfilled its legal responsibility for producing country-specific reports on human rights practices, junior political officers in embassies across the globe actually expanded their links with human rights organizations during this time, continuing to register the impact of specific human rights issues on bilateral relations. See ADST Schifter interview, pp. 53-54, in which Schifter points out that although Reagan and Haig had cleaned out the human rights officers from the Latin America bureau, there was no similar “purge” of political officers responsible for populating reports on human rights. 28 Author interview with Elliott Abrams, Washington, DC, 27 April, 2010. 29 For Abrams quotes, see Abrams, “Reagan’s Leadership,” p. 106.
100 political ideal, he wrote, “is of transcendent importance” to American foreign policy.30 Abrams’s appointment was widely seen as a sign that Reagan planned to take human rights more seriously.
In November 1981, The New York Times published excerpts of a leaked State Department memorandum penned by Abrams for Secretary Haig, sketching out a new Republican human rights policy. The memorandum stressed the urgency of fusing the administration’s anti- communism with a more liberal idealism. “We will never maintain wide public support for our foreign policy,” the memo warned, “unless we can relate it to American ideals and the defense of freedom.” Abrams suggested that frank assessments about human rights performance could incorporate—rather than undermine—U.S. interests. “We must take into account the pressures a regime faces and the nature of its enemies. If a nation, friendly or not, abridges freedom, we should acknowledge it, stating that we regret and oppose it,” he wrote. Punishment should “result from a balancing of all pertinent interests.” Abrams concluded with a resounding warning about the political costs of continuing to marginalize human rights: “There is no escaping this without destroying the credibility of our policy.” Applying a more consistent and constructive human rights policy would allow the United States to confront Soviet communism on ideological and moral grounds, as well on proxy war battlefields.31
By connecting fundamental human rights and American national interest, Abrams wrote the playbook for Reagan’s policy of quiet diplomacy. The State Department’s 1981 report on human rights practices, released in February 1982, officially outlined this approach. In the introduction, the administration put forth a limited definition of human rights as those that, when fulfilled, support broader human desires and social aspirations. To the administration’s
30 Elliott Abrams, “What is a Liberal? Who is a Conservative,” Commentary, Vol. 62, No. 3 (September 1976), p. 32. 31 “Excerpts from State Department Memo on Human Rights,” The New York Times, 5 November 1981, p. A10. Kagan, arguing that the memorandum represented the nascent Reagan Doctrine, attributes it to Elliot Abrams in Kagan, Twilight Struggle, p. 210. Abrams confirmed that it was his memo in interview with the author.
101 understanding, human rights were best guaranteed by a free market and by “a political system of liberty” that gave citizens a choice in the officials and the laws that govern them.32 The liberal democratic orientation inherent in this definition reflected the administration’s attempt to reconcile its endorsement of universalist ideals with a respect for national sovereignty. Focusing moral outrage only on “friendly countries,” where American power was strongest, the report reasoned, would alienate allies and erode American influence, while violations elsewhere in unfriendly countries went unpunished.
The State Department report suggested that the United States could navigate this dilemma by wielding influence to improve human rights in other countries, but doing so discreetly. U.S. financial and military aid would be reviewed “in order to avoid identifying the United States with violations of human rights,” the report stated. Diplomats would use “frank discussions with foreign officials; meetings with victims of human rights abuses; and, where private diplomacy is unavailing or unavailable, public statements of concern.” Although the report claimed that these tools would be applied consistently, it also hedged by saying that they would be applied in a manner that “takes into account a country's history, culture and current political environment, and recognizes that human rights concerns must be balanced with other fundamental interests.”33
The Reagan administration had made significant strides in adopting a policy that dealt proactively with human rights. But while that policy appealed to U.S. ideals, it remained driven by pragmatism. Human rights advocates protested that Abrams’s subordination of human rights to exigencies of national interest trivialized the very existence of such rights, and the international standards on which they should be protected. The administration saw quiet
32 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1981, Report Submitted to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives and the Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate by the Department of State in Accordance with Sections 116(d) and 502B(b) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, as Amended (Washington: GPO, 1982), p. 5. 33 Ibid.
102 diplomacy as a way to court military regimes, particularly in Central and South America, by downplaying their brutal rights records. Engaging with anti-communist allies via “traditional diplomacy,” the report stated, “maximizes the limited leverage we do possess, while minimizing counter-productive reactions, damage to bilateral relations, and international tension.” By avoiding public acknowledgments of the dismal realities of human rights in Latin America, the administration believed that it could repair relations with anti-communist allies, while eroding
Marxist support in the region with little political cost at home. 34
“No Nation Without Sin”: Rapprochement with the Southern Cone
The Reagan administration was eager to restore friendly relations with the military governments of Argentina and Chile. Reagan Republicans felt strong ideological ties with these anti-communist, free market regimes that faced foreign-backed Marxist insurgencies—even though those insurgencies were extremely weak by the early 1980s. U.S. military planners saw reinforcing the South Atlantic as central to hemispheric defense against foreign invasion. But the
Southern Cone’s most important value to Reagan planners was symbolic. Reversing the ostracism that the Argentine and Chilean regimes had faced in the 1970s would be a demonstrable rebuke of Carter’s foreign policy and would send a strong signal to American allies that the United States would no longer sacrifice security interests for human rights. To achieve these objectives, Reagan officials aimed to overcome legislative amendments passed in the
1970s that prohibited military assistance, training, or weapons sales to Argentina and Chile on human rights grounds.35 Between 1981 and 1982, the administration applied its policy of quiet
34 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1981, p. 5. 35 Reagan officials and those from Argentina and Chile often referred to the restrictions on military aid using the shorthand “Kennedy Amendment.” In fact, the administration was targeting two separate legal prohibitions on military aid to Chile and Argentina, both of which bore the imprint of Senator Ted Kennedy. Military assistance to
103 diplomacy, hoping to build support for repealing the so-called “Kennedy Amendments” on the grounds that private U.S. pressure was encouraging human rights improvements. Although the administration had some success in the case of Argentina, the outbreak of the Falklands War in summer 1982 exposed its meager influence and sapped U.S. support for Reagan’s South
American gambit.
The administration moved quickly to signal its intentions to the Argentine government. In
February 1981, Reagan’s personal emissary for the region, former General Vernon Walters, visited the outgoing president of the junta, General Jorge Videla. When Videla confessed to
“certain excesses” in Argentina’s fight against communism, Walters reassured him that there was
“no nation without sin.”36 Videla’s successor, General Roberto Viola, visited Washington in
March. Viola left the meetings floored by the reception he received from Reagan officials. He believed the visit had demonstrated a “virtual identity of views on hemispheric security requirements.” Specifically, Reagan welcomed Viola’s support for U.S. policies in Central
America, where Argentina was secretly training former members of Somoza’s national guard and now promised to boost arms sales to El Salvador and Guatemala.37 On April 1, Reagan asked
Congress to repeal the Humphrey-Kennedy amendment restricting U.S. military assistance on the grounds that the administration no longer considered the Argentine regime to be a gross violator of human rights.
Chile had been prohibited in 1976 by The International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act of1977 (P.L. 94-329), which incorporated a Kennedy Amendment terminating cash sales of weapons, military training, and credits. In the case of Argentina, The International Security Act of 1977 (P.L. 95-92) included an amendment introduced by Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey prohibiting all military assistance and sales to Argentina after September 30, 1978. Both laws capitalized on a broader sense within congress (and in Argentina’s case, in the Carter administration) that the United States should not be providing military aid to the dictatorships. For a good summary of human rights legislation relating to Chile, see Peter Kornbluh, The Pinochet File, pp. 222-230. 36 Cable Buenos Aires to State, “My Talk with President Videla,” 25 February 1981, Digital National Security Archive (hereafter DNSA), Argentina collection. 37 Cable Buenos Aires to State, “President Viola’s Private Visit to the U.S.-Assessment,” 24 March 1981, DNSA Argentina Collection.
104
Reagan’s public commitment to lessen human rights pressure on Argentina strengthened the junta’s political basis at home.38 Viola “noted with special pleasure” Reagan’s and Haig’s reassurances that human rights would no longer be the focal point of the U.S.-Argentina relationship, a shift that Viola considered to be “of fundamental importance for US-Argentine relations.” The prospect of accessing U.S. arms markets bolstered Viola’s position within the armed services.39 Although the dirty war against the Left had been effectively concluded by
1979, the regime continued a policy of military buildup to shore up its regional position and legitimize its rule at home. By one estimate, between 1976 and 1982, the junta imported $16.7 billion on arms, roughly two-thirds of its total foreign debt.40 Repeal of the Humphrey-Kennedy amendment would lubricate these policies, further legitimizing the junta’s bellicose rhetoric.
Throughout 1981, however, Reagan officials found repealing the Humphrey-Kennedy amendment far more difficult than they anticipated. Legislators and human rights NGOs disputed administration claims that U.S. pressure had encouraged a change in behavior by the Argentina dictatorship.41 In reality, human rights had improved dramatically in Argentina after 1979, but this owed primarily to the fact that forces of the Left had been decimated by the junta in the preceding years. By the middle of 1981, political murders in Argentina were rare, and the practice of forced disappearances had ceased almost entirely. However, human rights groups
38 “My Talk with President Videla.” 39 On the regime’s access to Reagan, see Ariel C. Armony, Argentina, the United States, and the Anti-communist Crusade In Central America, 1977-1984. (Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1997), p. 66. On Viola’s growing strength at home, see Cable Buenos Aires to State, “President Viola’s Private Visit to the U.S.- Assessment,” 24 March 1981, DNSA Argentina Collection. 40 Richard C. Thornton, The Falklands Sting: Reagan, Thatcher, and Argentina’s Bomb (Washington: Brassey’s, 1998), p. 5. 41 Foreign Assistance Legislation for Fiscal year 1982 (Part 7) Hearings and Markup Before the Subcommittee on Inter-American Affairs of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, 97th Congress, 1st sess., 23 March 1981 (Washington: GPO) p. 86.
105 protested that the whereabouts of 10,000 desaparecidos were still being kept secret by the military government.42
As the administration sought quietly to prod the Argentine government toward human rights improvements that would allow it to repeal Humphrey-Kennedy, the ongoing issue of the desaparecidos demonstrated the hollowness of U.S. policy. The major pressure to keep the records secret came from Argentine military officials who feared that public revelations would lead to legal punishment for those involved.43 Viola told U.S. Ambassador Harry Shlaudeman that the past was a “closed book” and warned that any investigation of the disappearances would
“destabilize” the government. To the State Department, Shlaudeman admitted that only a return to democratic rule was likely to resolve the issue, but the military’s fear of “another Nuremburg” made it virtually impossible that it would support a political opening.44 While acknowledging that the regime was using a false threat of terrorism to prevent the return to democracy,
Shlaudeman did not force the issue. “Perhaps a less confrontational manner of handling the problem can be found,” he wrote.45
Like Argentina, Chile welcomed the Reagan administration’s new approach to human rights, as years of international ostracism were starting to have deleterious effects on the regime.
The restrictions on U.S. military aid to Chile had not weakened Pinochet’s ability to administer ruthless security inside the country, but they had limited Chile’s ability to develop its external military capabilities. Chile watched as regional neighbors—notably Argentina, Peru, and
Brazil—moved steadily to increase their military power. As the Argentine junta pressed its claim
42 The 10,000 figure is cited in “The Human Rights Picture,” The Washington Post, 11 July 1981, p. A18. Other sources claimed as many as 15,000 unaccounted disappeared. 43 Cable State to UN Mission, “Meeting of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights: Argentina and Disappearances,” 26 January 1981, DNSA Argentina Collection. 44 For reference to “another Nuremburg,” see interview with Ambassador Harry Shlaudeman Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, Arlington, VA. 45 Cable, “Meeting of the United Nations Commission.”
106 on a disputed island in the Beagle Channel, Chile lamented America’s continued lack of support, which it saw as the product of Marxist propaganda.46
In late summer 1981, as opposition to Reagan’s plans to provide advisers and military aid to El Salvador raged in Congress, the administration reassured its allies that human rights would not jeopardize the prospect of improved relations. In August, Reagan dispatched Jeane
Kirkpatrick to the Southern Cone, where she told the Chileans that the United States remained committed to “a profound change in U.S. foreign policy” that would make Chile a vital ally of the United States in a “new West” while freeing Chile of the old “hegemonic” ways of U.S. power. A Chilean official was on hand to discuss human rights, but Kirkpatrick did not take up the issue.47 Chilean diplomats were pleased to note that State Department officials were now only addressing human rights informally in meetings.48 The strongest sign of the administration’s new approach was the appointment of Ambassador James Theberge, a conservative Latin American affairs specialist and known skeptic when it came to human rights.49 When Theberge was confirmed in 1981, the Chilean ambassador cabled the ministry with a glowing review of his credentials. “The principal characteristic of Mr. Theberge is his unalloyed anti-communism,” he wrote. His selection was “positive for Chile . . . as much for his personal convictions as for the political support I presume he has in [the Reagan]
46 John R. Bawden, “Cutting off the Dictator: The United States Arms Embargo of the Pinochet Regime, 1974- 1988,” Journal of Latin American Studies vol. 45 no. 3 (August 2013) pp. 513-14. 47 Oficio Secreto Enviado (Secret Transmitted Memo) #19, 7 September 1981, Central Archive of the Chilean Foreign Ministry (hereafter Chile RREE). Unless otherwise noted, all translations performed by the author. 48 Oficio Secreto Enviado #21, 14 October 1981, Chile RREE. 49 Replacing Ambassador Turner Sheldon in Nicaragua in 1975, Theberge was instructed by the State Department to keep a moderate distance from the Somoza regime, which was rapidly growing out of favor with the Ford administration. Although Theberge had dutifully carried out the policy of “distancing” on grounds of corruption, he saw human rights violations as less significant and was reluctant to pressure the regime on those issues. For a thorough but largely confidentially-sourced account of Theberge’s time in Managua, see Morris H. Morley, Washington, Somoza, and the Sandinistas: State and Regime In U.S. Policy Toward Nicaragua, 1969-1981 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 75-85. “To Hear Testimony on the Nominations of Admiral Gerald E. Thomas To Be Ambassador to the Cooperative Republic of Guyana and the Honorable James D. Theberge To Be Ambassador to Chile,” Committee on Foreign Relations. Senate, 7 December 1981 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1981).
107 administration.”50 The administration fed Chilean optimism that the Kennedy Amendment would soon be repealed.51
U.S. support for Argentina was thrown into question by ongoing economic troubles and internal power struggles. When Viola suffered a heart attack in November, the Reagan administration threw its support behind the new presidential aspirant, Leopoldo Galtieri.
Galtieri, a bold, hard-line Army chief, had been in Washington only a week earlier for regional military consultations, where he had taken the opportunity to woo American officials, including
Caspar Weinberger, Tom Enders, Richard Allen, and Vice President George Bush. The
Argentine press noted the exceptional treatment that Galtieri received from his American hosts, while Argentine diplomats lauded the sign of the “growing rapprochement between the United
States and Argentina favored by President Reagan.”52 U.S. officials welcomed Galtieri’s ascent to the presidency, believing that his strong support within the military would help to tamp down on political instability, guarantee pro-U.S. policies, and make the kind of measured progress on human rights that would allow the United States to pass military aid through Congress.
Chile presented a tougher case for the administration on human rights. Although the
Pinochet regime went through several administrative iterations, the general’s personal control of politics was cemented by a deferential military and the façade of dictatorial law, combined with an aggressive security apparatus that he used to eliminate dissent and silence his opposition.
Pinochet used the 1980 plebiscite to justify a gradualist return to democracy once the threat of
Marxist subversion was eliminated. In governing circles, he surrounded himself with
50 Telex Recibido (Received Telex) #462, 29 September 1981, Chile RREE. 51 In September 1981, Deputy Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci told the new Chilean Ambassador, Enrique Valenzuela, that he supported the repeal of the Kennedy Amendment and wished to find expanded avenues for military cooperation. Letter from Carlucci to Enrique Valenzuela, as reported in Oficio Reservado Enviado (Classified Transmitted Memo) #98, 4 September 1981, Chile RREE. 52 See “Galtieri en los Estados Unidos,” La Nacion (Buenos Aires), 8 November 1981. Quote is from “Weinberger y Galtieri,” in the archive of Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (Hereafter CELS) clippings collection.
108 conservative technocrats who supported neoliberal reforms as well as his crusade against the
Left. If individuals questioned the regime’s policies, or the pace of transition, they were typically replaced.53 This insular bureaucratic legitimacy helped Pinochet weather global ostracism. Years of isolation had weakened Chile’s external capabilities, but had also taught it how to survive. As one author has written, “Pinochet knew he could ignore Washington’s threats, advice and pleadings. The experience of confronting so many crises and outside pressures had revealed the limits of U.S. power; Santiago knew how to navigate the international landscape as a pariah state.”54
While the administration’s lobbying efforts in 1981 effectively convinced the Congress to repeal the Humphrey-Kennedy amendment applying to Argentina, there was markedly less support for doing the same for Chile. In December, the House and Senate conferred to iron out differences between versions of the foreign aid bill, dealing particularly with removing limitations on arms sales to Argentina and Chile.55 The more strident House version of the aid bill included a presidential certification requirement—similar to the requirement already in place for El Salvador—that would require Reagan to verify that the Argentine government was paying particular attention to the issue of the disappeared. The administration objected to the House version of the bill because this requirement forced it to depart from its policy of privately acknowledging human rights transgressions.56 A State Department official present at the session
53 See Constable and Valenzuela, Nation of Enemies, pp. 167-68. 54 Bawden, “Cutting Off the Dictator,” p. 540. 55 The administration also sought to overcome restrictions on military aid to other countries including Angola. For good summary of the bill, see Larry Q. Nowels, Issue Brief # IB81098, Foreign Aid: Budget and Policy Issues for FY82, 8 January 1982 (Washington, DC: Library of Congress Research Division, 1982). 56 Bosworth, who was present at the conference meeting, said: “given our overall interest in improving relations with Argentina, we should be concerned with the way in which we express our concern for the human rights issue, but to do it in a way in which we are supporting the construction of a stronger relationship with that government, rather than raising possible problems in the construction of a possible relationship or improved relationship with that government.” Joint Conference: 1982 Foreign Assistance Authorization Act, Monday December 14, 1981, Congress
109 told legislators that a certification requirement, as proposed by the House, was counterproductive to “record[ing] our continued interest in the human rights situation” in Argentina.57
The compromise legislation repealed the restrictions on military assistance to both
Argentina and Chile together, but it included a presidential certification requirement to resume aid in either case. Just as in the case of El Salvador, Congress had no veto over the certification decision, but the requirement forced the Reagan administration to submit its judgment about human rights to public scrutiny. For Argentina, Reagan was required specifically to consider the junta’s cooperation on the whereabouts of political prisoners and the disappeared.58 The language was more restrictive for Chile. If the president wished to resume arms sales to Chile, the law stated, he would need to certify not only general progress on human rights, but also that the Chilean government was doing everything it could to cooperate in the ongoing investigation into the 1976 assassination of former Allende official Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C.59
While the Chilean embassy celebrated the amendment as a diplomatic “triumph,” it acknowledged that relations would not automatically improve.60 On January 6th, State and
Defense officials told Chilean diplomats that the administration would soon put forward a certification request to Congress for resumption of arms sales. The Chilean embassy noted an air of optimism in the discussions. U.S. military officials even told their Chilean counterparts that
of the United States: United States Senate Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and House Committee on Foreign Affairs, 14 December 1981, p. 122. 57 Joint Conference, p. 124. 58 An Act to Authorize Appropriations for the fiscal years 1982 and 1983 for international security and development assistance and for the peace corps, to establish the peace corps as an autonomous agency, and for other purposes, Public Law 97-113, U.S. Statutes at Large 95 (1981), p. 1519. 59 The best accounts of the Letelier-Moffitt assassination and ensuing investigation and cover-up can be found in John Dinges, The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents ( New York: New Press, 2004), Vanessa Walker, “At the End of Influence: The Letelier Assassination, Human Rights, and Rethinking Intervention in US-Latin American Relations,” Journal of Contemporary History vol. 46 no. 1 (Jan. 2011), pp. 109-135 and Taylor Branch and Eugene M. Propper, Labyrinth (New York: Viking Press, 1982). 60 Oficio Secreto Recibido (Secret Received Memo) [unnumbered] 18 December 1981, Chile RREE.
110 the Pentagon was receiving requests from companies who were anxious to approach Chile once a certification had been made official.61
The administration had gotten what it wanted by repealing the Kennedy amendments, but the certification requirement put the administration in a difficult position. Reagan officials had argued that Chile and Argentina deserved U.S. military assistance as key allies in the hemispheric struggle to turn back Marxist subversion. But certification of either country would require the administration to demonstrate to Congress that human rights were improving under these authoritarian regimes—a case that was likely to be politically unpopular and damaging to
Reagan’s credibility. To withhold certification, on the other hand, would amount to the type of human rights criticism that Reagan officials were committed to avoiding, and would jeopardize the close ties the administration had worked to foster. For Argentina, the administration believed it had a case, and in February the State Department prepared to advance it. The certification would argue that the number of disappearances had dropped precipitously after 1978, with 44 cases in 1979, 12 in 1980 and only a single potential case in 1981. The use of torture and prolonged detention by security forces had been brought under control by a functioning legal system. Although the political parties were still restricted, freedoms of speech and the press were expanding. “The building of a strong, confident, and democratic Argentina is the task of the people of Argentina,” the draft language read. U.S. military assistance would help the regime
“achieve both human rights and security goals. These goals are complementary, not contradictory.”62
In the early months of 1982, economic and political turmoil threatened to rupture
Argentina’s temporary peace. As the government failed to demonstrate progress towards
61 Telex Recibido (Received Telex) #4-5, 6 January 1982, Chile RREE. 62 Cable, State to Buenos Aires, “Argentine Certification,” 2 February 1981, DNSA Argentina Collection.
111 elections, and as a worsening economic situation invited outcry from political parties that were still technically outlawed, the embassy noted, “Argentina is showing more political ferment than at any time since 1976.” The embassy believed that Galtieri’s government was attempting to
“soften political tensions,” lessen controls, “show concern for human rights and hold out promises of progressively greater political liberalization.” But Galtieri’s own ambitions complicated those goals, as the general sought to secure himself in office beyond 1984.63
Economic deterioration exacerbated an already dire situation. By the start of 1982, GDP had fallen six percent from the year before. External debt had skyrocketed more than 32 percent since the first year of El Proceso, while unemployment rose to 4.5 percent—the same level it had been in 1976.64 The junta’s policy of debt-led growth sputtered as exports fell and lending markets dried up.65
The Argentine junta turned to the United States to solidify its position, playing on ideological affinities with the Reagan administration. The regime pointed out that its support of the Nicaraguan Contras made it an indispensable ally of the United States. Without decisive action against the Marxist threat, Galtieri told Republican Senators Howard Baker and Laxalt in
January, the hemisphere would be “[cut] in half.”66 The military regime simply needed time and economic security to oversee an orderly transition to democratic rule, Argentine leaders insisted.
But internal pressure continued to simmer. “The issue of the disappeared is becoming highly politicized,” Shlaudeman warned the State Department when a spring march of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo turned into the biggest anti-regime demonstration in recent history. “We see
63 Cable, Buenos Aires to State, “Politics Not as Usual,” 22 March 1982, State Department Freedom of Information Act Online Reading Room (hereafter State-FOIA). 64 Deborah L. Norden, Military Rebellion in Argentina: Between Coups and Consolidation. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), p. 67. 65 On a history of the brief life of export-led growth, see Victor Bulmer Thomas, The Economic History of Latin America Since Independence (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003) pp. 349-51. 66 Sen. Howard H. Baker, Jr. Developing an American Consensus: A Report to the United States Senate, 97th Congress, Doc no. 97-26 (Washington: GPO, 1982) p. 11.
112 no evidence of a genuine willingness to share power at the national level with the civilian sectors of society,” Shlaudeman judged.67
Controversy continued to surround the potential certification of Chile as well, as the unsolved Letelier assassination case remained the greatest obstacle to fully normalized relations.68 In early 1982, as American investigators attempted to bring suspects from the
Chilean security services under investigation, the Chilean government declared its investigation into the case closed. The Justice Department, frustrated with the “obstructionist” attitude of their
Chilean counterparts, strongly opposed certification on those grounds alone. Internally, Elliott
Abrams acknowledged that FBI and DOJ opposition would make it impossible to certify Chile because “the only acceptable action on the part of the GOC might put half the government in jail.” While he saw Congress’s demands on the Letelier case as “foolish,” he also understood that for the administration to challenge the Justice Department would produce “extremely damaging front page news.”69
U.S. plans to seek certification were derailed on April 2, when Argentine forces carried out a surprise invasion of the Falkland Island—las Islas Malvinas to Argentinians—taking control of the barren territory held by the British since 1833.70 In secret, Galtieri had developed
67 Cable Buenos Aires to State, “Politics Not as Usual,” 22 March 1982, State-FOIA. 68 In early February, the release of the film Missing further inflamed attitudes surrounding Chile’s human rights record. The film, which Greek filmmaker Costa-Gavras marketed as a true story, told of an American father’s frustrated attempts to locate his son who was kidnapped and killed by the Pinochet government following the Allende coup. The film suggested American complicity not only in the coup but in the coverup of the son’s murder. While the film was banned in Chile, in the United States it drew fresh popular attention to the Pinochet dictatorship’s human rights record. The Chilean foreign ministry hoped that the State Department would pursue legal action against the filmmaker. See Oficio Reservado Enviado (Classified Transmitted Memo) #31, 19 February 1982, Chile RREE, in which the Ministry asked the embassy whether the State Department was still pursuing the issue or whether it had “given up.” 69 Abrams memo to Eagleburger, 13 March 1982 in Peter Kornbluh, The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability (New York: The New Press, 2003), p. 411. 70 Since the 1960s, British control of the Malvinas had become an increasingly contentious issue in Argentinian politics and foreign policy. In spite of apparent British indifference to the islands, periodic negotiations had produced no progress towards a handover. Indeed, only a week before the invasion, British and Argentinian diplomats had held yet another round of “cordial and responsive” talks in New York, agreeing only to continue
113 plans to take the islands by surprise, presenting the British with a fait accompli of Argentine control. The Malvinas conflict is typically treated by scholars as an issue apart from—or an interruption of—the burgeoning U.S. relationship with the Galtieri regime. Because of the surprise nature of the invasion and Secretary Haig’s subsequent attempts to mediate the conflict, it is portrayed as a miscalculation that jeopardized the regime’s unwavering support from
Reagan. In reality, the invasion was closely linked to issues of human rights, which dominated discussions of U.S. support. The Galtieri regime’s decision to invade was largely influenced by the political turmoil that had engulfed the Argentine political sphere in late March 1982. Those protests were partly driven by economic concerns, but for many Argentinians, the regime’s economic failures had become inseparable from its intransigence on the issue of political arrests, accounting for the disappeared, and returning to elections. The regime calculated that launching the invasion would unite the country and restore the military’s prestige. In the short term,
Galtieri’s gamble worked. Within a week, the demonstrations in the Plaza de Mayo had turned from protesting Galtieri to disparaging Margaret Thatcher.
Outside of Buenos Aires, however, Galtieri’s sense of events proved far less prescient.
While Argentine claims that high-level U.S. officials were aware of plans for the invasion remain unsubstantiated, Galtieri did count on U.S. support after six months of unwavering courtship by
Reagan officials. At worst, Argentina calculated that the United States would remain neutral in the dispute between two allies. Reagan’s first phone call with Galtieri on the night of the invasion dispelled that notion, as the president urged Galtieri to avoid using force and accept an
discussing control of the islands throughout 1982. For a lively and well-sourced (but not documented) account of the British negotiations with the Argentinians in the lead-up to the invasion, see Max Hastings and Simon Jenkins, The Battle for the Falklands (London: Michael Joseph, 1983). The most revealing account of the Argentine side of events—though one which mixes a fair amount of speculation with insider information, and claims not to be definitive—is Oscar Raul Cardoso, Ricardo Kirschbaum, and Eduardo van der Kooy, Malvinas: La Trama Secreta (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana/Planeta SA, 1983). After numerous Argentine re-printings, it was translated as Malvinas: The Secret Plot (Surrey, UK: Preston Editions, 1987).
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American offer to mediate the conflict. When Galtieri declined, Reagan warned him that a military conflict would cause repercussions throughout the hemisphere and for U.S.-Argentinian relations specifically. “The special relationship that exists today could suffer gravely,” Reagan told him through an interpreter.71
Tensions were rife in the State Department over the proper course for the United States to take. Tom Enders, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and other Latin Americanists believed that it would be foolish to sacrifice America’s newfound influence in South America for the sake of the
Falklands. Europeanists—Haig among them—believed the United States must use the conflict to reinforce its commitment to European security. The administration remained anxious to avoid all-out hostilities. Not only would a British military response risk U.S. prestige in the hemisphere, but U.S. officials worried that Galtieri might turn to the Soviet Union for support.
Secretary Haig attempted to mediate the conflict, pushing an even-handed proposal that called for military withdrawal by both parties, joint administration of the islands, and an eventual return to the question of sovereignty. The British were disappointed by the American position, and
Prime Minister Thatcher remained intransigent on the issue. In Argentina, Haig’s reception was far worse. The secretary was openly rebuffed by Argentinian officials who doubted that Haig had the clout to “tilt” American policy in favor of Britain.72
Argentina’s refusal to consider Haig’s proposal led the United States to throw its support completely behind Britain. On April 30, Reagan announced that the United States would impose sanctions on Argentina, openly signaling its support for the British as heavy fighting began. The decision, which included a further ban on military exports to Argentina, marked a stark reversal
71 This is based on the dialogue reconstructed in Cardoso, Kirschbaum, and van der Kooy, Secret Plot, 83-86. Their account is based on the Argentine and, hence, Spanish language minutes of the phone call. 72 Argentine officials were keenly aware of the growing disagreements over the Falklands between Kirkpatrick and Haig, and calculated that Haig’s position was weaker. See Hastings and Jenkins, Battle for the Falklands, pp. 258- 69.
115 of American policy, which had been designed to resume arms sales to the military junta on the grounds of human rights improvements. Yet human rights were conspicuously absent from the administration’s justification for deciding not to support the Argentinian regime—a sign of how seriously quiet diplomacy had failed. After all, that policy had reckoned that American influence could moderate the behavior of a dictatorship. Instead, the Falklands demonstrated just how tenuous American influence had been all along. When faced with mounting internal pressure,
Galtieri had turned to aggression rather than American support to solidify the regime’s internal legitimacy. In the context of war, the regime further clamped down on political rights, continuing to use arrest, kidnapping, and detention against political opponents.73 American confidence that it could “certify” the regime now appeared foolish. As British Foreign Secretary Francis Pym had asked during a press conference, how could the United States choose to support a dictatorship over a democracy?74
While Chilean officials publicly backed Argentina in the Malvinas dispute, privately they stressed to their American interlocutors that Argentine behavior was predictable. When Enders met Chilean embassy officials to talk about the Falklands and complained of the predominance of “extreme and aggressive positions” in Argentina’s foreign policy, Chile acknowledged that this had been their experience as well. More than an “I told you so” moment, Chilean officials seized on the opportunity to portray themselves as America’s more reliable ally in the South
Atlantic. Normalizing military relations with Chile was more important than ever, the ambassador told Enders, “not just for Chilean interests” but for “the equilibrium of the Southern
Cone.”75
73 See Americas Watch Briefing, “Human Rights During the Falklands/Malvinas Crisis,” July 1982, in DNSA Argentina Collection. 74 Hastings and Jenkins, Battle for the Falklands, p. 109. 75 Telex Recibido #209-211, 3 May 1982, Chile RREE.
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As Reagan’s advisers remained reluctant to fully normalize relations with the Pinochet government, relations reached a low point. At an intense meeting between Haig, Chilean
Foreign Minister René Rojas, and the commander of the Chilean military, Haig lamented to the
Chilean side that the Falklands had complicated the matter of certification because the “naïve left” now accused Reagan’s involvement with authoritarian regimes as helping to cause the conflict. The Chilean ambassador was incensed. “If the United States does not wish to collaborate militarily with us,” he said, “we will stay within our borders and look to other markets, but the United States would pay the cost for this.” Failing to normalize relations with
Chile created a “vacuum of power” in South America that invited “Soviet penetration.” The
Chilean Army commander lamented that for nearly eight years Chile had resisted the “violent campaign of the Soviet Union” virtually alone. Haig reassured the Chileans that he agreed: the
Marxist threat to Chile was real, and while few Americans truly appreciated what Chile had done to protect American interests, the United States remained committed to providing military assistance as soon as possible.76
As the Falklands conflict came to a close, however, it became more obvious that a restoration of relations with the Chilean dictatorship was politically impossible. The State
Department urged the NSC to postpone plans for certification indefinitely, arguing that any public debate over certification would likely damage Reagan’s political ability to deal with more important issues in El Salvador. National Security Advisor Bill Clark worried that putting off certification would jeopardize Reagan’s larger objective of “improving relations with the so- called pariah states,” but NSC staffer Roger Fontaine pointed out that U.S. pressures on human
76 For the Chilean summary of this lengthy meeting, see Telex Recibidos #318-325, 16 June 1982, Chile RREE. These themes were echoed in other meetings with U.S. officials during the same round of talks. For meeting with Frank Carlucci of the Defense Department, see Telex Recibido #329-334, 17 June 1982, Chile RREE.
117 rights were getting the administration nowhere. Going to Chile to “ask for significant progress on human rights is hardly yet a strategy for improved relations,” he wrote to Clark.77
Beginning in late 1982, economic troubles further undermined Reagan’s efforts to support the Chilean regime. Like Argentina, Chile’s foreign debt had doubled in the three years leading to 1982, while the GDP had plummeted by almost 15 percent in 1982-1983. As one scholar has written, Pinochet’s economic miracle “had feet of clay.”78 The NSC suspected that economic problems in Chile might give them more influence with the Pinochet regime,
“provided we help them.”79 Instead, economic recession only made the regime more intransigent.
To Pinochet, economic woes were inseparable from the ongoing fight against Marxism that had come to dominate his rule. “Our opponents and international Marxism have tried, in vain, to find a way of undermining the monolithic cohesion of our institutions of national defense,” he said in a February 1983 speech, “nor have they been able to drive a wedge between the institutions and our citizens.”80 Pinochet’s grip tightened even further, inviting new opposition to U.S. policies.
Ambassador Theberge wrote to Bill Clark personally, bypassing the State Department to register his frustration that the administration was silently conceding to Congress that human rights should prevent better relations with Pinochet. “History demonstrates that discriminatory and punitive treatment of friendly countries results in wounded pride and humiliation,” he wrote,
“that is often transformed into anger and frustration, self-assertion, and belligerency towards us.”
It was “disheartening,” Theberge wrote, to allow “a small vocal band of activists in the US
77 Fontaine memo to Clark, “Certification of Chile,” 8 July 1982, Box 20- Chile, Exec Sec NSC: Country File, Latin America, RRL. 78 Huneeus, The Pinochet Regime, p. 363. 79 Memo Sapia-Bosch to Clark, “Jim Theberge’s Comment on Chile’s Frustration,” 28 September 1982, Box 20- Chile, Exec Sec NSC: Country File, Latin America, RRL. 80 “Pinochet Responds to Coup Rumors,” The Washington Post, 2 February 1983, p. A23.
118 congress to use the human rights issue to oppose certification with considerable damage to our political, security, and commercial interests.”81
By the end of 1982, presidential certification of Argentina and Chile seemed a foolhardy proposition. Based on the premise that Argentina and Chile were ideological allies in an effort to combat communist infiltration in the western hemisphere, U.S. policymakers had tried desperately to resume relations. They argued that the prospect of a rekindled bilateral relationship and renewed military sales gave them influence to wield in urging human rights improvements. Indeed, they argued that the regimes of Pinochet, Videla, and later Galtieri were capable of bearing out Kirkpatrick’s thesis that authoritarian governments were amenable to gradual liberalization. The cost of improved relations, however, had been a continual reinforcement of the status quo. In Argentina, the administration’s willingness to offer military assistance with no quid pro quo had reinforced the junta’s desire to delay indefinitely any meaningful democratic opening. In Chile, the United States had in fact not once pressured Chile on the issue of transition to democracy, acquiescing to Pinochet’s grip on Chilean politics because of the domestic sensitivities of publicizing the regime’s abuses.
In the early months of 1983, however, politics appeared ready to explode onto the street.
As Argentine citizens debated the meaning of the Falklands War, civil society and political life began to slowly spring back to life. The military government that replaced Galtieri, led by
Reynaldo Bignone, announced it was open to what Bignone called a “democratic way out.” But
Bignone faced the same intense opposition from military officers that feared democratization would make them vulnerable to prosecution for human rights crimes. In Chile, as the economic crisis deepened, and Pinochet searched for new ways to ameliorate political discontent, he knew
81 Theberge to Clark, 16 November 1982, Box 20- Chile, Exec Sec NSC: Country File, Latin America, RRL
119 he could no longer count on U.S. support. Taken together, the failure of U.S. policy in Chile and
Argentina now signaled a loss of American influence with the regimes that it once considered most friendly in the region.
Quiet Americans: U.S. Diplomacy and Guatemalan Genocide
If ideological affinity inspired Reagan’s courtship of the Southern Cone, the U.S. embrace of Guatemala was driven by an urgent sense of strategic necessity. With insurgent factions unified under the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG, Unidad
Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca), Reagan officials saw civil war there as the next front in the battle against a spreading Marxist tide. Congressional opponents signaled early on that they would not approve any new initiatives to provide Guatemala with military assistance, barred since 1977, or access to international lending, barred by the State Department’s earlier designation of Guatemala as a gross violator of human rights.82 In 1981 and 1982, the Reagan administration sought to overcome these laws by arguing that security objectives outweighed concerns about the Lucas regime’s atrocious human rights record. When a coup brought General
Efraín Ríos Montt to power in March 1982, however, the administration shifted its strategy, arguing that Ríos Montt was dedicated to improving human rights. In fact, between March 1982 and August 1983, Ríos Montt and Guatemalan military officials oversaw genocidal counterinsurgency policies that killed and dislocated tens of thousands of Guatemalan civilians.
82 Unlike Argentina and Chile, military assistance to Guatemala was not prohibited by country-specific legislation, though such a prohibition had been put in place for fiscal year 1978 (P.L. 95-148, Foreign Assistance and Related Programs Appropriations Act of 1978). That prohibition followed Guatemala’s declaration that it did not wish to be considered for foreign assistance because it saw human rights restrictions as interference in internal affairs. Following the 1977 law, congress actively restricted requests for aid both by the Carter administration and by the Reagan administration in early 1981. In the House Committee on Foreign Affairs’ authorization report accompanying the foreign assistance bill for 1981, the committee explicitly stated that it expected “to be in on any new initiative that may occur with regard to Guatemala.” See Foreign Assistance Legislation for Fiscal Year 1982: Markup before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, 97th Cong., 1st sess., p. 350.
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Fearing that openly acknowledging human rights violations would curtail American influence and delegitimize Ríos Montt, the Reagan administration challenged the independent reporting of human rights organizations and, in some cases, its own embassy. Their unflagging support, culminating in Reagan’s public endorsement of the general in December 1982, showed that any pretense of “quiet diplomacy” regarding human rights was in fact a policy of open consent.
Unlike James Theberge in Chile, U.S. ambassador to Guatemala Frederic Chapin was no stranger to human rights diplomacy. While serving as interim chargé in El Salvador in 1981,
Chapin had presented evidence to the Salvadoran junta tying government forces to the murder of four American churchwomen and, separately, two American land-reform experts. Chapin remembered the episode proudly, but also came away believing that human rights pressures were most effectively applied in a quiet manner.83 Even privately, however, Chapin’s hand was blunted by the administration’s commitment to support the Guatemalan regime’s counterinsurgency efforts. Before arriving in Guatemala, Haig instructed Chapin to avoid discussing the sensitive issue of military aid altogether. If it did come up, Chapin was to emphasize that levels of violence were only a problem because they invited U.S. congressional opposition.84 When Vernon Walters visited Guatemala in September, President Lucas raged against “Liberal Democrats in the house of representatives who were determined to criticize the
Guatemalan government and negate the facts.” Walters agreed, telling the Guatemalan officials
83 “I could have covered myself with a great deal of glory by announcing that the Salvadoran government had arrested the persons responsible for the church women's murder,” Chapin recounted, “ [I]t is not something which has enhanced my public image, but I nevertheless believed it was the right course of action.” Interview with Ambassador Frederic Chapin, Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection, ADST, p. 25. 84 State Memo to Embassy Guatemala City, “Talking Points for Ambassadors Use in Presenting Credentials,” 26 August 1981, DNSA Guatemala Collection.
121 that his “his problem was precisely in convincing the congressmen that innocent persons were not being killed.”85
Foes in the U.S. Congress--particularly in the House, where liberal Democrats controlled several key committees—were determined to maintain the restrictions and prevent further militarization of the Central American isthmus. When press reports in mid-1981 revealed that the administration was seeking to circumvent restrictions on providing helicopter spare parts to the
Guatemalan military, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs secured an agreement from the administration that it would formally consult with the committee before any decision to reverse the U.S position on aid. Unconvinced that the administration would honor this agreement, congressman Steven Solarz (D-N.Y.) introduced a bill that would require presidential certification—again modeled on the El Salvador requirement—to allow military assistance and training. The administration, already struggling with the political exposure wrought by certification requirements for El Salvador, agreed to seek the prior approval of the committee before undertaking any new Guatemalan aid initiatives. Meanwhile, the House oversight committee also actively opposed Reagan’s efforts to facilitate loans to Guatemala from multilateral development institutions. Although the administration took advantage of loopholes that facilitated some military assistance to the regime, congressional prohibitions were effective through early 1982 in using human rights to prevent the administration from establishing a military relationship with the Guatemalan regime.86
85 Cable Guatemala City to State, “Ambassador Walters’ Call on President Lucas: Bilateral Issues,” 22 September 1981, DNSA Guatemala Collection. 86 Paul Albert points out that prior to December 1982, the Reagan administration did not attempt to grant aid in defiance of congressional objections, and that the aid which it did seek to grant “clearly fell within the basic needs exception.” Paul Albert, “The Undermining of Legal Standards for Human Rights Violations in United States Foreign Policy: The Case of “Improvement” in Guatemala” Columbia Human Rights Law Review Vol. 231 (1982- 1983), p. 249.
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The violence in Guatemala was so pervasive that diplomats struggled to carry out the
Reagan administration’s policy of quiet diplomacy. In mid-January 1982, Raymond Gonzales—a political and consular officer in Guatemala City—expressed to Chapin his moral outrage over the embassy’s passive approach to the government’s role in political violence.87 “Eventually the misdeeds and corruption of the GOG will come to light,” Gonzales wrote:
I, for one, do not intend to serve as an apologist for the GOG or my own government. It is the height of hypocrisy to participate in the civilities of diplomacy when one knows the truth. We become silent partners in the barbarous and criminal deeds of theis government if we do not speak out. I feel we are past the point of “quiet diplomacy” in Guatemala.88
Chapin forwarded the cable to the State Department, with a muted endorsement. “I sympathize with [Gonzales’s] outrage” he wrote, lauding the memo as “profound cry of conscience from a deeply concerned and eminently honest officer.”89 However, he continued, “I do not believe that we can allow ourselves the happy and otherwise much-to-be-longed-for luxury of departing from the path of quiet diplomacy.” Foreign policy, the ambassador concluded, “cannot, unfortunately be run on raw, gut, emotion.”90 By dismissing human rights criticism as emotional, Chapin laid bare the weakness of quiet diplomacy. Believing their policy to be calibrated to a realistic assessment of U.S. interests and hemispheric threats, U.S. officials forfeited the moral outrage necessary to protest human rights violations. Instead, Reagan officials voiced support for the
87 Cable Guatemala City to State, “GOG Officials Implicated in Arrest of Priests and Nuns and Murder of Sexton,” 13 January 1982, DNSA Guatemala Collection. 88 Ibid. 89 Ibid. Gonzales was a self-styled social activist who took pride in the power of dissent from within policymaking institutions. Previously elected to the California assembly as the first Latino representative of the San Joaquin Valley, he had written critically of U.S. foreign policy before joining the foreign service in 1980. During his time in Guatemala, he used the “dissent channel” more than all other foreign service officers in the world, combined. Motivated by an affinity for liberation theology, he particularly highlighted the plight of the clergy in Central America. After leaving the foreign service, he became a faculty member at California State University Monterey Bay and continued to be immersed in labor issues. See the self-published Raymond J. Gonzales, A Lifetime of Dissent (Xlibris, 2006). 90 “GOG Officials Implicated in Arrest.”
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Guatemalan government at the very moment it was to embark on a genocidal counterinsurgency campaign.
The March 1982 coup that brought Efraín Ríos Montt to power appeared to U.S. officials as a stroke of good fortune. The coup’s perpetrators publicly stated that they sought to curb corruption and abuses of power by the security forces. A U.S. cable from March 30th noted that many of the Guatemalan officials suspected of “terrorist acts” had been forced out of the country, with their personal “security forces” disbanded.91 U.S. embassy officials reported that the young
Air Force officers responsible for the coup had been motivated in part by a desire to improve relations with the United States, which the Lucas regime had been unable to do.92
Policymakers’ initial impressions of Ríos Montt were mixed. A defense intelligence report stated that Ríos was a self-styled moderate, “opposed to the ultra-right and . . . .violently opposed to socialism and communism.”93 In early April, Ríos Montt told Chapin that he had no desire to stay in power and that he wished for democratic elections at an early date.94 Regarding human rights abuses by the military, the general told Chapin that “[p]roper measures would be taken and charges instituted against military officers guilty of crimes.” Chapin reported, “I think he means it, if he is given the necessary time.”95 Vinicio Cerezo, head of the Christian
Democratic Party, assured Elliott Abrams that the coup was “a move toward genuine democracy.”96 Cerezo told Abrams: “[T]he killing has practically stopped. The death squads are being deprived of their guns. Many of the judicial police are in prison. Their chief is under
91 Guatemala City to State Department, “EGP Denounces Junta, Guerrilla Activity Picking Up Again,” 30 March 1982, DNSA Guatemala Collection. 92 See Memorandum to Enders, “Guatemalan Coup,” March 25, 1982, DNSA Guatemala Collection. 93 DIA Intelligence Report, “Biographic Information on Leader of March 1982 Coup in Guatemala,” 28 March DNSA Guatemala Collection. 94 Cable Guatemala City to State, “Ambassador’s Conversation with Junta President Ríos Montt,” 8 April 1982, DNSA Guatemala Collection. 95 “Ambassador’s Conversation.” 96 State Department to Guatemala City, “Meeting Between Assistant Secretary Abrams and Vinicio Cerezo,” 21 April 1982, DNSA Guatemala Collection.
124 house arrest.”97 Early reports from Guatemala fueled an optimistic sense that bilateral relations would at last be normalized.98
Reality was far grimmer. Ríos Montt’s charisma, together with a concerted public relations campaign, obscured the start of the Guatemalan military’s intense counterinsurgency plan—“Victory 82”—that sought to achieve a decisive victory in the worsening civil war. The linchpin of the effort was a shift from “tactical pacification”—targeting isolated guerrilla units in urban and rural areas—to “strategic pacification,” which sought to deprive the guerillas of potential support from the indigenous population in the countryside.99 General Ríos Montt and other commanding officers referred to the strategy as fusiles y frijoles (“bullets and beans”)—a combination of social and economic aid to “loyal” Guatemalans with terrifying deadly force wrought on suspected guerrilla collaborators. Beginning in late April, the Army began sweeps of matazonas (killing zones), using massive exterminations of noncombatants to “dry up the human sea in which the guerrilla fish swim.”100 There was little precision in the state’s campaign of terror. “Everyone, everyone was a guerrilla; no difference was made in killing them,” remembered one Army officer operating in the Ixil region. The only apparent difference in strategy after the 1982 coup was that Army planners now recognized of the guerrillas that they
“couldn’t eliminate them all.”101
Those who were not killed were incorporated into Civil Defense Patrols (PACs), units of crudely armed campesinos tasked by the government with rooting out alleged communist
97 Ibid. 98 For an excellent study of the ways that Ríos Montt ’s Christianity led American evangelicals to lobby on behalf of improved relations with the dictator, see Lauren Turek, “‘To Support a “Brother in Christ’: Evangelical Groups and U.S.-Guatemalan Relations during the Ríos Montt Regime,” (Draft Ph.D. dissertation chapter, University of Virginia, shared with author 2013). See also Mark Whitaker and Ben Nissen, “Guatemala: Beans and Bullet Politics,” Newsweek, December 13, 1982. 99 Jennifer G. Schirmer, The Guatemalan Military Project: a Violence Called Democracy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998) pp. 35-36. 100 Ríos Montt quoted in Schirmer, Military Project, p. 45. 101 Schirmer interview with intelligence colonel as quoted in Military Project, p. 52.
125 sympathizers. Beginning with 25,000 Civil Defense Patrol forces, in just eighteen months the
PACs grew to number 700,000.102 Those who refused to join were designated guerrillas. As a
November 1982 Americas Watch Report concluded, “sustained efforts to be neutral in the conflict are not respected.”103 Meanwhile, the Army relocated surviving peasants into model villages. Here, as in the PACs, the Army subjected indigenous populations to hegemonic control via state-building civic action and propaganda campaigns. Together with outright massacres carried out by state forces, these social control efforts later were found by Guatemala’s Historical
Clarification Commission to constitute “acts of genocide against groups of Mayan people.”104
Newly uncovered documents have revealed the extent to which Ríos Montt regime’s counterinsurgency strategy included efforts to gain national and international legitimacy by obscuring violence and portraying government policies as reforms aimed at the social and economic causes of the civil war. Under an aggressive censorship law, the Ríos Montt government controlled nearly all public information. The regime reorganized the National Police
(PN)—long seen as the most aggressive branch of the state security apparatus; their records were put under state control with “absolute secrecy.” The PN instructed employees to rip pages out of crime reports so that damning information could not be picked up by journalists.105 The foreign ministry coordinated security forces’ efforts to “uniformly” reflect Ríos Montt’s reforms to international audiences.106 Foreign missions were instructed to court foreign journalists who
102 Americas Watch, Civil Patrols in Guatemala (New York: Americas Watch, August1986), p. 2. 103 Americas Watch, Human Rights in Guatemala: No Neutrals Allowed (New York: Americas Watch, 1982), p. 19. 104 “Human Rights Violations, Acts of Violence and Assignment of Responsibility,” Memoria del Silencio: Report of the Commission for Historical Clarification, 2000, English translation.
126 wrote negatively about Guatemala, reporting back to the ministry whether they did so out of
“ignorance or bad faith.”107
The regime’s public relations effort was internally devised, but there is evidence that foreign governments including the United States were complicit. Just two days after the coup, on
March 25th, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico and personal friend of Reagan’s, John Gavin, told his Guatemalan counterpart that Ríos Montt could count on American support. However, he stressed that the government would have to be “smarter and more tactful” than before, particularly on the issue of human rights. Ambassador Gavin suggested that the new regime portray itself as “defenders of human rights, and to denounce loudly to the whole world every time the communist terrorists carry out criminal acts.” In particular, Gavin told the Guatemalan ambassador that the foreign ministry should pressure newspapers to tamp down on coverage of political murders, which “endangers the help of the Reagan administration” due to the effect on public opinion. Gavin even suggested that Ríos Montt would “do well to engage the services in the United States of a good public relations agency,” to convince the American public that the
Ríos Montt regime was improving human rights. Ríos Montt should rely on his personal charm:
“It’s been a long time since we’ve seen a Guatemalan leader smile,” Gavin said.108
In the summer of 1982, Reagan officials used the Ríos Montt regime’s apparent commitment to socio-economic reform to shift its logic for resuming military aid. Whereas the administration had previously argued that the need to assist Guatemalan counterinsurgency efforts outweighed concerns about violence, it now began to argue that Guatemala’s improving
107 “Improving the Guatemalan Image Abroad,” 29 April 1983, Dirección General de Relaciones Internacionales y Bilaterales (DIGRIB) 1983, Central Archive of the Guatemalan Foreign Ministry (hereafter Guatemala MRE). 108 All quotes from letter from Guatemalan ambassador in Mexico City, Jorge Palmieri Garcia, to foreign minister regarding meeting with US Ambassador to Mexico John Gavin, 25 March 1982, DIGRIB 1982 Guatemala MRE,.
127 record on human rights justified repealing restrictive legislation.109 This shift in justification relied on a wholesale regurgitation of the Ríos Montt propaganda effort. In cables to
Washington, Chapin reflected positively on peasant participation in the Civil Defense Patrols.110
The ambassador applauded the success of the Army’s strategy in getting guerrillas to turn themselves in. “Political killings, of the type formerly attributed to the extreme right, have dropped off dramatically,” Chapin wrote optimistically in April, but “[g]uerrilla activity . . . appears to have increased and entered a new phase in which propaganda plays a heavier role.”111
In July 1982, the Reagan administration announced that it no longer found Guatemala to be a gross violator of human rights, facilitating the resumption of military aid.112 At nearly the same time, human rights organizations began to report evidence of staggering civilian atrocities occurring in the rural highland areas, where the Guatemalan military was operating.113 A July
1982 special briefing by Amnesty International estimated that more than 2,000 civilians in rural areas had been killed since the March coup.114 Amnesty ascribed the killings to Guatemalan security forces carrying out the Army’s counterinsurgency strategy, targeting opposition “both violent and non-violent through widespread killings including the extra-judicial execution of large numbers of rural non-combatants, including entire families.”115
The report presented a serious dilemma for the administration’s claims that quiet diplomacy had led to an improvement of human rights and a decrease in political violence.
Amnesty’s reporting also invited fresh opposition from liberal Democrats in congress. Seeking to
109 Paul Albert, “Undermining,” pp. 231-32. 110 Cable Guatemala City to State, “Press Reports 30,000 Armed Campesinos in Quiche Civil Defense; Campesinos Flee ‘Massacres’ in San Martine Jilotepeque,” 15 April 1982, DNSA Guatemala Collection. 111 Cable Guatemala City to State, “Guerrilla Activities Increase” 30 April 1982, DNSA Guatemala Collection. 112 Albert, “Undermining,” p. 231. 113 Raymond Bonner, “Some Rights Gains Seen in Guatemala,” The New York Times, June 3, 1982. 114 Amnesty International Special Briefing, “Guatemala: Massive Extrajudicial Executions in Rural Areas Under the Government of General Efrain Ríos Montt ,” July 1982, as discussed in Americas Watch No Neutrals Allowed. 115 Americas Watch, No Neutrals Allowed, p. 111.
128 respond, the administration first continued to deny its own awareness of the government’s role in rights violations. In August, testifying before the House Oversight Committee on behalf of a proposed inter-American Development Bank Loan to Guatemala, State Department official
Stephen Bosworth explained that while Guatemala’s human rights record was not perfect, the administration saw “a significant improvement in the situation on the ground,” and “an even more dramatic change in the policies and attitudes” of the regime.116
Secondly, the administration directly challenged Amnesty’s reporting. Assistant secretary Enders wrote to Amnesty in September, rebutting several specific reported incidents.117
Enders only reluctantly acknowledged the possibility that military units, “in contravention of stated policy,” had been involved in political killings.”118 Since March 23, he wrote,
[T]he Government of Guatemala has committed itself to a new course and has made significant progress. But, as we know from our own experience, it takes a long time to change the bias of the past, and to convince people that the new ways are better. We must demonstrate our support for the reforms under-way and for those in the government urging further improvement through meaningful, if prudent acts.” 119
Enders finished with a stinging critique of Amnesty’s reporting procedure, arguing that it was only applying human rights criteria to governments rather than guerrilla groups. A more
“balanced account of events and application of criticism,” he wrote, would likely produce different results.120
U.S embassy reporting was not “balanced,” but instead reflected the administration’s ideological disposition that political violence was a natural product of the Right’s response to the
116 Inter-American Development Bank Loan to Guatemala : Hearing Before the Subcommittee On International Development Institutions of the Committee On Banking, Finance, and Urban Affairs, Ninety-seventh Congress, Second Session, 5 August, 1982 (Washington: GPO, 1982), p. 24 117 Thomas Enders to Patricia L. Rengel, Amnesty International, September 15, 1982 in Americas Watch, No Neutrals Allowed, pp. 119-21. 118 Ibid., p. 120. 119 Ibid. 120 Ibid.
129 threat posed by the revolutionary Left. In October, an Americas Watch report, No Neutrals
Allowed, detailed a widespread state terror campaign in the countryside in which innocent peasants were denied the right to avoid the conflict. Americas Watch estimated that anywhere from 2,600 to 8,000 rural and mostly indigenous peasants had been killed in the seven months since the coup. In the report, Americas Watch report strongly criticized the methodology of U.S. embassy officials investigating human rights violations who, it claimed, collected information quickly and superficially, often via use of biased informants.121 The biggest problem, however, was the embassy’s unwillingness to acknowledge evidence of government involvement.122 In roughly 60 percent of cases, the report found that the embassy failed to assign any responsibility and merely deduced modus operandi based on the victims’ identity.123 Recently declassified documents have revealed that in some cases the embassy did report knowledge of the Ríos Montt regime’s role in political murder, only to have these reports ignored or contradicted by administration rhetoric. In a February 1983 cable reporting on political killings carried out by the
Archivos death squad, Chapin wrote: “I am firmly convinced that the violence described . . . is government of Guatemala ordered and directed violence and not ‘right wing violence’ and that these were not ‘rightist hit squad executions’ but again executions ordered by armed services officers close to president Ríos Montt.”124
The disparity between the administration’s public defense of the Ríos Montt regime and embassy reports of its direct involvement in political murder reinforced the reality that quiet diplomacy would always subjugate moral concerns to the primary goal of bolstering anti-
121 Americas Watch, No Neutrals Allowed, p. 104. 122 Ibid., p. 103. 123 Ibid., p. 106. 124 For quote, see cable Guatemala City to State, “Statements of Americas Watch Representative in Re Human Rights in Guatemala,” DNSA Guatemala Collection. In late December 1982, after an investigation into an alleged massacre of 200 civilians in the village of Dos Erres, the embassy concluded that “the party most likely responsible for this incident is the Guatemalan Army.” Cable Guatemala City to State, “Possible Massacre in ‘Dos R’s,’ El Peten,” 28 December 1982, DNSA Guatemala Collection.
130 communist foes. The campaign to aid Guatemala reached its climax when Reagan agreed to meet
Ríos Montt in Honduras in December 1982. The trip was envisioned as a way for Reagan to associate with democratic allies in the region. The administration also judged that a public meeting with Ríos Montt would help build support for its decision to approve a $3 million sale of spare helicopter parts. Secretary Shultz was nervous. In an NSC meeting prior to the trip, he told
Reagan his “fingers were crossed” for the meeting with Ríos Montt.125 The United States had to encourage the regime’s apparent progress on human rights “[b]ut, don’t throw your arms around him,” Shultz warned.
Reagan did exactly that, proclaiming to the press afterwards that Ríos Montt was getting a “bum rap” on human rights, and was “totally committed to democracy.” The remarks reflected equal parts deception and gullibility on Reagan’s part. In their private meeting, which lasted for an hour, the general personally pledged to Reagan that he would end the activities of death squads and return Guatemala to democratic rule within a year.126 Ríos Montt knew precisely how to manipulate Reagan, and he emphasized the regime’s efforts to promote conciliation and economic development in spite of the climate of civil war. “We enacted profound reforms to save the country from ruin,” Ríos Montt told the press after the meeting. He even congratulated himself for the regime’s treatment of indigenous communities: “Like the United States, we seek to achieve national unity through respect for individual differences,” Ríos Montt said: “‘E pluribus unum also describes our philosophy.”127
But on a more fundamental level, Reagan’s embrace of the dictator reflected the way that anti-communism informed U.S. priorities. Quiet diplomacy had never been about reducing
125 National Security Council Meeting, “Issues and Objectives for the President’s Latin America Trip,” 23 November 1982, Box 91284, White House Staff and Office Files: Exec Sec NSC, Meeting Files, RRL. 126 “Guatemalan is Said to Pledge Elimination of Death Squads,” The New York Times, 7 December 1982. 127 Ríos Montt Press Statement in Honduras, 5 December 1982, DIGRIB 1982, Guatemala MRE.
131 human rights violations, but rather about reducing the perception of violence to a level that would allow the administration to actively aid the regime’s counterinsurgency efforts. Reagan’s briefing before the meeting had reminded him that while human rights progress was to be encouraged, Ríos Montt “needs to be convinced that we share the same mutual goal of
[Guatemalan] victory in the civil war.”128 In this regard, Ríos Montt had been an ideal partner for Reagan, proving a reliable and responsible ally. Not only had the government’s offensive significantly weakened the insurgents, but strategic pacification had successfully muted support for the guerrillas in rural areas.129 Many peasants had embraced Ríos Montt’s “frijoles” programs as a means of security against the increasingly chaotic and authoritarian efforts of the guerrillas.130
Although Ríos Montt was responsible for the bloodiest period in Guatemala’s civil war, following the visit, the Reagan administration felt optimistic about the trajectory of relations.
In early 1983, the State Department announced its intention to lift the ban on arms sales to
Guatemala, requesting more than $56 million in security assistance. Critics were enraged that the administration would reward the regime for brutally pacifying the country. Congressman
Tom Harkin (D-IA) introduced a bill aimed to thwart the move, co-sponsored by 76 other members of the House. Harkin called the relative peace in Guatemala “the quiet of the dead.”131
***
Throughout 1981 and 1982, the Reagan administration sought to achieve its primary objective of eroding communist influence in Central and South America by resuscitating U.S.
128 State Memorandum, “Supplementary Issues and Objectives for the President’s Visit to Central America,” 22 November 1982, Box 91284, White House Staff and Office Files: Exec Sec NSC, Meeting Files, RRL. 129 Brands, Latin America’s Cold War, p. 206. 130 Ibid., pp. 208-209. 131 Bernard Gwertzman, “U.S. Lifts Embargo on Military Sales to Guatemalans,” The New York Times, January 8, 1983.
132 relationships with globally ostracized military regimes. To do so, it pursued a policy of “quiet diplomacy” that addressed human rights only to the extent necessary in order to overcome congressional opposition to providing military assistance. This policy had relied on the logic of human rights improvement—an attempt to demonstrate that U.S. influence and the prospect of military aid could encourage regimes to reduce political violence. By the end of 1982, it was clear that this policy had failed both as a means of inducing respect for human rights, and for increasing U.S. influence with ideologically compatible, anti-communist regimes.
Thus Reagan’s rendezvous with Ríos Montt, in which he lauded the dictator’s democratic credentials, was impelled by a broader strategic re-orientation that occurred in the aftermath of the Malvinas conflict. As a result of the failure of quiet diplomacy, Reagan officials sought a new ways to justify the pursuit of its national interests in Latin America, while staving off congressional opposition at home. They found that justification in the processes of democratization that were underway throughout the region. Elections in El Salvador in 1982 and
1984, the fall of the dictatorship in Argentina in 1983, and a similar democratic transition in
Brazil after 1983 gave the administration new ways to demonstrate that human rights were improving. In the coming years, the Reagan administration first embraced these changes in a rhetorical sense, but also began to promote democratic transitions, even when it meant dropping dictators throughout the region.
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Chapter 3
“The Map of Democracy is the Map of Human Rights”: Global Change and Democratic Openings in Latin America, 1983-1984
In the aftermath of the Falklands War, the Reagan administration recognized the need to reorient its strategy in the Western Hemisphere.1 Quiet diplomacy on human rights and support for anti-communist military regimes had yielded few political or strategic benefits. Instead, U.S influence with regional allies was on the wane, once again instilling fears among administration policymakers of expanded Cuban and Soviet meddling. A mounting wave of congressional opposition now threatened to derail Reagan’s programs in El Salvador and Nicaragua. The administration re-committed itself to core security goals, focusing on the threat of Marxist insurgencies in Central America and rethinking its basic assumptions about the relationship between military aid and political objectives in the broader hemisphere.
Between late 1982 and early 1984, the administration abandoned its strategy of unqualified support for brutal authoritarian regimes and began to emphasize democratic transitions as a means of ending civil conflict, advancing human rights, and facilitating U.S. support. To many commentators at the time, and for many scholars since, this shift was rhetorical or, worse, deceptive.2 These criticisms are well founded: Reagan’s invocation of democratic
1 National Security Decision Directive (NSDD)-71, “U.S. Policy Toward South America in the Wake of the Falklands Crisis,” 30 November 1982, Federation of American Scientists website
134 ideals was opportunistic, meant to overcome congressional opposition to expanded military aid for U.S. allies. But this strategic shift also responded to a series of broader events that transformed the geopolitical landscape after 1983, and altered the administration’s fundamental assumptions about its interests in the region.
In this chapter I place the emergence of U.S. democracy promotion efforts in Latin
America in a broader domestic and international context. I argue that during 1983-1984, the administration learned that promoting democracy—in particular encouraging and aiding formal, legitimate elections—was a viable strategy for undermining the revolutionary Left, legitimizing regional allies, and rebuffing domestic opposition. In the first section, I detail the internal political calculations that led it to adopt democracy as a key theme in its broader “public diplomacy” effort. Although this rhetorical change did not dislodge the administration’s goal of eradicating leftist insurgencies in the region by military force, it publicly aligned Reagan with political reform as a central tactic in these efforts. Next, I turn to a series of external factors that led Reagan officials to see democratic openings as part of a broader regional trend toward re- democratization: the emergence of the Contadora negotiating forum; the weakening of military regimes by the debt crisis and internal resistance; and, finally, the weakening of the Left in a hemispheric order being re-defined along liberal-capitalist lines. The final section brings these developments together, showing how Reagan’s policies of democracy promotion took shape through the end of 1984. Looking separately at South and Central American cases, I show how the administration embraced unexpected allies on the basis of their democratic credentials, while also using liberal democratic criteria to justify opposition to those countries, like Chile and
Nicaragua, that did not accede to the broader democratic trend.
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Reagan and the Rhetoric of Democracy Promotion
The administration’s adoption of a democracy promotion strategy was precipitated by a series of internal factors that coalesced in late 1982 and the first half of 1983. First, efforts by congressional opponents to cut the administration’s funding requests for El Salvador and
Nicaragua led Reagan officials to rhetorically emphasize reform, political development, and improved respect for human rights as key strategic goals in the region. Second, this political gambit was accompanied by a bureaucratic shift in which the White House asserted its leadership of Central America policy over that of the State Department in early 1983. Spearheading a
“public diplomacy” campaign that sought to win bipartisan support for Reagan’s Central
America policy, the president and his advisers co-opted themes of democracy and development that the State Department had emphasized since mid-1981. Finally, although spawned by political opportunism, these efforts produced several bureaucratic initiatives that expanded the
U.S. commitment to democracy promotion abroad.
Of course, the administration’s turn to democracy promotion did not come out of thin air.
Reagan had always seen the Cold War as a conflict between freedom and totalitarianism, even if he had been willing to support non-democratic regimes to achieve national security goals. “It is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history,” Reagan told the British Parliament in June
1982, “by denying human freedom and human dignity to its citizens.”3 Reagan incorporated
Latin American events into this vision. In a segment of that speech that Reagan inserted by hand, he appealed to the symbolic power of the 1982 Salvadoran elections in El Salvador. When the
“silent, suffering people” were allowed “to choose the kind of government they wanted,” It
3 Ronald Reagan, “Address to Members of the British Parliament,” 8 June 1982 in John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters, The American Presidency Project [online] (Santa Barbara, California).
136 exposed the guerrillas’ desire for “power for themselves, and their backers, not democracy for the people.”4
The State Department—and Assistant Secretary for inter-American Affairs Tom Enders in particular—had stressed since July 1981 that any lasting solution to civil conflict in Central
America must be based on political, social, and economic reform. As shown in the previous chapter, even when the administration was unwilling to sacrifice its support for military regimes in Central and South America, the State Department human rights bureau under Elliott Abrams had become more active in acknowledging allies’ lack of progress on reform. The July 1982 appointment of George Shultz to replace Al Haig as secretary of state strongly reinforced the department’s emphasis on human rights and the value of diplomacy in seeking political solutions to civil conflict. Whereas Haig had been resistant to the very idea of human rights, Shultz embraced their importance. Shultz agreed with Abrams’s key contention that U.S. human rights policy should focus on promoting systemic change rather than leveling criticism against violators for political effect.5 Although Shultz was largely focused on trans-Atlantic and Middle Eastern diplomacy in his first several months on the job, in Latin America he recognized that democratic change could be the key to preserving U.S. military support for Latin American allies while augmenting respect for human rights throughout the region.6 In late 1982, as Reagan prepared to
4 For Reagan’s insertion of the text, see Ariel David Adesnik, Reagan’s Democratic Crusade: Presidential Rhetoric and the Remaking of American Foreign Policy (Ph.D. Diss. Oxford University, 2006), pp. 191-92. 5 Interview with Elliott Abrams, “Reagan’s Leadership: Mystery Man or Ideological Guide,” in Kenneth W. Thompson, ed., Foreign Policy in the Reagan Administration: Nine Intimate Perspectives, Vol. 3 of the Miller Center Reagan Oral History Series (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1993), pp. 105-106. 6 George P. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993), pp. 129-30.
137 depart on his first trip through Latin America, Shultz reminded the NSC: “We are building on a theme of democracy.”7
Congressional Pressure
If the theme of democracy and reform in Latin America was not entirely new, then
Reagan’s involvement in that policy certainly was. In the 1983 State of the Union address,
Reagan characterized U.S. policy in Central America as “a partnership for peace, prosperity, and democracy.”8 This appalled his critics, who believed that U.S. policies were supporting bloodshed, protracted war, and economic subjugation. The speech signaled a shift from earlier rhetoric that had placed Central America in the context of the East-West conflict. Now Reagan claimed historical continuities with U.S. programs that sought development and regional cooperation.9 What led to this shift?
Reagan’s advisers worried that that surging congressional opposition to U.S. involvement in Central America threatened the administration’s entire program of military support to El
Salvador. In the final months of 1982, as revelations of U.S. covert activity in Nicaragua emerged, liberal Democrats and moderate Republicans alike became wary of the administration’s objectives. In December, Congress drastically cut the administration’s request for military aid for
El Salvador, rejecting all but $1 million of a requested $35 million supplemental, and appropriating only $26 million in the foreign aid bill—the same amount as the previous year.
7 National Security Council Memorandum, “NSC Meeting Minutes of November 23rd,” Box 91284, White House Staff and Office Files, Executive Secretariat, National Security Council (hereafter Exec Sec NSC) Meeting Files, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library (hereafter RRL). 8 Ronald Reagan: "Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the State of the Union,” 25 January 1983 in Woolley and Peters, American Presidency Project.
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Congressional committees sliced the administration’s request of $128 million in economic aid for El Salvador under the Caribbean Basin Initiative to $75 million.10
The administration had good reason to fear the direction of events. Not only were human rights violations rampant in El Salvador, but the political system was a mess. The 1982 election had been a success from Reagan’s point of view, but the majority gained by the ultra-right
ARENA party was a major setback. As president of the constituent assembly, ARENA’s Roberto
D’Aubussion now wielded significant political power while simultaneously orchestrating death squad violence that halted meaningful political progress. Recognizing that it needed to rein in
D’Aubuisson, the embassy facilitated the selection of Alvaro Magaña as provisional president.
Magaña—a University of Chicago-educated banker and a devotee of the Alliance for Progress— held sway with the military in part because most army pensions were deposited in the bank he controlled.11 Although Magaña exerted leverage over the armed forces, the traditional oligarchic
Right still remained resistant to civilian control.12 Paramilitary activity stalled land reform and jeopardized the drafting of the new constitution. Ambassador Deane Hinton worked tirelessly to forge “national unity” by reinforcing Magaña’s authority with the military and the right wing.13
10 See Christopher Dickey, “U.S. Envoy Says U.S. Aid is Vital: El Salvador Certification is Set,” The Washington Post, 19 January 1983 and Cynthia J. Arnson, Crossroads: Congress, the President, and Central America 1976- 1993 (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993), p. 100 and corresponding note on p. 246. 11 This point is made in Deane R. Hinton, A Life in the Foreign Service of the United States, an ADST-DACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy Book (forthcoming: 2015), pp. 195-96, and was repeated to me by a State Department official in a background interview. The author would like to thank the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training for making Amb. Hinton’s forthcoming manuscript available. 12 For a fascinating account of oligarchic attitudes toward the democratic opening based on extensive interviews, see Jeffery M. Paige, Coffee and Power: Revolution and the Rise of Democracy in Central America, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1997), pp. 198-205. 13 Several accounts have alleged that elements within the Reagan administration in fact supported D’aubussion’s bid for the presidency and either reluctantly accepted Magaña (and later Duarte) against their own wishes, or openly opposed those choices. One such account is LeoGrande’s, which states that the hardliners only “reluctantly accepted” the State Department’s strategy of supporting the Christian Democrats. I have found no evidence that the administration ever considered promoting D’Aubuisson as a viable leader, and indeed his popular support in El Salvador was one of the greatest challenges faced by policymakers implementing democracy promotion in El Salvador. See William M. LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, 1977-1992 (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), p. 188.
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At the end of 1983, inadequate funding and political intrigue combined with battlefield failure to lend an air of crisis to the Salvadoran political scene. A fall guerrilla offensive by
FMLN guerrilla forces yielded high-profile victories in the Jucuaran and Berlin—the latter El
Salvador’s third largest city. The Salvadoran Right blamed U.S. interference for these defeats, alleging that Defense Minister José Guillermo García’s ties to U.S. policymakers had corrupted his leadership. With García facing coup attempts in August and September 1982, U.S. military and diplomatic officials weighed military efficacy against political progress. Ambassador Hinton supported García but, privately, the ambassador was growing wary of the general’s failure to
“lean hard” on human rights abusers in the military. He cabled Washington, urging García’s removal.14 When García struggled to retain his command, U.S. officials withdrew their support and helped force him into retirement.15 The embassy then portrayed his replacement, Eugenio
Vides Casanova, as a military moderate even though, as the former commander of the National
Guard, Casanova was explicitly linked to high-profile murders of American churchwomen in
1980 and USAID officials in 1981.16
Military crises did not make for good politics in Washington. As the deadline for the administration’s third certification of El Salvador approached in January, congressional opponents heightened the pressure on the administration to support negotiations with the FMLN.
Departing from its previous certification practice, the administration now openly acknowledged its misgivings about the Salvadoran government’s record, while emphasizing the importance of reforms underway. The January certification report admitted that violence was declining at a
14 Deane Hinton, A Life in the Foreign Service. 15 For a succinct account of the episode see Leogrande, Our Own Backyard, p. 183. 16 Nonetheless, Hinton privately saw Vides as a “substantial improvement” over Garcia. See Hinton, A Life in the Foreign Service, p. 201. In April, 2015, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security deported Vides Casanova after the Board of Immigration Appeals found that he was, by virtue his of “command responsibility” for the Salvadoran National Guard, culpable for human rights violations during the civil war—specifically the murder of the four American churchwomen tortured and murdered in 1980. See Julia Preston, “U.S. Deports Salvadoran for Role in '80s Killings,” The New York Times, 9 April 2015, p. A8.
140 slower rate, and that “[h]uman rights abuses continue and . . . the further development of democracy and human rights are not to be taken for granted.”17 But elections gave the administration a way out. While many had feared the elections would lead to the triumph of the
Right, their report said, “[o]n the contrary far rightist elements . . . have not achieved a clear majority, and issues are being hammered out within a democratic forum.”18 Abrams told the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee that U.S. military aid was part of a larger struggle for political progress. “What compels military aid,” Abrams testified, “is a conclusion not only that military aid helps in the struggle against the Guerillas, but that the struggle is essential in order to win the battle for democracy.”19
By acknowledging the salience of tenuous political reforms underway, the administration dared congressional opponents to cut funding and bear the responsibility for “losing” El
Salvador. But suspicions remained among Reagan’s supporters and opponents about the administration’s ultimate aims. Liberal Democrats, particularly in the House, protested that the administration was pouring money into the Salvadoran counterinsurgency campaign while refusing to support a negotiated solution that could end the conflict. Further leaks about the scope of the administration’s covert action program in Nicaragua led administration supporters, like senators Barry Goldwater and Howard Baker, to warn the administration of further congressional oversight of its ambitions.20 These legislative constraints highlighted the political importance of promoting reform in El Salvador. If D’Aubuisson and other conservative members
17 Department of State, “Report on the situation in El Salvador with Respect to the Subjects Covered in Section 728 (d) of the International Security and Development Cooperation Act of 1981,” 21 January 1983, pp. 2-3, Digital National Security Archive (hereafter DNSA) El Salvador Collection. 18 Ibid., pp. 22-24. 19 Ibid. 20 Arnson says congressional opponents and moderates alike began to “focus a lightbulb, if not a spotlight” on the administration’s activities in Nicaragua. See Arnson, Crossroads, p. 104. See also Patrick Tyler and Don Oberdorfer, “U.S. Role in Nicaragua Raises Concern,” The Washington Post, 6 April 1983, p. A26.
141 hijacked the direction of the constituent assembly, it would serve the administration a resounding political defeat.
Democracy Promotion as “Public Diplomacy”
The administration’s response to these pressures was a bureaucratic and ideological realignment in early 1983 that more closely identified the White House with the need for a political solution in Central America. To a large degree, this realignment was rhetorical—it took the shape of a deliberate “public diplomacy” campaign designed to garner support for counterinsurgency aid and covert action. However, the White House’s adoption of this rhetoric, detailed below, reinforced the State Department’s long-held assertion that political and social reforms were necessary components of a strategy to thwart leftist insurgents. Even though the administration’s core goal of defeating the threat posed by Marxist insurgents in Latin America did not change, the public diplomacy effort of 1983 altered the terms of U.S. policy in significant ways, ultimately elevating the importance of democratic elections as part of U.S. policy in the region.
The public diplomacy effort evolved from a growing divide between the State
Department and the White House over U.S. policy in Latin America, and an attempt by the NSC to re-assert control over policymaking process. Until early 1983, in spite of the machinations of
Jeane Kirkpatrick, Bill Casey, and others on the NSC, the State Department had retained leadership of policymaking for Latin America. Coordinating interagency processes from the inter-American Affairs bureau at State, Tom Enders tried to prevent a crisis atmosphere, which he feared would sour public opinion and invite further congressional opposition. With legislative disapproval of Reagan’s policies mounting, however, NSC members called into question
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Enders’s strategy of pursuing aid requests on a piecemeal basis. Reagan’s advisers on security issues—namely Clark, Casey, Weinberger, and Kirkpatrick—wanted a bold statement about the importance of Central America and the threat posed by leftist forces. NSC staff members under
Clark’s leadership who viewed themselves as true “Reaganites” believed that the president should provide more aid and military support to its anti-communist allies in the region.21
Enders’s response to developments in early 1983 exacerbated fears among hard-liners on the NSC. Enders proposed a two-track formula that would pair military aid to El Salvador with engagement in regional dialogue with Nicaragua and the Salvadoran guerrillas. He wanted to build congressional support for a large aid increase while reassuring opponents that the administration’s ultimate objectives was political reconciliation. But the NSC interpreted the plan as a State Department gambit meant to sell out the U.S. objective of defeating the guerrillas outright.22 They abhorred Enders’s proposal to “Latinize” the conflict by engaging regional partners. Casey, Kirkpatrick, and Clark maneuvered to blunt the proposal before it could be shown to Reagan, but Shultz backed the plan.
Reagan gave Shultz the go-ahead to pursue a two-track policy, but then—on the advice of his NSC advisers—dispatched Kirkpatrick to Central America in February 1983 to reaffirm U.S. support for friends in the region.23 While traveling, Kirkpatrick learned that Enders had cabled
U.S. embassies alerting them of the two-track plan for negotiations. Seeing this as further evidence of a State Department plan to undermine the president and cut a deal, Kirkpatrick, upon her return, warned Reagan that the region had never been more imperiled, and that State
21 See Constantine Menges, Inside the National Security Council: the True Story of the Making and Unmaking of Reagan’s Foreign Policy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), pp. 215 and 226. 22 See LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard, p. 189. 23 According to Menges’s “inside” account of the infighting, he first alerted Casey to Enders’s proposal in late January, at which point Casey led the charge to dissuade Shultz from supporting it. See Menges, Inside the National Security Council, pp. 104-10.
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Department policy was to blame. Reagan lamented in his diary that “the same kind of St[ate]
Dept. bureaucrats who made Castro possible are screwing up the situation in El Salvador.” In anger, he wrote, “I’m determined that heads will roll, starting with Ambas. Hinton.” Clark and
Kirkpatrick engineered a leak of Enders’s memo to the Washington Times, which portrayed
Enders’s policy as “advocating a coalition government” in El Salvador. When Reagan read the story, he “hit the roof.”24 Media coverage fueled perceptions of a White House suffering from fundamental disagreements over the nature of the regional threat and how to deal with it.
The White House believed that it must wrest control of policy making from the State
Department or risk losing the initiative on El Salvador. “This is one we must win,” Reagan wrote in his diary.25 In March, the administration unveiled a massive $298 million emergency aid package for the region, which included $110 million in aid for El Salvador. The response on
Capitol Hill ranged from alarm to skepticism. Nancy Kassebaum (R-KS) proposed a $50 million cap on military aid while various congressional committees—including Clarence Long’s House
Foreign Affairs subcommittee and Mike Barnes’s subcommittee on Western Hemisphere
Affairs—spent the following months chopping the president’s proposal in half. Representatives on both sides of the aisle eagerly sought clarifications of the administration’s objectives, and urged it to acknowledge the importance of dialogue to end the conflict.
Reverting to a common theme, Reagan’s NSC advisers attributed congressional resistance to a lack of public understanding, and proposed a public diplomacy effort on Central
America. Its purpose was to increase bipartisan support for the president’s policies in Central
America by “[convincing] Congress and American opinion leaders that the pursuit of political stability and economic and social reform in Central America serve our moral and security
24 LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard, pp. 191-92. 25 Ronald Reagan and Douglas Brinkley, The Reagan Diaries: Vol. 1, January 1981-October 1985 (New York: Harper Collins, 2009), p. 201
144 interests.” The administration believed it had to stress that the “real objectives” of U.S. policy were democracy and development.26
Importantly, Reagan’s public diplomacy effort did not entail a change in actual U.S. policies in Central America. To the contrary, the administration remained wedded to its basic goals of supporting the Salvadoran security forces in their fight against the guerrillas by providing military advisers, training, aid, and materiel, while in the political realm providing economic aid and financial assistance to support the presidential elections planned for 1984. In
Nicaragua, the administration sought to apply pressure on the Sandinista government through a combination of economic harassment, regional military posturing, and covert support for anti-
Sandinista forces (Contras). Expanding CIA support to the Contras allowed them to launch their first major offensive in March 1983.27 Concurrently, U.S. Southern Command Chief Paul
Gorman planned a major military exercise, Big Pine II, off of the Central American coast, designed to intimidate the Sandinistas and provide a “shield” for Contra activity. But, outwardly, the administration continued to state that its goals were to contain, and not to overthrow, the Sandinista regime.28 It was against the backdrop of these aggressive acts that the administration sought to portray a brighter future for the region.
The thrust of the public diplomacy effort was to place U.S. policies in a conciliatory framework that integrated what Shultz later called the “three Ds: democracy, development, and defense.”29 For this effort, coordinated by National Security Advisor Judge Clark, the White
House enlisted Dick Stone, a former Democratic senator from Miami with strong anti-
26 State Department Public Diplomacy Strategy Paper, “Central America” 5 May 1983, DNSA Iran-Contra Collection. 27 Roy Gutman, Banana Diplomacy: The Making of American Policy in Nicaragua 1981-1987 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988) pp. 150-51. 28 LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard, p. 316. 29 George P. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993) p. 403.
145 communist credentials. Stone had been deeply impressed by the effect that the 1982 Salvadoran elections had on public opinion, and he counselled the administration that promoting elections should be at the center of the public diplomacy effort.30 In March, the administration dispatched
Stone to El Salvador to pressure Magaña to agree to an early election timetable, a move that the administration hoped to portray as Salvadoran initiative. This gambit was blown, however, when
Stone was overheard by a reporter and the U.S. plan was leaked to the press.31
The public diplomacy effort placed the White House—and Reagan in particular—at the center of the public defense of its Central America policy. In early March 1983, Reagan gave his first major speech on El Salvador to the National Association of Manufacturers, doubling down on democratic themes. “Despite incredible obstacles, the democratic center is holding in El
Salvador,” Reagan declared, “working to replace the politics of death with a life of democracy.”
Reagan even stressed the continuity between his policy objectives and those of Carter. “For three years,” he said, “our goal has been to support fundamental change in this region, to replace poverty with development and dictatorship with democracy.”32 Other administration officials gave similar speeches emphasizing the importance of democratic change, and Clark encouraged administration officials to make similar appeals to their church congregations and community groups.33
In the most important public statement by the administration, on April 27, Reagan directly addressed the Congress on Central America. Reagan’s advisers, including Kirkpatrick,
30 Kenneth Dam Diary Entry, 22 February 1983, State Department Freedom of Information Act Online Reading Room (hereafter State-FOIA). 31 Josh M. Goshko, “U.S. Negotiating With El Salvador On Early Election,” The Washington Post, 2 March 1983, p. A1. 32 Ronald Reagan: “Remarks on Central America and El Salvador at the Annual Meeting of the National Association of Manufacturers,” 10 March 1983 in Woolley and Peters, eds. The American Presidency Project.
146 envisioned a speech as a chance to confront Reagan’s opponents. “One of the central reasons for making the speech,” Reagan’s director of communications noted, “is to ensure that if Congress doesn’t go along with the President’s program, everyone will know where the blame lies for what follows.”34 Reagan’s speech writers tried to craft something to meet the importance of the moment. “NO SENSE OF URGENCY,” Jeane Kirkpatrick complained after reading an early draft. The speech was too parochial, she insisted; Americans needed to know that the interests of
“free men everywhere” were at stake.35 Reagan commandeered the drafting process, writing approximately 35 percent of the final speech by hand, according to one speech writer’s estimate.36
To the surprise of his speech writers, the president’s final draft toned down the drama, and presented a “low-key, low-voltage” argument for the importance of U.S. aid to El
Salvador.37 Although the administration was asking for military assistance to meet an exigent national security threat, Reagan said, democracy and development were its fundamental goals for the region. The consolidation of political parties in El Salvador, the drafting of the new constitution, and scheduled elections: these were positive developments that should encourage
U.S. assistance. “The people of El Salvador are earning their freedom, and they deserve our moral and material support to protect it,” he told the Congress. Portraying El Salvador as a struggling democracy, Reagan contrasted it with Nicaragua, where the Sandinistas had imposed
“a new dictatorship.” Although he chastised the Sandinista military buildup, Reagan characterized their transgressions as primarily political. After failing to hold elections, and after
34 Gergen Memo to NSC Speechwriting Staff, “Central American Speech” 25 April 1983, Box SP 283-22, White House Office of Records Management (WHORM) Subject Files: SP-Speeches, RRL. 35 Kirkpatrick comments on Draft of Reagan Speech, 24 April 1983, Box 2, White House Staff and Office Files, William P. Clark Files, RRL. 36 Gergen, “Central American Speech.” 37 Ibid.
147 restricting civil and economic rights, Reagan asked: “is it any wonder that opposition has formed?” Reagan ended the speech by likening U.S. policy to the Truman Doctrine, challenging congressional critics to bear the costs of failing to support democratic allies in need.38
In narrow rhetorical terms, the speech succeeded. It challenged opponents of funding in
Congress on the issues that were most dear to them: human rights, social reform, and democracy.
But politically, its impact was weak. Conservative legislators panned the speech, noting that it had done more to confuse the public and potential allies than it had to persuade them.39 A State
Department memo noted that the president’s address “did not have much impact on the public’s perceptions and preferences about El Salvador.”40 In the coming weeks, Democrats and
Republicans cut the administration’s aid proposal in half, saddling it with new requirements including a demand that the Salvadoran government engage in talks with the guerrillas.41 To
Elliott Abrams, the speech had not gone far enough in addressing human rights. He wrote to
Judge Clark, telling him that the administration needed to stop apologizing for human rights in El
Salvador while emphasizing democracy. Instead, Abrams wrote, “we should note that elections and democracy are the solution to El Salvador’s human rights problems.” Abrams, who found an increasingly willing listener in Shultz, hinted that democracy was the key to a larger strategy.
“When we look at the globe,” Abrams wrote, “we can see that the map of democracy is the map of human rights.”42
38 Ronald Reagan: “Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on Central America,” 27 April 1983, in Woolley and Peters, eds. The American Presidency Project.
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Abrams’s comments suggest how the White House’s public diplomacy effort and its rhetorical emphasis on reform—which had been borne of political calculation—now aligned the
White House with the very same views that NSC advisers detested among State Department officials. In May, the administration appointed Dick Stone as ambassador-at-large to Central
America. Although the move was greeted with some domestic skepticism, Salvadoran guerrillas welcomed the gesture, and suggested they would be willing to meet with Stone.43 Internally the move signaled further bureaucratic tensions. Stone was replaced as the director of the public diplomacy effort by Otto Reich, a conservative academic specializing in Latin American affairs.
Though Clark portrayed the move as designed to improve coordination between State and the
White House, privately the NSC complained that State was not doing enough to help the public diplomacy effort. For their part, State officials bristled at a presidential appointee serving in a
State Department post.44
On May 25, Shultz met with Reagan to clear up the policymaking snafu that had been created largely in response to events in Central America. Shultz told Reagan that a coherent foreign policy required State’s leadership. Policy direction should come from the White House, but Shultz must be in charge of implementing it. Public diplomacy—an important effort, Shultz conceded—had to be subordinated to larger policy aims, just like diplomacy and other operations. Reagan agreed with much of what Shultz proposed, but required a price: the removal of Tom Enders as head of the State Department bureau for inter-American affairs and Deane
Hinton as ambassador to El Salvador. Fueled by further press leaks emanating from Clark, the press portrayed the move as a sign of Reagan’s displeasure, but these observations were not
43 Robert J. McCartney, “Salvadoran Opposition Chief Willing to Talk to Stone,” The Washington Post, 3 May 1983, p. A12. 44 Memo from Walter Raymond to Clark, “Central American Public Diplomacy,” 18 May 1983 DNSA Iran-Contra Collection.
149 accurate. Internally, State department officials saw the changes as a reaffirmation of Shultz’s foreign policy leadership.45 Enders’s replacement, Tony Motley, seen by some as pliant to
White House interests, had in reality been shaped by his experiences as ambassador to Brazil during that country’s transition to democracy in 1982-1983. To replace Hinton, the State
Department prevailed on the White House to select Thomas Pickering, a highly accomplished diplomat with no ideological affinity for Reagan’s anti-communism. Pickering agreed to take the position only after meeting personally with Shultz to confirm that he would be carrying out State
Department—and not White House—policy. Shultz assured Pickering he would have his full support and encouraged the new ambassador to deal with the Salvadoran government aggressively on human rights issues.46
Bureaucratic tensions and mistrust among Reagan’s advisers would continue to characterize Central America policymaking for years. But what had looked in January and
February as a major policy rift between State and the White House over the core aims of U.S.
Latin America policy had been reduced to a battle for control that was worked out in bureaucratic terms. As for policy substance, ironically, there appeared to be more agreement between Reagan officials on the principle of supporting democratic elections and development in
Central America. In the memo that summarized their understanding of the new bureaucratic arrangement, Shultz wrote to Reagan that the administration could not
expect a military solution, at least not in the next several years. In all likelihood the only way in which we can reestablish a peaceful Central America, free from foreign incursions into democratic countries, is by regional negotiations leading to a reciprocal and verifiable agreement in which the Nicaraguans come to terms with the need for them to mind their own business.47
45 Kenneth Dam Diary Entry, 28 May 1983, State-FOIA. 46 Author interview with Amb. Pickering, 21 April 2015, Charlottesville, VA. See also Leogrande, Our Own Backyard, ch. 8. 47 Shultz to Reagan, “Managing Our Central America Policy,” 25 May 1983, DNSA El Salvador Collection.
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Shultz acknowledged that a combination of negotiations and military pressure would be central to such an effort. Military pressure would show the Sandinistas that they would have to respect the wishes of “patriots” to hold free elections, while in El Salvador, military pressure would show the rebels that they could negotiate for a place in the functioning political system, but not for power.
For those in the administration who advocated a more aggressive policy in Central
America—namely Casey, Kirkpatrick, Clark, and the NSC Staff—this bureaucratic modus vivendi led to serious, long-term problems. But for the short term, the administration coalesced behind the effort to change perceptions about its policies. On nearly a daily basis, the media carried stories of internal bureaucratic disagreement, nefarious covert planning, and echoes of war. Several legislators, including Senators Scoop Jackson, Jack Kemp, and Mike Barnes, encouraged the administration to convene a bipartisan panel to clarify the purposes of U.S. policy in the region. A similar bipartisan panel on the issue of MX missiles had worked effectively for Reagan, but ceding policymaking leadership to a bipartisan group on Central
America carried major risks for the administration. Meeting in early July, the NSC judged that the time was right for such a commission. “There is a persistent lack of public understanding of our interests, objectives, the threat, and our policies for dealing with Central America problems.”48 A bipartisan report could refocus the discussion, and give Reagan political cover to reorient his strategy.
On July 18, Reagan announced the formation of the National Bipartisan Commission on
Central America, chaired by Henry Kissinger. The choice of Kissinger to lead the panel was superficially shocking, given Reagan’s longstanding opposition to détente. Protests swirled from
48 NSC Summary Memo to Shultz, Weinberger, Casey, and Vessey Jr., “Central America,” DNSA CIA Covert Operations Collection.
151 the Left and the Right—the former decrying Kissinger’s legacy of intervention in Latin America, the latter lambasting the failure of his Cold War policies. To Reagan and his advisers, Kissinger offered diplomatic gravitas, reliable convictions, and administrative muscle. Clark and Reagan knew that Kissinger was likely to emphasize that “social issues” and underdevelopment underlay the political instability in Central America and intersected with U.S. security interests in the region.49 But there was little doubt that he stood behind the administration’s support for counterinsurgency in El Salvador, and its refusal to negotiate on even terms with the guerrillas.50
Reagan’s critics dismissed the panel as a set-up, designed to rubber stamp the administration’s policies. But many inside and outside the administration welcomed the opportunity to clarify the administration’s strategic goals.51 As the State Department reminded the NSC, the idea for the commission had come first from Congress. If the White House wanted its funding requests approved, it would have to carefully coordinate the panel’s research and findings with supporters on Capitol Hill.52
Scholars have made much of the political stacking of the panel—a fact as obvious then as it is now. The panel featured only one notable liberal Democrat, Mayor Henry Cisneros of
49 Clark’s biographers note, improbably, that they welcomed Kissinger’s differing viewpoint in their quest to “bring freedom to communist Nicaragua.” More likely Reagan and Clark judged that the risk of Kissinger introducing contradictory viewpoints was outweighed by the political benefits of the panel. Paul Kengor and Patricia Clark Doerner, The Judge: William P. Clark: Reagan’s Top Hand (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2007), pp. 236-37. 50 At a private lunch, Kissinger told the Chilean ambassador that it was “absurd to negotiate with the guerrillas” because such a policy had never ended a civil war. See Telex Recibido (Received Telex) # 571, 8 June 1983, Central Archive of the Chilean Foreign Ministry Archive (hereafter Chile RREE). Unless otherwise noted, all translations performed by the author. 51 Jeane Kirkpatrick, for example, saw the commission as the entrée to a “Marshall Plan for Latin America,” and advised Reagan to see the effort in a historical context along with the Alliance for Progress, Truman Doctrine, and Good Neighbor Policy. See Kirkpatrick to Clark “An approach to the Marshall Plan Approach,” 12 July 1983, Box 1, White House Staff and Office Files, William P. Clark Files, RRL. 52 State advised: “Moving to secure full funding of the 1983 supplemental and our reprogramming request will, we believe, be viewed by many on the Hill as an appropriate short-term quid for the quo of enthusiastic support for the commission concept.” See State memo to Clark, “Central America—Forming a National Bipartisan Commission,” 14 July 1983, Box 28- Central American General, White House Staff and Office Files, Exec Sec NSC, Country Files, RRL.
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Houston, who was unlikely to challenge the administration’s policy recommendations.53 What has escaped most scholars’ attention, however, is the way that the panel’s makeup reflected a growing bipartisan consensus about the utility of supporting democracy abroad by incorporating the input of U.S. civil society groups. The panel was essentially a cross-section of American civic life, featuring representatives of education (John Silber of Boston University), labor (Lane
Kirkland of the AFL-CIO), business (former Senator Nicholas F. Brady of New Jersey, now managing director of Dillon Read & Company), interest groups (Wilson S. Johnson, president of the National Federation of Independent Business), political parties (Robert S. Strauss, the former
Democratic national chairman) and charities (William B. Walsh, president of Project Hope, an international medical care and education organization). Panel member Richard Scammon was particularly interesting in this regard, having served as a contractor for the State Department and adviser to El Salvador’s electoral reforms in 1982 and again in 1983. Even if Kissinger was to control the message, the makeup of the panel ensured that the report would likely rally around deep ideological themes of American foreign policy: the defense of democracy, a vibrant civil society, free trade, and the need to “prevent hostile forces from seizing and expanding control in this strategic area.”54
Democracy Promotion Initiatives
While the executive branch was marshalling rhetorical and bureaucratic power behind the themes of human rights and democracy, a third internal factor was expanding the importance of the political aspects of U.S. foreign policy in Latin America: the creation and expansion of programs designed to promote democracy abroad. These nascent bureaucratic efforts drew some
53 LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard, p. 238. 54 Summary of the panel’s findings is from Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, p. 403.
153 of their energy from high-level strategic considerations, but were not directly tied to the political and bureaucratic imperatives discussed above. Nonetheless, together they gave substance to the idea that the United States was expanding its commitment to democracy abroad. In the coming years they constituted a growing pillar of U.S. foreign policy, particularly in Latin America.
Reagan’s June 1982 speech to the British Parliament jumpstarted two simultaneous administration efforts to institutionalize democracy promotion as a basis for foreign policy, both of which began to affect U.S. Latin America policy in 1983. The first of those initiatives,
“Project Democracy,” came from within the administration, directed by officials who, like
Reagan, had long seen democracy as the key weapon in America’s “war of ideas” against the
Soviet Union. Overseen by the U.S. Information Agency, Project Democracy began in 1981 as an effort to coordinate all facets of U.S. foreign policy that carried out democracy promotion.
The thrust of the project was informative, intended to increase awareness of U.S. programs fostered democratic ideals abroad. The administration requested $65 million for Project
Democracy in its foreign aid budget for FY1983, but Congress rebuffed the request, fearing that it was little more than a thinly-veiled propaganda effort. 55 Although Project Democracy failed as a formal policy program, it was essentially co-opted into other administration initiatives that reinforced the burgeoning emphasis on democracy promotion. For example, NSDD-77, signed in
January 1983, created the International Political Committee (IPC), an inter-agency group responsible for “implementing international political activities in support of U.S. policies,” including aid and training to encourage the creation of democratic institutions.56 Like Project
55 Thomas Carothers, In the Name of Democracy: U.S. Policy towards Latin America in the Reagan Years (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1991), p. 203. 56 NSDD-77, “Management of Public Diplomacy Relative to National Security,” 14 January 1983, DNSA Iran- Contra Collection.
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Democracy, the IPC served as an informal coordinating effort to emphasize political action in
U.S. policies abroad.
The second effort, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), superseded Project
Democracy. The idea of a quasi-governmental foundation responsible for spreading democracy abroad originated in an effort led by George Agree of Freedom House, and overseen by the bipartisan American Political Foundation (APF), founded in 1979. APF undertook a study on the bases of American democracy and the possibility of exporting it abroad.57 The study explicitly looked at the model of German party institutes and pondered how American civil institutions like the church, private sector, and unions might shape U.S. efforts to build similar institutions abroad.58 Staffing for the project anticipated the structure of the NED, drawing representatives from the Democratic National Committee (Jack Loiello), Republican National Committee (Keith
Schuette), and the AFL-CIO (Eugenia Kemble). The APF continued previous efforts by both the
RNC and DNC to establish links with corresponding parties overseas.59 In Reagan’s June speech he specifically cited the study and, in November 1982, the administration provided $400,000 of federal funding through USAID—including $150,000 in unanticipated funds authorized by the president—to complete it.60
The APF study, formally submitted to Reagan in July 1983, recommended the creation of a National Endowment for Democracy, a “quasi-nongovernmental organization” that would receive State Department funding and channel it to specific grant projects through four “core institutes.”: the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institutes for
57 See William King, The Origins of Neoconservative Support for Democracy Promotion (M.A. Thesis: University of Calgary, 2007), pp. 114-15, in author’s possession. 58 “The Democracy Program: Interim Report” George Agree to Marilyn Zak, 13 April 1982, Folder 7- AID Interim Reports Box 1, National Endowment for Democracy (NED) Series I, NED Papers, Library of Congress (LOC). 59 Jack Loiello Memo to Allen Weinstein, “Democratic Party International Activities, 1945 to the Present,” 10 January 1983, folder 22- Chron Files Jan 83, Box 1, NED I, NED Papers, LOC. 60 See Clark memo to Stockman, “Endorsement of Peter McPherson’s request for $150,000 for Democracy Study Funding” box OA 85: Project Democracy, White House Staff and Office Files, Exec Sec NSC Subject Files, RRL.
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International Affairs—international wings of the respective parties; the Free Trade Union
Institute, run by the AFL-CIO to promote international free labor education; and the Center for
International Private Enterprise, overseen by the American Chamber of commerce. The core institutes reflected the uniquely associational view of democracy that the APF study highlighted in U.S. democracy. The NED, therefore, was supposed to channel U.S. funding and political expertise to aid in the development of pluralist institutions, through organizations that were nominally independent of the state, and immune to partisan affiliations abroad.61
The NED proposal garnered wide bipartisan support and the Endowment was created by law on November 17, 1983. From the start, the mission of providing non-partisan democratic expertise was complicated by the ideological assumptions involved in supporting American-style democracy abroad. Though the NED was officially nonpartisan, it was essentially the brainchild of neoconservatives who believed that promoting an American brand of social democracy abroad could weaken the appeal of the Left—an approach that some scholars have characterized as
“State Department socialism.”62 The first (and to this date, only) leader of the NED, Carl
Gershman, earlier served as senior counselor to Jeane Kirkpatrick at the United Nations as the
U.S. representative to the Third Committee, focusing on human rights. Gershman’s work at the
United Nations followed his stint as director of the Social Democrats-USA in the 1970s, where he advocated using human rights and democracy promotion to challenge the Soviet Union. Thus,
Gershman saw no conflict between his previous ideological work and his new role at the NED.
He believed that the ideas that had guided his own neoconservative activism were now part of a
61 American Political Development Study, p. 15 62 For a full exploration of intellectual-social history of the NED and its relationship to human rights, see Nicolas Guilhot, The Democracy Makers: Human Rights and International Order (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), particularly pp. 91-100.
156 bipartisan U.S. foreign policy that linked democracy promotion and human rights.63 American ideals, Gershman thought, required the U.S. government to challenge authoritarian regimes of the Left and the Right. Rather than seeking the overthrow of human rights abusers, through the
NED the United States could seek to build resilient democratic institutions. The full implications of the NED role in an “associational” foreign policy is explored in the following chapter, but it was clear from its earliest efforts that Latin America would figure prominently in its activities.
As the 1985 annual report of the NED stated, in the organization’s first two years, the majority of
NED support went to Latin American grantees who “have been the first to become acquainted with the Endowment and its work,” the report stated.
The Hemispheric Roots of Re-Democratization
While the Reagan administration’s adoption of democratic rhetoric was initially instrumental, it nonetheless responded to significant global events that reinforced the salience of liberal democratic ideals in Latin America. At the end of 1982, international developments precipitated tectonic political shifts in the region. First among these was the emergence of a regional negotiating forum, Contadora, managed by democratic countries keen to serve as a counterweight to U.S. power. While the administration was ambivalent about Contadora, Reagan welcomed the negotiations’ emphasis on verifiable democratic elections as a potential means for isolating Nicaragua. Second, the onset of the debt crisis and international human rights pressures weakened military regimes—and along with them—the U.S. perception that authoritarian governments were the best guarantors of free market economies. Finally, changing regional circumstances forced the Left to reconcile itself to the opportunities and challenges in a hemisphere increasingly defined by democratic transitions and free market reforms.
63 King, Neoconservative Support, p. 115.
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Contadora
The first of these external developments was the emergence of the Contadora peace process, inaugurated in January 1983 by the governments of Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, and
Panama. These so-called “Contadora four”—named for the Panamanian island on which they first convened—set out to create a regional negotiating forum that would encourage the Central
American countries to de-escalate regional tensions. Between April and September 1983, foreign ministers of the Contadora four worked—often improvisationally—to create a negotiating document that responded to the various views of the five Central American states:
Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. While the Contadora framework recognized the socio-economic and political roots of civil conflict in the region, it also explicitly acknowledged that a lasting peace would require addressing the role of inter-state conflict.64 In this sense, Contadora was designed to simultaneously co-opt American concerns about trans- national insurgencies while serving as a counterweight to U.S. and, to a lesser degree, Cuban intervention in Central America.65
Some scholars have argued that Contadora was doomed from the start by the backdrop of overbearing U.S. power, but key administration officials were cautiously receptive to the initiative.66 Shultz welcomed a renewed path to negotiations that put democratic elections and
Nicaragua’s external meddling on the agenda.67 Interestingly, even though Tom Enders’s proposal for regional negotiations had led to an NSC backlash, the White House also supported
64 Adolfo Aguilar Zinser “Negotiation in Conflict: Central America and Contadora,” in Nora Hamilton, Jeffry A. Frieden, and Manuel Pastor, eds. Crisis in Central America: Regional Dynamics and U.S. Policy in the 1980s (Boulder: Westview Press, 1988), pp. 97-118. 65 Bruce Michael Bagley, “Contadora: The Failure of Diplomacy,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Autumn, 1986), p. 3 66 See any of the standard accounts, including LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard pp. 467-68; John H. Coatsworth, Central America and the United States: The Clients and the Colossus (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1994), pp. 189-90 and 197-98; or Hal Brands, Latin America’s Cold War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), p. 218. 67 See Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, pp. 402-403.
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Contadora’s initial efforts.68 After meeting with the Venezuelan president Luis Herrera Campins during her regional trip in February, Jeane Kirkpatrick came away assured that the negotiating framework would safeguard U.S. interests. Though the United States was not directly involved in the negotiations, Reagan sent Dick Stone—now in his role as special envoy—to deliver the message that the United States welcomed Contadora’s emphasis that “democratic institutions be established and strengthened as a means to resolve political differences within Central American states.”69 In July, Herrera Campins told Ambassador Stone that “An institutionalization of democracy in El Salvador would be of transcendental importance within Central America and would have repercussions even in the Soviet Bloc.” Stone assured Campins that Reagan agreed:
“promotion of democracy is the focal point of his initiative.”70 In fact, Stone so enthusiastically embraced democracy as the key objective of Contadora that some in the State Department were angered by his inattention to the broader goals of the negotiations.71
The greater obstacle to Contadora’s success was the competing interests of its members.
Though each of the Contadora four shared an interest in distancing themselves from Reagan while using diplomacy to boost their regional legitimacy, they varied widely in their specific aims.72 Most obviously, Mexico’s early recognition of the FMLN-FDR in El Salvador put it at odds with Venezuela’s aggressive pro-democracy stance, suggesting that these two countries would fundamentally disagree in their assessment of the causes of regional conflict. Tensions were high among the representatives of the five Central American countries as well when they
68 NSC staffers like Constantine Menges were suspicious from the start about Mexico’s ability to draft a fair treaty, but in the initial months, like Shultz, key officials welcomed the initiative. See Menges, Inside the National Security Council, pp. 132-33. 69 Reagan letter quoted in Gutman, Banana Diplomacy, 164. 70 Cable, Caracas to State, “Stone Mission: Meeting with the Venezuelan President Luis Herrera Campins,” 10 June 1983, DNSA Iran-Contra Collection. 71 Gutman citing interview with State Department deputy assistant secretary Craig Johnstone, Banana Diplomacy, p. 165. 72 Zinser, “Negotiation in Conflict,” p. 108
159 met for an initial summit in Cancún in July. The negotiating framework walked a fine line by identifying cross-border aggression as a major source of conflict, while still recognizing the sovereignty of each government to negotiate as potential partners in peace.73 El Salvador,
Guatemala, and Honduras viewed Nicaragua as the source of their internal insurgencies, fueling doubts that the Sandinistas could negotiate in good faith. For its part, Nicaragua viewed
Honduras and Costa Rica as U.S. proxies, providing support and sanctuary to Contra paramilitary forces. The Sandinistas preferred to hold bilateral talks with the various sides, including the United States. But at the same time, the Sandinistas recognized an opportunity to exploit a diplomatic forum to pursue their interests: further legitimizing the revolutionary regime, guarding their security against external pressure, and expelling U.S. advisers from neighboring El Salvador. In spite of major misgivings, each country saw sufficient advantages to continue participating in the forum, but consensus and clear signals were in short supply.
In September, the Contadora four met to synthesize proposals by various ministers into one final framework. The document of objectives, which came to be known as the 21 points, was broad in scope, appealing simultaneously to principles of sovereignty, non-intervention, self- determination, international law, socioeconomic development, and human rights.74 Basically, the peace plan called for the removal of external militaries from Central America and respect for national sovereignty in exchange for an end to cross-border support for paramilitary forces and revolutionaries. These compromises represented a realistic vision for de-escalating a series of national civil conflicts that had become internationalized by the interventions of United States,
Argentina, Nicaragua, Cuba, and the Soviet Union—to name only the most prominent players. In
73 Zinser, “Negotiation in Conflict.” 74 See “Document of Objectives” in Contadora and the Central American Peace Process: Selected Documents, Bruce Michael Bagley, Roberto Alvarez, and Katherine Hagedorn, eds. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press/Foreign Policy Institute, School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University, 1985), pp. 176-80.
160 addition, the 21 points urged the importance of democratization as the pre-requisite for long-term peace, stating that they should “take measures leading to the establishment, or where appropriate, the improvement, of representative and pluralistic democratic systems that will guarantee the effective participation of the people in decision-making and ensure free access by the diverse tendencies of opinion to honest and periodic elections, based on the full observance of the rights of citizens.”75
Contadora’s eventual failure, and the United States’ escalating intervention in Nicaragua in the following years, has relegated its role to the sidelines of history.76 However, between 1983 and 1986, Contadora remained a relevant and dynamic diplomatic force. Through 1986, Shultz and the State Department engaged in bilateral talks with the Sandinistas aimed at forcing the
Nicaraguans to agree to an acceptable Contadora treaty. Even hardliners like Weinberger and
Kirkpatrick, who opposed bilateral negotiations with the Sandinistas, argued that Contra pressure was would ultimately force Nicaragua back to a regional negotiation.
At the same time, U.S. engagement with the process was tainted from the start by the
Reagan administration’s fixation on military intervention in Nicaragua and its insistence on its moral right to support the Contras.77 As tensions between the United States and Nicaragua escalated, both sides used the Contadora forum for instrumental purposes, probing for willingness to engage, but more often than not harping on the intransigence of the other. Such maneuvering paid short-term dividends, but produced no long-term results. When the Sandinistas unexpectedly accepted the negotiating framework in September 1984, they immediately
75 “Document of Objectives,” p. 178 76 Contadora is featured in most accounts of this period as a “what if” that highlights the Reagan administration’s intransigence when it came to peace negotiations. The far more interesting story is how the administration’s disagreements over the goals of U.S. policy—democracy chief among them—allowed various parties within the administration and in Congress to emphasize or ignore Contadora at different times. 77 Jose Alberto Zambrano Velasco, Centroamerica & Contadora: Enfrentimiento Ideólogico y Político (Caracas: Editorial Ex Libris, 1989), p. 328.
161 followed by proposing a set of bilateral treaties with the United States that would have violated
Contadora. The Reagan administration rejected these treaties on the grounds that the Sandinistas were not serious about submitting to democratic elections. The United States also carried out military maneuvers off the coast of Honduras while Nicaragua was considering the negotiating framework, a move designed to compel the Sandinistas into negotiations on U.S. terms. The fundamental weakness in the Contadora effort lay in the way that hardline Reagan officials— and, to be sure, some intransigent FSLN negotiators—used the treaty’s emphasis on democratization as a justification for non-cooperation when they preferred to escalate conflict.
The strength of the process, however, lay in the way that the Contadora four used the negotiations to pressure the United States and the Nicaraguans to take diplomacy seriously— particularly on the issue of verifiable democratic elections. In that regard, the effort gelled with a growing sense of hemispheric responsibility recognized not only by the Contadora four, but by new regional democratic governments like Argentina and Peru. This “Latinism,” as Dick
Stone—Contadora’s most enthusiastic supporter—called it, would ensure that “The U.S. would not fall into the past trap of either acceding to Marxist expansion or merely supporting military dictatorships.”78 Although Contadora ultimately failed as a diplomatic forum for negotiating differences, its regional model and emphasis on democracy presaged the successful Esquipulas agreements, spearheaded by Óscar Arias in 1987.
The Weakening of the Right
Perhaps the most seismic change affecting politics in the Western Hemisphere during the middle of the 1980s was the receding power of the military right, brought on by economic
78 Cable, Caracas to State, “Stone Mission: Meeting with the Venezuelan President Luis Herrera Campins,” 10 June 1983, DNSA Iran-Contra.
162 weakness, internal resistance, and external pressure. No factor was more important in that process than the international debt crisis, which shook the stability of authoritarian regimes and tarnished their image as capable stewards of free market success. The collapse of debt-saddled economies in the Southern Cone, combined with economic failure in the export economies in
Central America, catalyzed broad oppositional coalitions throughout the region.
The authoritarian regimes that came to power throughout Latin America in the late 1960s and 1970s had adopted neoliberal economic policies meant to depart from the import substitution model favored by Latin American developmentalists in the 1960s. These new policies, which favored de-regulation, privatization of industry, and the elimination of barriers to trade and investment, were designed by an expanding class of Latin American technocrats specializing in macroeconomic management. Like Chile’s renowned “Chicago Boys,” these technocrats were typically trained as lawyers, economists, or engineers in the United States. They were defined by their emphasis on economic growth over social reform, an interest in maintaining political order, and their unwillingness to challenge existing social hierarchies.79 These views, together with their distrust for the messiness of democratic politics, made the technocrats natural allies of military and oligarchic elites who took power in the 1970s, and who wanted to roll back the state’s presence in the market as part of their broader anti-communist programs. The apparent success of the economic programs of Latin America’s “new Right” by the end of the late 1970s had bought anti-communist regimes some legitimacy, and the Reagan administration championed the apparent success of those models.80
79 This definition comes from Miguel Centeno and Patricio Silva, eds., The Politics of Expertise in Latin America (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), p. 3. 80 See Brands, Latin America’s Cold War pp. 227-228 for a good summary of the rise of the “New Right” in Latin America.
163
In reality, Latin American military regimes’ short-term economic success masked fiscal mismanagement and continued state corruption amidst major shifts in the international financial system. In the 1970s, sharp increases in private bank liquidity made new resources available to
Latin American states, particularly Argentina, Chile, Brazil, and Mexico. For several years, these states used debt to finance the growth of export industries, using borrowed money to continue the practices of the Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) development model, even while rhetorically praising the free market.81 Following the second oil crisis of 1978-79, tight money policies in developed countries put increasing stress on these debtor nations’ ability to maintain export growth at a rate sufficient to make interest rate payments. In spite of warning signs, private banks continued to lend money until 1982, when global recession drove down export prices, crippling Latin American countries’ financial health.
In August 1982, Mexico announced that it could no longer service its foreign debts.
Brazil and Argentina followed shortly after, prompting fears of a regional debt crisis. Even in
Central America, where governments had maintained only small levels of private sector debt through the 1970s, global recession now stalled economic growth. Sharp increases in public spending led to drastic increases in budget deficits as a percentage of GDP, as well as aggressive borrowing.82 In the three years leading to 1982, external public debts at least doubled in all
Central American countries.83
The debt crisis severely undercut the legitimacy of the economic programs of anti- communist regimes, and began to erode the tight connections between neoliberal technocrats and authoritarian leaders. In the case of Argentina, discussed in the previous chapter, massive
81 Brands, Latin America’s Cold War, p. 228. 82 Victor Bulmer-Thomas, The Economic History of Latin America Since Independence (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999 (1994)), p. 242. 83 Ibid., pp. 242-43.
164 unemployment and inflation combined with the aftermath of the Malvinas conflict to sap the
Proceso of its remaining popular support. The Chilean economy—which had been singled out as a “miracle” by Reagan officials—shrank by 14.2 percent in 1982, more than any other Latin
American country, while urban employment climbed to the highest level of any country in South
America. 84 Economic downturns had political consequences. General Augusto Pinochet shuffled his cabinet, hiring yet another technocrat—Rolf Luders, a prominent adviser to the private conglomerate Vial Group—to take charge of the financial meltdown. Luders’ response was an unprecedented state intervention in the Chilean economy. Pinochet seized 70 percent of the assets of private banks and leading financial corporations. The regime justified the departure from free market principles on the grounds of saving the wider economic model, but the debt crisis nevertheless did irreparable damage to the prestige and power of the Chicago Boys.85
Starting in 1983, Pinochet fired a number of neoliberal advisers, replacing them with pragmatists who sought a return to traditional inward-looking state-led development policies.86
The first order effects of the debt crisis and the ensuing policy responses were felt in
Latin American countries, where economic disaffection among the working class merged with a growing discontent among middle class professionals to produce a broadening opposition. In
Chile, high unemployment rates, labor unrest, and fears of personal bankruptcy fueled the first major protests against the regime in May 1983. These protests were not only notable for their size and ferocity, but because they encompassed a wide range of political groups from the Left
84 Pamela Constable and Arturo Valenzuela, A Nation of Enemies: Chile Under Pinochet (New York: W.W. Norton, 1991) p. 195-96. 85 See Bulmer Thomas, Economic History, p. 370, and Constable and Valenzuela, Nation of Enemies, p. 196. 86 Constable and Valenzuela, Nation of Enemies, p. 198.
165 and Center.87 “During the boom,” one historian has written, “Chile’s economic gains had been privatized; now, in the crunch the country’s losses were socialized.”88
Elsewhere, in Central America, the reaction to the economic downturn was more visceral, as the debt crisis now threatened the survival of regimes engaged in civil war. In El Salvador, years of intense warfare had strangled agricultural and manufacturing output, damaged basic infrastructure, and made economic growth a near impossibility. “It is expected that political- military considerations may well dominate economic events in the near future,” a 1983 World
Bank report concluded.89
On the international level, the debt crisis shook the confidence of creditor nations who doubted that military regimes in Latin America could manage free market economies efficiently.
Debt-led growth, in fact, now threatened the viability of major international lenders.90 The
United States, therefore, joined with international banks and financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank to provide debtor nations a “dignified exit” from the crisis. In saving the debtor nations, U.S. and financial officials hoped to “push Latin America down a more liberal economic path.”91 Their assistance—often negotiated by the embassy with direct input from major lenders—came with strings attached, typically demands for reduced barriers to trade and decreased public spending. These “structural adjustments” required by the IMF also entailed political reforms, and U.S. officials seized the opportunity to encourage political liberalization along with free markets. As the U.S. chargé in Argentina later remembered: “We all hid behind
87 In 1983, the Chilean Christian Democrats sought an alliance with Leftist unions specifically because they were “better organized” to demonstrate discontent with Pinochet’s economic policies via strike. See interview with Gabriel Valdes, head of the Christian Democratic Party, in Paul H. Boeker, Lost Illusions: Latin America’s Struggle for Democracy, as Recounted by its Leaders (New York: Markus Wiener Publishing, 1990), p. 25. 88 Constable and Valenzuela, Nation of Enemies, p. 197. 89 See World Bank Report No. 4054-ES, El Salvador: Updating Economic Memorandum, 21 January 1983 (Washington DC: World Bank) p. iii, DNSA El Salvador Collection. 90 Bulmer-Thomas, Economic History, p. 69. He states that 16 of the 18 major international banks had loans-to- equity ratios of 100 percent by the end of 1982. 91 Brands, Latin America’s Cold War, p. 229.
166 the IMF. . . .the Embassy role was basically diplomatic, promoting the intellectual discussion that might lay the basis for a sound program the IMF would support.”92
The most important result of the debt crisis was that it created a political opportunity for broad oppositional movements to capitalize on the vulnerability of the authoritarian governments which were being battered in the economic sphere. In spite of the economic slowdown, the growth of the previous years had created a continuing demand for consumer goods which authoritarian regimes could no longer satisfy.93 Opponents of military regimes capitalized on this discontent, levelling their criticism at ineffective economic policies in states where overtly political debate was prohibited or limited by repression. These opponents took advantage of the network of academic and policy organizations that had grown throughout the early 1980s even as the political sphere shrunk in Central and South America. In the throes of the debt crisis, policy organizations focused specifically on economic analysis offered a base for opposition figures to draw on academic expertise to challenge the status quo and build political legitimacy.
Quite literally, the destabilization wrought by the debt crisis nurtured the political platform of democratic opponents who emerged as viable alternatives to discredited authoritarian regimes. Throughout the region, centrist democratic opposition movements sought to respond to popular calls for economic welfare, while proposing their own policy programs that would appeal to international lenders. These leaders mobilized around the debt crisis to ensure that it was not treated merely as a financial issue but a political one as well. Most notably at the Quito conference of 1984, heads of Latin American states challenged the U.S. view that structural
92 Interview with John Bushnell, 19 December 1997 (Washington, DC: Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project, 2007), p. 542. 93 On Argentina, see David Sheinin, Argentina and the United States: An Alliance Contained (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press), p. 182 and, more generally, Paul W. Drake, Between Tyranny and Anarchy: A History of Democracy in Latin America, 1800-2006 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press), p. 210.
167 adjustments alone would bring the debt crisis under control.94 Although it disagreed, the United
States heeded a complementary lesson from the debt crisis: that democratic regimes were ultimately more amenable to structural adjustments—and more inherently transparent—than their authoritarian allies had ever been. Unlike the military regimes they succeeded, democratic governments were willing to implement the economic and political reforms prescribed by international bankers.
While debt and economic collapse undermined regimes of the Right, persistent international human rights criticism further discredited these governments. In South America, in particular, years of clandestine human rights work and international solidarity efforts succeeded in turning international opinion against anti-communist dictatorships. Oppositional networks stood ready to exploit the cracks that showed in 1983. In South America, as several scholars have pointed out, anti-communist programs had been so successful in wiping out the armed Left that citizens and civil society groups now questioned the justification of continuing under a national security state.95 Criticisms of military regimes became more acceptable in public discourse. In
May 1983, when the Argentine junta released a “final document” calling forced disappearances
“acts of service” in the fight against communism, even the Pope lamented the “tragedy of the disappeared in Argentina.”96 Human rights remained more proscribed amidst civil war in Central
America, but even there the nascent opening of democratic space suggested that the grip of military regimes was weakening. In 1983-84, the Organization of American States increased
94 See Riordan Roett, “Latin America’s Response to the Debt Crisis,” Third World Quarterly vol. 7, no. 2 (April 1985), pp. 227-41. 95 Brands, Latin America’s Cold War, pp. 241-42. 96 Anthony Lewis, “At Home Abroad: Gently, With Gangsters,” The New York Times, 22 May 1984, p. A21.
168 pressure on El Salvador and Guatemala to submit to an international accounting of the costs of their civil wars.97
Much like the debt crisis, human rights criticism not only eroded the legitimacy of anti- communist regimes, but provided an organizing principle for a broadening democratic political opposition. A series of notable transitions from authoritarian rule to democracy after 1982—in
Ecuador, Peru, Argentina and Brazil—signaled to some observers that Latin America was emerging into a new political moment. Social movements and formal political parties embraced these opportunities, adopting discourses that re-focused on the return of democratic politics.
The Reorientation of the Left
The global changes that weakened the militant Right in Latin America in the 1980s also forced the Left to reassess its strategy relative to democratic openings. Following the success of the Sandinista revolution in 1979, Central America had emerged as the center of gravity for the regional Left. Marxist organizations saw new hope for a blueprint that combined political and military revolutionary factions to achieve broad-based revolutionary change.98 By 1983, however, the heady times of the earlier years had faded. In Nicaragua, the FSLN was held under military and political siege by covert action and overt pressure by the United States. Cuban officials believed that an invasion was imminent and, indeed, the U.S. invasion of Grenada
97 See Klaas Dykmann, Philanthropic Endeavors or the Exploitation of an Ideal: The Human Rights Policy of the Organization of American States in Latin America (1970-1991) (Frankfurt: Vervuert, 2004), p. 411. 98 Support for the region was paramount to leftist rhetoric, organizational strategy, and cooperation. Financial and logistical support from Marxist governments and sympathizers around the world flowed to Central American through Cuba, and the Havana-Managua axis became a hub of international revolutionary activity supporting Central American revolutionaries. See Jorge G. Castañeda, Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left and the Cold War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), pp. 90, 101-2, and Ch, 4 more generally on the significance of the Central American movements to the regional Left. For an analysis of how this “wave” of guerrilla activity borrowed from earlier repertoires in the late 1960s, see Timothy Wickham-Crowley, “Two Waves of Guerrilla-Movement Organizing in Latin America, 1956-1990,” Comparative Studies in Society and History vol. 56 no. 1 (2014), pp. 215-42. A succinct contemporary account of the international dimensions of the Left can be found in James LeMoyne “The Guerrilla Network,” The New York Times Magazine, 6 April 1986.
169 launched in October further convinced both the Nicaraguans and Cubans that Reagan was sizing up the Sandinistas for regime change.99 In Guatemala and El Salvador, the overwhelming strength of state counter-insurgency policies weakened the appeal of the guerrillas and pre- empted popular resistance.100 Even in El Salvador, where the FMLN was relatively successful in forcing the military to fight on its terms, interminable warfare was now a reality. From their strongholds in the eastern highlands, the FMLN had become “an army with a political wing” rather than the broad-based movement it had strived to be.101
The nascent democratic openings that began throughout the region presented the Left with a strategic challenge and an opportunity. For some Marxist leaders, elections provided a chance to translate their popular support into legitimate political backing, and to articulate their political platform to adherents beyond the battlefield. History, ideology, and strategic realities prevented most leftists from embracing these opportunities, however.102 On the most basic level, the persistence of counterinsurgent military power made democratic openings untenable for leftist groups. Throughout the Cold War, the Right—in Chile, Argentina, and El Salvador most obviously—had never been willing to respect the results of democratic politics when reformism threatened traditional elite interests. But the experience of the 1970s and 1980s had also shown
99 Interestingly, the decision to use military force in Grenada was, for the most part, directed by the State Department, though NSC staff members enthusiastically participated in the planning. U.S. officials used as a pretext for the invasion 1000 U.S. citizens enrolled in medical school on the island, but in the broader frame Shultz and the president agreed the invasion was necessary to pre-empt Cuban-supported intimidation of small democratic state. See Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, pp. 323-45; Robert C. McFarlane with Zofia Smardz, Special Trust (New York: Cadell & Davies, 1994), pp. 260-65. 100 See Brands, Latin America’s Cold War, pp. 208-10 for a good summary of this phenomenon, but see also the intense scholarly debate fueled by David Stoll’s Between Two Armies In the Ixil Towns of Guatemala (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993) and Rigoberta Menchú and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1999), both of which question the methodology and conclusions about Guatemalan violence reached in Rigoberta Menchú and Elisabeth Burgos-Debray I, Rigoberta Menchú: an Indian Woman In Guatemala (London: Verso, 1984). 101 Castañeda, Utopia Unarmed, pp. 101-102. 102 The most sensitive and thorough consideration of the Latin American Left’s ambivalence towards formal democracy—which clearly recognizes the restrictions placed on democratic politics by the Right—can be found in Castañeda, Utopia Unarmed, Ch. 11 “The Democratic Imperative,” and summarized on pp. 356-57.
170 the Left that the denial of democracy and basic civil rights were powerful inducements to galvanize change. Somewhat ironically, at the same time U.S. policymakers were judging that democratic transitions might undermine the armed Left, the Left was learning that democratic political strategy would be necessary to generate long-term support for their programs.103 These were fundamental transformations that played out beyond the end of the decade. Central
American armed conflicts continued into the 1990s, and slivers of armed opposition in South
America continued to resist formal political openings.104 But it was in the 1980s that the Left in
Latin America first began to consider the strategy of democratic mobilization seriously.
In part because the Leftist struggle in Latin America in the 1980s was an international one, the ripples of change began, first, in Cuba and, to a lesser degree, the Soviet Union. After serving as the primary supporter of insurgencies on the isthmus, by mid-1983, Cuba was hedging its support for armed insurgency and exploring negotiated settlement in some cases.105 The move was a tactical one for Castro, who aimed to capitalize on Cuba’s growing regional influence in the wake of the Falkands war to end or at least alleviate its diplomatic isolation. In essence, Cuba was pursuing its own version of the “two-track” policy pursued by the United States. In
Nicaragua, Castro remained resolute: the Sandinistas should resist negotiation, curtail political activities by rival groups, and maintain the road to socialism. But elsewhere—in Guatemala and
El Salvador—Castro perceived that supporting a negotiated settlement could further strengthen
Cuba’s position in the hemisphere, and with Western European countries like France and Spain.
103 Steve Ellner, “Introduction: The Changing Status of the Latin American Left in the Recent Past,” in Barry Carr and Steve Ellner The Latin American Left: From the Fall of Allende to Perestroika (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993). 104 Examples of persistent armed leftism in the wake of democratic transitions include the Chilean Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez (FPMR), Peru’s Shining Path, and the Colmbian Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias Colombianas (FARC). 105 The Cuban vice president told reporters in June 1983 that supporting negotiations in the region could empower moderate socialists and make Leftist factions more broadly appealing. Karen DeYoung, “Cuba Seeks Ties to West: New Policies Aim to Ease Isolation,” The Washington Post, 3 June 1983, p. A1.
171
This calculation was also prompted by growing pressure emanating from the United States.
Believing that a U.S. invasion of Nicaragua was imminent, Cubans and Nicaraguans agreed that, as Jorge Castañeda, put it, “[t]he war in El Salvador was the easiest meaningful concession the
Cubans and Nicaraguans thought they could make to placate Ronald Reagan’s wrath.”106
Cuba’s reorientation did not play well among some factions of the guerrillas in El
Salvador, who saw military victories in late 1982 as encouraging signs that their revolution might still yet be victorious.107 The behind-the-scenes tensions over the revolutionary path revealed themselves in a bizarre and grisly series of events in the spring of 1983. While traveling in Libya, Cayetano Carpio—the long-established face of the FMLN’s militant wing and a devout follower of Ché Guevara—learned of Castro’s intention to empower moderate forces within the organization by promoting Carpio’s deputy, Anaya Montes.108 Returning from Libya, Carpio arranged for Montes’s murder, framing it as a CIA assassination. When Nicaraguan and Cuban officials confronted Carpio with evidence of his role in the murder, Carpio committed suicide.109
Revelations that Montaya’s murder had been orchestrated from within the FMLN ranks shook leftists throughout the region, spawning a wrenching debate over the responsibility of the guerrilla movement to the general Salvadoran population. Though it was clear that the
Salvadoran government could not achieve a decisive victory over the guerrillas, it was also increasingly obvious that the FMLN would not be able to realize the prolonged peoples’ war that its earliest programs had called for. Increasing U.S. support, professionalization of the armed forces, and the development of a viable democratic process presented the guerrillas with a
106 Castañeda, Utopia Unarmed, p. 354. 107 Interview w Joaquin Villalobos, Max G. Manwaring and Court Prisk, eds. El Salvador at War: An Oral History of the Conflict from the 1979 Insurrection to the Present (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1988), p. 147. 108 The link between the move to support the faction and a strategy that accepted negotiations is made in Castañeda, Utopia Unarmed, p. 352-54 109 Castaneda, among others, believes that Tomas Borge of the FSLN urged him to end his life. Castañeda, Utopia Unarmed, p. 354
172 dilemma: they could continue to lead the fight against the government, or they could yield to an electoral system that was bound to co-opt some of their supporters among the general population.110
Having lost two of their most popular revolutionary leaders to internecine struggle, in
1983 the FMLN re-oriented its strategy. The organization rejected elections and continued to pursue an armed insurgency, but it organized around a smaller tactical organization in rural areas, capable of harassing government forces and weakening army morale. Reorienting to a rural strategy, however, meant that the FMLN political message no longer reached the people in
Salvadoran cities.111 In order to compete with government propaganda, the FMLN simultaneously recalibrated its political message, articulating its socialist program in democratic terms. In its new narrative, FMLN leaders portrayed themselves as true heirs to El Salvador’s popular desire for democratic reform, barred from realizing that status only by government violence and U.S. intervention. This reorientation culminated in January 1984 in a new organizational document, the “Propuesta de Integracion y Plataforma del Gobierno de Amplia
Participacion” (Platform and Integration Proposal for a Broad Participatory Government) that departed drastically from the group’s revolutionary platform of 1980. No longer did the group speak of overthrowing a military dictatorship battling Yankee imperialism; now it called for a broad-based government unified in its desire to restore national sovereignty and replace the will of the oligarchs with that of the majority.112 In this document, the FMLN also formally aligned
110 Comandante Miguel Castellanos in Manwaring and Prisk, eds., El Salvador at War, p. 204. 111 On this strategic change, see Jose Angel Moroni Bracamonte and David E. Spencer, Strategy and Tactics of the Salvadoran FMLN Guerrillas: Last Battle of the Cold War, Blueprint for Future Conflicts (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 1995), pp. 25-26. 112 The debate over the FMLN’s direction played out most clearly in the pages of the Mexican cultural journal Nexos in 1984. See first Adolfo Gilly, “El Suicidio de Marcial,” Nexos 76 (April 1984) which reprinted Carpio’s suicide note and explicitly placed his death in the internal ideological struggle that led to the revised platform. In the months that followed a number of responses questioned Gilly’s judgment that the platform represented a significant change. See Carmen Lira, “La Revolución y sus Jueces,” Nexos 77 (May 1984); Javier Gerrero y Gilberto López y
173 itself with Contadora—offering to negotiate with the United States through an acceptable third party on the issues of “mutual security.”113 The FMLN refused to approach El Salvador’s democratic transition from a position of weakness. In 1983 the group was arguably at the peak of its power, and prepared to boycott the 1984 elections just as it had in 1982. But external realities and internal disagreement forced it to recognize democracy as the ultimate basis of its political legitimacy.
In Nicaragua, the Sandinista regime’s relationship with democracy was more complex.
Ideologues in the FSLN had long been ambivalent about elections, viewing them as an instrument of bourgeois power that would circumscribe the Sandinistas’ claim to popular democracy. Following the revolution, in a 1979 agreement, the Sandinistas had pledged to the
Organization of American States that the regime would agree to periodic free elections. The postponement of those elections had become a favorite trope of Reagan’s and arguably the greatest sticking point in ironing out a negotiating agenda between the two countries.114 But growing pressure from the United States—both through covert support for the Contras and threatening behavior—now encouraged the Sandinistas to plan for elections. The invasion of
Grenada in October prompted the Sandinistas to order the FMLN high command out of
Managua, to send a thousand Cuban advisers home, and to relax controls on opposition media.115
In early December, Ortega agreed to Contadora’s draft treaty framework guaranteeing free elections and announced that the regime would oversee elections by the end of 1984. Castro counselled against this strategy, arguing it would ultimately jeopardize the fate of the
Rivas, “La Revolución Purificada,” Nexos 78 (June 1984); Adolfo Gilly, “Que Socialismo Queremos,” Nexos 80 (August 1984); and Adolfo Gilly, “A Modo de Conclusion,” Nexos 82 (October 1984). 113 Guillermo Ungo, “The People’s Struggle,” Foreign Policy, no. 52 (Fall 1983) p. 59. 114 See Gutman, Banana Diplomacy, p. 94-95. 115 Gutman, Banana Diplomacy, p. 171.
174 revolution.116 But the Sandinistas persisted. In reality Ortega played a double game: acceding to the rules of Contadora and making it appear that accommodation with the United States would be possible. At the same time, however, Ortega used the increasing U.S.-Contra threat to secure major commitments of military and economic aid from the Soviet Union.117
In South America the terms of the Left’s reconciliation with democracy were vastly different. There, remnants of the revolutionary Left approached democratic openings from positions of weakness and outright defeat. The counterinsurgency campaigns of the previous decade in the Southern Cone had been brutally effective. In Chile, labor protests that erupted in
May 1983 opened the possibility of broad opposition to the regime. Chile’s leftist parties generally recognized that democratic change was the most feasible strategy for toppling
Pinochet, but they differed widely on how to implement this strategy. Factions of the Chilean
Communist Party, for example, refused to abandon the armed struggle and in fact stepped up their offensive attacks beginning in 1983. However, the party identified this policy as supporting—rather than undermining—the broader effort to bring down the regime through eventual elections.118 The Chilean Socialist Party, on the other hand, welcomed the creation of a broad political front encompassing leftist parties. As discussed in more detail below, opposition in Chile moved increasingly to the political realm.
Throughout South America, the prospect of democratic transition presented the Left with an unfamiliar landscape. Many of the social movements that had grown up around questions of
116 See Yuri Pavlov, Soviet-Cuban Alliance: 1959-1991 (New Brunswick, Connecticut: Transaction Publishers, 1994), p. 99. 117 These commitments, which were made earlier in the year, included technical assistance on mining and mineral prospecting, agricultural development, oil and sugar to make up for deficiencies, and, finally, military aid. On the increase of Soviet aid to Nicaragua after 1982, see Danuta Paszyn, The Soviet Attitude to Political and Social Change in Central America, 1979-90: Case Studies on Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), pp. 50-55. 118 See the statement of the Chilean Communist Party’s Central Committee, as featured in Brian Loveman, “The Political Left in Chile: 1973-1990,” in Ellner, The Latin American Left.
175 human rights actually drew former leftists away from monolithic party structures and from uniform ideological attachment to socialism.119 Furthermore, many guerilla groups, chastened by exile and repression, now viewed the urban warfare strategy of the 1970s as obsolete. Political democracy—once viewed as an unlikely path to revolutionary change—now appeared the more viable strategy.120 Argentina’s Montoneros, for example, previously seen as the Robin Hood heroes of the regional Left, began an effort to rebrand themselves as “Revolutionary Peronists” under the banner of the formal Peronist party.121
The changes of 1983-1984 did not so much weaken the Left as present it with a new paradigm of democratization to which it chose, gradually, to reconcile itself. Placed in the wider frame of social, economic, and political changes that took place between the 1960s and the present day, the Left was quite successful in this effort.122 In these initial years, however, democracy was something that presented only the most tentative of opportunities on the local and national level. Playing by political rules meant sacrificing the militaristic dimension that had served as the basis for the Left’s legitimacy and organization since the Cuban revolution.
Seeking democratic support also meant playing by liberal economic rules that were quickly developing in ways repugnant to the Left’s core ideology. Indeed, this analysis is not to suggest that in 1983 either the traditional, violent Right or the armed Left abandoned the ideological mindsets that had perpetuated Cold War violence. But beginning in 1983, that ideological environment was increasingly defined by political re-democratization and liberal economic reforms. The diffuse global changes and shifts in the power balance that came with that transition
119 See Ellner, “Introduction,” pp. 10-11. 120 Richard Gillespie, “Guerrilla Warfare in the 1980s,” in Carr and Ellner, The Latin American Left, p. 189. 121 Ibid., p. 190 122 In addition to populist regimes which capitalized on many the platform and grassroots networks of the Left, a number of figures from the Cold War left have recently won elections in Central America. Most prominent among them have been Daniel Ortega and Salvador Sánchez Cerén, a former commanding general of the FMLN.
176 were beginning to alter the dynamics between the Right and Left, forcing each to react in different ways in specific national contexts.
The Praxis of Democracy Promotion in South and Central America
By late 1983, the Reagan administration had settled into its strategy focused on the three
D’s: democracy, development, and defense.123 Rhetorically, the administration emphasized democracy promotion as a way to guard its core objectives from political foes. But in specific national contexts, Reagan and his advisers found that democratic change presented it with opportunities, challenges, and unexpected potential alliances. In Central America and South
America, contrasting examples demonstrate how the administration saw elections as a way to undermine the Left, build support for policies among political opponents, and discredit intransigent regimes. Nonetheless, as the analysis below demonstrates, the continued tension between some U.S. officials’ pragmatism and the ideological anti-communism that continued to inform the administration’s goals in Latin America produced inconsistencies in the way democracy promotion took shape.
Argentina and Chile
The October 1983 Argentine presidential elections marked the resumption of democratic life after a decade of military rule. The winner of those elections—the unassuming, professorial
Raul Alfonsín—represented a new brand of politician to match Argentina’s democratic moment.124 A lawyer by training and the former head of the Argentine Commission for Human
123 Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, p. 403. 124 Interview in Boeker, Lost Illusions, p. 55
177
Rights, Alfonsín had crafted his campaign as an open rebuke of the dictatorship’s excesses.125
“Somos la vida”—we are life—was the slogan of his Radicalist party (UCR). Alfonsín made no secret that, if elected, he would confront the military over the issue of the desaparecidos and, should they not submit a proper accounting, to prosecute responsible officers through the judiciary. “My first act will be to lift the state of siege,” he told one newspaper, promising to relax restrictions on labor unions, student groups, and civil society more generally.126
U.S. involvement in the elections was peripheral but significant. Following the lead of the
State Department, the embassy applauded the return to democratic rule while trying to avoid endorsing a specific candidate. The chargé, John Bushnell—previously of the State Department’s inter-American affairs branch—“tried to mobilize all the resources of the country team to encourage compliance with the electoral process.” Under embassy direction, U.S. military officers met with their Argentine counterparts, emphasizing that fair elections and civilian control would pave the way to resumed arms sales. U.S. diplomats pressured Argentine politicians to reassure the military that civilian control would not threaten the military’s livelihood.127
Although Alfonsín was accused by opponents of being the favored candidate of the State
Department, the president-elect recognized that his program offered a stark departure from a
U.S.-Argentine agenda previously governed by anti-communism. Alfonsín and his foreign minister, Dante Caputo, were eager to create a new identity for Argentina at home and abroad.
Alfonsín wanted to make good on his promises to prosecute security officers responsible for
125 Elizabeth Jelin, “The Politics of Memory, The Human Rights Movement and the Construction of Democracy in Argentina,” Latin American Perspectives Vol 21, Iss 81, No. 2 (Spring 1984), p. 46. 126 Interview with Alfonsín, Latin America Weekly Report WR 83-10 11 March 1983, OEA-ONU Collection, Archive of the Foreign Ministry of Argentina (Hereafter Argentina MRECIC). 127 The deputy chief of mission, John Bushnell, “tried to mobilize all the resources of the country team to encourage compliance with the electoral process” while at the same time not promoting a specific candidate. Interview with Bushnell, pp. 527-28.
178 human rights violations under the Proceso. He promised to replace the commitment to free market austerity that had plunged Argentina into debt with pragmatism and sensitivity to economic hardship. Abroad, the Radical government sought to shed the image of a pliant, anti- communist partner in the East-West struggle. “I have never agreed with the theories of continental security, ideological frontiers, and other manipulations of the pentagon,” he told an interviewer.128 Caputo developed a “Sur-Sur” foreign policy, which sought to increase
Argentina’s links with other disadvantaged countries of the Global South, particularly in the non- aligned movement. Argentina withdrew its support for the Contras, increased aid to the
Sandinistas and grain sales to the Soviet Union, and began to back the Contadora peace process openly.129
At the same time, Alfonsín and Caputo were eager to demonstrate that a democratic
Argentina’s foreign policy goals could be compatible with U.S. interests in the region. The
Reagan administration was equally keen to accommodate the new government. “It is quite possible that Argentina might pursue foreign policies on issues such as Central America which are highly detrimental to U.S. objectives,” said one NSC memo. The State Department placed
“highest priority” on efforts to engage the regime and find common ground. Immediately following the election, the embassy began working to reinforce Alfonsín’s civilian control over the military. When embassy chargé Bushnell promised Alfonsín’s defense minister that henceforth all military-to-military activities would be cleared with the civilian minister of defense, the defense minister called it “the best gift another government could give at an inauguration.” Cognizant of Alfonsín’s deep anxieties that the military would overthrow his
128 Latin America Weekly Report interview with Alfonsin, Latin America Weekly Report WR 83-10, 11 March 1983, OEA y ONU Collection, Argentina MRECIC. 129 Sheinin, Argentina and the United States, p. 179.
179 government, Bushnell used his links with officers to foster mutual understanding and appreciation for legitimate civilian-military cooperation.130
A shared interest in liberal democracy served as the key ideological link between
Alfonsín and the Reagan administration.131 The elections, together with Alfonsín’s immediate efforts to address human rights—gave the administration the justification it had long sought to
“certify” Argentina, thus paving the way for resumed sale of weapons and spare parts that the military had long coveted. Some conservative elements within the Reagan administration actually opposed this, worrying that certifying Argentina on the basis of elections alone would go too far in empowering the regime to prosecute military officials for human rights. Yet, this is precisely what the administration did.132 Reagan announced the certification on December 7, the day of Alfonsín’s inauguration, emphasizing the elections above all else. Reagan’s endorsement helped to focus Alfonsín’s legitimacy on narrow electoral grounds, even as Argentine human rights victims and activist networks criticized the new president for pursuing a limited social agenda.133
In nearly all realms of foreign policy, Argentina leveraged its status as a democracy—and a supporter of regional democratization—to forge a positive relationship with the United States without appearing subservient. For example, through 1984, Alfonsín pursued a policy of
“politicizing” the debt, making it a major issue in international diplomatic forums while seeking
130 Interview with Bushnell, pp. 530-33. 131 The refrain of the democratic “wave” became a common motif in all Argentine-United States meetings. See for example MRECIC Memo #147/84 regarding the Argentina Foreign Ministry’s working meeting with Asst. Secretary of State Kenneth Dam. Both sides agreed that Latin America was on an unprecedented path toward democracy, and that the issues of debt, narcotrafficking, and revolution now threatened that fragile progress. OEA y ONU Collection, Argentina MRECIC. 132 Memo, Carbaugh to White House, “Argentina Certification” Box 008-Argentina, WHORM Subject File: Countries, RRL. 133 See letter from Barney Frank to Reagan, 6 March 1984, Box 008- Argentine Republic, WHORM Subject File: Countries, RRL and Jelin, “Politics of Memory,” p. 47.
180 favorable terms for settlement.134 In meetings with U.S. officials, Alfonsín tied the issue explicitly to democracy, arguing that his government was being punished for the malfeasance of the dictatorship, and now faced a threat from aggressive military officials. Before Independence
Day in 1984, Alfonsín wrote to Reagan personally: “the critical situation of external debt poses an urgent challenge to countries that have begun the difficult road to democratization.”135 If the
Reagan administration wanted to support elected governments, it would have to soften its structural adjustment policies so as to not weaken democracies—an argument that Alfonsín made to Reagan when the two met at the United Nations in September.136 For Alfonsín, this was largely political posturing. Painting himself as an “anti-imperialist,” he nonetheless knew that the stability of his regime rested on its ability to nurture economic improvement. Alfonsín ultimately agreed to austerity measures and, in December 1984, the International Monetary Fund approved
$1.4 billion in debt relief.137
Although it is true that Alfonsín’s power was circumscribed by the institutional power of the armed forced, the United States acted to support the regime rather than protect its interest in military-to-military relations. To be certain, Argentina benefitted from an American policy that was refocusing on Central American priorities in 1984, and placing a greater emphasis on economic cooperation over security issues. But for its part, Argentina recognized this ideological shift, and masterfully played the democracy card on a number of issues, using it to demonstrate the coincidence of long-term interests even when—on issues such as Contadora— the two governments disagreed. The strategy, as one Argentina foreign ministry memo put it,
134 Sheinin, Argentina and the United States, p. 191 135 MRECIC Memorandum #173, “Message from Sr. President of the Republic to the President of the United States,” Dirección America Del Norte, Box 0010, OEA y ONU Collection, Argentina MRECIC. 136 MRECIC Memo #118/94, “U.S.-Argentina Relations” Dirección America Del Norte Box 0010, OEA y ONU Collection, Argentina MRECIC. 137 See “Argentina Repays $500 Million Loan,” The Washington Post, 19 January 1985, p. C7.
181 was to “deepen the dialog with the United States about the global theme of the consolidation of democracies in Latin America.” Even though U.S. officials knew that “these democratic regimes will be less inclined to automatic alignments,” they would appreciate that the spread of democracy was a “curb on the growth of totalitarian systems and the most effective method to create socio-economic conditions that undermine terrorist and subversive activity in the region.”138
The extent to which democracy now pervaded U.S. strategic calculations in the Southern
Cone was illustrated by the contrasting experience with Chile during the same period. Unlike
Argentina, the Pinochet regime’s refusal to welcome an early democratic transition soured its relations with the Reagan administration, even as some of its officials continued to see the regime as ideologically compatible.
The widespread labor strikes that began in May 1983 marked a weakening of Pinochet’s grip on the public sphere. Pinochet responded with a series of moves collectively referred to as the Apertura (opening). A new cabinet of high-profile, experienced politicians was sworn in on
August 10, featuring Sergio Onofre Jarpa as the new interior minister. A former politician with
Center-Right leanings and anti-communist credentials for his staunch opposition to Salvador
Allende, Jarpa was an outcast of the Pinochet regime only by virtue of his membership in the old political class. Jarpa was no pacifist. His private plan, circulated to the government and the U.S. embassy in 1983, suggested that the regime must “eliminate the enemies of the government in position to produce problems or sabotage” its policies.139 But Jarpa was also a political pragmatist, and the eruption of protest in 1983 prompted Pinochet to invite Jarpa to join the cabinet to defuse the political chaos. Jarpa counseled the regime to accept dialogue with the
138 MRECIC Memo #118/94, “U.S.-Argentina Relations” 17 September 1984, Dirección America Del Norte Box 0010, OEA y ONU Collection, Argentina MRECIC. 139 Draft of Jarpa Plan, 1 June 1983, Box “Chron Mar-June 85,” James Theberge Papers, Hoover Institution.
182 political opposition, and consider speeding up the transition to elections before the scheduled
1988 date.140 On Jarpa’s advice, Pinochet welcomed 1,500 political exiles from abroad, loosened restrictions on the media, and approved limited dialogue. Interest groups, unions, and professional associations—whose governing bylaws had been gutted by government action in
1979—were once again allowed to elect their leaders directly. These civil society groups became major bastions of legitimacy for the opposition, and served as seats from which politicians could regain public stature necessary to challenge the regime.141
By far the most momentous changes during the Apertura were in the political sphere. In
August 1983, major groups from the Center-Left joined to create the Democratic Alliance (AD,
Alianza Democratica). AD leaders sought broad political backing to negotiate an early end to the dictatorship, but they remained uncomfortable with the public demonstrations against Pinochet, which they viewed as a sign of dangerous social upheaval.142 Meanwhile, a coalition of left-wing groups excluded from the AD formed the Popular Democratic Movement (MDP, Movimiento
Democrático Popular). Unlike the AD, the MDP—comprised of the Communist Party, the
Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR, Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria) and orthodox
Socialists—rejected dialogue and refused to renounce the righteousness of armed struggle.
Pinochet’s supporters on the Right also took advantage of the political opening, creating the
Independent Democratic Union (UDI, Unión Demócrata Independiente), a political front that advocated neoliberal economic policies and technocratic reform. Although UDI leaders
140 Steve J. Stern, Battling for Hearts and Minds: Memory Struggles in Pinochet’s Chile, 1973-1988 (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2006). 141 Carlos Huneeus, The Pinochet Regime (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007), pp. 373-74. 142 The AD brought together a broad spectrum of political groups, led by the Christian Democrats. It included social democrats, Radicals, as well as socialists, the Christian Left and MAPUcistas which together represented the “renovated left.” For a summary see Stern, Battling for Hearts and Minds, p. 314.
183 purported to be independent of the state, in general they resisted political change that departed from the regime’s plan of institutional transition.143
The reawakening of politics in Chile constituted a defeat for the Pinochet regime, which had long denounced the failure of democratic politics and, in particular, the traditional parties.
Pinochet envisioned the Apertura as a strictly tactical move to keep his long-term goals of an indefinite transition (officials typically referred to it as a process of “institutionalization”) intact.
Yet the combination of political organization and social mobilization had, in the words of one historian, “accelerated political time.”144 Labor and political leaders, like Andrés Zaldívar of the
Christian Democratic Party (PDC), returned from exile, assuming new public roles as political mediators in Jarpa’s talks with the AD. For citizens and political groups not involved in the talks, protests continued on a monthly basis, signifying a widening momentum for change. The
Chilean media—long subservient to Pinochet—now turned “hot,” releasing widely-read reports on the general’s corruption, undermining his image as a dutiful national hero.145 The Apertura appeared to inaugurate a new political moment in Chile.
The Reagan administration saw in these changes both major risks and significant opportunities. Key officials still considered Pinochet a staunch anti-communist ally in the regional fight against the spread of Marxism, and others—notably George Shultz—remained enthralled by Chile’s commitment to free market principles. But as protests broadened, and
Pinochet’s response hardened, the costs of that relationship became more obvious. In August,
U.S. Ambassador James Theberge met with Jarpa and told him the administration looked “with much sympathy” on the political dialogue and hoped that the effort would bring about a peaceful
143 See Constable and Valenzuela, Nation of Enemies, p. 289. 144 Ibid., p. 312. 145 Stern, Battling for Hearts and Minds, pp. 303-307.
184 resolution of Chile’s problems.146 The administration shifted its policy and began courting links with opposition groups.147 Internally, the State Department judged that U.S. interests were best served by “maintaining a cooperative bilateral relationship with Chile while attempting to influence key personalities and forces within and outside of the government” to articulate a timetable for democratic transition.148
The administration’s certification of Argentina in December 1983 proved to be an inflection point for U.S.-Chilean relations. Chilean officials recognized that the decision was based solely on Argentina’s democratic elections, and sensed that U.S. diplomats were now seeking to isolate Pinochet with an increasing emphasis on formal democratic change. Reagan wrote to Pinochet personally in December to assuage his concerns about the decision, notifying him that the administration would continue to monitor Chile’s human rights record and progress towards elections. Fearing damage to the relationship, Reagan sent General Vernon Walters personally to deliver the letter. Pinochet responded “more in sorrow than in anger,” telling
Walters that because of his belief that Reagan was “the best possible president in terms of U.S.-
Chilean relations,” he would not “cause the U.S. any problems” over the rebuke.149 In a private conversation with the Chilean ambassador, Elliott Abrams admitted that it would be impossible to certify Chile until an election had taken place.150
In 1984, progress in Chile ground to a halt, and it became clear that Pinochet was unwilling to consider any meaningful concessions to the opposition, or to consider early
146 Telex Enviado (Transmitted Telex) #375, 26 August 1983, Chile RREE 147 Menges to McFarlane, “Chile: Memorandum Sent to You by Ambassador Wilson,” 11 January 1984, Box 20- Chile, White House Staff and Office Files, Exec Sec NSC, Country Files, Latin America, RRL. 148 Hill memo to McFarlane, “Chile/Argentina” 25 November 1983, Box 28: Chile Files, White House Staff and Office Files, Exec Sec NSC, Country File, Latin America, RRL. 149 Department of State Briefing Paper, “Meeting with Enrique Valenzuela” 17 January 1984, Box 20-Chile, White House Staff and Office Files, Exec Sec NSC, Country Files, Latin America, RRL. 150 Cable State to Santiago, Chilean DCM Discusses Human Rights Issues with HA Assistant Secretary,” January 1984, Box 20-Chile, White House Staff and Office Files, Exec Sec NSC, Country Files, Latin America, RRL.
185 elections. In a stark departure from its earlier policy of quiet diplomacy, the Reagan administration now began to criticize Pinochet publicly for his intransigence. In a speech in
January, Shultz stated that Chile was “out of step” with the trend towards democratization in
Latin America.151 In April, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs James Michel delivered a speech in which he explicitly stated the U.S. desire for early elections in Chile.152
The Chilean ambassador was shocked by the speech. The United States was now undertaking policies similar to those of Carter, the foreign ministry alleged privately. In May, the Chilean foreign ministry cabled its embassy in Washington, reporting that intelligence suggested that
Ambassador Theberge had been spreading unfavorable judgments of the regime, “ordaining the efforts” of the opposition to seek the regime’s downfall.153
The Reagan administration’s open criticism of Chile’s intransigence on the issue of elections was the cost of a consistent policy, as advocated by the State Department, in favor of democratic elections. The Chilean embassy suspected that the administration was using Chile as
“the necessary balance to its posture of harassment in Nicaragua.” Some Reagan officials remained reluctant to pay that cost. Internally, Ambassador Theberge remained sympathetic with the regime, protesting strongly that “creeping certification requirements” that tied U.S. support directly to Chilean democracy threatened a relationship with a key anti-communist ally. “The
U.S. government pursues a range of national interests of which human rights and democracy are important but not primary interests,” he lectured Abrams in one letter.154 Even if transition was inevitable, other officials noted, the administration should be careful to guard against the role
151 At the request of the Chilean embassy, the State Department apologized for an “error” in the speech, but refused to issue an apology. See Telex Recibido (Received Telex) #156 21 February 1984, Chile RREE. 152 James H. Michel, “United States Support for Democracy in Chile,” 24 April 1984 at the University of Arkansas, Oficio Recibido Reservado (Classified Received Memo) #183, 24 April 1984, Chile RREE. 153 Telex Enviado #249, May 1984, Chile RREE. 154 Theberge to Abrams, 10 January 1984, Box 20-Chile, White House Staff and Office Files, Exec Sec NSC, Country Files, Latin America, RRL.
186 leftists might play in a democratic system. Vernon Walters wrote privately to Tony Motley in
1984 to caution against a full embrace of the opposition: “We should not overlook our experience in changing devils we know for a Castro, the Sandinstas, or a Khomeini,” Walters wrote.155
By the end of 1984, however, Pinochet’s continued intransigence eroded these misgivings. In November, the regime declared another state of siege, violently clamping down on protesters and closing off the apertura of the previous year. The U.S. government was furious.156 The Chilean ambassador told Walters that Pinochet was “shocked” over the U.S. reaction. Did U.S. officials not recognize the steps Pinochet had taken to ease political life?
Walters suggested that the ambassador return to Chile and tell Pinochet the “facts of life”: the
United States was disgruntled with Pinochet’s halting progress, and needed to see results.
“What’s in it for Pinochet?” the ambassador asked, pressing: “What advantage for him is there in going forward to democracy and possibly chaos?” Walters told him that the administration expected Pinochet to lift the state of siege and re-engage with the moderate opposition.157 The
Chilean ambassador was incredulous that the United States would once again risk “losing” a friendly government, just as Carter had done in Nicaragua.
In 1984 the Reagan administration did not seek to oust Pinochet from power. Indeed, even as the State Department applied indirect pressure on the regime to show some signs of a willingness to move towards elections, it simultaneously sought to marginalize the Left in that
155 Walters to Motley, “U.S. Policy Toward Chile,” 21 November 1984, Box 91181, White House Staff and Office Files, Latin American Affairs Directorate, NSC, RRL. 156 “The Chilean government has been irresponsible in contributing to a climate propitious for polarization,” Theberge cabled to the State Department. The ambassador tempered his assessment by laying blame on the moderate Left for playing into the hands of hardliners. See cable, Santiago to State, November 1984, Box 20-Chile, White House Staff and Office Files, Exec Sec NSC, Country Files, Latin America, RRL. 157 Draft Memorandum of Conversation, “Ambassador Walters’s Meeting with Chilean Ambassador Errazurriz,” 21 November 1984, Box 20-Chile, White House Staff and Office Files, Exec Sec NSC, Country Files, Latin America, RRL.
187 transition by focusing its efforts primarily on the moderate centrist parties of the AD.
Nonetheless, by the end of 1984, Pinochet’s refusal to demonstrate progress on the administration’s key criterion—a clear election timetable—forced the administration’s hand.
Showing ideological flexibility, the administration abandoned its tacit support for Chile’s horrendous human rights record, and began to lay the groundwork for an expanded democracy promotion effort that would more directly pressure Pinochet in the years ahead.
El Salvador and Nicaragua
Rhetorically, the Reagan administration’s interest in democracy promotion in Central
America often seemed to reflect a lack of clarity about the relationship between political and military goals. But within El Salvador from 1983 to 1984, the application of this policy was more cogent. During that time, U.S. embassy officials, program officers, military planners, and their
Salvadoran counterparts forged an unprecedented consensus that creating a legitimate, popular government was vital to overcoming the challenge posed by the insurgency.158 To some degree this reflected the political consensus around foreign policy that Reagan had worked hard to foster during the election year. The release of the Kissinger Commission report in January 1984 placed democracy promotion efforts in a larger international and conceptual framework: “The tortured history of Central America is such that neither the military nor the political nor the economic nor the social aspects of the crisis can be considered independently of the others,” read the report’s introduction. “Unless rapid progress can be made on the political, economic, and social fronts, peace on the military front would be elusive and would be fragile. But, unless externally-
158 Terry Karl, “Imposing Consent? Electoralism vs. Democratization in El Salvador,” in Paul W. Drake and Eduardo Silva, eds. Elections and Democratization in Latin America, 1980-1985 (San Diego: University of California, San Diego), pp. 9-36.
188 supported insurgencies are checked and violence curbed, progress on those other fronts will be elusive and will be fragile,” the commission concluded.159
For some officials—like José Napoleón Duarte—this transition carried deep ideological and nationalistic importance. Duarte, having been denied the presidency and jailed in the 1970s, saw the 1984 elections as a chance to re-establish a functioning political system and resume the
Christian Democrats’ rightful role as popular leaders. For many others—including U.S. officials—the transition was a matter of necessity. In early 1983, political infighting and military fecklessness made the government look fragile. “My estimate. . . was that the whole thing was about to go down the tubes,” remembers General Wallace Nutting, commander in chief of U.S.
Southern Command.160
The United States provided open, substantial support to the political-military effort to build a functional and legitimate democratic system in El Salvador. The new U.S. ambassador,
Thomas Pickering, who took over in September 1983, recognized that he arrived during the “low point” for the government.161 U.S. support allowed interim president Alvaro Magaña to press ahead on drafting a new constitution, overseeing the land reform effort, and establishing rules by which the election would take place, even as ARENA used its majority in the constituent assembly to stymie those efforts. Now, the CIA judged that the Right’s failure to halt those reform initiatives would likely lead to an increase in paramilitary violence.162 On the Left, the
FMLN’s strategic shift to a prolonged, rural-based model that allowed it to harass government forces brought a string of guerrilla victories. “The Salvadorans were scared silly,” remembered
159 Henry Kissinger, Report of the National Bipartisan Commission on Central America, (Washington, DC: USGPO, 1984) p. 2. 160 Interview with Wallace Nutting in Manwaring and Prisk, eds., El Salvador at War, p. 233 161 Interview with Thomas Pickering in Manwaring and Prisk, eds., El Salvador at War, p. 145. 162 CIA Special Analysis: “El Salvador: Threat from the Right,” 18 August 1983, DNSA El Salvador 1980-1994 collection.
189
Col. Joseph Stringham, commander of the U.S. military group in El Salvador. Stringham warned the ambassador that they were “witnessing a general disintegration in process in the armed forces.”163
Ambassador Pickering, a professional diplomat with no obvious ties to the ideologues in the Reagan administration, approached the democratic transition with a hands-on pragmatism.164
Under Pickering, the embassy began to apply more serious pressure on security officers and military officials to curtail human rights abuses. The embassy also oversaw a broadening—if ultimately unsuccessful—effort to promote judicial reforms that would hold human rights abusers accountable to the law.165 To a degree, these efforts were dictated by political needs in
Washington. The administration remained uninterested in negotiating peace with the guerrillas and, in November 1983, Reagan vetoed a bill that would have extended the legislative requirement that the administration certify progress in El Salvador in order to receive aid.
Internally, the NSC judged that the certification process “has not worked, is unlikely to do so in the future, and is both domestically and internationally politically damaging to the president.”166
But by the end of 1983 both the Reagan administration and the Salvadoran government were subordinating military aims to larger, political goals. The best example of this shift was
Vice President George Bush’s December visit to El Salvador. During the visit, Bush publicly announced to Salvadoran military leaders that human rights abuses would jeopardize not only
U.S. support but the survival of their government. In private, Bush produced a list of civilian and
163 Interview with Joseph Stringham in Manwaring and Prisk, eds., El Salvador at War, p. 149. 164 Interview with Col. John Cash, US Defense Attache, in Manwaring and Prisk, eds., El Salvador at War, p. 212. 165 For the best summary of the judicial reforms which gives a sense of their scope but also their failure to effect change, see Margaret Popkin, Peace Without Justice: Obstacles to Building the Rule of Law in El Salvador (University Park: Pennsylvania State Press, 2000), pp. 49-80. See also Carothers, In the Name of Democracy, pp. 210-15. 166 The State Department believed that such a veto would invite further congressional opposition to funding in 1984 and 1985. See memos, e.g., North and Menges to McFarlane, “Certification of El Salvador,” 23 November 1983, Box 102, White House Staff and Office Files, Oliver L. North Files, RRL. See also Arnson, Crossroads, p. 135.
190 military officers involved in the paramilitary terror and demanded that they be prosecuted or expelled.167 Unlike previous attempts at “quiet diplomacy,” Bush’s high profile message suggested that the United States was willing to use Salvadoran dependency on U.S. aid to elicit greater responsiveness to human rights criticisms.168 Indeed, beginning in 1984, while civilians continued to be victimized by indiscriminate military operations, death squad activity, paramilitary violence, and torture by security forces declined sharply.169
These contradictory trends were the result of increasing U.S. pressure—exerted through the embassy and via military training—that emphasized professionalization of counterinsurgency operations. U.S. military trainers worked with Salvadoran counterparts to implement a new
“National Plan” designed to win hearts and minds to the counterinsurgent fight (the plan was called “Unidos Para Reconstruir”—United to Reconstruct). These efforts drew heavily on U.S. counterinsurgency lessons learned in Vietnam. “Popular support is the secret,” Col. John
Waghelstein, head of the U.S. military group in El Salvador, told the Salvadoran officers.170
Waghelstein and other military officers began to see progress, demonstrated by the increasing military deference to politicians, support for land reform efforts, and increasing opposition to
167 For a brief summary of the visit see Arnson, Crossroads, p. 136. 168 William Deane Stanley, “El Salvador: State-Building Before and After Democratisation, 1980-1995,” Third World Quarterly Vol 27, no. 1 (Aug 2006), 101-114. Vice President Bush’s visit to El Salvador had a profound impact on military officers—if not in changing their moral calculus then making them understand the policy language of human rights. See interviews with Adolfo Onecífero Blandón, Armed Forces Chief of Staff in Manwaring and Prisk, eds., El Salvador at War, p. 212. Pickering remembers: “[the Salvadoran Armed forces] no longer had the attitude that there may have been some bad guys but they were strongly anti-Communists, and therefore, they were our bad guys, and they ought to be tolerated. Perhaps the situation had gotten bad enough that they could become the seeds of the destruction of the whole policy if they weren’t turned around…” Interview with Thomas Pickering in Manwaring and Prisk, eds., El Salvador at War, p. 215. 169 See Americas Watch, El Salvador’s Decade of Terror: Human Rights Since the Assassination of Archbishop Romero (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), p. 126. 170 Interview with Waghelstein in Manwaring and Prisk, eds., El Salvador at War, p. 223; see also a discussion of Waghelstein’s views of counterinsurgency in Greg Grandin, Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), pp. 89-92.
191 paramilitary activity security forces.171 Long seen as the protector of the oligarchy in El
Salvador, the military began to adopt a new position as the protector of the political process.172
Political reforms, Pickering later wrote, gave the military “a new goal and respectability and a sense of pride in their potential accomplishment that they hadn’t had before. It aligned them, in a sense, with the good guys.” 173
The crux of U.S. policy was preparation for the Salvadoran presidential election of March
1984. As the parties registered, it became clear that the front runners, as expected, would be
Napoleón Duarte representing the Christian Democrats and Roberto D’Aubuisson of the
ARENA party. Unlike 1982, when the administration had internally debated the costs and benefits of supporting the Christian Democratic platform, in 1984 there was no doubt they wished to see Duarte win. Although his policy stances differed from those of the U.S. embassy—Duarte supported land reform and was willing to negotiate with the FMLN if elected—U.S. officials recognized that the Christian Democrats’ ability to form a broad-based government gave U.S. policy its best chance of overcoming the threat posed by the guerrillas.174
The United States undertook efforts to undermine D’Aubuisson during the campaign, denying him a visa to enter the United States and rewarding military officers—a key ARENA constituency—for remaining neutral in their political discourse. But in general, these policies
171 Waghelstein saw the period under Magaña as a time during which the military began to “meditate, cogitate, and to feel out its new position vis-à-vis the politicians.” Manwaring and Prisk, eds., El Salvador at War, p. 194. On support for reform within the ranks, see Interview with Gen. Jose Guillermo García, Manwaring and Prisk, eds., El Salvador at War, p. 176. 172 Interview with General Fred Woerner, Manwaring and Prisk, eds., El Salvador at War, pp. 178-79. 173 Interview with Thomas Pickering, Manwaring and Prisk, eds., El Salvador at War, p. 198. 174 Duarte “personally symbolizes change in El Salvador toward Liberal Democracy,” an embassy cable in late 1983 read, “as conceived in Western Europe.” Cable San Salvador to Managua, “El Salvador Political Overview Before Elelctions (sic): The situation Remains Fluid: Part I,” 18 October 1983, DNSA El Salvador Collection. For a summary of party political platforms compiled by the embassy, in which Duarte’s progressive program is clearly outlined, see Cable San Salvador to State, 19 March 1984, DNSA El Salvador Collection.
192 were a continuation of the political-military strategy that U.S. officials in-country had been pursuing throughout 1983.175
In the final analysis, the United States provided approximately $14.8 million to support the Salvadoran elections.176 Scholars disagree over the extent to which these funds aided Duarte directly. Initial investigatory press reports stated that the CIA routed $2 million to the Christian
Democrats through a Venezuelan-based public relations firm, but Reagan officials refused to confirm these allegations.177 Much of the aid, however, provided technical expertise, confirming the State Department’s view that U.S. help ought to be neutral, aimed at guaranteeing a fair and functional process. Through USAID, the administration granted $3.4 million to the Salvadoran
Electoral Commission (CCE) for computers, software, and technical assistance to create an election registry, along with funding for international observers. AID authorized an additional
$4.2 million in local currency funds that also went towards administrative needs for the elections.178 The idea that procedural assistance was more important than financing a specific candidate had been promoted since early in 1983 by State Department-funded election consultants, including Richard Scammon (a member of the Kissinger commission), Howard
Penniman, and John Kelly (an AID computer consultant). These individuals, acting in an official capacity, reinforced the notion that the key to election legitimacy lay in process: increasing voter turnout, maximizing the number of foreign observers, and reducing procedural problems. Duarte,
175 See Karl, “Imposing Consent.” 176 Marilyn Anne Zak, “Assisting Elections in the Third World,” The Washington Quarterly, vol. 10 no 4 (Autumn 1987). In an earlier analysis, Karl estimated $10 million. See Karl, “Imposing Consent.” 177 Karl states this figure, citing an interview with the organization, IVEPO, in October 1983. The press reports can be found in The Boston Globe, 4 May 1984 and “A Little Help from Friends,” Time, 21 May 1984. In the latter case, the author cites three Senate Intelligence Committee staffers who said that the administration admitted to funneling $2 million for the PDC and 2 other small parties, under the authority of a 1981 intelligence finding that allowed them to support elections to combat Marxism. 178 These local currency funds were used by AID for administrative costs; none were used for party expenses or salaries. See Cable San Salvador to State, “Additional Aid to Salvador Elections,” 21 March 1984, DNSA El Salvador Collection.
193 too, embraced this emphasis on administrative and technological support, which he viewed as a check on Right’s traditional practice of stealing elections.179
The Reagan administration and the growing Salvadoran political class rejected criticisms from the Left regarding the FMLN’s exclusion. In spite of the claims of some that the election was “an administrative disaster,” U.S. officials emphasized the procedural success of the vote.180
Duarte won a majority of votes—43.4 percent to D’Aubuisson’s 29 percent—and, in the run-off in May, collected 54 percent to D’Aubuisson’s 46 percent. The State Department lauded the high voter turnout, once again emphasizing the guerrillas’ attempts to disrupt the elections as an example of their bad democratic faith. As in 1982, observers marveled at the widespread expression of popular will in the face of civil war.181
Even accounting for the Left’s abstention, Duarte’s success in the runoff affirmed the saliency of his reform agenda among a significant portion of the popular classes—not to mention among the middle class and some private sector elements that saw his particular vision for liberal democracy as an improvement over military rule or ARENA governance in El Salvador. Still, the
Reagan administration’s support for Duarte has been interpreted by many as a fait accompli given that it supported his campaign and believed his victory would clear the way for increases in military aid. But this undersells the extent to which the administration demonstrated flexibility by fully endorsing democratic elections which undercut the military’s favored
179 These officials lent the CCE technical guidance and facilitated relationships with local technology firms to overcome anticipated problems in the election. Duarte Interview, Manwaring and Prisk, eds., El Salvador at War, p. 199. 180 The elections garnered some critiques from the Left for the exclusion of the FMLN, but by and large observers were impressed by the successful nature of the elections. The critiques over the administrative side of the elections came mostly from those involved in the process. The problems were manifold: an overly cumbersome registration process, the politicization of the CCE, procurement problems that prevented the acquisition of election equipment, lack of funds, and so on. AID provided eight computer terminals and had one trained technician from each party entering the results into his computer. These ended up not being used because one of the CCE members interpreted the law anew as to be read aloud—7,000 ballot boxes meant they were still being read five days later. 150,000 people were prevented from voting, while 1.4million voted. Zak judges this was an administrative failure, though she did not see fraud or intimidation. Zak, “Assisting Elections,” p. 182. 181 U.S. delegation document in Manwaring and Prisk, eds., El Salvador at War, p. 187.
194 candidate. Duarte saw his election as a mandate for “a government of reconciliation, tolerance, and peace for the nation.”182 He selected cabinet members from different political factions, offering economic posts to key private sector officials. Duarte split up the army and security forces, designating right-wing officers for posts outside of El Salvador.183 These moves were primarily designed to bolster Duarte’s legitimacy—not to curry favor with the United States.
Indeed, Duarte looked for other bases of support as well. The common interest of democratic groups, Socialist International leader Willy Brandt and his deputies wrote to Duarte, “is rooted in contributing to the process of allowing democratic values and political pluralism to take genuine effect in your country and, in this way, giving a vigorous push to the process of democratization that lives on in Latin America.”184
Notably, the most critical comments about U.S. election aid came from Reagan’s right, where hardline conservatives claimed that promoting democracy ignored core interests and abandoned conservative allies. Senator Jessie Helms protested the elections on the grounds that covert funding “bought the election for Duarte” and thus constituted “a misuse of the democratic process” that undermined Reagan’s own emphasis on democratic ideals. But Helms’s critique went deeper, arguing that D’Aubuisson represented the true interests of the Republican Party.
Duarte, he objected, was merely a “socialist” whose penchant for negotiations would “result in a coalition with the Marxist-Leninists.”185 By 1984, the ideological uniformity with which Reagan supporters had approached Central America in 1981 was a distant memory.
182 Duarte Interview, Manwaring and Prisk, eds., El Salvador at War, p. 203. 183 See Terry Karl, “Exporting Democracy: The Unanticipated Effects of U.S. Electoral Policy in El Salvador,” in Hamilton, et. al., Crisis in Central America, p. 183. 184 Cable San Salvador to State, “Socialist International Letter to Salvadoran President-Elect Jose Napoleon Duarte,” 17 May 1983, DNSA El Salvador Collection. 185 Helms speech to the Senate, May 8, 1984.
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The 1984 elections in El Salvador have long been viewed with suspicion by scholars and democratization specialists. For critics like Terry Karl, the elections demonstrated the hollowness of U.S. democracy promotion, which had been functionally married to U.S. goals of eliminating the guerrillas by force. But even Karl acknowledges that the Reagan administration’s controls on the ultra-right—which she argues were merely instrumental to facilitate military aid—opened up politics to a greater degree than any time before the war.186
Opening democratic political space created new avenues of protest for popular social groups and unions. They demanded that Christian Democrats follow through with their vision of reform.
Even as the administration continued to pour military aid into El Salvador, the elections of 1984 confirmed an understanding that this aid ought to protect the democratic political process. When
Reagan met with Duarte in May, they agreed that the primary objective of their relationship would be “The strengthening of democratic institutions.”187 These were not just U.S. positions, but the basis of Duarte’s legitimacy as well.
While the Reagan administration made democratic elections the crux of its policy in El
Salvador, in Nicaragua it did the exact opposite. There, it used democracy as a rhetorical instrument to delegitimize the Sandinista regime and to justify aid to the armed resistance— whose own claims to be “democratic” were tenuous at best. From the start, this policy was hampered by internal disagreement over the role of Contra aid in U.S. policy. Once again this division came down to the administration’s core ideology of anti-communism, which prevented
Reagan from embracing a more constructive, pragmatic approach to the Sandinistas. On several occasions, Reagan advisers like Bill Casey and Jeane Kirkpatrick told Reagan that it would be
186 Terry Karl, “Exporting Democracy: The Unanticipated Effects of U.S. Electoral Policy in El Salvador,” in Hamilton, et. al., Crisis in Central America, pp. 181-82 and 187-88. 187 Reagan-Duarte Communique, 20 May 1984, Box 30- El Salvador, White House Staff and Office Files, Exec Sec NSC, Country File, Latin America, RRL.
196 futile to negotiate with the FSLN because, as communists, they were incapable of accepting a moderate agreement. To Shultz, these ideological arguments missed the point of a comprehensive strategy. He argued that U.S. support for the Contras should be designed to pressure the FSLN to incorporate its political opposition peacefully. Such pressure was pointless if not matched with a negotiating effort that gave the Sandinistas political means of reconciling with the opposition and—importantly for the administration’s strategy—force them to deliver on their promise to hold democratic elections. Furthermore, Shultz argued, negotiations would help convince moderates in the U.S. Congress that the administration was not set on a belligerent course of action, and could thus help obtain necessary funding for the Contras.188
Shultz broke through the bureaucratic impasse in May 1984, when Reagan approved his request to make a surprise stop in Managua while returning from Duarte’s inauguration in San
Salvador. Shultz believed that the momentum created by Duarte’s election made it an opportune moment to pressure the Sandinistas to accept democratic change through negotiations. Using back channels, Shultz cleared the visit with the other Central American governments, easing their anxieties by stressing that the goal of bilateral talks was not to reach a separate deal with the
Sandinistas, but to pressure the FSLN into accepting a Contadora treaty acceptable to U.S. and
Central American interests. Shultz and Motley distilled the Contadora objectives down to four points that constituted their negotiating agenda: 1) the removal of Cuban and Soviet advisers; 2) the end of Nicaraguan support for the Salvadoran guerrillas; 3) a regional agreement that would shrink Nicaragua’s armed forces; and 4) fair democratic elections in Nicaragua.189 The Managua negotiations were cordial but inconclusive. The Sandinistas would not agree to any specific
188 This characterization covers Shultz’s general position within the administration from 1983-1984, and can be found cogently summarized in Turmoil and Triumph, pp. 410-24. 189 See Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, p. 402.
197 framework, but Shultz and Ortega agreed that talks should continue between the new U.S. special envoy, Harry Shlaudeman, and Ortega’s lead negotiator, Victor Hugo Tínoco.
Responding equally to U.S. pressure and the desire to manage external perceptions, the
Sandinistas began planning for the upcoming election early in 1984. Initially, at least, the U.S. embassy saw the elections as a major opportunity. In March, when the State Department asked embassies to recommend how NED funding might be used, Ambassador Anthony Quainton replied that, indeed, the election should serve as the focal point of U.S. policy. “If the opposition parties are to mount an effective campaign against the dedicated and organized cadres of the
FSLN,” Quainton wrote, “they will need considerable external help. Such help will only make sense if the opposition can put aside its parochial and personal rivalries and move towards some form of united alternative to Sandinista power.” Quainton acknowledged that any opposition effort was likely to lose, but even a small amount of money spent on technical and administrative costs could turn the election into a valuable strategic event. “An opposition even slightly more competent and active than at present can only be to democracy’s advantage. We still have an opportunity to influence the development of the internal political structure here, even if only to a modest degree,” Quainton concluded, “We should use this opportunity before it disappears.”190
Nonetheless, the United States did not endorse the political opposition’s participation in the elections—a policy that would have seemed logical given the administration’s close engagement with of the political process in El Salvador. The administration assessed that the
Sandinistas were incapable of holding fair elections, an ideological judgment that in turn affected the calculations of the political opposition and the FSLN. Ironically, both sides in this debate— the hard-liners of the NSC and the more conciliatory officials in the State Department—agreed
190 Cable from Managua to State, “National Endowment for Democracy,” 2 March 1984, Box 28, White House Staff and Office Files, Exec Sec NSC, Subject File, RRL.
198 that pressuring Nicaragua to democratize was the fundamental objective of U.S. policy. Shultz recognized that this demand alone amounted to U.S. interference in Nicaraguan internal affairs, and thus required delicate diplomatic pressure to achieve. Weinberger, Kirkpatrick, and Casey, on the other hand, believed that the FSLN would not respect democratic elections; they believed only by force of arms would the Contras—true democrats in their eyes—be able to carve out a space for themselves in the political process. Thus, negotiations were a futile effort.
Internal disagreements came to a head at a National Security Planning Group meeting in
June 1984. As Shlaudeman was meeting with the Nicaraguan negotiators in Manzanillo,
Mexico, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger told other members of the NSC that direct negotiations with the FSLN amounted to an abandonment of Central American allies. Seemingly every one of Reagan’s security and military advisers except for Shultz agreed with this logic— the administration should not be wasting its time with negotiations. Instead, it should be fighting for more aid to the Contras. Shultz protested, arguing that the entire point of the negotiating effort was to “get a better treaty” out of Contadora, in particular one that would force the
Sandinistas to hold verifiable democratic elections that included the Contra opposition. Reagan seemed suspicious, but came down softly on Shultz’s side. “[T]hat is so far-fetched to imagine that a communist government like that would make any reasonable deal with us,” Reagan opined, “but if it is to get Congress to support to [the Contras], then that can be helpful.”191
Thus, Shultz received Reagan’s blessing to continue the negotiations, but that blessing also reinforced the inclination among the hardliners to expand support for the Contras as the means to compel concessions from the Sandinistas.
191 National Security Planning Group Meeting Minutes, “Central America” 25 June 1984, DNSA El Salvador Collection.
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The continual undermining of Shultz’s diplomatic efforts by the NSC had important results on the political landscape in Nicaragua. In July, the Nicaraguan democratic political opposition formed a loose alliance behind Arturo Cruz, who one author called “the most respected non-Sandinista in Nicaragua.”192 Shultz and the State Department saw Cruz’s candidacy as an opportunity to “pressure the Nicaraguans into holding free and fair elections.”193
Cruz courted international support, but his intentions were not completely aligned with those of the State Department. His candidacy came with a series of demands on the FSLN government ostensibly designed to demonstrate the fairness of the elections, but which in fact would have constituted complete political capitulation by the FSLN.194 Cruz purposely missed the deadline to register as a candidate, afterwards attempting to negotiate with the Sandinistas as a means of leveraging the opposition’s specific demands. This strategy placed Cruz at the mercy of the
Nicaraguan government, which was not sincerely inclined to meet Cruz’s demands.
Hardliners on the NSC argued that negotiations were going nowhere—only strong-arm tactics would force the Sandinistas to accept Cruz. Ratcheting up pressure once again, the administration’s covert tactics undermined the Shlaudeman-Tinoco negotiations. Responding to the administration’s persistent attempts to seek funding for the Contras, House Intelligence
Committee Chairman Edward Boland (D-MA) succeeded in passing the third Boland amendment, which completely cut off U.S. funding for “military or paramilitary operations by any nation, group, organization, movement, or individual.”195 On the eve of elections, talks between Cruz and the FSLN over the terms of his participation broke down, and Cruz withdrew from the contest. Shultz acknowledged—as the NSC had suggested--that the FSLN’s decision to
192 Stephen Kinzer, Blood of Brothers: Life and war in Nicaragua (New York: Anchor Books, 1992), p. 222. 193 Shultz memo to NSC, “Strategy on Nicaragua Elections,” 23 July 1984, Box 32, White House Staff and Office Files, Exec Sec NSC, Country File, Latin America, RRL. 194 Ibid., pp. 240-41. 195 Arnson, Crossroads, pp. 167-69.
200 marginalize Cruz had been taken in large part because the Boland amendment reduced all pressure on the Sandinistas to play by democratic rules. But it also confirmed Shultz’s earlier view that the administration would have to keep open a negotiating track if it expected Congress to support Contra aid. The Reagan administration was now barred from legally providing aid to the Contras in any form, Cruz was now out of the race, and talks with the Sandinistas were on the ropes. Reagan openly dismissed the Sandinista election, calling it “a Soviet-style sham.”196
On November 6, Ortega won the election handily with 67 percent of the vote.
Notwithstanding Reagan’s comments, most observers judged the election to be free and fair.
Much like the United States had done in El Salvador, the Sandinistas had excluded their primary opposition, while placing an emphasis on holding free and administratively successful elections.
Given the Iran-Contra scandal that unfolded in the following years, the 1984 election looks like a missed opportunity for U.S. policy. To Reagan officials, that outcome of the election seemed to reinforce their ideological assumptions about the Nicaraguan regime. The Sandinistas’ exclusion of the opposition served as a pretext for the administration to continue its preferred policy of
Contra support, which it now pursued illegally by seeking funding from third countries.197
The contrast with El Salvador served to further highlight stark changes in U.S. policies.
In its support for Duarte, the administration made democracy the cornerstone of its policy. It used electoral procedure to garner popular legitimacy for the new government, thereby undermining the Left. But in Nicaragua, the administration’s ideological anti-communism prevented it from supporting similar elections that could, at a minimum, have helped the non-
Sandinista opposition develop popular support and achieve legitimacy. Even if that policy failed,
Shultz suggested, it would pay long-term dividends beyond the election. Instead, the
196 Steven R. Weisman, “Reagan Predicts Nicaragua Vote will be ‘Sham,’” 20 July 1984, The New York Times. 197 This is discussed in depth in chapter 5 of this dissertation (pp. 255-56).
201 administration remained aloof from the electoral process, equating “democracy” with a vision focused on overthrowing the Sandinistas by force.
***
The Reagan administration’s support of the democratic “wave” that began to sweep through Latin America in the middle of the 1980s was paradoxical. On a superficial level, the
Reagan administration softened its policies towards Latin America—exploring negotiations, promoting socioeconomic development, speaking out on human rights, and championing democratic change. Reagan’s critics have correctly portrayed these developments as cynical. The president and his advisers shared a continued desire to eradicate the armed Left in Latin America and, between 1983 and 1989, authorized millions of dollars to defeat insurgents on the battlefield. Reagan’s support for negotiations was designed to win military aid for allies, including the Contras. “Communists don’t lose negotiations,” Reagan’s advisers often reminded him.
Nonetheless, 1983-1984 marked the beginning of a watershed moment in hemispheric relations. Changes on the global level wrought by debt and the human rights revolution, together with the consolidation of democratic opposition movements in Latin American countries, altered the ideological conflict between the Left and Right. These transformations altered the way that the Reagan administration perceived its interests and threats to U.S. national security in the region. It reacted in ways that were rational and productive. It embraced democratic change not only rhetorically but with championing support (in the case of Argentina), substantial technical assistance (in the case of El Salvador) and programmatic development (in the form of the NED assistance, detailed in the next chapter). In other cases, most notably Chile, the administration
202 illustrated its claims that democracy was central to human rights by criticizing allies who refused to submit to open elections.
1983-1984 was far from “end of history” in Latin America. But it marked the beginning of a new period in hemispheric relations. The administration’s ideological anti-communism, which had excused heinous human rights violations and political violence on a massive scale, was displaced. In its place, the administration turned to a strategy of promoting democratic elections, nurturing civil society abroad, and championing free markets. The tension between these goals and its ideologically-driven concerns for U.S. national security were never completely resolved. But in the coming years, a growing U.S. emphasis on democracy promotion found an enthusiastic audience among Latin American civilian leaders.
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Chapter 4
“A Golden Opportunity to Break with Statism”: U.S. Democracy Promotion Programs in Latin America, 1984-1987
In 1982, Maria Rosa Segura de Martini was the wife of a wealthy Argentine businessman, living in a fashionable neighborhood in Buenos Aires. In the soul-searching aftermath of the Malvinas War, Martini and several friends pondered the democratic transition that loomed on the horizon. How, they wondered, could Argentina expect to build civic engagement, particularly among women, in a country where violent ideological conflict had destroyed political activity and erased a proud constitutional tradition?1
Their answer lay in beauty products.
Martini’s brother, a regional salesman for Mary Kay and Avon, suggested that she “sell democracy like cosmetics,” a dictum that she took literally. Convening small groups of ten women at a time to discuss the possibilities of the political opening, Martini grew her circle exponentially, eventually incorporating it as a non-profit, Conciencia (Conscience). Martini and her divulgadores (disseminators) envisioned themselves as “missionaries” for the democratic faith, holding seminars on civic education and political literacy for Argentine citizens ahead of the 1983 presidential elections. In 1985, Conciencia was given free air time by the government of Raul Alfonsín to broadcast public service announcements to voters before national legislative elections. In 1986, Conciencia was providing issue-specific background information to members of the Argentine Congress. By 1992, the organization had developed into a region-wide NGO focusing on all aspects of civic education. The goals of the organization were not partisan;
Conciencia studiously avoided any activity that would make it appear as a pressure group. But
1 Shirley Christian, “Democracy Calling: It’s Women’s New Selling Job,” The New York Times, 20 November 1986, p. A4; María Rosa Martini and Sofia L. de Pinedo, “Women and Civic Life in Argentina,” Journal of Democracy vol. 3 no. 4 (July 1992), pp. 138-46.
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Conciencia’s mission of reinvigorating Argentine civil society responded to a specific vision for the future of Argentine liberalism. Martini told The New York Times:
In accord with current global trends, the reach of the state in most Latin American countries is being cut back, opening up space for individual and group initiatives. If civil society fails to respond and instead allows the gaps to go unfilled, the state will begin to expand again. A golden opportunity to break with statism will have been lost. On the other hand, if autonomous groups can build on the good work that they have done so far, the benefit to public life will be enormous.2
For an organization that eloquently prided itself on the virtues of voluntary association and the free market, Conciencia had an unlikely partner: the United States government. In its formative years, between 1984 and 1988, Conciencia received over $530,000 in funding from the newly-created National Endowment Democracy (NED).3 U.S. funding, channeled through the
Overseas Education Fund—the international arm of the League of Women Voters—and later through Delphi International, a U.S.-based contracting firm, helped Conciencia to expand its operations throughout Argentina and to neighboring countries in South America. In a private letter to a U.S. diplomat in Argentina in 1985, NED president Carl Gershman lauded the
Conciencia program as “a model for other countries in Latin America . . . .” As the organization grew, it linked with other organizations that were receiving U.S. funding to develop civil society in formerly authoritarian regimes like the Center for the Study of Politics (CEDEP, Centro de
Estudios Publicos) in Guatemala and the El Salvadoran Trust for the Integration of Women in
Development (PIMUDE, Patronato Pro-Integracion de la Mujer al Desarrollo).
In this chapter, I focus on the transnational network of agents and non-state actors, like
Conciencia, that developed alongside U.S. efforts to promote liberal democracy in place of
2 Christian, “Democracy Calling.” 3 See National Endowment for Democracy, Annual Report 1984 (Washington, DC: National Endowment for Democracy, 1984); NED, Annual Report 1985 (Washington, DC: NED, 1985); NED, Annual Report 1986 (Washington, DC: NED, 1986); NED, Annual Report 1987 (Washington, DC: NED, 1987); NED, Annual Report 1988 (Washington, DC: NED, 1988).
205 dictatorial regimes between 1984 and 1987. During this time, the number and size of transnational programs dedicated to promoting democracy in Latin America exploded. These efforts were remarkably diverse, running the gamut from logistical support to labor unions in
Latin America; to funding for organizations that raised voter awareness and encouraged participation ahead of transitional elections; to the purchase of much-needed ballot paper and supplies before election day; to the provision of seed money for think tanks that sought to spread free market ideology. What united the various efforts of these actors at the start of Ronald
Reagan’s second term was that each explicitly defined its objective in terms of democracy, and that—while often drawing on widely divergent conceptions of that ideal—each looked to international and transnational partners for support in its efforts to develop civil capacities under authoritarian or transitional regimes. Although these organizing efforts were not directed by the
United States, money and expertise that flowed through the National Endowment for Democracy
(NED) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) forged links between mid- level bureaucrats, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and politicians in the United States and abroad.
Two tendencies in the historical literature on U.S. foreign relations have limited attempts to place democracy promotion into an adequately transnational frame. The first has been a focus on liberal ideals in U.S. grand strategy and official rhetoric, emphasizing democracy promotion as a fundamental tenet of U.S. ideology, a basis for exceptionalism, and a justification for empire.4 In Reagan’s case, this historiography is split along critical lines, either championing his
4 Debates over whether the U.S. foreign policy has been—or ought to be—guided by the desire to spread its ideals echo to the very founding of the discipline of the history of U.S. foreign relations. My argument is not that these questions are irrelevant, merely that works focusing on “grand” designs typically ignore the ways that democracy promotion is often implemented, and thus do not illuminate points of contact where U.S. ideals meet local actors, cultures, and circumstances. For some recent examples of such works, see Robert Kagan, Dangerous Nation: America’s Place in the World from its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the 20th Century (New York: Vintage Books, 2007); Tony Smith, America’s Mission: the United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012); Michael Cox, Timothy J. Lynch, and Nicolas Bouchet, eds. U.S. Foreign Policy and Democracy Promotion: From Theodore Roosevelt to Barack Obama (New
206 emphasis on democracy as a key component of his global vision, or decrying it as a trope which corrupted a cosmopolitan ideal of human rights.5 The second tendency has been to treat democracy promotion efforts cynically as foreign interventions aimed at expanding U.S. power.
In this literature, programs like NED support for the anti-Sandinista paper La Prensa in
Nicaragua in 1985 are treated as slightly sanitized versions of covert action.6 By either glossing over democracy promotion or downplaying it, historians have not yet explained the emergence of a foreign policy bureaucracy that, to this day, continues to utilize public-private partnerships to channel American money and expertise to global civil society organizations in the name of democracy and human rights.7 The literature also misses an opportunity to show how the emergence of that network in the 1980s reflected not only political and cultural shifts underway in transitional regimes in Latin America, but also contentious debates over democratic ideals in the United States during the age of Reagan.
Although U.S.-funded democracy promotion programs touched nearly every country in the hemisphere, I focus here on the cases of Guatemala and Chile to show how the expansion of democratic political organizing between 1984 and 1987 meshed U.S. foreign policy with local
York: Routledge, 2012); and Jeremi Suri, Liberty’s Surest Guardian: American Nation-Building from the Founders to Obama (New York: Free Press, 2011). 5 Some welcome recent exceptions have begun to interrogate the ideological shifts that facilitated the creation of a democracy promotion bureaucracy under Reagan. See Nicolas Guilhot, The Democracy Makers: Human Rights and International Order (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005); William King, The Origins of Neoconservative Support for Democracy Promotion (M.A. Thesis: University of Calgary, 2007), in author’s possession; and James Peck, Ideal Illusions: How the U.S. Government Co-opted Human Rights (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2010). 6 This reading of democracy promotion programs can be found in most standard accounts of Reagan’s Central America policy. See William M. LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, 1977- 1992 (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1998). This cynicism is well-founded on a history of U.S. intervention justified by democratic ideals, but downplays the importance of the democracy promotion bureaucracy that became institutionalized under Reagan. 7 Taking their cues from the well-sourced studies of modernization theory, historians have recently taken up the task of historicizing these often messy efforts at democracy promotion. See, for the most recent example, Gregory F. Domber, Empowering Revolution : America, Poland, and the End of the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014). An older book that remains the best comprehensive account of democracy promotion efforts is Thomas Carothers, In the Name of Democracy: U.S. Policy towards Latin America in the Reagan Years (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1991).
207 and transnational efforts to erode the power of authoritarian states. These “on the ground” democracy promotion efforts responded to larger U.S. foreign policy goals in Latin America: undermining the appeal of the revolutionary Left and increasing U.S. influence by supporting elected, civilian regimes to whom Reagan could extend aid unencumbered by congressionally- imposed human rights restrictions. At the same time, democracy promotion efforts were activated, shaped, and carried out by program operators, NGO leaders, and politicians who pursued their own goals and, typically, sought meaningful change. My analysis shows how these two strands of democracy promotion were linked by an associational vision of U.S. democracy in which civil society groups—labor, the private sector, and political parties—could achieve U.S. foreign policy aims of promoting democracy while obscuring the role of the central state.
This model of democracy promotion was broadly appealing, but covered up intense disagreements over, and contradictions within, the model of democracy that the United States was promoting abroad. In the first section, I show how the political and professional debates over
U.S. democracy promotion not only shaped the functions of the NED, but belied its claim to a broad consensus on the importance of replicating a U.S. model of civil society abroad. This associational model was explicitly limited by competing U.S. national security and economic objectives when applied in local contexts, as two cases demonstrate in the following sections. In
Guatemala, while U.S. democratization efforts provided significant support to the election of a moderate civilian leader in 1985, that election was used in turn to justify increasing military aid to defeat the threat of leftist guerrillas. Because U.S. officials supported a policy of co-opting the military into a transitional civilian government—rather than empowering elected officials to increase their oversight of the military—U.S. aid ironically weakened the civilian government that took root following those elections. In Chile, U.S. democracy promotion programs were part
208 of a successful effort to pressure the regime of General Augusto Pinochet to articulate a hastened timetable for transitioning to a civilian government. Because of Pinochet’s intransigence on the issue of democratization, U.S.-supported efforts were perceived by the regime as provocative interventions in Chile’s internal affairs. But even those policies were carefully calibrated to adhere to U.S. goals of keeping the opposition moderate and the post-transition government friendly. U.S. democracy promotion efforts under Reagan contributed power and expertise to the reawakening of liberal politics in Latin America, though tensions between policymakers’ goals of democracy, free markets, and national security often remained unresolved.
Growing Civil Society Abroad
In the previous chapter, I outlined the political basis for the Reagan administration’s adoption of an outwardly bipartisan policy in Central America and throughout the Western
Hemisphere. Bolstered by the Kissinger Commission’s final report in 1984 and seeking to undermine its domestic critics, the administration abandoned its open support for anti-communist dictatorships in Latin America and adopted a focus on promoting political, economic, and social development in the region. The policies now pursued by the administration in Central America and South America were conspicuously similar to those pursued by the Carter administration, which had sought to promote moderate liberalization as a viable alternative to revolutionary
Marxism.8 The key difference was that, instead of human rights and modernization, the Reagan
8 Reagan won the presidency in large part by eviscerating the fecklessness of expert-led programs designed to promote development abroad, and rallied the American Right by vocally championing free markets and small government as the model for growth that would challenge the Soviet model of revolutionary, state-directed political economies. See Benjamin O. Fordham, Building the Cold War Consensus: the Political Economy of U.S. National Security Policy, 1949-51 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998); Robert M. Collins, More: The Politics of Economic Growth in Postwar America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). On modernization theory see Michael E. Latham, Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and “Nation-Building” in the Kennedy Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000); Latham, The Right Kind of Revolution: Modernization, Development, and U.S. Foreign Policy from the Cold War to the Present (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011),
209 administration described its efforts strictly in terms of political democracy and free markets. This focus on democracy was significant. Unlike previous modernization policies, which relied upon experts affiliated with the state to replicate the U.S. model of development abroad, the Reagan administration idealized democratic institutions and civil society groups that existed outside of the state, operating in conjunction with a vibrant private sector. Reagan portrayed these developments as part of a trend of re-democratization that was already underway in the region, and to which the United States was providing support.
Promoting liberal democracy in Latin America meant weaning dictatorships and military regimes from the unconditional support previously promised—and in some cases, delivered—by the Reagan administration in the form of military aid, economic assistance, and access to international loans.9 As noted in the cases of El Salvador and Argentina, U.S. diplomats, mid- level officials, and Latin American political leaders were the key figures in the mix of encouragement and pressure that coaxed regimes to gradually open political space and accept the possibility of free elections. In the years after 1984, however, these bilateral initiatives were augmented by the programmatic efforts of the NED and USAID. Although not directly responsive to the Reagan administration’s strategic directives, these organizations became the operational arms of democracy promotion, providing money, expertise, and collaboration to democratic advocates under transitional regimes like Argentina and Guatemala, as well as in regimes like Chile and Nicaragua that did not consent to such political openings. Precisely because they did not respond directly to administration control, the transnational connections that
NED and USAID programs fostered—along with the collaboration they facilitated and the
especially chapter 4; and Nils Gilman, Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003). 9 For more on the congressional restrictions that prevented Reagan from realizing formal, overt military aid to Guatemala and Chile, see chapter 2of this dissertation.
210 resistance they invited—exemplify the public-private model of democracy promotion that developed in response to Reagan’s grand vision.
The NED drew explicitly on an associational model of democracy in which civil society groups like political parties, unions, trade associations, and interest groups were seen to embody citizens’ interests and serve as a check on the power of the state.10 Not only did the organization incorporate the most standard of American interest groups—the AFL-CIO, the Chamber of
Commerce, and the Republican and Democratic Parties comprised the NED’s “core institutes”— but it anointed those organizations to channel congressionally-appropriated funds to similar interest groups in other countries where democratic transitions were imminent. The associational structure of the NED made it broadly appealing. Neoconservatives saw the overt promotion of democracy as an effective weapon in the “war of ideas.” Internationalist Republicans and
Democrats embraced support for labor diplomacy and the protection of free markets—not to mention earmarked funds for party-building efforts abroad. The Endowment’s emphasis on “civil society” appealed to Reaganites who saw the civil sphere as inherently ant-statist and pro- market. Finally, the NED even appealed to liberal Democratic sensibilities by suggesting that
“official” means of U.S. political development were no longer credible.11 Public-private efforts that sought to build democratic institutions while simultaneously obscuring the power of the state
10 See William J. Novak, “The American Law of Association: The Legal-Political Construction of American Civil Society,” Studies in American Political Development vol. 15 (Fall 2001) and Brian Balogh, The Associational State (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, Forthcoming), especially “Introduction: Toward an Associational Synthesis.” 11 Even NED operators recognized that being too closely aligned with the state would jeopardize the NED’s mission. As the AFL-CIO’s Free Trade Union Institute put it in one memo: “If the [NED] came to be viewed as an agent of the US Government its essential character as a private entity [and] labor’s credibility as an independent non- government group developing its own relationships and making its own decisions about who to help and how to help them would be seriously undermined and the impact hopelessly counterproductive.” Questions and Answers on Labor and the National Endowment for Democracy,” undated internal memo, Box 7, National Endowment for Democracy (hereafter NED) Archives series III.1, Library of Congress (hereafter LOC).
211 were not novel.12 What was novel was that the NED incorporated these efforts in a new bureaucratic body that was expected to achieve these aims abroad.
Unlike Cold War modernizers, who had drawn their legitimacy from close collaboration with the state, democracy promotion agents drew their legitimacy from appearing to be separate from it. Reflecting liberal democratic ideals of both representation and the existence of a separate
“civil sphere,” these values appealed for U.S. policymakers, activists, and academics focusing on civil conflict in Latin America in the mid-1980s. During that time, drawing largely on academic discourses in the social sciences, Latin American specialists became singularly focused on the relationship between democracy, development, and free markets.13 Although political opposition to Reagan’s policies in Central America remained strong throughout his second term, the administration successfully mobilized growing support based on perceptions that the region was democratizing. Democracy promotion through the NED and USAID reinforced basic assumptions about the universal appeal of democracy without undermining the reality of U.S. hegemony.14
12 As Brian Balogh has argued, the associational model of governance has a lengthy history in the United States, obscured only by competing visions among progressive and conservatives that both ignore the collaborative efforts between the private and public sectors. I use Balogh’s associational model in this chapter because it provides such an incisive lens to understand both the design of the NED and its widespread support among liberals, Reagan republicans, and—of course—the constituents of organizations that received NED funding. See Balogh, “Introduction.” My analysis differs in a fundamental way in that APD scholars have been narrowly focused on the way that the state responded to the will of American citizens, whereas the formation of these “core institutes” affected a multi-dimensional interaction between the U.S. state, U.S. interest groups, foreign states, their constituencies, and foreign interest groups. 13 Mark T. Berger “The Reconquest of Central America: Latin American Studies and the Transition to Democracy,” Journal of Latin American Perspectives iss. 92, vol. 24, no. 1 (January 1997). Berger characterizes this liberal discourse as resting on “a commitment to individualism and individual rights, evolutionary social change, reformist politics and pluralist parliamentary government, free trade, and the importance of private property as universal values.” ( p. 8) 14 While radical scholars continued to object to Reagan’s policies, the differences among conservative and liberal Latin American specialists gradually narrowed to the point that both camps privileged political democratization as a significant trend, even as liberal scholars remained more pessimistic about the long-term prospects for democracy. An example of incorporation can be found in neoconservative think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute, which functioned as the intellectual basis for Reagan’s emphasis on democracy promotion and which cooperated closely in devising, implementing, and promoting Reagan’s “democracy projects.” But in less congenial circles as well, the Kissinger commission’s argument that the U.S. needed to support liberal economic reform while pursuing
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In spite of this search for consensus, the NED faced serious criticism in its first year from legislative and public opponents who questioned whether U.S. support for democracy could be apolitical. These criticisms first surfaced in response to a May 1984 episode involving NED activities in Panama. In a cable that was leaked to the press, U.S. Ambassador to Panama James
Briggs objected to NED support for the AFL-CIO’s Free Trade Union Institute (FTUI). Briggs claimed that $20,000 in NED money to the FTUI had allowed the labor group to support the military-backed candidate, Nicolas Ardito Barletta.15 Briggs warned the State Department that it would be “embarrassing” if the FTUI’s support for one candidate became public knowledge. He requested that the program be shut down “before the U.S. Government is further compromised in
Panama.” In spite of NED president Carl Gershman’s assurances that NED funding had not directly supported Barletta’s election, in June Congress slashed the $31 million dollar authorized budget of the NED, funding it only to $18 million. Ironically, these limitations did not target the
FTUI’s budget, but rather the $5 million in annual funds previously earmarked for the
International Republican Institute and National Democratic Institute for International Affairs.
The controversy surrounding the NED that followed the Panama episode reflected more than a simple debate over U.S. interventionism. It was instead a debate over how overt democracy promotion programs that took their direction from the U.S. government could be made to appear as though they were not representative of ideological or parochial political interests. The Endowment’s 1985 annual report described its objective as “to strengthen the processes of democracy, not to influence them in any direction, and to demonstrate a
military objectives in Central America created a model for a bipartisan consensus. See Berger, “Reconquest,” and Mark T. Berger, Under Northern Eyes: Latin American Studies and U.S. Hegemony in the Americas 1898-1990 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), especially chapter 5. The memoir of Howard Wiarda—a conservative Latin America specialist who described himself as having been skeptical of the administration’s pro- democracy bent—is especially illuminating. See Howard J. Wiarda, Conservative Brain Trust: the Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of the American Enterprise Institute (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009). 15 Ben A. Franklin, “Project Democracy Takes Wing,” The New York Times, 29 May 1984, p. B10.
213 commitment to democracy in different countries irrespective of their ideological coloration.”16
What made this attempt to de-ideologize the act of promoting democracy unique was that it did so not by emphasizing the power of civil society groups independently to forge links across borders with foreign groups seeking to challenge authoritarian states. “The Endowment serves as a focal point for pro-democratic efforts and as a magnet for individuals and groups around the world committed to the democratic cause[,]” the 1985 annual report described.17 Other critics were more cynical about the use of U.S. money for these purposes. “If I ever saw a power play by big government, big politics, and big labor,” Senator Lowell Weicker (R-CT) complained to his fellow committee members about the NED, “that is it right there in just one project.”18
The NED argued that its status as a Quasi-Non Governmental Organization (QUANGO) protected it from partisan biases. But there is ample evidence that the NED responded to the administration’s policy objectives, as the Endowment’s early activities in Latin America demonstrate quite obviously. The State Department collaborated closely with the NED to guide the grant-making process towards identified goals. Notwithstanding the complaints of
Ambassador Briggs mentioned above, U.S. diplomats typically fielded and helped to vet grant requests from civil society groups in specific countries for the Endowment. In some cases they worked with contracting organizations—the local chamber of commerce, for example—to assess the effectiveness of a given project.19 The U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, Tom Pickering, wrote to Carl Gershman in 1985 to complain that the NED was not doing enough to engage with
16 NED, Annual Report 1985, p. 4. 17 Ibid. 18 On the legislative compromise that led to these cuts, see United States Senate, Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, State, and Judiciary of the Committee on Appropriations, Markup Session on H.R. 5712, 7 June 1984 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1984), p. 34 for Weicker quote. 19 “The embassy is prepared to work closely with the American Chamber of Commerce to ensure that U.S. money is well spent,” Pickering wrote. Pickering to Gershman, 15 April 1985, Box 7, NED Series II, LOC.
214 democratic groups in El Salvador.20 Ambassadors, state department officials, and even Reagan’s
National Security Council consciously recognized the NED as a way of furthering their strategic goals in Latin America, and worked with the NED to take advantage of those programs.21
NED rhetoric downplayed the extent to which funding for labor, the private sector, and political parties subjected that support to ideological and parochial interests that were not shared throughout the sectors they represented. The NED’s support for labor diplomacy in Latin
America through the AFL-CIO, for example, was extremely contentious throughout the broader labor movement. The AFL-CIO had long pursued a collaborative relationship with the State
Department and the intelligence community in support of non-communist union activity in Latin
America, primarily through the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD). NED funding to the FTUI continued programs that were already underway through the AIFLD, allowing the AFL-CIO to re-brand anti-communist labor programs in terms emphasizing the role of unions and business associations in democratic development.22 The NED championed labor’s role in monitoring trade union rights under authoritarian regimes, supporting labor leaders in exile, providing civic and voter education before elections to union membership.23 But at the same time, rival union groups and factions within AFL-CIO protested that the AIFLD and FTUI
20 In his response, Gershman explained that congressional restrictions on the party institutes were to blame—for it was through the Republican and Democratic parties that Gershman believed the NED would find its natural audience in El Salvador. “When you consider the problem we have had getting Congressional approval of the party institutes (which should have been the natural partners of the Salvadoran parties that applied to the Endowment), the need for patience becomes even more obvious.” Gershman to Pickering, 15 April 1985, Box 7, NED Series II, LOC. See also Howard Wiarda, who claims that his January 1985 trip to Latin America (while with the American Enterprise Institute) was “designed to educate and convince the Central American political and intellectual leaders about the National Endowment for Democracy, development and peace growing out of the Kissinger Commission.” Wiarda, Conservative Brain Trust, p. 143. 21 Specific examples of this dynamic in the cases of Guatemala and Chile are mentioned in the sections below. 22 NED, Annual Report 1984, p. 14. 23 “Whether they be leaders of democratically controlled unions or democrats competing to win membership support in organizations hostile to democracy….Some require additional research and information or technical assistance in their efforts to counter what are often the well-financed activities of unions or other groups that oppose free trade unionism.” Free Trade Union Institute, “Questions and Answers.”
215 were supporting the aims of repressive regimes in Latin America by partnering only with government-friendly unions.24
The NED’s incorporation of private sector groups was equally problematic, not because of any internecine struggles within that sector of associational life, but because of the confused relationship between private sector activity, civil society, and democracy. NED funding to the private sector was granted through the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), a newly-established international wing of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Some CIPE-funded projects were constructive in a policy sense. In 1985 and 1988, for example, NED funding through CIPE went to the Institute for Contemporary Studies, an Argentine think tank that undertook a study on how to incorporate the nation’s “informal sector”—unregulated and untaxed businesses—into the country’s new democratic framework. Most often, however, CIPE grants went to programs that were designed to spread free market ideology through seminars, courses, and training programs. In the parlance of the U.S. Chamber and the NED, these programs focused on the “democratic development and the development of open market systems” by targeting a lack of understanding about the existence of free market and voluntary organization in Latin America.25 In reality, the logical relationship between civil society and the private sector was a tenuous one. Support for expanding the clout of businesses’ meant empowering a sector that had typically been allied with conservative military governments in
Latin America. Free market business organizations were typically ill-disposed to the economic reforms favored by newly-elected democratic regimes.
It was not just the NED that took part in these public-private democracy promotion efforts. USAID’s funding model, developed in the 1960s, had relied on local partnerships in
24 See Andrew Battista, “Unions and Cold War Foreign Policy in the 1980s: The National Labor Committee, the AFL-CIO, and Central America,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 26, No. 3, p. 435. 25 NED, Annual Report 1984, p. 26.
216 order to facilitate economic development and, in the 1970s, the agency had expanded its cooperation with nongovernmental organizations. In the 1980s, responding directly to the influence of Reagan appointees, USAID broadened its mission to include democracy promotion.
The most visible sign of this change was the creation of the Latin American Office of
Democratic Initiatives (ODI) within USAID, which oversaw several major projects related to democracy and human rights in the Western Hemisphere. The first was a “Democracy Promotion
Election Assistance Program,” that sought to capitalize on the agency’s role in the Salvadoran elections and to formally expand AID capabilities to “strengthen the democratic process around the world by improving the quality of elections.26 To study this prospect, AID contracted for
$145,000 with Eddie Mahe Jr., Inc., an electoral consultancy whose namesake had pioneered direct mailing techniques in the Republican Party. The language of the contract was expansive, asking for nothing short of developing “a program of election assistance with the long range goal of strengthening democracy around the world by improving the election process.”27
The second USAID program of note was the “Central America Initiative,” which was an umbrella project that covered all USAID efforts to carry out the recommendations of the bipartisan Kissinger Commission in Central America. Those objectives included “economic stabilization,” “economic transformation, leading to sustained long-term growth,” “broadening the base of economic opportunity and social services,” and, finally, “fostering democratic institutions.” As these goals make clear, USAID explicitly conflated economic reform and democratic institution-building, and often in ways that were contradictory. At the same time that
USAID sought to help Central American countries to “spur private investment, increase employment opportunities, and expand non-traditional exports,” it also sought to increase access
26 USAID Contract # PDC-0086-C-00-6221-00, 30 September, 1986, USAID Development Experience Clearinghouse (hereafter USAID DEC).
217 to social services among disenfranchised citizens.28 U.S. policymakers used democratic transitions in the region to justify expanded developmental aid, but they typically were frustrated by the tradeoffs involved in pressuring partners to rein in public sector spending, meet debt service obligations, and re-orient their economies by expanding exports. 29
The administration brought a diverse array of programs together under the general description of “democracy promotion.” This diversity was healthy in terms of mobilizing many ideological factions to support the spread of American ideals abroad without involving the U.S. state. Of course, this vision was as simplistic as it was misleading. In reality, government money, earmarked for specific interest groups, was now being sent abroad with few controls on how it would be spent. The far more disconcerting issue was a lack of clarity about what that money could or would reasonably be expected to achieve.
The two cases below highlight programs that illustrate how the Reagan administration made meaningful contributions to transitions to civilian rule in Guatemala and Chile. In many instances the grants were small, but their focus on technical aspects of elections and institution- building helped to facilitate an expansion of democracy in pragmatic ways. These programs, however, occurred within the strict limits set by overriding U.S. security and economic objectives. While these objectives often circumscribed the salience of democratic political openings, the ideological appeal of democracy promotion made most policymakers blind to those limits.
28 Marshall Brown, USAID Acting Secretary of Latin American Section, NSC Briefing, “Progress and Problems Carrying Out the Central American Initiative,” 23 May 1985, Box 4,folder “Kissinger Program Inquiries,” RG286, Agency for International Development, USAID/Burfor Lamer/Carib/ Ofc. Of Central Amer. and Panamanian, National Archives II, declassified authority # 988066. 29 Brown, “Progress and Problems.”
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Guatemala: “If You Want Peace and Progress, Vote Like this!”
Although General Efraín Ríos Montt presided over the genocide of an estimated 70,000
Guatemalans from 1982-1983, and is widely seen as the architect of the most brutal period of
Guatemala’s civil war, the military coup that toppled him in August 1983 was a backlash against the perceived failure of his counterinsurgency campaign.30 An evangelical who eschewed ties with the Guatemalan Catholic church in favor of protestant groups, he coupled brutal military repression with liberal social development programs aimed at discouraging indigenous communities from becoming bases of support for leftist guerrillas. By 1983, these programs, along with his consideration of agrarian reform and the introduction of a value-added tax, had alienated conservative segments in the Guatemalan private sector, the Catholic Church, and the military.31 His overthrow was engineered by Brigadier General Óscar Humberto Mejía Víctores, a representative of old-guard military officers who questioned the wisdom of the younger cadre who had supported Ríos Montt’s ascent to power a year earlier. Like his predecessor, Mejía was virulently anti-communist, and his government promised “to struggle by every means to eradicate the Marxist-Leninist subversion threatening our liberty and sovereignty.”32
To Mejía and other conservatives, Ríos Montt’s greatest failure lay in Guatemala’s worsening economic turmoil and international isolation. Commentators at the time portrayed the coup as a distinct turn to the right, a sign that the Guatemalan military wanted to align its priorities openly with U.S. objectives in Central America, dropping its policy of neutrality to support U.S.-backed forces in the Nicaraguan and Salvadoran conflicts. Although Reagan was an
30 Statistic is an estimate from the Center for Justice and Accountability’s website
219 outspoken supporter of Ríos Montt, the administration was also frustrated that, under his leadership, it had been unable to resume overt military assistance because of congressional restrictions stemming from Guatemala’s egregious human rights record and mounting public evidence of genocide.33 Rios Montt’s continuing isolation reflected an apparent decline in U.S. power in the region.34 This impression became even stronger in November 1983 when the murder of several Guatemalan USAID employees prompted George Shultz to recall the U.S. ambassador, Fred Chapin.35
Mejía’s coup presented the Reagan administration with a renewed opportunity to repair its relationship with a vital Central American ally by resuming military assistance and increasing economic aid. In order to realize that opportunity, the Reagan administration had to pressure the regime to make demonstrable progress on human rights. Reagan officials feared that while Ríos
Montt’s strategy of coupling progressive reform with counterinsurgent violence had undercut the social base of the guerrillas, Mejía was now “returning to past discredited practices and unsuccessful methods of fighting the violent left.” The administration offered its congratulations to the new leader, but stood ready to level economic sanctions if the government could not bring political violence under control. It was “imperative,” Reagan’s new national security advisor
Robert McFarlane wrote to Reagan in late 1983 that the United States must, “find ways to work with a moderate government that can defeat the communist guerrillas and neutralize the violent right.”36
33 The administration had successfully exploited loopholes in the congressional restrictions to continue supplying some helicopter spare parts—a practice also carried out under the Carter administration. In 1984 the administration looked to offer $300,000 worth of training to Guatemalan officers, but remained unable to offer military sales and credits. 34 CIA Report, “Guatemala: Reluctant Central American Partner” 23 November 1984, DNSA Guatemala Collection. 35 On this episode, see Oral History Interview with Frederic Chapin (Washington, DC: Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project, 1989), pp. 29-32. 36 McFarlane memo to Reagan, “Memorandum from Secretary of State Shultz Concerning Our Relations with Guatemala,” 8 December 1983, box 90378- Guatemala, Constantine C. Menges Files, RRL.
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For its part, the Mejía government assured foreign partners that it was merely a transitional regime, eager to oversee the resumption of civilian rule. In reality, competing interest groups within the military disagreed over the wisdom of relinquishing power to a civilian president, but overriding concerns about economic failure and the need to secure external aid impelled Mejía to acquiesce to elections.37 Promising that the military would respect the autonomy of the newly-created Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE, Tribunal Supremo Electoral), grant autonomy to universities and unions, and guarantee human rights, the Mejía regime laid out an electoral timetable that would guide the transition to democracy.38 These were superficial and deliberate moves. Mejía and other officers calculated that publicizing its commitment to elections—first for the constituent assembly in 1984 and then for president in the fall of 1985— would be the most effective way of mobilizing international support.
They were correct. As in El Salvador, the Reagan administration seized on the electoral timetable and the promise of elections as justifications for renewing U.S. support.39 Following the constituent assembly elections in 1984, the United States offered $300,000 to Guatemala for military training, the first time such assistance had been granted since 1977. The newly appointed U.S. ambassador, political appointee Alberto Piedra—a conservative professor of economics and a Cuban émigré whose primary backer was Jesse Helms—later remembered that
37 One of the major factors militating against abdicating power was the popularity of military officers, which far outstripped that of civilian politicians during this time. A survey underwritten by the Guatemalan Chamber of Free Enterprise in 1984 found that while 60 percent of respondents considered the military as a group to be held in high esteem, only 16 percent of the respondents replied similarly about politicians. Notably, support for the military was twice as high among poor Guatemalans as wealthy ones. See Cable from Guatemala City to State, “The Limits of Tolerance: The Interaction of Guatemala’s Civilian and Military Structures,” 2 April 1985, DNSA Guatemala Collection; and James Lemoyne, “In Guatemala, the Army’s Retreat May be Good Politics,” The New York Times, 11 April 1985. 38 “International Policy” Excerpts of Guatemalan Foreign Ministry Annual Report, July 1984, Guatemalan Foreign Ministry Archive (Hereafter MRE) Dirección General de Relaciones Internacionales y Bilaterales (DIGRIB) 1984. 39 Shultz to Reagan, “Our Relations with Guatemala,” 30 November 1983, box 90378- Guatemala, White House Staff and Office Files, Constantine C. Menges Files, RRL.
221 his first priority in Guatemala City was to “reestablish free elections in a democratic process.”40
The Guatemalan government used the elections as a benchmark to illustrate its openness, persuading U.S. legislators and international observers that the resumption of activities by political parties was the clearest sign of its commitment to democracy.41
Unlike in El Salvador, however, where U.S. officials had been deeply immersed in the electoral process from the outset, the Reagan administration found itself with preciously little influence to keep the Guatemalan process on track. To some degree this owed to Guatemalan institutions like the TSE, which were generally more competent and better resourced than their counterparts in El Salvador. But it also reflected Guatemala’s intense sense of sovereignty, hardened by years of ostracism over international human rights scrutiny. Even as the State
Department and Defense Department strategy identified elections as the administration’s best hope of getting congressional support for new military assistance and development aid to restructure Guatemala’s lagging economy, Ambassador Piedra and others recognized that they had limited means to influence such an outcome.42
In the absence of such influence, newly-active civil society organizations took on special importance for U.S. policymakers. Trade unions, media outlets, and political parties, given limited freedoms in the final months of Ríos Montt’s rule, seized on the electoral process in 1984 and 1985 as a means of expanding their activities. For U.S. policymakers, democracy promotion efforts nurtured by the NED and USAID became a key link between U.S. strategic interests in the elections and the popular momentum necessary to ensure the transition from authoritarian
40 For quote, see ADST Interview with Alberto Piedra, 26 September 1981 (Washington, DC: ADST Foreign Affairs Oral History Project, 1998), p. 10. Helms’s support for Piedra was mutual. In 1984, Piedra was one of 22 U.S. diplomats who openly supported Helms in his re-election campaign. James Lemoyne, “U.S. Envoy’s Goal: Better Relations with Guatemala,” The New York Times, 3 February 1985, p. A5. 41 Note from Guatemalan Ambassador Eduardo Palomo to U.S. Senator William Proxmire, 28 May 1985 in Box 46, White House Staff and Office Files, Oliver North Files, RRL. 42 See Platt to McFarlane, “Assisting Guatemalan Progress toward Democracy,” 6 June 1985, Box 46, White House Staff and Office Files, Oliver North Files, RRL
222 rule. Although these programs responded to the broad strategic designs of State and Defense department officials, they were generally conceived in narrow terms and focused on spreading of technical knowledge related to the elections.43
Through USAID, the administration provided money and technical assistance to the
Guatemalan TSE, the institutional body responsible for overseeing the election. For this purpose,
USAID granted $322,100 to the Inter-American Center for Election Advising and Promotion
(CAPEL—Centro Interamericano de Asesoría y Promoción Electoral). CAPEL, founded by
Guatemalan lawyer Jorge Mario García Laguardia, was a regional democracy promotion organization that operated under the auspices of the Inter-American Institute for Human Rights, an independent research arm of the OAS Inter-American Court of Human Rights. USAID funding allowed CAPEL to provide training to 400 Guatemalan educators who in turn trained almost 13,000 Guatemalans to serve on voting commissions that monitored polling stations on election day.44 USAID also awarded a grant of $234,000 directly to the TSE to purchase balloting paper from Portals, Inc., a security paper company located in Hawkinsville, Georgia.45
Although the funding was a matter of public record, care was taken to ensure that its sources remained obscure. The USAID director in Guatemala told his associates that he wanted to “avoid
43 NED and USAID programs were referenced specifically in strategic planning efforts of the administration with regard to Guatemala. See Platt to McFarlane, “Assisting Guatemalan Progress.” Among the list of “political means” already underway, the memo included: “Encourage the National Endowment for Democracy to fund projects related to the upcoming elections.” See also draft memo from McFarlane to Shultz, Baker, Weinberger, Block, and Casey, “Assisting Guatemalan Progress Toward Democracy,” 21 June 1985, Box 46, White House Staff and Office Files, Oliver North Files, RRL. In Mcfarlane’s memo to the cabinet secretaries he also mentioned NED and USAID: “The State Department and AID should encourage the National Endowment for Democracy to fund projects related to the upcoming elections. Projects now being considered to print ballot paper and train ballot watchers should be given high priority.” 44 This grant was awarded through AID’s Latin American and Caribbean Department Office of Democratic Initiatives. See Final report, Strategy for Guatemalan Democratic Initiatives, Prepared for USAID/Guatemala by Checchi and Company Consulting, Inc. 20 March, 1989, p. 18. 45 Notably, in 1984, Portals, Inc. retained the services of Gray and Company, a powerhouse lobbying firm with ties to both parties. See Foreign Agent Registration Act Report, 1984, p. 201; and FARA Registrant Statement #3301, 29 February 1984.
223 any hint of U.S. interference in the election process, and assure that our support reinforces the perception that this is truly a Guatemalan initiative.”46
The NED also served as a conduit for U.S. support for the transition to civilian rule. NED funding to Guatemalan civil groups was typically described in terms of bolstering the technical aspects of the election, but in reality NED programs reflected the aims and ideologies of the groups to which it allocated funds. In 1984, for example, the newly-created International
Republican Institute (IRI) used NED backing to support the first national opinion poll of potential Guatemalan voters.47 Conducted in Indian languages as well as Spanish, the survey was then used to “design voter education and mobilization campaigns in preparation for the March
1985 return to civilian government.”48 NED reports on the survey lauded its non-partisan effort to gather data for the Guatemalan TSE and the five major political parties that agreed to participate in the elections. But the survey conspicuously reflected simultaneous efforts by the
Republican Party in the United States to develop data-driven approaches and “microtargeting” techniques for U.S. elections. Through these grants and others, the IRI and its Democratic counterpart, the National Democratic Institute (NDI) engaged in international party-building, developing their election strategies abroad and partnering with like-minded international groups.49
In 1984, the NED also made a discretionary grant of $127,500 to establish the Center for the Public Studies (CEDEP, Centro de Estudios Publicos), a think tank that it portrayed as
“neutral ground” for political discussion that could not otherwise occur under military rule.
46 Memo, Roma Knee to Tom [name not included], “Assistance for Guatemala Election,” no date, [1985], box 8, folder “Recommendation Promote Democracy,” RG286 Agency for International Development, USAID/Burfor Lamer/Carib/ Ofc. Of Central Amer. and Panamanian , National Archives II, declassified authority # 988066. 47 It is worth noting that the IRI went unfunded in 1984 due to the aforementioned congressional suspicions of its international aims. Nonetheless, this grant is outlined—without details or monetary figures—in the NED’s 1984 annual report. See NED, Annual Report 1984, p. 35. 48 Ibid. 49 NED, Annual Report 1985, pp. 31-35.
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Support for CEDEP, NED materials claimed, afforded pro-democratic political groups of all political stripes the space to challenge the state by articulating independent policy recommendations.50 NED funding was administered by Caribbean-Central American Action, a
Washington-based non-profit interest group founded in 1980 to improve private sector ties in the region.51 In 1985, NED awarded a $152,450 grant (again through Caribbean-Central American
Action), this time targeting specific logistical aspects of the elections. That grant supported a
“highly effective nonpartisan get-out-the-vote campaign,” as well as public service announcements targeting different segments of Guatemalan voters.52 In reality, CEDEP had been established by “professionals and businessmen,” who used the forum primarily to oppose the military government’s economic policies.
Labor unions provided another key avenue through which the Reagan administration sought to advance its goal of promoting credible elections. NED support for unions was particularly contentious because, from 1978 to 1983, unions had become targets of state terror under the military governments of Fernando Lucas García and Ríos Montt. Once Latin
America’s most burgeoning labor movement, by 1981 only two percent of the Guatemalan workforce was unionized, according to labor group statistics.53 In the early months of 1983, likely in an effort to attract foreign investment under Reagan’s Caribbean Basin Initiative, the
Ríos Montt regime had declared that it would protect the right of unions to organize, but at the same time it explicitly discouraged unions from participating in politics.54 This decree notwithstanding, Ríos Montt included Juan Francisco Alfaro, organizer of the Confederacion
50 NED, Annual Report 1985, p. 9. 51 On C/CAA see Ann Crittenden, “Caribbean Aid: Troubled Plan,” The New York Times, 30 April 1982, p. D1. 52 See “Comunicado de Prensa,” 17 October 1985 in Guatemalan Supreme Electoral Trubunal, Memoria Oficial 1985, p. 54. 53 Fact Sheet, Guatemala Solidarity Committee, 1 June 1981, Politics and Government 6.1.b,, reel 56, GNIBA. 54 Inforpress Article #539, 29 April 1983, Politics and Government 6.1.b,, reel 56, GNIBA.
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Unidad Sindical de Guatemala (CUSG), a conglomerate of non-Leftist trade unions, in his official Council of State. Ríos Montt was present at the CUSG’s inauguration, and Alfaro explicitly declared to the general that the federation would espouse “faith in government” in conjunction with their right to organize. The U.S. embassy applauded the CUSG’s creation, calling it the “most significant trade union development in years.”55
The CUSG was an outgrowth of Rios Montt’s efforts to incorporate non-communist unions into the state while tamping down on broader labor activity. In the aftermath of the Mejía coup, the CUSG’s activities became more oppositional in the sense that they directly supported the presidential elections in 1985. The first NED grant, awarded in 1984 through the FTUI, allowed CUSG leaders to travel through the country and educate local leaders in preparation for the constituent assembly election process.56 In1985, a $100,000 grant from the NED helped
CUSG to expand its voter education and mobilization efforts—education courses, seminars, and mobilization drives aimed at union members—that resulted in an estimated 80 percent of organized workers participating in those elections.57 By the middle of 1985, CUSG claimed to have the largest membership of all unions in Guatemala—somewhere between 150,000 and
200,000 members—and to be central to the rejuvenated union movement.58
Other unions, however, were suspicious of the CUSG’s proximity to the regime and, particularly, U.S. funding; they characterized the CUSG as “pro-management” and a “tool of imperialism.”59 One labor pamphlet, titled “Labor between Two Fires” explicitly decried the
55 Tom Barry and Deb Preusch, AIFLD in Latin America: Agents as Organizers (Albuquerque, NM: Resource Center, 1990) p. 22. 56 NED, Annual Report 1984, p. 18. 57 Ibid., p. 8. 58 On figures, see FTUI internal memo, Eugenia Kemble to Samuel Haddad, “COHA Assertions Regarding the CUSG in Guatemala,” 15 January 1985, box 11, NED series III.1, LOC. 59 Al Weinrub and William Bollinger, The AFL-CIO in Central America (Oakland, CA: Labor Network on Central America, 1987); Henry J. Frundt, Refreshing Pauses: Coca Cola and Human Rights in Guatemala (New York: Praeger, 1987), p. 177-78.
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CUSG’s political focus as a thinly-veiled attempt to create an establishment labor party. “The leadership of the CUSG are showing interest in creating a political party with an electoral base of laborers,” the pamphlet accused, “where the leaders use the movement to boost their positions in government without solving the workers’ problems—substituting the interests of political parties for those of the workers.”60 They openly questioned whether the CUSG had as many members as it claimed, a criticism that made its way into U.S. debates over funding for labor unions abroad.
On June 20, 1984, Rep. Richard Ottinger (D-N.Y.) read into the U.S. Congressional Record a memo from the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) which alleged that the CUSG was a government-supported union with links to the Christian Democratic Party and with weak rank- and-file support.61 The FTUI worked to counter perceptions that U.S. funding was merely propping up a government union. An internal memo in the NED archives from 1983 indicates that the FTUI responded to criticisms by painting other major Guatemalan union councils as
Marxist fronts.62
After 1985, the NED no longer provided funds to the CUSG, nor to any FTUI programs specifically designed to develop free labor in Guatemala. However, the NED did continue funding regional FTUI programs that operated in Guatemala, including the Inter-American
Committee on Human and Trade Union Rights—an AFL-CIO supported watchdog organization—as well as broad grants that supported “political education committees” in labor federations in Guatemala.63 The activities of these committees are not entirely clear from the
60 CNUS Pamphlet “Between Two Fires,” August 1986, Politics and Government 6.2.2.c, reel 57, GNIBA. 61 COHA Memo, “The National Endowment for Democracy: Opening Pandora’s Box,” as introduced by Hon. Richard L. Ottinger, Congressional Record, 10 June 1984 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1984), pp. 17617-18. 62 Kemble to Haddad, “COHA Assertions.” 63 The grants referenced here include $229,000 in FY 1987 funding for labor federations in Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, and the Dominican Republic; a $197,500 FY 1988 grant to create “nonpartisan committees on political education of democratic labor federations in Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, and Central America”; and a separate FY 1988 grant of $70,000 to “orient trade unionists in Latin America and the Caribbean to modern political
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NED’s own records, but one can surmise that they continued the FTUI’s earlier emphasis on drumming up labor support for the electoral process.
Foreign-supported programs designed to promote civilian democracy culminated with the presidential election, which took place in two rounds in November and December 1985. The election pitted Center-Left Christian Democrat Vinicio Cerezo against Centrist Jorge Carpio
Nicolle of the Civic National Union. The elections were a major event in Guatemalan civic life.
In the run up to the elections, the TSE ran illustrated instructions for voters in major newspapers underneath the headline “Si Quieres Paz y Progreso ¡Vota Asi!” (If you want peace and progress,
Vote Like This!).64 CEDEP, the NED-funded think tank, ran similar ads with a slogan that read
“Your vote is the expression of a free people.”65 The head of CAPEL, the USAID-supported organization that had trained poll watchers, called the election “the first step in a long prolonged effort of change in the distribution of wealth and the structure of power.”66 On the day of the final vote, the centrist newspaper El Gráfico trumpeted: “Today, Guatemala decides its destiny.”67
Cerezo won the vote handily, ushering in only the fourth democratically-elected administration in Guatemala’s previous half century.68 The TSE noted significant voter participation of 69.2 percent in the first round and 65.3 percent in the runoff—numbers that it lauded, even though they fell short of publicly stated expectations.69 In its official historical document of the elections, the TSE suggested that international support had given the event its ideologies, familiarize them with economic trends, and provide materials for rank-and-file education programs.” See NED, Annual Report 1987 and Annual Report 1988. 64 See advertisement in El Gráfico, 2 November 1985, Hemeroteca Nacional de Guatemala (hereafter Hemeroteca). 65 See advertisement in El Gráfico, 1 November 1985, Hemeroteca. 66 Felix Loarca, “‘El Iniciodel Cambio,” El Gráfico, 2 November 1985, Hemeroteca. 67 El Gráfico (Guatemala City), 8 December 1985, Hemeroteca. 68 Stephen Kinzer, “Guatemala Democrats of the Past Meet the Future,” 12 December 1985, The New York Times, p. A2. 69 For a pessimistic assessment of this “abstentionism,” see Ricardo Gatica Trejo, “Tranquilas las Eleccciones,” El Gráfico (Guatemala City), 8 December 1985, Hemeroteca.
228 greatest salience: “the most notable development consists of the progressive internationalization of democracy,” the report read. The democratic system “is shifting from the sovereignty of each nation to the broader scope of a community of nations, whether in the regional or continental sense.”70
Cerezo’s status as Guatemala’s first freely elected civilian president in almost 20 years was central to his domestic and international policies. At home, he took actions meant to signify a commitment to using presidential power to realize social justice, expand civilian authority, and roll back the power of conservative interests. In February 1985, Cerezo ordered security officials to surround and overtake the Technical Investigations Division—the country’s most feared secret policy organization. After detaining all of the unit’s officers and confiscating their weapons,
Cerezo dissolved the agency. In September, he announced a plan to repossess unused government land and distribute it among the nation’s poorest farmers. This rural development program—a direct contradiction of his campaign promise not to pursue land reform—was greeted with ambivalent acceptance on the part of the country’s rich.71 While the threat of a coup remained serious, Mejía Victores reassured Guatemalans that the army would take its orders from the civilian government. “The military doesn’t want to return for a coup,” the general declared.72
In foreign affairs as well, much like Alfonsin had done two years earlier in Argentina,
Cerezo tried to strike an independent approach to regional affairs while using shared democratic ideals as the basis for cooperation with the United States. Guatemala would pursue “active neutrality” in Central America, Cerezo announced, engaging as an honest broker with all of its
Central American partners, including Nicaragua. Correctly perceiving that this would frustrate
70 TSE, Memoria, p. 3. 71 Stephen Kinzer, “Walking the Tightrope in Guatemala,” The New York Times, 31 August 1986, p. A1. 72 “Ejército Obedecerá a Cerezo,” El Gráfico (Guatemala City), 11 December 1985, p. 5, Hemeroteca.
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U.S. officials who desperately wanted Guatemala’s support in the expanding Contra war, Cerezo told Vice President George Bush in a February 1986 meeting, “we are confident that the democracies of the world will support our democracy.”73 In private conversations with the State
Department, Cerezo stressed that the military aid so important to U.S. officials would actually be a liability for him. Cerezo preferred to “use the economic aspects of security assistance for
Guatemala’s benefit in the near future,” he told U.S. counterparts, but to delay military assistance so that he could use it as an incentive to compel the military to respect the autonomy of the civilian government. Publicly, Cerezo downplayed his reliance on the United States: “I came to solicit support, understanding, and tolerance for the new democracy,” he told an audience in
Washington.74 When Cerezo named Oscar Padilla-Vidaurre to be the new ambassador to the
United States, the notoriously oppositionist COHA heralded the pick as a “gifted choice.” 75
In spite of Cerezo’s bold moves, civilian governance was limited by the persistent institutional power of the military and elite conservative interests who opposed his policies designed to broaden the social base. Indeed, the military’s acquiescence to civilian authority owed largely to the designs of some officers—primarily younger, progressive officers—who perceived the need to solidify the army’s power within a rapidly evolving democratic landscape.
This military “project,” as one author describes it, was facilitated by the rapidly diminishing prospects of victory for Guatemalan armed Left.76 Although the most powerful guerrilla group,
73 White House Memo., “Meeting Between Vice President Bush and President-elect Vinicio Cerezo of Guatemala,” 14 January 1986, Box 91176- Guatemala, White House Staff and Office Files, Latin American Affairs Directorate, NSC, RRL. 74 El Gráfico (Guatemala City), 18 December 1985, Hemeroteca. 75 See also COHA Press Release, “Oscar Padilla-Vidaurre to be New Guatemalan Ambassador to U.S.” 13 August 1986, Dirección General de Relaciones Internacionales y Bilaterales (DIGRIB) 1986, Archive of the Guatemalan Foreign Ministry (hereafter Guatemala MRE). 76 Jennifer Schirmer, The Guatemalan Military project: A Violence Called Democracy (Philadelphia: the University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), pp. 185-204. This paragraph draws heavily on Schirmer’s account, which is based on exclusive interviews with military and civilian officials including Vinicio Cerezo. Schirmer explicitly implicates Cerezo in the “project” by demonstrating ways that he made decisions that militarized the presidency under
230 the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG, Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional
Guatemalteca) maintained a sizable fighting force, the military’s counterinsurgency programs in
1982-1983 had succeeded in eliminating the Left’s potential base of support in the indigenous communities. With entire villages decimated, populations displaced, and many indigenous citizens co-opted into military-governed “development poles,” the threat of popular revolution in the Guatemalan highlands had been effectively nullified. This contributed to a sense among reform-minded military officers that counterinsurgency should proceed to a new phase in which suppression of the Left was brought under professional and civilian control.77 Cerezo and the
Christian Democratic Party were themselves supporters of this project, which sought to institutionalize—rather than oppose—the repressive power of the military and security forces.
At the same time, support for Cerezo’s regime was far from unanimous within the military, and while Cerezo sought to broaden the scope of Guatemalan democracy, the military curbed many of his key initiatives. Most notably, when Cerezo promised to set up a commission to investigate the role of the military in cases of missing and killed citizens, military pressure forced him to guarantee that no officers would be prosecuted for past crimes.78 Through the end of Cerezo’s term, the military continually maintained its impunity for human rights violations by stressing the need for ongoing counterinsurgency operations. Similar to Duarte in El Salvador,
Cerezo’s efforts to rein in the military were limited to “professionalizing” the armed forces, bringing them under civilian control rather than holding them accountable for the use of political democratic rule. Nonetheless, her narrative also eloquently demonstrates that factions within the military viewed Cerezo as a threat to their traditional power base. 77 The roots of these developments dated to the 1970s, when Ríos Montt and other reform-minded military leaders had sought to align themselves with the social and economic programs of the Christian Democratic Party (CDP). In spite of being a prime target of the military’s repression in the 1970s and early 1980s, the CDP envisioned an institutional role for the military in an eventual liberal democratic state, and worked to build alliances with military officers who supported their vision of broad based economic and social reforms undergirded by anti-communism. See Schirmer, Military Project, pp. 202-204 78 Robert J. McCartney, “Guatemala to Air Issue of Missing; Panel Will Probe Cases But Prosecution of Officers Barred,” The Washington Post, 25 February 1986, p. A9.
231 violence as the moderate and Leftist opposition demanded. Cerezo’s efforts appealed to the small group of officers who perceived the political importance of playing by democratic rules. Within the high command, however, Cerezo encountered firm resistance from officers who saw their deference as merely a superficial necessity. Ministry of Defense officials flouted presidential orders and constitutional laws, and refused orders to retire officers known to be corrupt and ineffective.79 Ambassador Padilla-Vidaurre, a close friend of Cerezo, was outspoken about the new president’s lack of power vis-à-vis the military, telling an audience in Washington that
Cerezo “is still not free to operate and must whisper in his own office.”80
U.S. policy designed to bolster bilateral military and economic ties with Guatemala exacerbated the constraints on Cerezo’s democratic governance. Whereas Cerezo preferred to withhold security assistance, in order to use it as a lever with the military, the State and Defense
Departments recommended reactivating it quickly to “reward the Guatemalan military for facilitating and defending democratic elections and ensure U.S. leverage.”81 U.S. military officials met privately with the Guatemalan military early in 1986 and warned that Cerezo’s policy of “active neutrality” in Central America might be a further impediment to U.S. funding.
An enraged Cerezo voiced his displeasure to Ambassador Piedra over this episode. Piedra promised that such military-to-military diplomacy would not happen again, but U.S. officials continued to look for ways to develop Guatemala’s security potential.82 In November 1986, the
79 Cable Guatemala City to State, “Friction in the GT High Command,” 24 April 1986, DNSA Guatemala Collection. 80 See Guatemalan embassy report on a Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, SAIS event, DIGRIB 1986, Guatemala MRE. 81 Memo from Allen Holmes and Elliott Abrams, “Reviving the US-Guatemalan Bilateral Security Relationship,” December 30 1985, DNSA Guatemala. 82 Edward Cody, “Guatemala's Unspoken Bargain: Civilian Rulers Block Prosecution of Rights Abuses by Military” The Washington Post, 3 July 1986, p. A26.
232 military independently voiced its desire for $60 million in U.S. aid—far more than the $10 million limited request that Cerezo favored.83
The installation of a democratic regime and the apparent professionalization of security forces transformed the way that U.S. officials perceived and described political violence in
Guatemala. Rates of violence dropped under Cerezo, but acts of terror perpetrated by the military and security forces continued to be a major problem. The Guatemalan government estimated 700 political murders in the six months following Cerezo’s inauguration.84 What were once ignored or excused by Reagan officials as regrettable excesses by the Left and Right locked in violent civil war were now diagnosed as signs of “corruption in state institutions” that nominally answered to civilian leadership. “The security forces and paramilitary groups are responsible for most kidnappings,” one State Department memo admitted in 1986. While “our monitoring of human rights is good,” the report concluded, “we have failed in the past to adequately grasp the magnitude of the problem.”85 In 1985 and 1986, the administration attempted to formalize this approach through a region-wide counterterrorism program that would aim to further professionalize security forces in several countries including Guatemala.86
The Reagan administration treated Cerezo’s election as a historic achievement and, indeed, it had been. The swell of civic activity that preceded the election and forestalled the possibility of yet another military coup, coupled with Cerezo’s energetic approach to democratic governance, were signs that civilian leadership might eventually “chip away” at the entrenched interests of military and business elites. Individual programs supported by USAID and the NED
83 Joanne Omang, “Guatemalan general Favors More Aid,” 17 November 1986, The Washington Post, p. A17. 84 Edward Cody, “Killings Still Haunt Guatemala: Up to 700 Murdered Since mid-January,” The Washington Post, 6 July 1986, p. A17. 85 State Department Memo, “Guatemala’s Disappeared 1977-86,” 28 March 1986, DNSA Guatemala Collection. 86 James Lemoyne, “Latin American Police Get Some Pointers from Washington,” The New York Times, 16 February 1986, p. A4.
233 had been constructive in aiding that change, fostering the development of a civil society sphere where there had been none before. To Reagan, the elections represented another powerful example that democracy could counteract the appeal of revolutionary, one-party states like
Nicaragua. “The peaceful and orderly elections in Guatemala were a model of the democratic process at work,” Reagan wrote to Cerezo, “when given a free choice, the people always choose freedom over dictatorship.”87 When Reagan met Cerezo in October 1987, he gifted him a copy of the Federalist in Spanish. “May the wisdom of the framers…help you in your endeavor in
Central America,” he inscribed inside the book’s cover.88
This congenial view of Guatemalan democracy ignored the strict limitations imposed on the new regime not only by internal constraints but by U.S. policy demands as well. When
Cerezo visited Washington to discuss Central America in 1987, Reagan officials complained privately that Guatemala’s neutral stance in the region was the result of Mexican “pro-Sandinista influence.”89 They exerted pressure on Cerezo to compel the Sandinistas to hold democratic elections in Nicaragua. Late in 1987, Cerezo still faced a massive debt left behind by the outgoing military government. He looked in vain to the United States for relief, but policymakers instead pressured Cerezo to increase taxes and shrink public spending, while continuing to fight leftist guerrillas. These were difficult, if not impossible, tradeoffs for a newly elected leader seeking a broad democratic mandate. Democracy promotion had been a practical success, but the post-election results belied the ideological victory that Reagan and his supporters wanted to claim.
87 Reagan to Cerezo, 9 April 1986, Box 91176- Guatemala, White House Staff and Office Files, Latin American Affairs Directorate, NSC, RRL. 88 Copy of La Federalista book front matter, Box 92385: Guatemala Folders, White House Staff and Office Files, NSC Latin American Affairs Directorate, 1983-1989, RRL 89 Frank Carlucci memo to Reagan, “Meeting with the National Security Council,” 4 May 1987, box 91304, White House Staff and Office Files, Exec Sec NSC, Meeting Files, RRL.
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The shortcomings were most obvious to the beneficiaries of U.S. support. After 1987, the CUSG—the free labor union that had relied on the FTUI in its formative years to get out the vote—became a leading critic of the Cerezo regime’s austerity measures.90 In 1988, the CUSG joined with openly leftist unions in a general strike. Tellingly, Juan Francisco Alfaro acknowledged that CUSG leaders had “learned the importance of moving in a political direction” from U.S.-supported labor education programs. But, he insisted, “[t]he money which the North
Americans have given us has never damaged our dignity or our sovereignty…the rules of the game which we established with the Yankee workers is based on the independence of thought and action of our Confederation to build a movement at the service of both Guatemala and
Democracy.”91
Chile: Odd Man Out?
In the case of Chile U.S. democracy promotion efforts were more contentious because they occurred in the context of steadily declining relations between the Reagan administration and Pinochet after 1984. Even though Reagan officials remained supportive of Chile’s efforts to eradicate the communist Left, Pinochet’s reintroduction of the state of siege in 1984, his continuing restrictions on political and civic activity, and his failure to make concrete steps towards a democratic transition led to a stark reversal in the Reagan administration’s embrace of its erstwhile ally. While the United States agreed to vote against a UN human rights resolution condemning Chile for human rights violations in December 1984, the State Department told the
90 “Trade Union Revitalization with Tendencies Toward Modernizing the Economic System” 3 March 1986, Central American New Agency, Politics and Government 6.1.c, reel 56, GNIBA. 91 Frundt, Refreshing Pauses, p. 296.
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Chilean ambassador that it expected Chile to expedite the lifting of the state of siege and to swiftly move the political transition forward.92
The State Department considered the transition to democracy as inevitable, and believed that U.S. policy should work to ensure that this transition produce a democratic government amenable to U.S. interests. Pinochet’s refusal to take concrete steps to start the transition— constitutionally mandated to take place in 1989—was only making it more difficult for the moderate opposition to present a reasonable alternative to Chilean voters. State Department officials worried that any further setbacks would only increase the power and appeal of the Left.
“The key to protecting long-term U.S. interests is strengthening the disorganized moderates, specifically weaning them away from the radical left” Assistant Secretary of State for inter-
American affairs Tony Motley wrote to another official in late 1984.93 U.S. support for moderate groups required tradeoffs. Motley himself was reluctant to pressure a friendly country on issues of human rights, and to intervene in Chileans’ internal affairs. In a series of meetings with
Chilean officials in Santiago during February 1985, Motley conveyed that the United States was becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack of clarity on the timetable for the transition to democracy.94 But upon returning to the United States, Motley told reporters that it would be inappropriate for a “gringo” to “muscle” Pinochet into taking concrete steps.95
In spite of Motley’s trepidations, U.S. interests in jumpstarting the transition process led officials to engage with the Chilean opposition, albeit tentatively at first. In early 1985, that opposition was growing stronger, just as Pinochet’s popularity was suffering in response to his
92 State Department briefing memo, James Michel to Mr. Armacost, “Your Meeting with Chilean Ambassador Errazuriz,” 7 December 1984, DNSA Chile Collection. 93 State Department Memo, Motley to Deputy Secretary, “U.S. Policy toward Chile,” 20 December 1984, DNSA Chile Collection. 94 Cable Santiago to State, “Assistant Secretary Motley Meeting with Foreign Minister Del Valle feb 18,” 21 February 1985, DNSA Chile Collection. 95 Howard Kurtz, “U.S. Official Receives Little Assurance from Chile's Pinochet,” The Washington Post, 2 February 1985, p. A12.
236 tightening political controls. While Pinochet insisted that Chileans must respect the transition plan laid out in the 1980 constitution, a CIA analysis reported that a majority of the population believed that the general should step down before 1989. In early 1985 Motley met with leaders of the Democratic Alliance (AD, Alianza Democratica) and the Christian Democrats, who urged
“U.S. pressure but not interference to get Pinochet to the negotiating table.” The spokesman for the AD, Gabriel Valdes, stressed to Motley that the AD represented more than seventy percent of all Chileans and controlled all the major professional associations, except the lawyers.96 Motley urged the AD to press on, but he also encouraged the opposition base its negotiations on moderate principles: respect for private property, no accommodation with Communists, and accepting the 1980 constitution as the starting point for talks with the government. These were the core ideas that Motley and Reagan’s State Department believed would define a moderate political force for democracy in Chile.
During 1985, the U.S.-Chilean relationship became increasingly confrontational, a dynamic that was shaped by two key personnel changes. First, Elliott Abrams was appointed as assistant secretary of state for inter-American Affairs, replacing Motley. Although Motley had proven that he was no Reaganite ideologue, he also had demonstrated over time that he was more content to manage bilateral relationships with Latin American authoritarian governments than to apply meaningful pressure in behalf of human rights. Abrams was cut from a different cloth.
Intensely focused on Reagan’s Central America policy in Nicaragua and El Salvador, Abrams looked disdainfully upon Pinochet’s intransigence. As a firm believer that democracy was the key to the administration’s claims for human rights improvements throughout the hemisphere,
Abrams had no qualms about reminding Chilean counterparts that they were out of step with
96 Cable Santiago to State, “Ambassador Motley’s Meeting with the Democratic Alliance,” 2 February 1985, DNSA Chile Collection.
237 broader trends. Second, in late 1985, Harry Barnes replaced the conservative James Theberge as the U.S. ambassador in Santiago. A career diplomat savvy in handling human rights issues,
Barnes arrived ready to establish closer links with the Chilean opposition. The Chilean embassy noted that Barnes had broader support in the U.S. congress than any other U.S. ambassador before him.97
Pinochet’s stubborn unwillingness to make visible progress on democratization pushed
U.S. policymakers to take more confrontational measures. In February 1985, ignoring U.S. complaints, Pinochet extended the government-imposed state of siege and carried out several high profile arrests of union and political leaders. In response, the United States abstained from a
$130 million Industrial Recovery Program loan from the Inter-American Development Bank and, weeks later, again abstained from voting on an $11 billion loan from the World Bank. Although symbolic, Abrams publicly declared that the abstentions were meant to express dissatisfaction with Pinochet. In the State Department’s annual report on human rights practices, the administration leveled especially harsh criticism against Chile. Upon releasing the report,
Abrams called Chile “the biggest disappointment,” for seeing political freedoms regress while other regional allies moved toward democracy.98
When several angry Republican legislators voiced their displeasure to the State
Department over the denial of the inter-American development bank loan, Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs Edward Fox took the opportunity to explain that the administration’s policies towards Chile were on a new track. “The objective of the Administration,” he wrote to members of Congress on behalf of George Shultz, “is to promote the restoration of democracy by
97 Oficio Secreto Recibido (Secret Received Memo) # 65, 1 November 1985, Central Archive of the Chilean Foreign Ministry (Hereafter Chile RREE). 98 Bernard Gwertzman, “A Rights Review Points to Gains in the Latin Region,” The New York Times, 14 February 1985, p. A1.
238 encouraging, through active diplomatic efforts, pro-transition forces in the Government and pro- negotiation forces in the opposition to reach a consensus on a democratic transition timetable.”
Fox explained to the Republicans that Chile’s failure to democratize put it out of step with the broader trends in the hemisphere. Fox continued: “The Chilean government’s position is that it must first defeat the communist-backed terrorists, then begin the transition process. We disagree.
It has been our experience that successful transitions to democracy are those where the two issues of security and democracy are addressed simultaneously.”99
When the Chilean embassy surreptitiously obtained a copy of the letter, the ambassador wrote to the foreign ministry that the Reagan administration wanted
to influence the course of events in Chile through some attitudes and demonstrations, but cautiously, and while maintaining open and friendly channels with all sectors, especially with the Chilean government.100
The ambassador’s comments were astute. The administration sought to proceed carefully. It knew that intervening too openly in Chilean affairs would offend not only Pinochet but the opposition as well. The plan for bringing Pinochet to the negotiating table had to be developed by the Chileans themselves; the United States meanwhile could try to hold the government accountable for its lack of adhesion to the democratic transition. “The United States has lost its trust in the government of the Armed forces,” the Chilean ambassador solemnly judged.101
Once again, NED programs provided a vehicle to pursue U.S. policy goals where local realities limited direct U.S. influence. Linkages between transnational civil society organizations and local Chilean groups that opposed the Pinochet regime allowed the United States to maintain
99 Letter from Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs J. Edward Fox to Senators Laxalt, Helms, Hawkins, Symms, Thurmond, McClure, East, and Denton, as copied in Oficio Secreto Recibido # 19, 2 April 1985, Chile RREE. 100 Ibid. 101 Oficio Secreto Recibido #19.
239 the appearance of non-intervention. The Chilean embassy in Washington had paid close attention to the NED’s creation, although it did not initially see the Endowment as controversial. In memos to the foreign ministry, the Chilean ambassador had portrayed the NED as an election year ploy for Reagan to soften his policies in Central America. “Once again,” the ambassador wrote when the NED was inaugurated in 1984, “the president is reconciling foreign policy needs and electoral objectives.”102
Those assessments changed, however, as the Chilean foreign ministry began to see NED programs as part of a broader U.S. effort to pressure Pinochet towards democratization. Unlike in
Guatemala, the NED was more aggressive in funding party-building initiatives by the
Republican and Democratic parties. In 1985, NDI hosted a meeting of the Chilean democratic opposition in Washington. The Chilean embassy took special note of this meeting, warning the foreign ministry that the agenda of the conference included analyzing the state of siege in Chile and searching for ways to mobilize support for the opposition parties in Chile.103 Although the embassy report claimed that conference attendance was far below what the organizers planned, it did note that the NDI arranged for opposition leaders to meet privately with State Department officials, including Elliott Abrams.104 More bombastically, the NED claimed in its 1985 annual report that this NDI conference led directly to the creation of the National Accord for a Full
Transition to Democracy (National Accord) and marked “the first official collaboration of the entire range of democratic opposition groups within the country.”105
102 Oficio Reservado Recibido (Classified Received Memo) #56, 24 February 1983, Chile RREE. 103 Oficio Secreto Recibido #16, 25 March 1985, Chile RREE. 104 Oficio Reservado Recibido #196, 6 June 1985, Chile RREE. 105 NED, Annual Report 1985, p. 16. The U.S. embassy in Chile contradicted this claim when conservative politician and Pinochet lawyer Pablo Rodriguez told a Chilean magazine that the Accord was a creation of the U.S. state department. Charge d’Affairs George Jones issued a statement that claimed the United States had “nothing to do” with the signing of the Accord. See “U.S. Official Refutes Statements on Accord’s Origin,” Radio Chilena (Santiago), 22 October 195, translated by Foreign Broadcast Information Service, VI. 23 October 1985.
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Regardless of the veracity of the NED’s claim, the creation of the National Accord in
Santiago in August 1985 electrified the Chilean opposition and gratified its U.S. supporters as well. Brokered by the Chilean Catholic Church, the National Accord brought together a wide spectrum of Chile’s political groups—from the socialist Left to the moderate Right—behind a coherent plan for peaceful transition to civilian rule. The plan called for direct presidential elections to be held instead of the 1989 yes-no plebiscite, a more independent legislative body, and freedom to amend the 1980 constitution. It also included guarantees for private property and workers’ rights, as well as national security—a plank meant to placate the Right and military officials. Pinochet rejected the proposal, but in Washington, the accord was celebrated.106 The
Chilean ambassador, Hernán Felipe Errázuriz, cabled his foreign minister that the National
Accord was creating “an unfortunate coincidence between liberals and conservatives, between
Republicans and Democrats on the need to ‘send a message’” that Pinochet oversee a prompt democratic transition.107 “There is ample consensus in all U.S. sectors that [the National
Accord] is reasonable and moderate,” Errazuriz concluded.108
Pinochet wasted no time attempting to undermine the National Accord, arguing to domestic and foreign audiences that the opposition was fractured, and that the regime was not as intransigent as it appeared.109 The Chilean embassy in Washington continued to stress to U.S. officials that the threat posed by Marxist groups within the country, as well as by the Soviet
Union, was dire.110 These were largely political tactics meant to exploit U.S. national security fears. To Pinochet, the greatest danger of the accord was that it raised the possibility of an
106 “Chile Rejects Opposition’s Call, The Washington Post, 4 September 1985, p. A29. 107 Oficio Secreto Recibido #60, 9 October 1985, Chile RREE. 108 Oficio Secreto Recibido #58, 23 September 1985, Chile RREE. 109 Ibid. 110 See Chilean Ambassador Hernán Felipe Errázuriz note to Adm. John Poindexter, 12 December 1985, Box 33- Chile, White House Office of Records Management Subject File, Countries, RRL. That note read: “The absence of military cooperation between our two countries, due to congressional attitudes, works to the advantage of the Soviets.”
241 alliance between Christian Democrats and “Marxists”—a term he used to group together moderate socialists and communists alike. But the threat of leftist violence was not imaginary.
Communists and the socialist Left, feeling spurned by the National Accord’s moderate stance on armed protest, as well as its proximity to U.S. officials, began to develop plans to seize the
“revolutionary moment.” In 1986, the discovery of a major arms cache belonging to the Manuel
Rodríguez Patriotic Front (FPMR, Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez) seemed to substantiate
Pinochet’s claims.111
In addition to support for party organizations, NED funding in Chile featured support for labor unions opposed to the regime. As in Guatemala, funding through the Free Trade Union
Institute—more than $800,000 from 1984 to 1987—was funneled to the Democratic Workers
Union (CDT, Centro Democratico Trabajadores), a centrist labor union in Santiago. Unlike the
Guatemalan case, where aiding a centrist union amounted to accommodation with the military regime, Pinochet’s thorough repression of labor activity had turned almost all labor officials into critics of the government.112 Since Pinochet had outlawed the collection of union dues, funding the CDT was an inherently provocative act. Not only did FTUI funding allow the CDT to increase membership to roughly 130,000 members by 1987, but it permitted the CDT to aid
Chilean labor leaders who Pinochet exiled internally. Support for labor also benefitted other, more explicitly political objectives. In 1985, for example, the CDT launched a nationwide petition campaign to build support among rank-and-file unionists for the National Accord.113
Not surprisingly, Chilean authorities opposed these initiatives. In a 1985 cable, the
Chilean labor attaché in Washington complained to the foreign ministry that the AIFLD was
111 Pamela Constable and Arturo Valenzuela, A Nation of Enemies: Chile Under Pinochet (New York: W.W. Norton, 1991), p. 293. 112 Constable and Valenzuela, A Nation of Enemies, p. 228. 113 NED, Annual Report 1985, pp. 13-14.
242 fomenting opposition to the Chilean government. “I believe that it is not advisable to have any contact with anybody from the AIFLD,” he warned, because their directors in Latin America
“play the role of spies.”114 In 1986, the Chilean ambassador in Washington cabled a more balanced and incisive assessment about the role of U.S. labor diplomacy: “The growing importance assigned by the U.S. to linking with labor leaders suggests an alternative channel to be used by parties and popular movements of the opposition with the same effect: the creation of an opposition consensus that marginalizes Marxists.” The problem, he judged, was that U.S. policies were naïve about “the political and party-based manipulation of the unions and the
Marxist infiltration of the unions as much as the parties.”115 Thus, while critics of the AFL-CIO criticized the organization’s anti-communist orientation, Chilean officials suggested that the organization was itself being duped by leftists.
Other NED programs in Chile sought to nurture the development of an independent civil sector, which had become the primary base for critics of the regime in the absence of politics. A
1986 NED grant of $198,000 to the James F. Byrne Center at the University of South Carolina allowed the center to partner with two prominent Chilean think tanks to perform an academic study of the transition. The study, performed by the Latin American Faculty of the Social
Sciences (FLACSO, Facultad Latinomericana de Ciencias Sociales) and the Center for Public
Studies (CEP, Centro de Estudios Publicos), was designed to formulate “a more realistic and consensual set of political strategies for a transition to democracy.”116 The following year, the groups received a second grant of $154,000 to disseminate the study in an attempt to amplify public opinions before the plebiscite.
114 Oficio Reservado Recibido #235, 5 July 1985, Chile RREE. 115 Oficio Secreto Recibido #61, 13 November 1986, Chile RREE. 116 NED, Annual Report 1986, p. 31-32.
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Chilean diplomats viewed these initiatives as obstacles to constructive dialogue. Not only did these programs heighten pressure on Pinochet to advance the democratic timetable, but they reflected a broader ideological change in the way the two allies related to one another. Whereas
Reagan in 1981 had been eager to embrace the dictator and ignored the regime’s human rights abuses, now his administration was championing “human rights” and chastising the regime for its failure to democratize on American terms. In March 1986, Secretary of State George Shultz included Chile on a list of Latin American dictatorships that he called “odd men out” in the hemisphere; the list included Chile alongside Cuba, Nicaragua, and Paraguay.117
But the Reagan administration’s recalibration did not produce significant results immediately. Restrictions on civil and political rights remained, and Chilean security services continued to abuse basic human rights in an effort to keep the leftist opposition fractured and underground. Democracy assistance to Chilean groups had not been coordinated or geared to a specific end, and it did not further the administration’s stated goal of forcing Pinochet to negotiate with the opposition on the transition timetable. Civil society was growing, but it was still disorganized. Pinochet continued to argue that threats to Chilean security mandated a controlled transition. United States-supported democracy promotion programs reinforced an ideological commitment to producing regime change even where such change contradicted apparent security interests, yet these programs were unable to catalyze the popular momentum necessary to bring down Pinochet.
Whatever small momentum existed halted suddenly in September 1986, when the MPFR communist faction attempted to assassinate Pinochet while he was returning to his home in
Santiago following a stay at one of his rural estates. Assaulting his motorcade with an arsenal of machine guns, grenades, and bazookas, the MPFR killed five of the general’s bodyguards and
117 Joanne Omang, “Shultz Puts Chile on List of Latin Dictatorships,” The Washington Post, 30 March 1986, p. A18.
244 wounded eleven more, but only slightly injured Pinochet. The ensuing crackdown—inaugurated by yet another state of siege and a resumption of torture and detention tactics by Pinochet’s secret police—had a chilling effect on both the political opposition and the Reagan administration’s policies supporting the opposition. The public displays of state violence were horrific, but fear trumped outrage. The National Accord, which had tentatively embraced some members of the socialist left, now found itself paralyzed by internal divisions among over the proper response to the attack and the ensuing crackdown. Popular momentum toward democratic change seemed to freeze.
For U.S. officials, the attack put into stark contrast the tradeoffs between democracy and security that Pinochet had long used to justify the military’s tight control of the political opening.
In the aftermath of the assassination attempt, the United States continued to nudge Pinochet toward democratic change, but these efforts were limited in scope. Rumors abounded that the
United States was developing rifts within the Chilean armed forces, in hopes of supporting a friendly coup, but instead joint military exercises between in 1986 publicly aligned the United
States with Pinochet’s strongest base of support.118 In the spring of 1987, the United States vetoed a World Bank loan to Chile, but did so knowing that commercial banks could easily support Chile’s international financial obligations. Nonetheless, ties between the United States and Pinochet’s regime were not improving. In May, Pinochet told Le Monde that he suspected
CIA involvement in the previous year’s assassination plot.119
The halt to democratic momentum proved to be only temporary. At the start of 1987, it was clear to Pinochet that he could not delay the constitutionally-mandated transition indefinitely. Instead, he shifted efforts to manipulating the process, combining intense
118 Joanne Omang, “U.S. ‘Messages’ Urge Pinochet to Bring Democracy to Chile,” The Washington Post, 26 September 1986, p. A35. 119 Edward Cody, “Pinochet Cites CIA in Attack,” The Washington Post, 8 May 1987, p. A17.
245 repression of political activity with a shrewd campaign of fear and beneficence aimed at solidifying support among the dictatorship’s popular support base. Pinochet preferred to maintain a yes-no plebiscite in which he would run as the lone government candidate. If
Pinochet won, as expected, he would continue in power, overseeing the country’s gradual resumption of civilian rule. The opposition favored direct presidential elections with multiple candidates. The U.S. State Department openly supported the opposition’s plan for elections, but recognized that Pinochet was unlikely to agree to it. The United States would support Pinochet’s plan, the administration announced, only if there were adequate rules preventing fraud.120 The
National Accord, still fractured over the best way to challenge Pinochet, struggled to craft a campaign that would inspire Chilean voters to turn away from authoritarian security to a narrative of change.121
The announcement of the plebiscite completely refocused U.S. democracy promotion efforts in 1987 and 1988. These efforts, which I discuss in the conclusion to this study, were coupled with acute diplomatic pressure. Barnes met openly with the opposition, and in meetings with Chilean officials he conveyed the need for the elections to be free of fraud. At a private breakfast in 1987, the Chilean ambassador to the United States warned Barnes that the risk of further leftist terrorism was grave. U.S. intervention “in principle and practice” in the Chilean democratization process risked generating further obstruction from within the regime.122
Chileans saw the NED as a specific pressure point. The embassy noted an American “obsession” with preventing Pinochet from continuing in power. “The State Department has all its cards on
120 Bradley Graham, “Pinochet Balks at U.S. Nudges; After 14 Years in Power, Chilean Runs for Office,” 25 August 1987, p. A12. 121 The film No! directed by Pablo Larrain (Sony Classics, 2012) artfully captures the energy of the plebiscite, though it places a heavy emphasis on the importance of the message—as opposed to the substance—of the respective parties in the campaign. 122 Telex Recibido (Received Telex) #255-257, 26 February 1987, Chile RREE.
246 the table,” one cable read. “They sense a non-existent polarization and try to manifest their criticism and pressure on our government in every chance they get.”123 Pinochet publicly bristled at the external interference. “Chile is not a colony of anyone and will never accept being a colony,” he declared in one public statement.124 In effect, U.S. policy had come full circle from
Reagan’s initial overtures to Pinochet in 1981. No longer willing to support the dictator on the grounds of a shared anti-communism, the Reagan administration pressured Pinochet to conform to a broader trend of liberal democratization in the hemisphere.
And yet, it is worth considering what U.S. pressure, so carefully calibrated to the technical aspects of the plebiscite process, did not do. U.S. pressure did not suggest that
Pinochet would be held to account for the human rights crimes that occurred during his regime.
In fact, U.S. democracy promotion programs in Chile seemed to eschew almost entirely engagement with human rights organizations that had become some of the most active members of Chile’s growing civil opposition. Nor did U.S. policies use the Pinochet regime’s economic livelihood as a point of pressure. In spite of destructive inflation, rising unemployment, and reports of corruption, U.S. policymakers still revered Chile as a model for free market development. Although the administration’s policy had evolved markedly from open support of
Pinochet in 1981, it nonetheless endorsed a pacted transition that would not jeopardize power arrangements in Chile.125 Pinochet recognized this, and indeed it gave him confidence to approach the plebiscite not as a challenge to his power, but as an affirmation of his regime’s
123 Telex Recibido # 550-551, 8 December 1987, Chile RREE. 124 Graham, “Pinochet Balks at U.S. Nudges.” 125 Scholarship on pacted democratic transitions is a broadly developed subset of political science literature on democratization and democratic consolidation. For the most important works dealing with Latin American transitions, see: Guillermo O’Donnell, Philippe Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead, eds. Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Latin America (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986); Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post- Communist Europe (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); and Terry Lynn Karl and Philippe C. Schmitter, “Modes of Transition in Southern and Eastern Europe, Southern and Central America,” International Social Science Journal (May): 269-84, 1991.
247 control of the transition process. The true success of U.S. policy lay in the flexibility exhibited by U.S. policymakers to support the opposition groups who successfully campaigned for the
“No!” vote. Yet, for Reagan policymakers the contradictions in that success were obscured by another apparent victory in a broader sweep of liberal ideals.
***
The democracy promotion efforts outlined above represent just a sliver of the regional, and indeed global, effort that put U.S. money, support, and expertise into the growth of civil society and democratic institutions abroad in the mid-1980s. In addition to the programs mentioned in this chapter, the United States backed hundreds of other programs that pursued aims as diverse as improving the administrative capacity of Latin American judicial systems; financing the publishing and distribution of “libros libres” (free books), works of literature that espoused western democratic ideals; and training Nicaraguan youth for the eventual return of democracy to their country.126 Reagan and his top foreign policy officials liked to speak of a
“wave of democracy” that not only beckoned such support, but to which these efforts contributed. For its part, the NED saw itself as a major component in this historic liberal movement. “When historians look back upon the 1980s,” the NED annual report triumphantly declared in 1987, “they are likely to conclude that the most significant global trend of the decade was the resurgence of democracy.”127 By 1986, the NED had channeled more than $53.7 million to programs abroad, a total far surpassed by USAID grants during the same period. Latin
America was arguably the primary recipient of this U.S.-financed transnational democratic organizing in the second half of the 1980s.
126 On the Central American Administration of Justice Project, see Carothers, Name of Democracy, pp. 210-15. On Libro Libre, see NED, Annual Report 1985, and on Nicaraguan journal, see NED, Annual Report 1987. 127 NED Annual Report 1987, p.3.
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Did it matter? Reagan believed it did. In March 1987, Reagan convened the NSC to discuss the burgeoning of democracy in the Western Hemisphere. His pride was palpable. “I have a vision of a democratic Western Hemisphere,” Reagan announced, “where the United
States has warm and solid relations with all the countries of the hemisphere.” The United States had ignored Latin Americans in the past, treating them as inferior partners, Reagan admitted. But the spread of democracy opened the door to a new, salutary relationship. Reagan had met with the new generation of Latin American democratic presidents, and he was impressed. “I am struck by their deep desire to make sure their democracies survive, the difficulties they face in achieving this, and also, how much they want and need our help so they can make it,” he said.128
Contemporary critics and historians alike have looked upon the Reagan administration’s claims and the NED’s self-congratulation with suspicion. The amount of money disbursed through democracy promotion efforts was dwarfed by spending on military assistance and training. Particularly in Latin America, where military aid to El Salvador alone outstripped democracy promotion aid to the region by significant margin, and support for “lethal aid” to the
Contras became an obsession for Reaganites, political development seems in retrospect like an afterthought. And yet it must be acknowledged that democracy promotion funding during the
Reagan years played a largely constructive role in the proliferation of transitions to civilian rule in the Western Hemisphere. To the organizers and grant recipients who used transnational funding to get out the vote, to democratic politicians who benefitted from international support for censored opposition newspapers and restricted union activity, and to the diplomats and policymakers who sought creative ways to support civilian politicians, even token amounts of aid
128 NSC Memo, “South American Democracy,” 13 March 1987, The Reagan Files Website
249 to the cause of developing civil society were meaningful contributions to liberal change in the region.
The fault in U.S. democracy promotion efforts lay in the relationship between its practical success as a limited tool of foreign policy and its ideological appeal to the Reagan administration and other supporters. In Guatemala and in Chile, as this chapter argues, U.S. democracy promotion efforts addressed technical issues that helped to facilitate long-awaited returns to civilian rule. But those transitions were simultaneously shaped by broader, competing
U.S. objectives, such as the need to promote economic stabilization through austerity measures and to strengthen military and public security apparatuses to combat a perceived threat from the revolutionary Left. Even as the administration’s electoral assistance programs grew, it found that democracy, security, and development were not easily reconciled goals. Elliott Abrams succinctly captured this fact in a memo on the USAID Central American Initiative sent to
George Shultz in 1985. U.S. development aid, he reported to the secretary, was shrinking government interference and bringing economic gains. If the successes continued, “we can demonstrate the superiority of the open, free enterprise-oriented model of development over that represented by Nicaragua.” The problem, however, was the
continuing dilemma in reconciling our political and security objectives with the need to obtain the comprehensive economic adjustments necessary for acceptable rates of growth in Central America. Emerging democracies in the region remain fragile and require nurturing. We seek to improve economic results without causing unacceptable damage to other foreign policy objectives. In some cases, measures to restore balance of payments equilibrium and promote structural adjustment may conflict with other priorities.129
Rather than acknowledge those competing interests and the limits they placed on political freedom, U.S. policymakers championed a caricature of democracy, one that idealized
129 Abrams to Shultz, “The Central America Initiative: Proposals to Accelerate Economic Development,” 14 September 1985, Box 4,folder “CAI Status Reports,” RG286 Agency for International Development, USAID/Burfor Lamer/Carib/ Ofc. Of Central Amer. and Panamanian, National Archives II, declassified authority # 988066.
250 civil society organizations working together voluntarily to realize a moderate path between revolution and repression, pursuing free market success, and thereby guaranteeing human rights.
U.S. democracy promoters did not see themselves as state-supported policy agents; they envisioned themselves as “missionaries.” It was this secular liberal faith that led the NED to declare triumphantly in 1987 a “pro-democratic consensus that exists in the West.” This consensus
brings together diverse political elements that can agree on certain crucial propositions: that democratic governments tend to be friendly to the United States and peaceful in their foreign relations; that they tend more toward political stability and economic prosperity than non-democratic systems; that the growth of democracy serves our national interests; and that to further those interests we should support those who are struggling to establish democratic systems and defend democratic values.130
The NED was correct that the Reagan administration was attempting to institute a regional order based on liberal democracy, but its recourse to ideological faith obscured the fact that the legacy of democracy would be a contested one. In Nicaragua, as the next chapter shows, the administration was willing to pervert those ideals when it believed security interests trumped the importance of development.
130 NED, Annual Report 1987, pp. 5-6.
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Chapter 5
Freedom Fighters and Comandantes: Perceptions of Democracy in the Central American Crisis, 1985-1988
During the second half of the 1980s, the Reagan administration grew increasingly confident that the trajectory of international events was bolstering its policies in the Western
Hemisphere. “Human freedom is on the march, and nowhere more so than in our own hemisphere,” Reagan boasted in his second inaugural address, adding, “America must remain freedom's staunchest friend . . . . Every victory for human freedom will be a victory for world peace.”1
As Reagan and Secretary of State George Shultz prepared to probe the possibility of negotiations with new leadership in the Kremlin, the president was emboldened to challenge
Soviet influence in the Third World.2 Latin America took on a renewed importance in the president’s ideological schema.3 The administration cautiously prodded allies toward regime change, preferring elected regimes to repressive dictatorships as a means of turning back the revolutionary Left. However, in countries ruled by Socialist regimes, Reagan openly endorsed support for armed rebels. Referring specifically to the Nicaraguan resistance, Reagan implored in his 1985 state of the union address: “we must not break faith with those who are risking their lives to defy Soviet-supported aggression and secure rights which have been ours from birth.”4
1 Ronald Reagan, “Inaugural Address,” 27 January 1985, in Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, ed. The American Presidency Project [online].
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Reagan’s bold statement of support for the Nicaraguan counterrevolutionaries (Contras) pointed to a major exception to the administration’s strategic reorientation in favor of liberal democracies. While championing elections and political reconciliation elsewhere in the hemisphere—as outlined in the previous chapter—U.S. policy towards Nicaragua remained fundamentally guided by an ideology of anti-communism. Reagan had proven adaptive in supporting regime change in the region, but his clash with Sandinistas revealed the extent to which U.S. policy was predicated on a version of democratic politics that was incompatible with the Sandinistas’ revolutionary model.
From 1985-1988, U.S. policy towards Nicaragua undermined Reagan’s claim to promoting freedom throughout the hemisphere. Although the Reagan administration maintained that its goal was to force the Sandinistas to accept democratic elections and restore political freedoms in Nicaragua, at key moments it proved more interested in ousting the Sandinistas by force than backing political reconciliation through negotiations. The Sandinistas viewed U.S. aggression as a dire threat to their democratic model, and sacrificed civil rights and political freedoms in the name of self-defense. But when regional partners who also had a stake in expanding liberalism pursued peace through self-determination and reconciliation, it was Reagan who ignored their efforts and locked the region into further conflict.
The chapter is divided into three sections. The first surveys the U.S.-Nicaraguan conflict as it had developed by 1986, emphasizing the way each side used democratic legitimacy to conceal and justify its true goals. The second section describes the regional peace processes of the Contadora group and, later, Costa Rican president Óscar Arias Sánchez. These efforts succeeded—somewhat unexpectedly—in establishing a framework for peace based on
development of the Reagan Doctrine, see James M. Scott, Deciding to Intervene: The Reagan Doctrine and American Foreign Policy, (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), p. 4.
253 democratization, self-determination, and regional cooperation. In spite of Reagan’s endorsement of these very goals, and the fact that the State Department backed a negotiated settlement,
Esquipulas succeeded largely in absence of U.S. support. The Reagan administration used the stipulations in Esquipulas as a pretext for further isolating Nicaragua. The final section explores the implications of the administration’s hypocritical reaction to the Esquipulas II peace treaty.
Reagan’s persistent attempts to aid the Contras demonstrated that in the case of Nicaragua national security concerns trumped Reagan’s idealism, and the language of democracy became an obstacle, rather than an inducement, to peace.
Democracy Between Foes: Nicaragua and the United States
Between 1985 and 1989, Reagan’s attempt to broadly reframe relations with Latin
America was belied by a singular fixation on the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. The administration had, since its earliest days, been concerned with the national security implications of a revolutionary regime in the heart of Central America. But during the second term, U.S. policy and rhetoric increasingly focused on the Nicaragua’s place in a hemispheric system that was rapidly liberalizing. In this ideological struggle, the three primary actors—the Reagan administration, the Sandinista regime, and Nicaraguan resistance (Contras)—each made claims to democratic legitimacy in ways that stalemated the conflict. For the Reagan administration, democracy was a way to discredit the Sandinista regime and justify military aid to the Contras; for the Sandinistas, democracy was a means of defending the legitimacy of their revolution against armed incursions and external pressure; and for the Contras, it was a means of improving their image as would-be political leaders.
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In 1985, the administration publicly committed itself to a dual-track Central America policy that combined regional diplomatic negotiations with pressure on the Sandinistas. The precise goals of this pressure remained unclear throughout Reagan’s presidency. At some moments U.S. officials said their main objective was to curb the Sandinistas’ external support for revolutionary movements; at others, they expressed a desire to force the Sandinistas to submit to internal democratic reforms. Notwithstanding this lack of clarity about the ends of U.S. policy, during Reagan’s second term, U.S. policy became fixated on means, not goals. In May 1985,
Reagan implemented an embargo of Nicaragua that prevented all non-humanitarian goods from being exchanged between the two countries. He justified the embargo, which constituted a crippling blow to the Sandinista economy, on grounds that Nicaragua constituted a national security threat to the United States. Further, the administration’s aid to the Contra paramilitary effort demonstrated that it regarded a Contra military victory as the benchmark of a successful policy.
Congress had seriously thwarted Reagan’s desire to support the Contras when it signed the second Boland Amendment into law in October 1984. Boland II explicitly barred direct or indirect U.S. support for “military or paramilitary operations in Nicaragua by any nation, group, organization, movement, or individual.”5 With covert support for the Contras legally outlawed, the Reagan administration turned to a number of policy maneuvers—some legal, some illegal—
5 On the Boland Amendment generally, see Cynthia J. Arnson, Crossroads: Congress, the President, and Central America 1976-1993 (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993), pp. 166-68. For the best discussion of whether Boland II applied to NSC funding activities, see Malcolm Byrne, Iran-Contra: Reagan’s Scandal and the Unchecked Abuse of Presidential Power, pp. 42-44. Byrne explains that in spite of divergent opinions among NSC staff about whether the amendment outlawed their role in supporting the Contras, National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane believed that it did.
255 to “keep [the Contras] together body and soul,” as Reagan instructed National Security Advisor
Bud McFarlane.6
The administration’s first method was to seek external funding that would allow it to continue supplying weapons and materiel to the Contras as long as lethal aid was barred by U.S law. Reagan officials accomplished this by securing third-country funding from allies that were either ideologically disposed to U.S. support for the Contras, or wished to gain favor by aiding the administration. The primary benefactor in this effort was Saudi Arabia, which provided $32 million to the Contras after May 1984, on top of hefty donations from allies in Taiwan and
Brunei.7 The administration also sought funding from private benefactors, an activity in which
Reagan was personally involved.8
The administration put these funds to use in a clandestine network of organizations responsible for purchasing and delivering weapons, materiel, and supplies to Contra fighters on
Nicaragua’s northern and southern borders. At the center of this network was Oliver North, a young Marine lieutenant colonel assigned to the National Security Council (NSC) staff on whom
McFarlane relied to carry out Reagan’s wish to keep the Contras alive. A Vietnam veteran with a passionate enthusiasm for Reagan’s worldview, North threw himself into the work, quickly becoming the indispensable figure at the center of an “enterprise” that drew on NSC, CIA,
Defense Department, and State Department elements. Although many colleagues would later
6 For McFarlane quote and discussion more generally, see Lawrence E. Walsh, Independent Counsel, Iran-Contra: The Final Report (New York: Times Books, 1994), p. 2. 7 Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador who fielded McFarlane’s request and facilitated the deal, indicated that King Fahd approved the aid in response to Reagan’s past support for the Saudi regime. McFarlane said they thought “it was the right thing to do.” See Walsh Report, pp. 80-81. The Intelligence Authorization Act of 1985 outlawed solicitations from third countries for the Contras, but because the law did not outlaw such funding for humanitarian purposes, the administration was able to continue pursuing external funding 8 On Reagan’s involvement, see Walsh, Final Report, p. 447. Investigators were not able to demonstrate that private funds solicited by Reagan were used for purposes other than those understood to be humanitarian.
256 criticize North’s recklessness and propensity for lying, his grasp of detail, industriousness, and zeal won him admirers like McFarlane, Elliott Abrams, Bill Casey, and Reagan himself.9
While the secret resupply network hummed quietly, Reagan and his top advisers worked conspicuously to force Congress to relax restrictions on official U.S. aid to the Contras. In the middle of 1985, both parties continued to oppose Contra funding. Senator Richard Lugar (R-
IN), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, stated that further funding for the Contras would not be forthcoming. In the Democratically-controlled House, Majority Leader Jim Wright
(D-TX) and other key committee leaders scored the idea of further U.S. interventions in
Nicaraguan affairs.10
To overcome this opposition, Reagan officials deliberately portrayed the Sandinista government as non-democratic and tyrannical, while emphasizing the democratic character of the
Contras. This tactic, engineered primarily by speechwriter Patrick Buchanan, appealed to
Reagan’s basic moral understanding of Cold War conflict, and helped him galvanize his conservative base around an otherwise obscure foreign policy issue. Speaking to the
Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington DC in March 1985, Reagan called the
Contras “the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers and the brave men and women of the
French Resistance.” The struggle in Nicaragua, “is not right versus left but right versus wrong,”
Reagan averred.11 This moralism also served a tactical purpose: intimidating moderate legislators into supporting administration policy or risk violating deep-rooted U.S. ideals. In a column in The Washington Post, Buchanan called the Democratic Party the “co-guarantor of the
Brezhnev Doctrine in Central America.” The vote on Contra aid, Buchanan warned, “will reveal
9 See Byrne, Iran-Contra, pp. 45-47. 10 See Arnson, Crossroads, p. 175. 11 See Lou Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York: Public Affairs, 2000), pp. 504-506. Cannon makes the important point that, while Buchanan was vociferous in his support for the Contras, he was not part of the “cabal” that believed Reagan should covertly support the Contras.
257 whether [the Democratic Party] stands with Ronald Reagan and the resistance—or Daniel Ortega and the Communists.”12
The decision to challenge the democratic legitimacy of the Sandinistas was not born entirely of domestic political calculation but strategic considerations as well. Daniel Ortega’s victory in the 1984 Nicaraguan presidential election had been a watershed moment for the
Sandinista regime. Ortega won those elections with a significant majority of 67 percent after the leader of the democratic opposition Coordinadora party, Arturo Cruz, withdrew from the campaign rather than submit to Sandinista conditions. While the opposition and the Reagan administration rejected the legitimacy of the elections based on Cruz’s withdrawal, the
Sandinista Front (FSLN, Frente Sandinista Liberación Nacional) now laid claim to a basis of electoral legitimacy and the outward appearance of political momentum.13 “One by one, we’ve eliminated the prospects used by Washington. . . . The only one they have left is that we’re governing without a popular mandate,” one Sandinista leader observed on the eve of Ortega’s election. The Sandinistas had played by American rules and Ortega had won.14
Despite the FSLN’s triumphalism, five years of intensive external pressure and U.S.- supported insurgent warfare had taken their toll on its ability to govern. In the second half of the
1980s, the Sandinista leadership—particularly the nine-man national directorate, which operated largely in secret to steer the government’s ideological course—struggled to achieve the revolutionary promise and to preserve the broad support that the FSLN had garnered during its campaign to topple Somoza.
12 Lou Cannon uses this quote in The Role of a Lifetime, p. 505. 13 For a succinct debate over the legitimacy of the elections, see A Twilight Struggle: American Power and Nicaragua 1977-1990 (New York: The Free Press, 1996), pp. 334-36. While Kagan puts some of the blame on Cruz for his failure to act more decisively in seizing the political moment, he ultimately judges that it is “wishful thinking” to believe that Sandinistas would have respected popular will after the elections. 14 For quote, see William I. Robinson and Kent Norsworthy, “Elections and U.S. Intervention in Nicaragua,” Latin American Perspectives 12, no. 12 (Spring 1985), p. 12. On the election itself, see Chapter 3 of this dissertation (pp. 197-99).
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Under Daniel Ortega, the Nicaraguan government circumscribed its revolutionary vision of popular democracy characterized by civil, social and economic rights. In the second half of the decade, the FSLN struggled to protect the gains of the revolution and preserve itself in power. With the Contra insurrection fueling suspicion and crisis, Nicaragua became a militarized state. The Sandinistas limited the political sphere, clamped down on opposition media, and increasingly regimented the already-battered economy. Military spending increased at the expense of other priorities. The FSLN rapidly expanded the People’s Revolutionary Army—to approximately 20,000 soldiers by 1986—through draft procedures meant to foster increase allegiance to the Sandinista state. Meanwhile, military aid and advisers flowed to Nicaragua from the Soviet Union and countries in the communist bloc.15 The Sandinistas hoped these moves would develop formidable power and secure international alliances that would discourage
U.S. intervention.16
The regime employed aggressive tactics to quiet domestic foes. In October 1985, it instituted a state of siege, restricting citizens’ legal rights and constitutional guarantees. State censors silenced the voices of human rights organizations and opposition media.17 Ortega and other leaders justified these restrictions by arguing that they were necessary during a state of war.
In June 1986, Interior Minister Tomás Borge indefinitely closed the U.S.-backed opposition
15 Ongoing Soviet support of the Nicaraguan government was widely assumed throughout the 1980s, but was later confirmed both by Nicaraguan defectors and Sandinista officials themselves. On Gorbachev’s decision to increase aid, see Robert Kagan, A Twilight Struggle: American Power and Nicaragua 1977-1990 (New York: The Free Press, 1996), pp. 567-76 and Hal Brands, What Good Is Grand Strategy?: Power and Purpose In American Statecraft From Harry S. Truman to George W. Bush (Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2014), p. 128. For a recent illuminating study on the extent of East German support to the Sandinistas, see Klaus Storkmann. “East German Military Aid to the Sandinista Government of Nicaragua, 1979-1990.” Journal of Cold War Studies 16: 2 (Spring 2014), pp. 56-76. 16 See Matilde Zimmermann, Sandinista: Carlos Fonseca and the Nicaraguan Revolution (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), p. 223-24 for a critical appraisal of the role of the FSLN in guiding the revolution’s course in the 1980s. 17 On the censoring of the Permanent Commission on Human Rights, (CPDH, Comisión Permanente de los Derechos Humanos), see Cable Managua to State, “GON Plans to Censor CPDH Publications,” 15 November 1985, Digital National Security Archive (hereafter DNSA) Nicaragua Collection.
259 newspaper La Prensa—a move criticized even by staffers at the FSLN’s official organ,
Barricada.18 Political arrests increased, while the regime stubbornly deflected the charges of external critics who noted its selective protection of human and civil rights.19 In rural areas, where the FSLN faced the Contra insurgency most directly, Sandinista recruiting techniques, intelligence gathering, and repression alienated rural campesinos from the revolutionary vision of the state.20
These moves grew organically out of the revolution’s anti-imperial ideology and its antipathy to U.S. power. But they were also inspired by exigencies of self-defense. Realizing the
Sandinista vision for a true social democracy would take time, FSLN ideologues reasoned.
Curtailing civil rights and abandoning socioeconomic goals were necessary compromises for the longevity of the revolution. Daniel Ortega’s vice president, Sergio Ramirez, later reflected, “A proposal for radical change needed radical power, capable of defending itself and freeing itself of the risks. . . .You do not win an armed struggle to conquer power short term, not when it involves sweeping history aside.”21 But Sandinista decisions to repress democratic foes carried significant political costs, weakened the FSLN’s once-broad appeal, and damaged its international prestige.
Economic setbacks also hurt Sandinista popularity. By the start of 1985, Nicaragua’s inflation rate was above 328 percent and, like many of its Central American neighbors, its crushing debt obligations limited its ability to access new credit.22 Many of the Sandinistas’
18 See Adam Jones, Beyond the Barricades: Nicaragua and the Struggle for the Sandinista Press, 1979-1998 (Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 2002). 19 Tomás Borge, the Sandinistas hardline interior minister refused to allow international agencies access to those prisoners. See Julia Preston, “Sandinistas Set to Mark 7-Year Rule: Mood Uncertain as Arrests Rise,” The Washington Post, 19 July 1986, p. A17. 20 See Lynn Horton, Peasants in Arms: War and Peace In the Mountains of Nicaragua, 1979-1994 (Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1998), pp. 183-84 and, on the distrust of Sandinista state security operations, pp. 212-13. 21 Sergio Ramirez, Adiós Muchachos: A Memoir of the Sandinista Revolution, translated by Alba D. Skar (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012 (originally printed in 1999 in Spanish)), p. 160. 22 Stephen Kinzer, “The Revolution Still has Soft Spots,” The New York Times, 16 March 1986, p. D4.
260 earlier economic and social reforms unraveled.23 Even the agrarian reform project, once seen as the hallmark of its socio-economic program, ground to a halt under the weight of economic stagnation and bureaucratic mismanagement.24 Sandinista economic interventions disrupted traditional transportation and distribution networks, created shortages of labor and consumer goods, and subjected campesinos to government controls for agricultural goods.25 One initial supporter of the land reform from the rural town of Quilalí later reflected on his disillusionment:
“Everyone who had something through his efforts or through inheritance, everyone who had a good farm, had his land confiscated by the FSLN,” he said.26 This disenchantment was especially pronounced in rural areas, where the Contras drew most of their manpower.27
Sandinista reactions to these economic challenges brought them closer to liberal economic norms. Throughout the 1980s, in fact, an overwhelming majority of businesses remained in private hands, bearing out the FSLN’s claim that the economy was “mixed.” In 1985 and 1986, in an attempt to combat rising inflation, the FSLN tried to promote austerity among consumers, while incentivizing increased output from producers and factory owners. They ended food subsidies, allowed grain prices to float, and reduced public expenditures. They also enacted a hiring freeze, increased interest rates, and devalued the currency. Some characterized these reforms as “IMF policies without IMF money,” designed to arrest economic decline and boost support for the government.28 But these initiatives created disagreements among the ranks of the
Sandinistas. Some leaders remonstrated that these policies were betraying the revolution,
23 Ramirez, Adiós Muchachos. 24 Katherine Hoyt, The Many Faces of Sandinista Democracy (Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1997), pp. 117-19. 25 Horton, Peasants in Arms, p. 158. 26 Quote of Ramón Moreno from Horton, Peasants in Arms, p. 151 27 On the roots of this problem, see Horton, Peasants in Arms, pp. 137-56. 28 Hoyt, Many Faces, p. 112.
261 accepting a bureaucratic model that drew its power from elections and free markets, not from the popular will.29
The Reagan administration said these developments were the outgrowth of Sandinista ideology, and justified U.S. hostility to the government.30 Even deteriorating economic conditions, they claimed, were not the result of Sandinista fecklessness, but communist repression. Ortega’s policies, they emphasized, reflected the regime’s disregard for human rights.
“During 1985, the Sandinistas increased markedly their intimidation of the Church and the civic opposition and their control of the society,” read the 1985 State Departments annual country report on human rights in Nicaragua. Using government agencies, the Sandinistas enforced
“political conformity” through “arrest, interrogation, and imprisonment.”31 These claims were by no means baseless—international journalists and human rights observers increasingly criticized the FSLN’s treatment of its political opponents.
In the summer of 1985, Reagan assailed the Sandinistas’ human rights record in order to mobilize congressional support for aid to the Contras. House leader Jim Wright recalled that the debates surrounding the vote were “reminiscent of McCarthyism.”32 Although House Democrats were firmly opposed to Reagan’s desire to further militarize the conflict, many lost faith in the
Sandinista’s willingness to play by democratic rules. In particular, Ortega’s much-publicized visit to Moscow in April 1985—in the midst of U.S. debates over the Contra funding— demonstrated to Democrats the political danger of merely opposing Reagan’s policies. Owing to these pressures of conscience, as well as political divisions within their party, a number of
29 Hoyt, Many Faces, pp. 107-109. 30 Horton, Peasants in Arms, pp. 247-50. 31 See Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1985: Report Submitted to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives and the Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate by the Department of State In Accordance with Sections 116(d) 502(b) of the Foreign Assistance Act, as Amended, 99th Congress 2d Session (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1986) p. 616. 32 For quote and Wright’s broader description of administration and Republican rhetoric around the vote, see Wright, Worth it All, pp. 79-80.
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Democrats sought to develop bipartisan alternatives that would provide aid to the Contras, but restrict its use to humanitarian purposes.33
In August 1985, Congress approved $27 million in humanitarian assistance for the
Nicaraguan resistance. The humanitarian aid vote was, in the words of one scholar, a
“beachhead” for the administration as it pursued the resumption of Contra military aid. The aid package created the Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office (NHAO), a State Department bureau responsible for the delivery of U.S. aid which turned into yet another link in the administration’s covert supply network. Although the Boland Amendment still restricted what the NHAO could do, the re-opening of U.S. funding to the Contras afforded CIA and administration officials more leverage with Contra leadership, particularly as they tried to entice the Contras to open a second front on the Costa Rican border.34
The vote emboldened the administration. Reagan and his advisers immediately set about seeking a much larger prize: funding for a proposal of $100 million in Contra aid money, including $70 million for military purposes. The resumption of humanitarian assistance had shown Reagan officials that playing up the democratic character of the Contras was a winning strategy to chip away at congressional resistance. From 1985 to June 1986, when the $100 million package was approved, the administration continued to portray Nicaragua as a totalitarian enemy and the Contras as downtrodden, heroic freedom fighters.
The debate in Washington over the ultimate purpose of the administration’s support for the resistance placed an increasing emphasis on the ability of the Contras to live up to this characterization as democratic political leaders. Unfortunately for the administration, the Contras
33 Cynthia Arnson usefully summarizes the tensions within the Democratic Party that led from an April defeat of Reagan’s humanitarian assistance package to an August acceptance of a similar proposal. She argues that moderate Democrats like Dave McCurdy felt that a failure to devise a positive, pragmatic regional policy would leave them “exposed” as merely opposing Reagan’s preferences. See Crossroads, pp.183-84. 34 Walsh, Final Report, p. 5.
263 were never a coherent movement and Contra leadership had not promulgated a coherent political alternative to the Sandinistas. That incoherence was a direct reflection of the Reagan administration’s political fixation on securing military aid for the Contras. The promise of that aid—which was already flowing covertly—empowered the most repressive military elements within the Contras while discouraging discipline and meaningful political discussions within the resistance. In short, the Contras were neither as united nor as democratic as Reagan made them out to be.
The administration sought to change this in 1985 by fostering the creation of the United
Nicaraguan Opposition (UNO). The State Department worked behind the scenes to shape the
UNO’s political program, creating a civilian directorate that brought together Arturo Cruz,
Adolfo Calero, and Alfonso Robelo. The creation of the UNO responded directly to the Reagan administration’s need for the Contras to articulate the political objectives of their struggle, and thus assure the congress that they were not merely seeking a military defeat of the Ortega government. The UNO’s political program mirrored the State Department’s official policy on
Contra support: it outlined a dual-track policy of political and military pressure to end the conflict; it called for free elections and the restoration of political and civil rights; and it sought negotiation of a cease-fire and general amnesty.35 The UNO also responded to dynamics within
Nicaragua. Following the elections of 1984, frustrated civilian opposition leaders like Cruz saw the importance of exerting military pressure on the Sandinistas. At the same time, politico- military leaders of the largest Contra army, the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN, Fuerza
Democrática Nicaragüense), began to understand that a political program—and the
35 Owing to the fact that the UNO’s program was designed primarily to convince U.S. audiences of its democratic credentials, many of its materials were printed in English by the State Department. On the political program, for example, see State Department Briefing Paper, “United Nicaraguan Opposition: Democratic Reforms and Support for a Peaceful Solution to the Conflict in Nicaragua,” June 1986, DNSA Nicaragua Collection.
264 incorporation of moderate political factions—were central to any long-term strategy to defeat the
FSLN.
The UNO and its U.S. supporters faced several obstacles in creating a politically articulate and legitimately democratic Contra front. The first was that the largest armed faction of the Contra forces—the FDN—had never taken the political power of the Sandinistas’ revolutionary model seriously. The FDN’s leadership, embodied by businessman Adolfo Calero, along with military leaders culled from Somoza’s maligned National Guard, believed that prolonged guerrilla warfare applied from Nicaragua’s northern border with Honduras would eventually weaken the FSLN’s control and lead to its demise. The political aspects of the FDN’s strategy rarely amounted to more than seeking external support for its military objectives.36
Calero and other former guardsmen resisted civilian oversight of the military struggle as called for in the UNO’s program. Reagan officials exacerbated these internal divisions by rewarding the FDN with prestige, attention, and arms. When Cruz and Robelo sought a share of control over the rebel army as part of their effort to remake the UNO as a viable democratic political force, Calero rejected the request.
The second obstacle to reforming the Contras’ image was the fact that the most genuinely democratic figure in the Contra movement, Arturo Cruz—who ran for President as head of the
Coordinadora before protesting the 1984 elections—deeply distrusted the FDN’s motives and
Calero’s power. Unlike many of the Contra leaders, Cruz laid claim to legitimate political appeal in Nicaragua on the grounds that he was former member of the Sandinista directorate who broke with the regime due to legitimate grievances. Cruz embodied the sense of betrayal that simmered underneath the Sandinistas’ heavy-handed control of Nicaraguan politics. Cruz’s relationship with Calero was marked by distrust from the start. After all, many FDN leaders were former
36 Rogelio Pardo-Maurer, The Contras 1980-1989: A Special Kind of Politics (New York: Praeger, 1990), p. 12.
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Somoza guardsmen whom Cruz had opposed during the revolution. The U.S. relied on Cruz as the political face of the Contras. Internally, Reagan officials recognized that his democratic credentials were necessary to secure Contra aid. But the overwhelming clout of the FDN within the UNO drowned out Cruz’s attempts to create a democratic political program for the Contras.37
The final and most problematic obstacle to a coherent Contra political program was that the Contra movement harbored unequivocally brutal characters. While Reagan portrayed them as freedom fighters, human rights organizations and journalists recorded overwhelming evidence of terrible abuses carried out by the resistance. In some cases, this disregard for human rights was the outgrowth of the Contras’ origins in Somoza’s feared National Guard. These Contra officers shared the disgust for communism found among their Latin American military compatriots, but the revolution of 1979 had forced them to employ ideological violence in the form of guerrilla warfare.38 They killed, raped, and mutilated suspected Sandinista supporters during the course of the civil war, and their acts of sabotage immeasurably worsened the economic toll of the civil war.39
Among the rank-and-file opposition fighters, there was simply little awareness of the broader political program that the UNO and Reagan championed. For many of the Contras, violent resistance had become simply a way of life. Timothy C. Brown, who served as a State
Department liaison with the Contras, argues that as many as ninety percent of the so-called
“Contras” were in fact peasant fighters whose grievances with the Sandinistas pre-dated CIA or other external support for the opposition movement. They were not swayed by the Reagan
37 On infighting in the UNO and Cruz’s role in Reagan’s portrayal of the Contras, see Kagan, Twilight Struggle, pp. 453-56. 38 See, for example, the account of former Guardsman Julio César Herrera, AKA “Krill” in Stephen Kinzer, Blood of Brothers: Life and War in Nicaragua (New York: Putnam, 1991), pp. 145-48. More generally, see Hal Brands, Latin America’s Cold War Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), pp. 211-13. 39 On economic damages, see Brands, Latin America’s Cold War, pp. 214-15.
266 administration’s wartime propaganda; they were attached to their land and they fought to pursue basic social and economic interests.40
The UNO tried to overcome these formidable impediments, but they fundamentally belied Reagan’s claim that the Contras were “freedom fighters” committed to democracy. In a letter to The New York Times, Calero, Cruz, and Robelo wrote “The organization was designed to preserve differences of opinion on economic and social questions and to preserve the groups that represent each point of view.”41 The UNO served, as one author has put it, as the “ideal resistance” that mirrored the administration’s divergent objectives of supporting negotiations while also backing military pressure. Robelo and Cruz—both former Sandinista officials—tried to protect the UNO’s image as democratic, calling for an independent panel to monitor human rights abuses by the Contras. But Calero’s dual role as leader of the FDN fighting force gave him the power to trump Cruz and Robelo.42 By the end of 1985, in spite of Reagan’s characterization of the Sandinistas as non-democratic, there was little to suggest that either the administration or the Contras had any competing vision for democracy in Nicaragua, nor a plan to achieve it.
Regionalizing War and Peace, from Contadora to Esquipulas
The greatest pressure for peace in Central America, and the most viable opportunities to achieve it, came from outside of the United States. The Contadora process—led by Mexico,
Venezuela, Colombia, and Panama, along with a host of supporting nations—and later the
Esquipulas negotiations spearheaded by Costa Rican president Óscar Arias Sánchez represented a growing inclination among Latin American elites to seek peaceful, liberal democratic
40 Timothy C. Brown, The Real Contra War: Highlander Peasant Resistance in Nicaragua (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press), p. 8. 41 Adolfo Calero, Arturo Jose Cruz and Alfonso Robelo Callejas, “Solving the Nicaragua Problem; ‘Contras’ Are on the Right Track,” The New York Times, 13 December 1985. 42 James LeMoyne, “Dispute Hampers Nicaragua Rebels,” The New York Times, 4 November 1985, p. A1.
267 development and avoid global revolution or counter-revolutionary repression. Beyond their symbolic significance, regional peace processes offered the Central American governments a realistic way to achieve common goals of self-determination and development unhindered by the intervention of external powers.
The Latin American leaders who managed these peace processes placed democratization and national reconciliation at the center of their agenda. Reagan policymakers, in spite of their rhetorical and strategic emphasis on those very themes in the region, treated multilateral negotiations as a way to undercut the Sandinistas and to justify additional military aid to the
Contras.43 The final peace terms of the Esquipulas II agreement signed in August 1987 exposed how the Reagan administration’s treatment of Nicaragua had become the fundamental exception to its commitment to advancing liberal democracy in Latin America. At key moments during negotiations, the administration undermined allies’—not to mention its own—commitments to promote free elections and demilitarization throughout the region.
By late 1985, the Contadora peacemaking process appeared to be on its last legs. After failing to secure a treaty amidst mutual U.S. and Nicaraguan recriminations in 1984, the
Contadora ministers in 1985 inaugurated a “group of support” comprising newly democratic regimes in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, and Uruguay. The broadening of Contadora to include the
Group of Support not only aligned the peace process with the conspicuous democratic trend in the hemisphere, but increased pressure on the United States to embrace that process as part of its support for newly elected governments.44 These moves proved insufficient to overcome
43 Shultz says that disingenuous support for the negotiating track was shared in multiple departments, including State. Shultz himself had a more honest—but not entirely idealistic—interest in the negotiating track, as this section details. See George P. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993), p. 950-51. 44 See Report of the Secretary General, “The Situation in Central America: Threats to International Security and Peace Initiatives,” 9 October 1985, United Nations General Assembly Fortieth Session, Agenda Item 21, pp. 1-2, DNSA Nicaragua Collection. Not only did the group of support include all of Latin America’s most powerful
268 longstanding U.S. and Nicaraguan ambivalence about engaging in a multilateral dialogue. In
September 1985, the Contadora ministers unveiled a new draft treaty designed to assuage concerns shared by U.S. and Central American officials. The draft placed greater emphasis on verification and implementation of the treaty provisions. The Nicaraguan government, however, immediately denounced the draft, characterizing it as a shield for continued U.S. armed intervention.
The Contadora group’s attempt to regionalize a solution to Central American violence ran counter to fundamental assumptions about the nature of the conflict held in both Washington and
Managua. Reagan had always been skeptical that Contadora could produce an acceptable—and, more importantly, enforceable—agreement that would keep Nicaragua within its borders and force it to democratize. This was as much a matter of ideological principle as it was a strategic assessment by Reagan: the Sandinistas could not be trusted to negotiate in good faith, he believed; nor would they agree to democratic reforms if they meant weakening their grip on power.45 Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, National Security Advisor Admiral John
Poindexter, Oliver North, speechwriter Pat Buchanan, and Elliott Abrams in the State
Department shared these views. They downplayed or dismissed Contadora as they assured
diplomatic and economic players, but it was also a collection of countries for whom the debt crisis of the 1980s had become a central political issue in relations with the United States. As the United States sought to expand and improve relations with elected governments in Brazil and Argentina, for example, those governments’ incorporation into Contadora resulted in additional pressure on the United States to adhere to the negotiations. For proof of how the inclusion of newly-democratic countries made Contadora a more powerful forum, see, for example, a 1987 Guatemalan foreign ministry memo which described Contadora and the support group as part of a “series of initiatives . . . that permit the visualization of a Latin American bloc that is more united, stronger, and more dynamic not only with relation to the United States, but with regard to other blocs as well.” Foreign Ministry Memo “Analisis y Reflexiones Para la Formulacion e Instrumentacion De Una Politica Exterior Guatemalteca,” 8 September 1987, Dirección General de Relaciones Internacionales y Bilaterales (DIGRIB) 1987, Archive of the Guatemalan Foreign Ministry (hereafter Guatemala MRE). Unless otherwise noted, all translations performed by the author. 45 Skepticism of Contadora was widespread among administration officials, for reasons discussed in Chapter 3. As Shultz promoted the idea of remaining engaged in the process, the NSC remained most vocal in its opposition to the various drafts that were produced. See, for example, Constantine Menges, Inside the National Security Council: the True Story of the Making and Unmaking of Reagan’s Foreign Policy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), pp. 136-39.
269 conservative legislators that the United States would never abandon the Contras.46 For
Nicaragua, submitting to a regional peace treaty meant granting the Contras political legitimacy, and conceding that the internal conflict was a civil war, rather than a U.S.-backed insurgency.47
In December 1985, at Ortega’s suggestion, the Contadora ministers tabled negotiations for five months. Many observers declared Contadora dead.48
In January 1986 the Contadora countries attempted to revive their peace efforts during a meeting in Caraballeda, Venezuela. The so-called “Caraballeda Message” aimed to achieve progress by scaling back the negotiating agenda to the fundamental principles that could serve as a basis of peace in the region. The message reiterated the need for a Latin American solution that removed Central America from the East-West ideological conflict and that supported common goals of non-interference, territorial integrity, self-determination, and pluralistic democracy.
These were terms meant to empower Central American governments to oppose U.S. hegemony on the one hand and the threat of leftist insurgencies supported by Cuba and Nicaragua on the other. In this sense, Caraballeda provided the last glimmer of hope for the Contadora process. All five Central American governments endorsed the message, and Nicaragua acknowledged that it was willing to negotiate based on these principles.
Mistrust between the United States and the Nicaraguans nonetheless scuttled meaningful progress. The Sandinistas endorsed Caraballeda’s insistence on simultaneous enforcement as a lever to weaken U.S. support for the Contras—should all parties have reached an agreement,
46 This claim is made in Jim Wright, Worth it All: My War for Peace (Washington: Brassey’s, 1993), pp. 83-84. 47 Responding to pressure from the Peruvian and Uruguayan governments to return to the bargaining table, the Nicaraguan government issued a communique stating that it could not do so because the “the modified Contadora document, which appeared as a result of the difficulties created by the United States, contains points that are unacceptable as they seriously harm the country’s sovereignty and security.” See “President Ortega Issues Message on Contadora,” Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) VI. 14, April 1986, translation of Managua Domestic Service 12 April 1986, p. P14. 48 “Now that Contadora is Dead,” The New York Times, 8 January 1986, p. A22.
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U.S. support for the Contras would have ceased immediately.49 “For Nicaragua, the immediate cessation of external assistance to irregular forces constitutes not only a priority action . . . but a fundamental action for regional peace,” the Nicaraguan foreign minister, Miguel d’Escoto
Brockmann wrote to South American counterparts in February.50 But d’Escoto was equally clear that his government would not, pursuant to any such agreement, negotiate directly with the
Contras. Sandinista firmness on this point was bolstered by the June 1986 decision of the
International Criminal Court, which found U.S. support of the Contras in breach of international law.51 While Reagan was funding and supporting an insurgency on Nicaraguan territory—with support of Honduran, Salvadoran, and Costa Rican neighbors—Ortega could not choose conciliation over self-defense. “So long as the aggression supported by the United States continues,” Ortega told a crowd in Santo Domingo, Nicaragua, “there will be no arms reduction in Nicaragua.”52 Nor could Ortega submit Nicaragua to a version of democratization that did not align with the Sandinistas’ popular, revolutionary vision.
The Reagan administration continued to outwardly support negotiations, even as it downplayed expectations and objected to the results.53 Shultz counseled Reagan that supporting regional peace negotiations allowed the United States to show that its policies were not fixated on a military solution, and that support for the Contras was part of a broader effort to end externally-supported revolution in the hemisphere. Shultz genuinely believed that, through
49 See text of letter from Miguel D’Escoto Brockman to Argentine Foreign Minister Dante Caputo, in Cable Managua to Bueno Aires, 5 February 1986, Box AH0035, OEA y ONU Collection, Archive of the Argentine Foreign Ministry (hereafter Argentina MRECIC). 50 Ibid. 51 See “Summary of Judgment of 27 June 1986”
271 diplomatic negotiations, the United States could achieve co-existence with Nicaragua, provided that any settlement was multilateral, enforceable, and serious about democratization. In other words, to Shultz, negotiations were not just a forum for voicing objections to the Sandinistas’ troublesome behavior but, if handled adroitly, a way to curb it.54
In March, Reagan appointed Ambassador Philip C. Habib as a special envoy for Central
America to serve as a direct liaison with the peace process. Habib had just completed an assignment as U.S. envoy in the Philippines, where the United States had pressed for the removal of dictator Ferdinand Marcos after he attempted to steal an election from democratically-elected
Corazon Aquino. Habib’s assessments of political events in the Philippines had played a crucial role in Reagan’s decision to turn away from Marcos, in spite of his personal reluctance to abandon a longtime ally.55 Informed by his experiences in the Philippines and extensive negotiating experience in the Middle East, Habib turned to his objective in Central America: balancing U.S. support for newly democratic regimes that desired peace on one hand with the administration’s insistence on obtaining a treaty that compelled the Nicaraguan regime to accept democracy on the other.
Although he was presidentially-appointed, Habib’s work as envoy was coordinated by
Shultz, and reflected the State Department’s position on the four points that comprised a “good treaty”: a verifiable end to Nicaraguan support for regional subversion; a removal of foreign military advisers from Nicaragua; demilitarization of Nicaragua to a level that represented
“equilibrium” with its neighbors; and a return to democracy in Nicaragua. The final point was crucial. Whereas Reagan and the NSC primarily used the rhetoric of democracy to delegitimize
54 See Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, pp. 951-52. 55 Shultz remembers that Habib’s assessment, “The Marcos era has ended[,]” during the post-election crisis was a crucial event in Reagan “turning a corner” to urge Marcos’s removal. For a summary of the entire episode, see Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993), pp. 623-41, and 635-36 on Habib’s role.
272 the Sandinistas, for the State Department this language was linked with the results of U.S. policy in the region over the previous five years. Elections in El Salvador, Argentina, Brazil, and elsewhere had shown that democratic openings could ameliorate ideological conflict, and that expanding civil rights offered a practical means of national reconciliation.56 Shultz and Habib believed that these goals could be achieved in Nicaragua without overthrowing Ortega or winning the war, so long as the enforcement mechanisms were realistic enough to prevent the
Sandinistas from cheating.57 As Habib repeatedly told his counterparts as he traveled through the region, the United States would support a treaty that was “comprehensive, verifiable, and simultaneous.”58
Contadora was not the forum in which such an agreement could be achieved. Habib suspected that while the Central American democracies were committed to getting a “good agreement,” the Contadora nations were interested in “any agreement” that would end U.S. support for the Contras.59 Meeting with Contadora ministers in April, Habib rejected out of hand their insistence that the United States should not demand democratization in Nicaragua. He told them that there must be “democratic national reconciliation” including dialogue leading to a cease fire, an amnesty, and free and fair elections.60 With a June 6 deadline approaching, the
Sandinistas voiced their intention to sign, but conditioned that they would not do so unless U.S. aggression had ended by that date. The Reagan administration was publicly seeking $100 million in aid for the Contras, and even pressured its Central American allies to help them in its
56 Habib made this point to the UNO leadership at a meeting in Miami. See “Memorandum of Conversation: Ambassador Habib with the UNO Leadership,” 14 May 1986, State Freedom of Information Act Reading Room (hereafter State-FOIA). 57 Shultz makes this claim in Turmoil and Triumph, (p. 952.), though his public role in continuing to seek Contra aid casts aspersion on the extent to which he genuinely believed in diplomacy independent of force. Habib’s critical comments of U.S. foreign policy after his resignation in 1987 reflect a firmer belief in the negotiating process. 58 Cable San Jose to State, “Efforts to Promote a Settlement in Central America and in Nicaragua,” State-FOIA. 59 Memo Habib to Shultz, “Information Memorandum on Contadora” 29 April 1986, State-FOIA. 60 Ibid.
273 efforts to secure funding. In March, Habib attempted to convince El Salvadoran President
Napoleon Duarte to come to the United States and help the administration secure the funding it desired.61
At this crucial moment, the Central American governments emerged as key players in pushing the momentum for peace. The process began with Vinicio Cerezo’s inauguration in
Guatemala in 1986, at which the five Central American governments endorsed the Caraballeda message and agreed to meet in the historic city of the Esquipulas in Eastern Guatemala in May
1986. As discussed in the previous chapter, Cerezo pursued a foreign policy of “active neutrality” designed to remove Guatemala from East-West ideological conflict. He successfully called for the creation of a Central American parliament in which popularly-elected representatives of the isthmian countries would be able to establish trade and security policy in collective fashion. These moves were devised explicitly to empower his government, as well as those of his neighbors, to resist U.S. pressure to further militarize the conflict. Doing so, Cerezo judged, would not only limit security concerns emanating from beyond Guatemala’s national borders, but limit the influence wielded by the Guatemalan military in domestic politics.62 Even
Ortega acknowledged to the press during a visit to Cuba that Cerezo’s proposal had merit.63
61 This is noted in a cable from the Argentine ambassador to El Salvador to the foreign ministry, reporting from a “direct source.” See Cable San Salvador to MRECIC, 21 March 1986, Box AH0035, OEA y ONU collection, Argentina MRECIC and Cable no. 158 San Salvador to MRECIC, 19 March 1986, Box AH0035, OEA y ONU collection, Argentina MRECIC. The former cable detailed the growing momentum for Central American solutions to the regional tension. A diplomat reported that “I estimate that the degree of political dependence in this country on the United States has not changed, however it can be detected that the dialog with Habib was the most serious and realist that of all those that have been held with Reagan delegations.” The latter cable detailed Duarte’s rebuff of Habib’s plea that he come to the United States to help sell the $100 million increase in Contra aid and pressure facing Duarte due to economic conditions. “Attitudes like this signal U.S. ignorance of the local political situation and the difficult position that Duarte finds himself in, [hemmed in] from the right and the left,” the ambassador reported. 62 Dario Moreno makes this point most forcefully in The Struggle for Peace in Central America (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1994), pp. 74-76. 63 Cable Havana to Buenos Aires, 9 February 1986, Box AH0017, Collection America Del Sur, Argentina MRECIC.
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The timing of Cerezo’s election was fortuitous. During the five month hiatus that appeared to have ended Contadora’s viability, newly-elected presidents took power in
Guatemala, Honduras, and Costa Rica. These new administrations continued to share a concern over the threat posed by revolutionary leftism, but their democratic sensibilities made them increasingly vocal about the shortcomings of the Sandinista model of “popular democracy.” In
El Salvador, where the United States preserved perhaps its greatest influence, Duarte rejected
Habib’s pressure to lobby the U.S. Congress on behalf of Reagan’s Contra aid plan, signifying a growing rejection of Contra support in the region.
None of the Central American elections was more important than that of President Óscar
Arias in Costa Rica in February 1986, an event which transformed the landscape of the Central
American crisis. Arias was on one hand a visionary leader, totally committed to representing
Costa Rica’s foundational ideal of liberal democracy in hemispheric diplomacy. But he was pragmatic as well. More than any other Central American leader, he recognized that regional peace and prosperity required ending the dual threats of revolutionary insurgency and
Washington’s intervention. Reagan officials—particularly Habib and Shultz, but the president as well—respected Arias, even if they did not always sympathize with him.64 In one early cable,
Habib told Shultz that Arias “has the potential to develop into our strongest asset,” in part because his opposition to Contra policy whose commitment to democracy allowed him to
“[speak] with the moral authority of an independent actor.”65
Arias wanted peace, and he recognized that political democratization was the only practical safeguard that would ensure that the Nicaraguans adhered to the principles of a regional
64 See Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, p. 951. 65 Cable Habib to Shultz, “Information Memorandum on Contadora” 29 April 1986, State-FOIA.
275 treaty.66 Like Reagan, Arias doubted that the Sandinistas would ever willingly give up power, and his early experiences with Ortega in the spring of 1986 convinced him that the Nicaraguan government was more interested in war than in peace.67 Costa Rica’s liberal democratic tradition gave it a unique responsibility to lead, Arias believed. He would be neutral, but not ideologically, he explained to one journalist: “[w]e identify totally with Western values, democracy, and what the United States represents.” He continued: “there will be no perpetual peace, long term, in
Central America, unless there are democratic governments. . . It must be peace with democracy.”68
Simultaneously, Arias recognized that Reagan’s policies in Nicaragua were an obstacle to legitimate democratization that was taking place in the region. These calculations were based on his interpretation of events in Costa Rica where, during the previous five years, Arias’s predecessor, Luis Alberto Monge Álvarez, had welcomed U.S. aid to rescue the struggling Costa
Rican economy from collapse. But the cost of that economic aid had been a free hand for the
United States to organize Contra activity from Costa Rican territory. Deeply troubled by this reversal of Costa Rica’s traditional neutrality, Arias campaigned on the idea that democratization of the region as a whole supported Costa Rica’s goals of security, peace, and democracy.69 When asked on U.S. television about U.S. aid to the Contras, Arias said that United States would be better off spending it on economic aid to Central America. “[T]he result with the aid to the
Contras has been a more dictatorial, more totalitarian government” in Nicaragua, Arias said.70
66 Cable San Jose to State, “Amb Habib Meeting with President Arias,” 28 April 1986, State-FOIA. 67 Ibid. 68 See Seth Rolbein, Nobel Costa Rica: A Timely Report on our Peaceful Pro-Yankee, Central American Neighbor (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989), p. 189. 69 Moreno, Struggle for Peace, p. 84. 70 Quote in Edward Cody, “U.S. Pressure on Costa Rica Reported,” The Washington Post, 13 April 1986, p. A1.
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Arias wasted little time reframing the peace agenda in terms that emphasized democratization and non-intervention. In May 1986, the Central American presidents gathered in
Esquipulas, Guatemala, to discuss the basic form of a regional peace settlement. Arias injected a frank, hard-headed tone into the discussions, particularly in his dealings with Ortega. This tone suited the leaders of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, all of whom criticized Nicaragua for its failure to guarantee basic democratic rights, along with its support for revolutionary groups abroad. Nicaragua continued to deny its support for the FMLN in El Salvador, and defended its democratic legitimacy. Ortega argued that—unlike the U.S.-supported governments in Central
America—Nicaraguan “popular democracy” was achieving genuine social and economic progress.71
Although the first Esquipulas meeting did not produce a formal treaty, the discussions led to a tacit agreement among the five presidents that democratization and self-determination would serve as the central principles of a lasting peace. While deferring on questions of demilitarization and enforcement, the official communique was specific on the importance of political reform, declaring that Central American peace
can only be the result of an authentic pluralistic and participatory democratic process that involves the promotion of social justice, respect of human rights, sovereignty and territorial integrity of states and the right of all nations to determine freely and without external interference of whatever type, its social, political, and economic model, understanding this determination as the product of the free will expressed by the people.72
The leaders of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador shared Arias’s fundamental interest in expanding the power of democratic governments. Even Nicaragua had agreed that, fundamentally, each country reserved the right to choose its own political and economic system free of external interference.
71 Hoyt, Many Faces, pp. 19-21. 72 See “Declaracion de Esquipulas,” 25 May 1986 in Folder “Reuniones de Presidentes,” DIGBRIB 1986, Guatemala MRE.
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Following the meeting, Arias told U.S. interlocutors that he was skeptical that the
Sandinistas were willing to submit to any formal treaty requiring democratic reform. Habib shared this assessment, and was pleased with the firmness and cooperation he found among the
Central American leaders. He wrote to Shultz that the Central American democracies were taking an important step by wresting control of negotiations away from Contadora and undermining Nicaraguan efforts to vilify the United States. “We should encourage it in every way possible,” Habib noted in his summary memo.73
At the same time, the Esquipulas meeting strengthened Arias’s resolve to confront U.S. policy in Nicaragua. Arias never wavered in his interpretation that ending regional conflict required the cessation of U.S-supported Contra activity on Costa Rican soil. In July, Arias announced that he would formally move to prevent Contras from using Costa Rica for “any kind of military act.”74 Arias also made plans to shut down a CIA-constructed airstrip inside Costa
Rican territory being used by the rebels. When news of Arias’s efforts made their way to
Washington, U.S. ambassador Lew Tambs, Elliott Abrams, and Oliver North threatened Arias that, should he make the announcement, he would lose U.S. economic aid.75
U.S. officials were encouraged that the negotiating process was isolating Nicaragua, but policymakers disagreed over the relationship between the diplomatic track and Reagan’s goal of obtaining congressional approval of the $100 million Contra aid request. Even in the State
73 Habib memo to Shultz, “Contadora: Visit to Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Guatemala,” 4 June 1986, State-FOIA. 74 Joanne Omang, “U.S. Support of Contras Causes Tension in Costa Rica,” The Washington Post, 19 July 1986, p. A17. Although this statement was Arias’s most formal announcement regarding his policy of shutting down Contra activity, in reality he lacked the manpower to enforce the decision. 75 These documents were revealed by the Tower Commission’s report on the Iran-Contra scandal. In the report, it notes that both Oliver North and Elliott Abrams called Arias on September 9th, 1986, telling him that if he announced the closure of the airstrip, U.S. aid to Costa Rica would be jeopardized. North then wrote to the national security advisor, saying “I recognize that I was well beyond my charter in dealing w/a head of state this way and in making threats/offers that may be impossible to deliver, but under the circumstances—and w/Elliott’s concurrence—it seemed like the only thing we could do.” The Arias government did not hold the press conference, but did later reveal the existence of the airstrip. See John G. Tower, Report of the President's Special Review Board. (Washington, D.C., GPO, 1987).
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Department, policymakers viewed the military aid as inextricably tied to their diplomatic objectives. “I am convinced,” Habib wrote to Shultz in June, “that funding is essential to the diplomatic process. With it we may be able to achieve our political and security objectives. We have little realistic possibility of doing so without it.”76 To Habib and Shultz, this was the dual- track policy at work: actively supporting negotiations while using Contra aid to pressure the
Sandinistas to accept a good treaty or punish them for violating it.77 Other officials, like Elliott
Abrams, worried that the State Department’s enthusiasm for the process might lead to a treaty that required cutting off the Contras; they advised the secretary to urge him Habib to “go slow.”78
On June 25th, the administration succeeded in obtaining its $100 million Contra aid package when the Democratically-controlled House reversed its earlier vote and approved the measure, 221 votes to 209. To achieve this reversal, the administration applied strong pressure on Democratic legislators to change their votes or risk being seen as supporters of non- democratic, communist forces.79 Appealing to the public, Reagan once again conjured the threat of a Soviet “beachhead” in the Caribbean should the aid be denied.80 Reagan’s rhetorical offensive had a dramatic effect, particularly on moderate “swing” legislators who were battered from the right and the left. Embracing Reagan’s portrayal of the Contras as freedom fighters gave them political cover to change their vote. Senator Richard Lugar told an audience at the
National Press Club before the vote, “[t]he American people and the Central American democracies will not back any Nicaraguan freedom fighters who have any other agenda than a
76 Habib memo to Shultz, “Contadora: Visit to Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Guatemala.” 77 Habib memo to Shultz, “Contadora,” 9 June 1986, State-FOIA. 78 Melton memo to Abrams, “Whither Contadora?” 10 June 1986, State-FOIA. 79 Edward Walsh, “House, in Reversal, Backs Reagan Plan For Aid to Contras,” The Washington Post, 26 June 1986. 80 Bernard Weinraub, “Reagan, In Appeal to Help Contras, Cites Soviet Peril,” The New York Times, 25 June 1986, p. A1
279 passion for democracy.”81 Reagan called the victory a “vote for democracy,” although polls showed that Contra aid was still opposed by more than half of Americans.82 The disbursal of the aid was planned to begin in October, during the next fiscal year.
The move once again sent ripples through Central America. In July, Nicaragua filed suit against Costa Rica and Honduras at the International Court of Justice.83 The lawsuit was an attempt by Ortega to rebuff Contra activity in those countries, but it further soured relations among the Central American countries.84 Privately Arias complained to Habib that the Contra aid put Costa Rica in a terrible position. Arias could not support the Contras given the Nicaraguan lawsuit, nor could he withstand the flood of refugees and the costs of additional in his country.
The Contra aid would shake Cost Rica “like an earthquake,” he told Habib.85 Costa Rica could do much more to support the diplomatic track than it could by supporting the paramilitary effort.
In September, Habib asked Arias to refrain from making statements critical of U.S. policy.86 By the autumn of 1986, Arias’s bold diplomatic leadership seemed to have earned him a place, like the Contadora ministers before him, between U.S. belligerence and Nicaraguan intransigence.
At that moment, unexpected events in Nicaragua broke the impasse. The shootdown of a
C-123 supply plane ferrying materiel to the Contras gave way to far-reaching public revelations about the clandestine U.S. supply network. Reagan and Shultz faced increasingly direct questions about U.S. involvement. They denied everything, as did Abrams, who deflected accusations that the administration had continued aiding the Contras in violation of the Boland
81 Joanne Omang, “Sen. Lugar Says Contras Must Act to Win Backing; Rebels Told to Prove ‘Passion for Democracy,’” The Washington Post, 18 June 1986, p. A22. 82 Barry Sussman, The Washington Post, Public Would Preserve SALT II Treaty, Not Help Nicaraguans; Contras Poll Finds Opposition to Reagan Proposals, Neutrality on Tax Overhaul,” The Washington Post, 25 June 1986, p. A16. 83 Larry Rohter, “Nicaragua Seeks New Court Ruling,” The New York Times, 29 July 1986, p. A3. 84 See Habib memo to Shultz, “My next Trip to the Central American Democracies,” 22 August 1986, State-FOIA. 85 Cable State to San Jose, “Ambassador Habib’s Meeting with Costa Rican President Arias,” 12 September 1986, State-FOIA. 86 Habib memo to Shultz, “My September Trip to Central America,” 12 September 1986, State-FOIA.
280 amendment. Lying, he told questioners that the plane’s pilot, Eugene Hasenfus, had been one of the “brave people” that took it upon themselves to bring aid to the Contras. “God bless them. . . they are heroes,” Abrams mused.87 Late in November, the administration admitted that the illegal
Contra funding had been diverted from proceeds of arms-for-hostages deals with Iran. The political and symbolic significance of the scandal as it related to Nicaragua was immediately obvious: an administration rhetorically committed to the idea of supporting democratic change had subverted U.S. laws rather than incur the political costs of its policy. As the cover-up spun ever wider, administration officials were ensnared in public suspicion and disenchantment regarding Reagan’s intervention in Central America.88
Arias benefitted from the Iran-Contra scandal, which put Reagan in a weak position before the two leaders met in December 1986. Publicly, Arias denied that his visit had to do with
Contra support. Privately, Arias used his leverage to build U.S. support for his own peace plan.
Reagan felt reassured by Arias’s realistic view of the Sandinistas, calling Arias the “most outspoken leader in Latin America against the Communist govt. of Nicaragua.”89 Arias convinced Reagan to release frozen USAID funding for Costa Rica. In January, the Costa Rican foreign minister met with Abrams and Habib in Miami, assuring them that Arias’s peace plan would demand significant democratization from the Sandinistas.90
In February, 1987 Arias convened all of the Central American presidents, except for
Ortega, in San Jose to draft a ten-point proposal for peace. The San Jose proposal formalized
Esquipulas declaration’s earlier principle that peace could only be achieved on the basis of
87 Byrne, Iran-Contra, p.254. 88 Byrne’s exhaustive account makes clear that the Iran portion of the arms-for-hostages deal was the greater cause for concern—both politically and legally—for the administration. However, fears that the NSC had violated the Boland Amendment were also obvious at the time. See Byrne, Iran-Contra, pp. 253-78. 89 Ronald Reagan and Douglas Brinkley, The Reagan Diaries: Vol. II, November 1985 –January October 1989 (New York: Harper Collins, 2009), pp. 663-64 90 This point is made by Dario Moreno, who interviewed the Costa Rican foreign minister, Rodrigo Madrigal-Nieto in November 1990. See Moreno, Struggle for Peace, p. 86.
281 national reconciliation and democratization. Peace “demands an end to dictatorships that continue to exist,” Arias’s proposal read. “It is imperative that all of us, together, promote the substitution of such tyrannies where the people are victims of a lack of freedom in whatever form. Such a substitution should occur, preferably, as a peaceful transition, without bloodshed, towards democracy.”91 The proposal took specific aim at Nicaragua’s failure to tolerate political opposition. “[W]here the doors to freedom and democracy have been opened,” the proposal read,” armed struggle could not be regarded as a “struggle for freedom,” but rather an “endeavor by fanatics.” The message to Nicaragua was clear: cease support for revolutionary groups in neighboring democracies, and undertake meaningful reforms at home. Then Nicaragua, too, could benefit from the legitimacy of regional cooperation. Following these meetings, the four
Central American presidents agreed they would now work to secure Nicaragua’s agreement to the plan, with a follow-up meeting planned for the summer of 1987 in Esquipulas.92
Reagan officials welcomed the Arias plan’s strong emphasis on political reform in
Nicaragua, but worried that lackluster security provisions could be exploited by the Sandinistas.
They resented not having been involved in the plan’s drafting, and they voiced concerns the San
Jose proposal contained “holes.” Reagan officials also seethed that Arias crafted the agreement in consultation with congressional Democrats.93 In reality, Reagan had not abandoned his hope to obtain aid for the Contras even, though the funding approved in June had been delayed indefinitely after the Iran-Contra scandal.
Reagan’s continuing focus on Contra aid confounded Arias, who now sought assurances from Wright that congressional Democrats would support the Esquipulas plan. Arias told Habib
91 Moreno, Struggle for Peace, p. 87. 92 For the text of the proposal, see Moreno, Struggle for Peace, pp. 184-90. 93 See Habib to Shultz, “The Diplomatic Track – My February Trip to Central America and Mexico,” 25 February 1987, State- FOIA.
282 he was “troubled by the U.S. concentration on aid to the resistance.” His plan, he said, was “a way to box in Nicaragua.” If they accepted, the Sandinistas would lose elections; if they rejected, then all illusions would be off and the United States could take “whatever action it wanted.”94
Other Central American leaders, like Duarte, felt that they could not oppose the plan because it garnered such a positive international reaction. To propose changes or publicly oppose the plan,
Duarte confided to Habib, would make leaders appear to be “puppets” of U.S. policy. The
Central American leaders perceived that Reagan’s White House was losing power to the
Congress; they began to suspect that Reagan’s successor—Democrat or Republican—would look differently upon the Contras. To Duarte and the other leaders, supporting Arias’s plan was, at a minimum, a hedge against the likely scenario that the Sandinistas would remain in power.95
In late summer the administration took action to arrest the perception that Iran-Contra had weakened U.S. power in the region and sacrificed the legislative initiative. House Speaker
Jim Wright and White House Chief of Staff Howard Baker crafted a bipartisan peace plan, unveiled in early August 1987. The so-called “Wright-Reagan Plan” was an open attempt to steal momentum away from the Central Americans’ efforts. It differed little in substance from what
Arias had proposed. The Central American leaders pressed ahead with their plans to meet in
Esquipulas, setting aside Reagan’s perfunctory public nod to peace.96
The decisive moment arrived in August, as the Central American countries returned to
Esquipulas in search of a comprehensive agreement that included Nicaragua. This time they were successful, owing largely to the leaders’ expanding sense of control over the course of events.
Although they began by rejecting the Wright-Reagan proposal, Arias recognized that it had
94 Cable Tegucigulpa to State, “Amb. Habib’s Meeting with Costa Rican President Arias,” 24 February 1987, State- FOIA. 95 Cable San Salvador to State, “Amb. Habib’s Meeting with President Duarte,” 23 March 1987, State-FOIA. 96 Moreno, Struggle for Peace, pp. 89-90.
283 actually put Ortega in a vulnerable position. If no agreement was reached at Esquipulas, Ortega’s rejection of Wright-Reagan would probably lead to a renewal of Contra aid. Arias and Duarte used this vulnerability to press Ortega hard on his willingness to make concessions, and to halt
Sandinista support to the Salvadoran rebels. After hours of recriminations, Ortega yielded and admitted candidly to Duarte that, indeed, Nicaragua was arming the rebels, but was now willing to negotiate on that point. Ortega later recounted that this admission “did something to change”
Duarte, who now took the lead in fostering an agreement. Asking Ortega to swear on his
“personal honor” that Nicaragua would cease aid to the FMLN, Duarte endorsed the treaty, paving the way for an agreement by all five presidents in the early morning hours of August 8.97
Building on Arias’s San Jose proposal, Esquipulas II called for national reconciliation through amnesty, demilitarization, and democratic elections. This framework was crucial because it bolstered the regional legitimacy of each signatory government—all of whom were facing challenges from insurgent forces. Sixty days after the accord was signed, all of the signatories were required to sign amnesty agreements with guerrilla forces, cease allowing foreign groups to use their soil for attacks on a neighbor, permit press freedoms, and announce new elections. These provisions required termination of all support for the Contras and demobilization of guerrillas in all countries within 90 days. The agreement rested on the same fundamental premise that the Reagan administration had espoused elsewhere in the hemisphere: that democratization and civil rights could form the basis for peace and undermine the challenge of the armed Left. But it also realized the worst fears of hardline Reagan officials who were unwilling to relent in their support of the Contra armed struggle.
97 This account relies on Kagan’s excellent summary, which is in turn informed by interviews with key participants. See Kagan, Twilight Struggle, pp. 538-43.
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To be sure, Ortega’s acceptance of Esquipulas was facilitated by rapidly worsening economic conditions and the ever-present fear of additional Contra aid. But Ortega and the
FSLN also recognized an opportunity to end Nicaragua’s isolation and cooperate with Central
American leaders without yielding to U.S. hegemony. Much to the dismay of U.S. officials,
Nicaraguan calculations appeared to be correct: by pursuing cooperation with its neighbors, the
Sandinistas undercut regional support for U.S. intervention.
In some ways, Arias had given the Reagan administration what it had claimed to want all along: a treaty that facilitated the growth of liberal democracy in the Western Hemisphere and compelled Nicaragua’s adherence to those norms. In this way, Arias was an ideal partner for the
United States. He was unwilling to share a border with the non-democratic and expansionist
Sandinista government, and he perceived the importance of regional politics based on free elections and free markets. What put Arias at odds with the Reagan administration was his insistence that belligerent pressure through the Contras—the linchpin of American policy—was an impediment to Sandinistas’ adoption of democracy. Arias exposed as false Reagan’s longstanding contention that the Sandinistas could not be negotiated with. Differing interpretations of those events, however, continued to limit the saliency of the peace.
Peace, Interrupted
On the evening of August 7th, George Shultz and Philip Habib met in the secretary’s office and toasted to the Esquipulas II agreement. They shared a sense of the historic importance of the accord and Habib’s work in facilitating it. Elliott Abrams, who joined Shultz and Habib on the seventh floor of the state department, was less inclined to celebrate. To him, Esquipulas was yet another step along a questionable diplomatic track that was more likely to strengthen the
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Sandinistas than it was to compel them to undertake democratic reform. “Communists win these kind of negotiations. This could be the end of our policy” Abrams warned the secretary.
Although Reagan issued a statement the following day congratulating the Central
American governments on the treaty, within weeks suspicion and distrust had soured the administration’s view of Esquipulas II. Reagan and other officials portrayed it as an attempt to sell out the Contras. Over the final year of Reagan’s presidency, Reagan’s unwillingness to abandon the cause of military aid to the Contras—and Reagan’s contention that military aid to the Contras supported “democratization”—undermined the implementation of the treaty in
Central America.
Reagan’s skeptical view of the peace was related to the ongoing backlash to the Iran-
Contra scandal. Joint congressional hearings into the administration’s extralegal activities played out through the summer of 1987, at the very moment that the Central American presidents were meeting in Guatemala.98 The scandal not only weakened Reagan’s prestige and political clout on the specific issue of Contra support; it demonstrated to allies and opponents alike that this support for the Contras was moribund.99 To no one was this more obvious than Sandinista leaders, who recognized that Reagan was losing his ability to enact policies of confrontation. The
Contras also recognized that they had to plan for a future in which Reagan’s moral support and
U.S. aid were no longer assured.100 Though Reagan would continue to lobby the Congress for
98 On the congressional hearings, which ran from May to August, see Byrne, Iran-Contra, pp. 290-306. 99 A Washington Post-ABC News poll from March 1988 found that 56 percent of Americans opposed providing additional aid to the Contras. The 40 percent supporting the motion was in fact the highest level of approval since Oliver North testified to Congress about his role in the Iran-Contra scandal. When the question was rephrased to make clear that the Contras’ survival depended on U.S. aid, then 56 percent supported—a clear indicator of the benefit of describing U.S. aid in dramatic, ideological terms. Lou Cannon and Tom Kenworthy, “Reagan Again Vows Support For Contras; Most in U.S. Oppose New Aid, Poll Shows,” The Washington Post, 23 March 1988, p. A23. 100 A separate Washington Post-ABC News poll in March 1988 found that more than half of respondents believed that Vice President (and Republican candidate) George Bush was lying about his role in the scandal, including a
286 military and humanitarian aid for the Contras, his authority on this issue was undercut by the scandal.
The administration remained unwilling to accept this reality. In the months following the signing of the Esquipulas agreement, Reagan officials publicly and privately undermined it, alleging that the Sandinistas would use the treaty process as diplomatic cover to finally destroy the Contras. Policymakers worried that the reforms called for in the treaty timetable were too vague, and that the Contras—as an armed group—would be left out of the political dialogue.
These claims were indistinguishable from the administration’s disappointment that the
Esquipulas treaty had decisively ended its chances for obtaining additional Contra aid from the
Congress. The treaty had exposed Reagan to attacks from conservatives who assailed him for abandoning the Contras.101 These criticisms stung Reagan. The Arias plan “has a loophole where the Contras are concerned,” Reagan complained in his diary. “We’ll plug it,” he noted.102 Habib, recognizing that his work as negotiator was now being repudiated by the administration, resigned on August 14.
On September 10, Shultz presented a request to the House for $270 million in aid to the
Contras. The Esquipulas agreement did not bar U.S. funding to the Contras during the current fiscal year, but seeking aid that would extend beyond the 90 day limit outlined in the treaty was a violation of its letter and spirit. Ten days later, Arias spoke to members of the House, urging them to oppose the aid request on the grounds that it would reverse the progress of Central
American leaders on the diplomatic front. “Let us combat totalitarianism with the power of democracy,” Arias encouraged the legislators. It was the exact point that the administration
third of Republicans. See Richard Morin, “Iran-Contra Affair Dogs Vice President in Polls; Scandal Could Cost Him Reagan Democrats,” The Washington Post, 24 March 1988, p. A20. 101 According to Kagan, this counsel was put forth by Carlucci, Abrams, and Weinberger over the objections of Shultz, who felt it contradicted Philip Habib’s work as negotiator. See Kagan, Twilight Struggle, p. 545. 102 Reagan Diaries, pp. 763-64.
287 continued to make regarding political developments elsewhere in Latin America. Yet in the case of Nicaragua, White House perceptions of domestic politics and the lingering anti-communism with which officials approached Nicaragua led Reagan to oppose democratization. Duarte,
Azcona, and Arias all urged for a delayed vote until January, when the Esquipulas countries would again meet to evaluate the progress after the treaty.
With the administration’s power weakened vis-à-vis the Congress, and Reagan fixated on
Contra aid, the momentum for enforcing the peace shifted to Central America. The Esquipulas agreement established an international verification mechanism, (CIVS, Comisión Internacional de Verificación y Seguimiento), scheduled to meet at the end of 1987 and report to the presidents on the progress in fulfilling the terms of the agreement.103 Although the provisions of the treaty calling for democratization were broadly acceptable to the Central American regimes, the treaty terms dealing with amnesties for guerrillas, limitation of weapons, and support for irregular forces were more contentious. In these areas, an externally-monitored treaty strained on the civilian-military relations that had developed under democratic transitions in all of the Central
American countries.
In El Salvador, for example, where longtime U.S.-ally Napoleon Duarte faced plummeting approval ratings for his handling of the economy and the civil war, the Esquipulas agreement invited a major backlash from the military, the conservative Right, and guerrillas. In
October, after a prominent human rights activist, Herbert Anaya, was murdered in what appeared to be a resurgence of death squad violence, Elliott Abrams cabled U.S. Ambassador to El
Salvador Edwin Corr. “The catalyst for such an event is perhaps the Guatemala agreement,”
Abrams wrote, “which has required the [government of El Salvador] to take a number of
103 CIVS comprised the foreign ministers of the five Centrral American countries, representatives of the four Contadora countries and the support group nations, the secretary general of the UN and the secretary general of the OAS.
288 precipitous actions that do not sit well with either the extreme right or the extreme left.”104 Later a State Department official wrote to the secretary that the Salvadoran military, “though professing support for the accord, feels undercut by it and there is discontent in military circles, including coup rumors and support for the right.”105
In Nicaragua, the very same calculations that guided the Sandinistas’ earlier defiance in the face of U.S. aggression—the need to safeguard the success of their revolution—now encouraged Ortega to accept peace. Recognizing that future Cuban and Soviet support was uncertain, Ortega saw the Esquipulas agreement as a chance to end the civil war with the
Contras, improve Nicaragua’s economic fortunes, and re-integrate the country into the region on
Sandinista terms, rather than those stipulated by the United States. Long suspicious of negotiations with their regional neighbors, Ortega and the FSLN increasingly saw the five- country treaty framework as a new, if necessary, way to safeguard their revolution. As Sergio
Ramirez later wrote, Esquipulas drove home a very basic realization for the comandantes: “being part of Central America gave our own reality an unavoidable twist; Central America continued to be an interconnected region, as it had been throughout its history, and Nicaragua was part of that region.”106
Nonetheless, accepting Esquipulas’s provisions for democratization was a risky move for
Ortega. He approached the peace unwilling to make concessions that would sacrifice the FSLN’s position of power—calculations that infuriated democratic political opponents in Nicaragua and invited criticism from the United States. Some ideologues within the FSLN openly disagreed with Ortega’s signature of the treaty, which—through the required amnesty—called on the
104 See Cable State to San Salvador, “The Human Rights Situation,” 28 October 1987, DNSA El Salvador 1980- 1994 Collection. 105 Memo Curtis W. Kamman to Shultz, “Scorecard on the Arias Plan—El Salvador’s Perspective,” 18 December 1987, DNSA El Salvador 1980-1994 Collection. 106 Ramirez, Adiós, Muchachos, p. 194.
289 government to recognize the legitimacy of the Contras.107 Ortega reassured his compatriots in the FSLN that signing the accords did not mean abandoning the revolution. The Sandinistas’ support for revolutionary movements abroad “must be maintained and even increased,” Ortega told his fellows ministers, and, shortly thereafter, Humberto Ortega met with Salvadoran rebels to promise increased support.108 When opposition politicians marched on Managua in mid-
August in an attempt to pressure the government to rapidly undertake the democratic reforms called for by the treaty, the Sandinistas responded with a violent crackdown. FSLN leaders refused to meet the Contras for cease-fire talks, judging that they could test the rigidity of the
Esquipulas deadlines even while complying with the letter of the agreements.
If there were domestic reasons for Sandinista ambivalence about adopting democratic reforms, they were dwarfed by Reagan’s ongoing campaign to compel the Sandinistas to accept cease-fire talks on U.S. terms. In late 1987, Contra commanders and Reagan officials alike noted with approval that the armed resistance was contesting control of larger portions
Sandinista territory.109 Policymakers interpreted this as a sure sign that paramilitary pressure had led to diplomatic breakthroughs, and they began to press for direct cease-fire talks between the two sides. Now more than ever, the Reagan administration saw it as necessary to resume aid to the Contras, in order to pressure the Sandinistas to negotiate with the Contras in good faith.110
With the FSLN unwilling to negotiate directly, the United States prevailed upon the Sandinistas to accept Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, an outspoken critic of the regime, as a mediator.
107 Kinzer notes that among Sandinista ideologues, notably Tomás Borge, the idea of negotiations was completely rejected. See Kinzer, Blood of Brothers, p. 369. 108 Kagan, Twilight Struggle, p. 549. 109 Kagan, Twilight Struggle, p. 556. 110 In Shultz’s memoir, this episode invites reflection on Reagan’s trust in the negotiating process. Reagan was a “hardliner,” Shultz says, but he was willing to negotiate with his enemies when he felt he could do so from a position of power. The problem, Shultz hints cryptically, was that Reagan “did not impose the discipline within his administration needed to allow the negotiating track to proceed in an unambiguous way.” This is undoubtedly a reference other White House advisers who opposed the negotiating track, but he only refers specifically to conservative legislators. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, p. 964.
290
Attempting to avert this arrangement, Ortega appealed to Reagan’s opponents in Congress, enlisting House Speaker Jim Wright to propose an alternate negotiating team and agenda for negotiations.111 This episode of “rogue diplomacy” enraged Reagan and Shultz, and concluded with a reconciliation in which Wright and Shultz publicly voiced their shared support for
Esquipulas II. Ortega’s gambit to limit Reagan’s influence on the talks failed, but Shultz’s blessing of the negotiations yet again invited outrage from U.S. conservatives who counseled
Reagan to dismiss the talks altogether.
The Sandinistas eventually yielded and agreed to cease-fire negotiations in December, but the talks quickly fell apart. The proposals of the Contras and Sandinistas were incompatible, reflecting their divergent perceptions of political and military reality. The Sandinistas envisioned a cease-fire as a way of formalizing the Contras’ disarmament before any attempt to integrate them into political life. Contra comandos, at this point being steered almost exclusively by military leadership, viewed a potential cease-fire as a formal legitimation of their territorial control. The Sandinistas perceived correctly that these demands reflected the Contras’ assumption that U.S. support would continue. The FSLN’s rhetoric was blunt: there can be “no truce with the Contras,” Ortega announced publicly, and promised the government would continue “hitting them hard.” Rejecting any prospect that the Sandinistas would relinquish their position in Nicaragua’s political life, Ortega declared: “In the hypothetical case that the
Sandinista Front lost an election, the Sandinista Front would hand over the government, not power.”112
Sandinista rhetoric seemed to confirm Reagan’s contention that the FSLN would not willingly cede power. In December a Sandinista defector told The Washington Post that the
111 On Wright as a “rogue” diplomat, see Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, p. 963-68. 112 On the talks and rhetoric, see Kagan, Twilight Struggle, pp. 562-64
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Sandinistas had signed military agreements with the Soviets that would expand their forces to more than 600,000 soldiers. The news sparked a renewal of support for Contra aid in the
Congress, where Democratic legislators remained frustrated by Ortega’s seeming obliviousness to international perceptions of his policies.113 The FSLN’s heavy-handed and tactless moves set back the possibility of national reconciliation. But the Sandinistas believed they needed to defend themselves. Given Reagan’s continued commitment to winning more Contra aid—and given
Democrats unwillingness to finally eliminate such a possibility—they had to prepare for the possibility of a renewed Contra offensive. A cease-fire seemed terribly risky; the FSLN believed its survival rested on negotiating from a position of power.
At the beginning of 1988 the CIVS verification commission met in Alajuela Costa Rica to review progress in implementing Esquipulas II. Ahead of the meeting, Elliott Abrams and
Colin Powell, Reagan’s new national security advisor, toured the region, pressuring countries to abandon the peace as a result of Nicaragua’s transgressions. Although the Central American countries did not yield to pressure to declare Nicaragua in non-compliance, they did begin to echo U.S. rhetoric that Sandinista intransigence was the main obstacle to peace. Duarte and
Azcona, for example, faced domestic pressure from their militaries to distance themselves from
Nicaragua, as well as exhortations from U.S. officials. Both leaders distrusted Mexican and
Panamanian representatives on the verification commission, believing they were inclined to accept Nicaragua’s claims of democratization.114 Although in its January report CIVS found that
Nicaragua had made the most significant changes in line with the accords, the commission also judged that Nicaragua had fallen short of expected goals, particularly in establishing a meaningful national dialogue with the opposition.
113 Kagan, Twilight Struggle, pp. 561-66. 114 Moreno, Struggle for Peace, p. 100.
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U.S. pressure and the CIVS report forced Ortega to concede significant changes—lifting the state of the siege and agreeing to reduce the size of the Nicaraguan military. But for Reagan, these changes were not enough. Trying a new tack, Reagan asked Congress to put $36.25 million of Contra aid in an escrow account, promising that legislators would retain control over when to disburse the funds.115 In support of the request, Reagan now turned to the American people. In a nationally televised address, Reagan portrayed Contra aid as the administration’s indispensable leverage: “If we cut off aid to the freedom fighters, then the Sandinistas can go back to their old ways,” Reagan argued. “Then the negotiations can become, once again, what they were before— high-blown words and promises and convenient cover while the Sandinista Communists continue the consolidation of their dictatorial regime and the subversion of Central America.”116
Congress did not yield. On February 3, 1988, the House voted against Contra aid, killing
Reagan’s final quest for military aid. With no aid forthcoming, the Contras withdrew from
Nicaragua to neighboring Honduras in late February 1988.
With the Contras in retreat, Ortega sensed a chance to strike a decisive blow. In early
March 1988, he sent roughly 5,000 troops into Honduran territory to overrun Contra bases and capture weapons stockpiles. The operation, Danto 88, failed. Fearing that the resistance was on the brink of defeat, Reagan ordered two divisions of the 82nd airborne to Honduras as a show of force. Believing that the Reagan administration might embark on a full-scale invasion, the FSLN recalled its forces, leaving the weapons caches untouched. News of the Nicaraguan incursion incited outrage from congressional Republicans as well as Democrats. Once again, Ortega’s
115 See Joel Brinkley, “White House Seeks $36 Million in Aid for the Contras, The New York Times, 27 January 1988, p. A1. 116 Ronald Reagan, “Address to the Nation on Aid to the Nicaraguan Democratic Resistance,” 2 February 1988, Ronald Reagan Library (hereafter RRL).
293 attempt to increase the Sandinista’s relative power over the Contras had given the Contras’ supporters a pretext for seeking additional aid.
Recalibrating, Ortega now invited the Contras to negotiate a cease-fire. Speaking over the clandestine radio station of the resistance, Adolfo Calero accepted: “The cutoff of aid to the
Nicaraguan resistance is affecting us more each day. . . . In the long run the cutoff could fatal,” he admitted.117 As Nicaraguan Vice President Sergio Ramirez later wrote in his memoirs, both sides moved cautiously to end the war when they recognized that victory was impossible.118
On March 21, Sandinista and Contra leaders met at the small town of Sapoá on
Nicaragua’s Costa Rican border. In spite of the deep mistrust between these two sides, the negotiations proceeded civilly. The Contras found the Sandinistas willing to cede on political points. “We’re ready to agree to a cease fire if the Sandinistas give us a little democracy,”
Alfredo César told a journalist in the midst of negotiations. When the lengthy negotiations came to a close, journalists expecting a formal announcement watched in awe as an unimaginable scene unfolded: flanked by Contra leaders, Daniel and Humberto Ortega took the stage.
Together, they sang the country’s national anthem. Ortega told the crowd, “we are determined to bury the weapons of war and raise the olive branch of peace.” Saying the agreements were not a victory for either side, Calero hoped they would establish a foundation for “peace and freedom for the Nicaraguan people.”119
The Sapoá agreements spelled out the procedures for integrating the Contra resistance into the processes of national reconciliation and democratization, a task that was easier to stipulate than to realize. The opening of political space in Nicaragua tested the limits of Contras’ willingness to reconcile peacefully. The Sandinistas legalized all forms of peaceful dissent, while
117 Kinzer, Blood of Brothers, p. 368. 118 Ramirez, Adíos Muchachos, pp. 192-93. 119 Kinzer, Blood of Brothers, p. 373.
294 the Contras agreed to disarm and to forfeit further aid from the United States. But a large number of resistance fighters refused to demobilize and continued to carry out attacks on Sandinista targets. The Reagan administration criticized the agreements and pressed for further aid. The
Contras had been “bludgeoned and blackmailed'” into signing an agreement by the U.S.
Congress, Elliott Abrams alleged. “If it is no longer possible for the Contras to pressure them militarily, where will the pressure come from that forces the Sandinistas to make concessions to democracy?” Abrams lamented.
At this point the United States was speaking to an increasingly small echo chamber within the Contra leadership. Moderate leaders like Arturo Cruz, Adolfo Calero, and Alfredo
César wanted to abide by the agreement, forge a lasting alliance with the unarmed opposition, and press for change through elections. But Enrique Bermúdez, the powerful Contra military commander who controlled the vast majority of the 13,000 man Contra army, shared the views of Reagan officials.120 With more military aid from the United States, the Contras could exact concessions from the government, Bermúdez insisted. Discord among these leaders—and their differing perceptions of what help they might receive from Washington—stalled meaningful progress on the cease-fire after Sapoá. Even though the U.S. Congress did not approve any additional military aid, the relatively small sums of humanitarian assistance that still found their way to the Contras were channeled through Bermúdez, strengthening his position and preventing conciliation.
As negotiations sputtered through the summer, the Sandinistas once again took actions that belied their claims to respect democratic processes. In June 1988, Contra and other moderate opposition leaders held a political rally in the city of Nandaime. Under orders from the interior
120 Robert Pear, “Abrams Predicts Sandinistas Will Violate Accord and Consolidate Power,” The New York Times, 4 April 1988.
295 ministry, state police used excessive force to break up the rally. The Sandinistas feared the growing coordination between the Contras and their more moderate foes. The FSLN wanted to dictate the democratic opening on its terms. The Sandinistas would tolerate political activity,
Interior Minister Tomas Borge declared, but not “the suicide of the revolution.”121
The crackdown at Nandaime and several similar incidents that followed were not the actions of a regime aspiring to achieve democratic legitimacy and, indeed, the Sandinistas paid dearly in political terms for their heavy-handed tactics after Esquipulas. Notwithstanding divisions among Contra leaders, growing popular discontent among all segments of the
Nicaraguan population portended a grim future for the FSLN’s revolution. High profile revelations about corruption and largesse among Sandinista leaders confirmed perceptions that the FSLN had become a party of bloated Socialist bureaucrats.122 Reagan sought to exploit these weaknesses. U.S. Ambassador Richard Melton used the embassy as a center of gravity for the anti-Sandinista political movement. On July 11 1988, the foreign ministry expelled Melton and seven other embassy employees for their behavior.123
The expulsion of the U.S. ambassador from Nicaragua was a fitting culmination of
Reagan’s enduring confrontation with the Sandinistas. The administration did not treat diplomacy as a means for constructive dialogue, but as an adjunct to its efforts to effect regime change by force. What set this apart from U.S. actions in other countries—Reagan’s pressure on
Pinochet in Chile, for example—was that Reagan believed the Sandinista regime’s revolutionary nature made it fundamentally incapable of relinquishing power. Reagan’s anti-communist ideological zealotry in the case of Nicaragua justified the use of force to effect regime change, even when evolving regional circumstances invited diplomatic alternatives. Of course, the
121 Kinzer, Blood of Brothers, p. 385 122 See Zimmermann, Sandinista, pp. 225-6. 123 On the expulsion, see Kagan, Twilight Struggle, pp. 616-17.
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Sandinistas often preferred confrontation to conciliation at key moments as well. But they proved far more ready to adapt when Nicaragua’s neighbors presented an option for a peaceful resolution of the domestic conflict. These changing dynamics offered risks and opportunities to the FSLN. By the end of 1988, the Sandinistas recognized that Reagan’s departure might finally end U.S. support for the Contras. On the other hand, they recognized that, in accepting democratic reforms, economic woes and political exigencies would make them answerable to their critics.
***
The final months of the Reagan presidency were less a resolution of the Nicaraguan crisis than a dénouement in the ideological conflict. Reagan, yielding to domestic political realities, relinquished the question Contra support to the next administration—not unlike Jimmy Carter had done with the related issues of aid to Nicaragua and El Salvador in 1980.
The Sandinistas had achieved their main objective by remaining in power in the face of a massive, eight year U.S. effort to unseat them. But the costs of that victory were high: 30,000
Nicaraguans killed in civil war, the economy destroyed, civil rights trampled, and a poisonous political climate. The FSLN had protected its revolution against armed and moderate foes, but its model of popular democracy had been completely undermined in the process. In the spring of
1989, just months after Reagan left office, Ortega surprisingly agreed to hold unconditional democratic elections, forcing the FSLN to face the consequences of its own abuses of power and reckless policies during the Civil War.124
124 Katherine Hoyt argues that the FSLN’s decision to hold elections represented a shift in their political philosophy, from rejecting elections as a tool of bourgeois power to promoting them as a basic facet of popular revolution. Hoyt suggests that after the drafting of the 1987 constitution, more Sandinistas grew to see that elections—which were a fundamental part of the FSLN program in universities, unions, and other aspects of life—were a significant aspect of national political legitimacy. This ideological explanation is perceptive, but also ignores the external pressure that Ortega and others were facing to hold elections, and the calculation that the FSLN could translate its widespread popular support into votes. See Hoyt, Many Faces, pp. 36-39.
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The costs of Reagan’s Central America policy were significant. The revelations of the
Iran-Contra scandal deepened distrust between the executive and legislative branches over foreign policy and covert operations in particular. Reagan’s legacy—not to mention the reputations of nearly all of his top officials working on Central American affairs—was tarnished irreparably. Many observers viewed the administration’s policies in the Western Hemisphere, where Reagan claimed to have worked to expand freedom and political rights, as having resulted in bloodshed and reactionary violence.125 Although the U.S.-Nicaraguan conflict was but one part of a much broader, evolutionary approach to the region, Reagan invested a huge amount of political capital in a confrontation that—notwithstanding his rhetorical pronouncements—served as a powerful exception to U.S. support for democracy. Reagan’s approach to Nicaragua made clear how the power of U.S. ideals could be abused when serving political ends that countenanced repression and human rights abuses.
125 Notably, even in the most recent strain of historiography on Reagan’s role in ending the Cold War, U.S. policies toward Latin America are portrayed as inflexible and ideological. See, for example, Hal Brands, What Good Is Grand Strategy?: Power and Purpose In American Statecraft From Harry S. Truman to George W. Bush (Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2014) and On the role of CIA assessments of the threat posed by Soviet support for Nicaragua, see Wilson, Triumph of Improvisation.
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Conclusion
Beyond Revolution and Repression?
If the Reagan administration’s belligerence toward the Sandinistas in Nicaragua belied its commitment to promoting democracy abroad, U.S. policy in Chile during 1988 was a reaffirming example of that commitment. In Chile, U.S. involvement was instrumental in the October 1988 plebiscite which unseated General Augusto Pinochet from power. Direct U.S. pressure on the regime, along with U.S. technical assistance that facilitated the plebiscite, proved that the Reagan administration would not hesitate to abandon dictators that did not abide by the trend toward liberal democracy in the hemisphere.
The 1980 Chilean constitution mandated that, after eight years of transition, a nation- wide plebiscite would affirm or reject a single candidate put forth by the regime to oversee the final steps of democratization. By the end of 1987, although voter and party registration had been underway for almost a year, the regime continued to obscure the date and terms of the plebiscite.
There was little doubt among the general’s inner circle that such a plebiscite would work in the regime’s favor. Pinochet had used referenda to great effect: in 1978, a popular vote had reinforced the regime’s legitimacy in the wake of a damning United Nations human rights report, and in 1980 a similar plebiscite ratified the regime’s constitution.1 A yes-no plebiscite overseen by the regime seemed more advantageous than the opposition’s proposal of competitive elections. More importantly, the regime saw a plebiscite as another chance to capitalize on
Pinochet’s personal popularity and to leverage state resources to triumph over the disorganized opposition.
The opposition doubted Pinochet’s intentions. Accepting the plebiscite as proposed by the regime meant abandoning the campaign for free elections, an idea which many in the
1 Carlos Huneeus, The Pinochet Regime (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007), p. 395.
299 opposition held dear. At the same time, the political parties recognized an opportunity to challenge the regime within its own institutional framework. In January, Patricio Aylwin of the
Christian Democratic Party (PDC, Partido Demócrata Cristiano) made the first organized call for citizens to vote “no” in the plebiscite. The PDC’s decision paved the way for a broad coalition that sought to dislodge the government’s hold on power by winning a simple majority.
Even the political Left, which had long been averse to such a strategy, grudgingly agreed.
Chile’s moderate Socialists and the faction of “Almeyda Socialists”—previously allied with the
Communists—publicly rejected the use of violence and organized to defeat Pinochet in the plebiscite.2 On February 2, 1988, fourteen opposition parties created the “Concertación de
Partidos Para el NO” (also known simply as “the ‘No’”). Aylwin’s role in the “No” was particularly important given his membership of the so-called Grupo de 24, a collection of politicians and jurists that had opposed the dictatorship from the civil sphere during the previous eight years.3
In Washington, the Reagan administration firmly backed the plebiscite, encouraging unity among Pinochet’s foes, and applying deliberate pressure to ensure the fairness of the vote.
These policies were driven by the State Department. Secretary of State George Shultz, much like
Assistant Secretary for inter-American Affairs Elliott Abrams, had become convinced that
Pinochet planned to manipulate the process to stay in power indefinitely. Shultz wanted the
United States to use its strength to force Pinochet to abide by the constitutionally mandated process. He and Abrams had grown increasingly incensed by the Pinochet regime’s brazen
2 This reconciliation was made possible by exiled socialist Clodomiro Almeyda’s clandestine return to Chile in 1987, where he turned himself into the courts. Almeyda, who had served as foreign minister under Salvador Allende, used his new public attention to play down the his faction of loyalists’ revolutionary aims and to foster cooperation with other parties in the “No.” 3 On the coalition building, see Huneeus, Pinochet Regime, p. 419. Huneeus was himself involved in the process as a researcher at the Center for the Study of Contemporary Reality (CERC, Centro de Estudios de la Realidad Contemporánea) one of the institutions performing opinion polls to determine the extent of the opposition.
300 disregard for human rights criticism, and its failure to cooperate with U.S. authorities in the ongoing criminal proceedings against Chilean officials involved in the Letelier-Moffitt murders.4
In late 1987, Shultz advised that the United States block a loan request for Chile at the World
Bank, and assent to a human rights resolution condemning Chile’s behavior in the United
Nations General Assembly.5 These actions, Shultz hoped, might pressure Pinochet to accept a fair plebiscite.6
Some members of the National Security Council (NSC) remained uncomfortable with the
State Department’s confrontational policy. Reagan’s national security advisor, Frank Carlucci, agreed that the United States should support the plebiscite, but argued that the United States should be careful not to criticize Pinochet vocally. Pursuing State’s “assertive” policy, he warned, would give credence to Pinochet’s claims of foreign intervention, and would allow the general to build popular support. If left to his own devices, Pinochet might be expected to lose.7
In late December, Shultz and the president issued a joint statement proclaiming U.S. support for the plebiscite and the ensuing democratic transition. Lauding Chile’s liberal tradition, the statement outlined the rules by which the regime could grant legitimacy to the process and thus strengthen human and civil rights in the transition. Privately, NSC staffers howled.8 To
4 See memo from Shultz to the President, “Pinochet and the Letelier Moffitt Murders: Implications for U.S. Policy,” 15 October 1987, Box 91528, Ludlow Kim Flower Files, Ronald Reagan Library (hereafter RRL). On the Letelier- Moffitt assassination, see p. 109 and accompanying notes in this dissertation. 5 The best discussion of this loan and economic pressure is found in Morris H. Morley and Chris McGillion, Reagan and Pinochet: the Struggle Over U.S. Policy Toward Chile (New York: Cambridge University Press), pp. 240-47. 6 See quotes from Abrams in Morley and McGillon, Reagan and Pinochet, p. 243. 7 Carlucci’s memo to Reagan made a lucid case that the NSC officials who favored the “cautious option” genuinely did want Pinochet out of power and believed that pushing too hard on bilateral issues may impede that goal. Nonetheless, the accompanying analysis makes clear that the concerns among this faction were tied largely to a fear that destabilizing Pinochet would empower Communist factions within Chile. Carlucci memo to Reagan, “Chile,” no date, Box 91528, Ludlow Kim Flower Files, RRL. 8 This episode is captured in a series of memos between NSC staffers. See NSC Memo Sorzano to Powell and Negroponte, “State Speaks for the President on Chile without Authorization,” 21 December 1987, Box 91528, Ludlow Kim Flower Files, RRL; In a private note from Ludlow “Kim” Flower of the NSC to Jose Sorzano, Flower wrote that “This is Elliott’s way of trying to use the symbol of [Reagan] to give political force to yet another ratchet
301 hardliners within the administration, who continued to be guided by anti-communist ideology, it was “a destabilizing act” for Reagan to back away from Pinochet when he was most vulnerable.9
The most important axis of U.S. policy was that which ran between the State Department and the Chilean embassy, where Abrams and U.S. Ambassador Harry Barnes forcefully pressured the Chilean government not to deviate from the rules of the plebiscite. Throughout
1988, Abrams met regularly with the Chilean ambassador, Hernán Felipe Errázuriz, to press U.S. interests. These meetings were often antagonistic, with Abrams citing evidence of Chilean repression and voicing U.S. concerns that Pinochet would not follow through with a clean vote.10
For his part, Errázuriz would typically protest that the United States was unfairly opposing
Pinochet and intervening in Chile’s internal affairs. Responding to this pressure, Errázuriz simultaneously pursued a backchannel dialogue with Richard Schifter, the assistant secretary for human rights, using it to preview details of the plebiscite for U.S. officials.11 Meanwhile in
Santiago, Ambassador Harry Barnes remained deeply involved in courting links with the opposition and facilitating the voter registration drive. Chilean officials were outraged at
Barnes’s visible alignment with the “No” campaign, which earned him the nickname “dirty
Harry” in regime-friendly media outlets.12
The administration choreographed high-level pressure on Chilean officials with National
Endowment for Democracy (NED) and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) upward in a ceaseless campaign to destabilize Pinochet.” Jackie Tillman wrote: “I disassociate myself from the whole thing.” These memos are summarized nicely in Morley and McGillon, Reagan and Pinochet, pp. 252-53. 9 This quote comes from Jackie Tillman’s note to Sorzano and Flower, cited above. 10 The records for these meetings are available both in State Department files and those of the Chilean foreign ministry. For a sample, see Telex Recibido #664-669, “Entrevista Sostenida con Consejero Max Kampelmann y Subsecretario Asistente Elliot (sic) Abrams,” 31 December 1987, Chile RREE; and Howard memo to Abrams, “Your Meeting on February 17 with Chilean Ambassador Hernán Felipe Errázuriz,” 16 February 1988, State-FOIA. The latter memo notes that Errázuriz appreciated Abrams’s ability to conduct the meetings entirely in Spanish. 11 Morley contributes this vital insight based on interviews with both Schifter and Errázuriz. The two remember the meetings differently, with Schifter portraying them as a device for administration control of the procedure, and the ambassador portraying them as general conversations about developments in the campaign. 12 Peter Kornbluh, The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability (New York: The New Press, 2003), pp. 422-23.
302 programs that were designed to ensure that the fairness of the plebiscite. These were absolutely crucial interventions, because technical assistance programs counteracted the institutional advantages that the regime held over the opposition. For example, during the summer of 1988, the regime used its vast public treasury to fund Pinochet’s campaign activities. Public officials were conscripted or intimidated into openly supporting the “Sí” ampaign,c and with state funding the campaign outspent the “No” advertisements at a margin of nearly 30-to-1.13 Under these circumstances, the opposition continued to doubt that Pinochet would allow a fair vote. U.S. policy not only pressured the regime to do so, but gave the opposition the means to counteract foul play.
United States spent approximately $2.9 million in public funds on democratization efforts in Chile during 1987 and 1988.14 This included a $1 million special appropriation made by
Congress to the NED for democracy promotion in Chile in 1988, and a $1.2 USAID grant to the
Inter-American Center for Election Advising and Promotion (CAPEL—Centro Interamericano de Asesoría y Promoción Electoral) to fund a voter education project run by a Chilean organization, CIVITAS.15 The above total was in addition to the $3 million spent by NED to fund Chilean free labor groups, academic conferences, and private sector organizations engaged in campaigning for the plebiscite after 1985.16
Regardless of the source, these funds supported programs that served technical purposes: increasing voter registration, developing polls to track voter preferences, funding international observers, and creating an infrastructure to verify the returns of the plebiscite in real time.
13 On these allegations, see CIA report, 11 August 1988, Box 92348, Robert S. Pastorino Files, RRL; on 30 to 1 margin, see memo Abram to Shultz, “Your Meeting with Chilean Foreign Minister Ricardo Garcia in Quito, August 10,1988,” 10 August 1988, State-FOIA. 14 These numbers are culled from NED annual reports, as well as summaries in Morley and McGillion, Reagan and Pinochet, pp. 255-56 and Carothers, Name of Democracy, pp. 158-59. 15 USAID Memo Ink to the Administrator, “Whether to Approve a FY88 $1.2 Million Voter Education Project in Chile,” 18 November 1987, Box 91528, Ludlow Kim Flower Files, RRL. 16 These figures are in Morley and McGillon, Reagan and Pinochet, pp. 255-56.
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Through the NED, both the Republican and Democratic parties seized the opportunity to develop and wield their election expertise abroad. The International Republican Institute for International
Affairs (IRI) spent roughly $300,000 to dispatch Republican pollster Richard Wirthlin to Chile to develop polls that would “[supply] vital statistics on voter preferences” ahead of the plebiscite.
These surveys, developed in conjunction with conservative academic and civil society groups, not only “modernized politics” in Chile, in the words of one observer, but proved a vital source of intelligence regarding the prospects of unseating Pinochet by popular vote.17 Meanwhile, with a much larger budget, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) focused on voter registration, outreach, and developing the capacity to verify the fairness of the plebiscite. In addition to annual NED grants totaling $415,000 that funded civic education and election observers, NDI received $515,000 of the special congressional appropriation for a variety of political programs meant to guarantee the fairness of the plebiscite.18 Private philanthropic foundations, too, poured money into the plebiscite effort. What was distinctive about the U.S. government’s approach was that it proved far more inclined than its Western
European counterparts to coordinate official policy with these private efforts to oust Pinochet.19
U.S. democracy promotion efforts helped the opposition gain an advantage. Whereas in
1987, NDI noted that only 1.6 million of over 8 million eligible voters were registered, by the time of the plebiscite, the voter rolls included more than 7 million citizens. Indeed, one Chilean academic who was involved in the “No” campaign and later wrote about the fall of the Pinochet regime noted that the single greatest difference between plebiscites of 1980 and 1988 was the
17 On the role of these surveys in pioneering “new techniques” that informed democracy in Chile after the plebiscite, see Jeffrey M. Puryear, Thinking Politics: Intellectuals and Democracy in Chile (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). On the State Department tracking these polls, see cable Santiago to State, “Republican Party Pollster says Pinochet Can’t Win,” 5 October 1988, State-FOIA. 18 See NED Annual Report, 1987, pp. 32-35 and National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, Chile’s Transition to Democracy: The 1988 Presidential Plebiscite (Washington, DC: NDI, 1989), p. 7. 19 Shultz found the British and West German governments were reluctant to “throw money” at the democratic opposition. See Morley, Reagan and Pinochet, p. 259.
304 existence of reliable voter lists.20 Although U.S. and transnational agents of democracy promotion were applying technical assistance, most understood their work to be decidedly anti-
Pinochet. One AID official confirmed as much when he told an interviewer in 1988, “[w]e’ve helped register millions of voters and we consider each one of those a vote against Pinochet.”21
Chilean officials saw U.S. efforts as provocative interventions. When NDI officials in
Santiago met with a vice minister at the foreign ministry about an observer delegation, the minister made clear that Chile rejected “all attempts at foreign intervention in Chilean internal affairs.”22 Other officials understood that international electioneering was a game they would have to play. In the lead-up to the plebiscite, the foreign ministry cabled the embassy in
Washington and suggested that the Chilean ambassador meet with the IRI and “[ask] bluntly about a way to influence the composition of the bipartisan delegation”—or, he suggested, find similar funding for IRI to send observers who were more sympathetic to the regime’s transition plans.23
After Pinochet announced the date of the plebiscite in late August, bilateral tensions increased. Ambassador Errázurriz told U.S. officials he expected Pinochet to win, but he feared that if the results were close, the plebiscite would probably end in violence.24 Barnes chided
Errázurriz that linking the moderate opposition to threats of violence was “a serious distortion.”25
Continuing state repression sent ripples through private channels. When the head of the AFL-
CIO’s American Institute of Free Labor Development, William Doherty, was attacked by
Chilean security forces during a show of support for embattled Chilean labor leaders, Abrams
20 Huneeus, The Pinochet Regime, p. 401. 21 Quote is from an unnamed USAID official in Thomas Carothers In the Name of Democracy: U.S. Policy towards Latin America in the Reagan Years (University of California Press, 1991), p. 159. 22 Telex Enviado #827-828, 1 August 1988, Archive of the Chilean Ministry of Foreign Affairs (hereafter Chile RREE). Unless otherwise noted, all translations are by the author. 23 Telex Enviado #843, 1 August 1988, Chile RREE. 24 See Cable Santiago to State, “Errázuriz Impressions,” 6 September 1988, State-FOIA 25 Ibid.
305 complained to the Chilean ambassador. Errázuriz assured Abrams that Doherty had not been attacked, but after speaking directly with Doherty, Abrams told Errázuriz that he “had received incorrect information” and was being fed lies by the foreign ministry.26 Errázuriz later reflected that attending meetings at the State Department was like entering a “torture chamber.”27
In late September, with the polls too close to call, U.S. officials became concerned that
Pinochet would use the pretext of violence to nullify or reverse the vote. Reports about specific government schemes catalyzed these concerns, but officials believed them due to general suspicions that Pinochet would do whatever was necessary to remain in power. During the first days of October, the State Department launched a serious effort—orchestrated by Abrams and
Barnes—to head off any foul play. On October 2, with Shultz out of the country, the State
Department summoned Ambassador Errázurriz to meet with Acting Secretary John Whitehead.
Whitehead warned that any plan to nullify the plebiscite would “have the most serious consequences for the Chile’s relations with the United States and the world.”28 The Chilean ambassador replied by saying that although he would relay U.S. concerns to his government,
“the alleged plan simply does not exist.”29 To amplify the effect, Abrams called upon U.S. military officials to convey the same message in their meetings with Chilean counterparts. After informing Reagan of the potential for subterfuge, State Department officials developed options for punishing Pinochet should the vote not be free and fair. “This is not a bluff,” Barnes assured the Chilean foreign minister on October 4, the day before the plebiscite.30
On the evening of the October 5, Pinochet’s efforts morphed from staving off the impossible to delaying the inevitable. 7.2 million Chilean voters cast votes in the election, with a
26 Cable State to Santiago, “Abrams meets with Doherty,” 22 September 1988, State-FOIA. 27 See Morley and McGillon, Reagan and Pinochet, p. 270. 28 See cable, State to Seoul, “Acting Secretary’s Meeting with Ambassador Errazuriz,” 4 October 1988, State-FOIA. 29 Telex Recibido #854, 3 October 1988, Chile RREE. 30 Kornbluh, The Pinochet File, p. 432-33.
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55 percent majority voting “no,” effectively ending Pinochet’s term in office. As U.S. officials feared, the regime withheld the vote totals as they came in, and Pinochet made plans to ask military officials to give him extraordinary powers to deny the vote. But owing largely to its separate polling and verification apparatus—created in part with U.S. funding and assistance— the “No” campaign was able to publicize the actual results while the regime obfuscated them.
Aware of these public returns, Pinochet’s military junta refused to comply with his wishes to nullify the election. On the night of the October 5, while Pinochet waited inside the presidential palace to meet with his advisers, Air Force General Fernando Matthei struck a crippling blow to
Pinochet by confirming to the media that the “No” had won.
The regime was shocked by the results of the plebiscite. Pinochet had not expected to lose the vote, and he held U.S. officials responsible for what he saw as their decisive role in his defeat. When he met with Abrams on October 7, Ambassador Errázuriz condemned Harry
Barnes, calling him an “unacceptable interlocutor” in league with Chilean communists. Abrams listened patiently to the ambassador’s criticism, and emphasized that U.S. policy in Chile was consistent with Reagan’s foreign policy in the second term: “favoring competitive elections in all of Latin America without exception.” Insisting to Abrams that Chile was “fed up with intervention,” the ambassador cabled Santiago saying that he had put Abrams on the defensive, and made him “conscious of the pain and risks” that the State Department had caused to bilateral relations. Errázuriz instructed the foreign ministry to keep “the most cold and distant relations possible” with the U.S. embassy, and not to meet with Ambassador Barnes before his expected departure from Chile. When Barnes’s tour did end shortly after the plebiscite, Pinochet came to see him off but—rejecting diplomatic protocol—refused to shake the ambassador’s hand.
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U.S.-Chilean relations after the plebiscite reflected the evolution of U.S.-Latin American relations as the Cold War came to an end. In spite of the Chilean foreign ministry’s anger,
Abrams’s meeting with Errázuriz highlighted a fundamental truth: that U.S. policy had always been geared toward preparing for a post-Pinochet future. Abrams—the most outspoken advocate of Chilean democracy in the administration—had long argued that the goal of U.S. policy was to empower moderate factions through a democratic transition. In this regard, the policy was a true success. The regime’s unexpected loss in the plebiscite prepared the way for Patricio Aylwin’s victory in the 1989 elections.31 The United States had courted Aylwin throughout the plebiscite campaign, applauding his leadership of the PDC as he had distanced himself from the communist
Left.32 Following his victory, the United States rewarded Chile by approving several key Inter-
American Development Bank Loans, and preparing to expand military cooperation.33
The differences between U.S. policy in Chile and Nicaragua in 1988 are instructive. In both cases, the administration argued that it was pressuring authoritarian regimes to liberalize.
Officials like Elliott Abrams justified U.S. pressure by appealing to the moral power of democratic ideals. In Chile, U.S. policy successfully combined intense diplomatic pressure and apolitical technical assistance to facilitate and shape an electoral result. But in Nicaragua, these same officials refused to risk U.S. power and credibility in the face of a revolutionary Leftist regime. Instead they maintained support for paramilitary forces that made functional democracy and national reconciliation impossible. Although they later claimed credit for the 1990 election that unseated the Sandinistas, the Chile case demonstrated that Reagan officials had forfeited an opportunity in Nicaragua to constructively shape its democratic future.
31 Taylor C. Boas, “Voting for Democracy: Campaign Effects in Chile’s Democratic Transition,” Latin American Politics and Society, vol. 57 no. 2 (April 2015), pp.4-5. 32 Morley and McGillon, Reagan and Pinochet, p. 264. 33 Memo Abrams to Shultz, 18 November 1988, Box 92386, Latin American Affairs Directorate, NSC, RRL.
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Old Problems in a New World Order
Between 1980 and 1989, the Reagan administration’s policies toward Latin America evolved. Coming to office in 1981, Reagan and his advisers saw the hemisphere as a flashpoint in the global Cold War. They supported military regimes in spite of their brutal human rights records and their opposition to free elections. The Reagan administration sought to thwart Soviet inroads and communist gains by offering military aid, economic assistance, and warm relations to regimes that opposed the Left. Gradually, however, open support to murderous military regimes gave way to the realization that the administration’s objectives were best achieved by supporting free elections and liberal democratic institutions. This transformation was calculated to further U.S. national security objectives. Nonetheless, Reagan’s embrace of democracy promotion had a significant bearing on the trajectory of U.S. foreign policy and Latin American politics.
Many factors shaped this evolution of policy. In the domestic political realm, the Reagan administration reacted to the criticisms of legislators, NGOs, and activists who objected to U.S. complicity in Latin American human rights abuses. By conditioning approval of military aid to
El Salvador in 1981 on that country’s demonstrated progress towards liberalization, Reagan’s foes thwarted the administration’s quest to provide military aid with no strings attached.
Democratic legislators, working in conjunction with grassroots organizations and solidarity networks, turned Reagan’s courtship of anti-communists in Latin America into costly foreign policy debates. These debates shaped administration policies in Latin America. This was true in the case of El Salvador, where the administration successfully made the argument that elections in 1982 and 1984 justified increases military aid, but also in Guatemala, Argentina, and Chile,
309 where the administration consented to elections as the primary criteria for the resumption of military aid.
The Reagan administration initially embraced democracy promotion merely as an instrumental means of garnering political support for its policies. Reagan and his key advisers tried to shape public perceptions by insisting that it was interested in furthering democracy and economic development along with the defense of U.S. national security interests. These were cynical claims, but not entirely so. After 1982, officials like George Shultz and Elliott Abrams— along with numerous mid-level State Department officials and diplomats—objected to military rule and pressured regimes to respect basic standards of human rights. In doing so, they emphasized individual rights, free markets, and elections above all else, while downplaying issues of social rights, poverty eradication, and justice made by their opponents. Nonetheless these were remarkable advances for a Republican foreign policy establishment that had contemptuously dismissed Jimmy Carter’s promotion of human rights in 1980. Indeed, conservative legislators like Jesse Helms (R- N.C.) proved to be among the most vocal critics of
Reagan’s emphasis on democratic elections, and many NSC staffers—like Constantine Menges and Oliver North—were dismayed by the emerging focus on political development.
In its relations with Latin America, the administration oversaw an unprecedented expansion of U.S. democracy promotion capabilities and their institutionalization as a component of U.S. foreign policy. Through the quasi non-governmental National Endowment for
Democracy and expanded USAID electoral assistance, the United States spent millions of dollars on funding and technical assistance, in partnership with local and transnational actors, to ensure that elections in Latin America were free and fair. In almost all cases, this overt funding—which
310 replaced covert support for elections overseen by the CIA earlier in the Cold War—benefitted moderate, reformist parties and coalitions in Latin America.
The evolution of U.S. policy responded to a transformation of the Latin American political landscape in the mid-1980s. A decade before, military regimes and conservative elites had made the elimination of democratic politics a central component in their strategy to thwart populist calls for reform. Guided by National Security Doctrine and armed by international partners including the United States, military regimes had not only sought to eliminate suspected communists and their potential supporters, but to close off all avenues for moderate political dissent. Working in conjunction with an apolitical class of technocrats, they instituted policies of privatization and social control. During the 1970s, these military regimes forced not just the revolutionary Left, but moderates of all stripes, into opposition.
Opportunities for civil activism opened in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In some cases—namely in the Southern Cone and Guatemala—the re-opening of political space was simply the result of brutally effective counterinsurgency policies which almost totally wiped out the organized Left. But global events also conditioned local realities: in 1985, Mikhail
Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union and moderated the ideological dimension of
Soviet foreign policy. At the same time, aggressive U.S. policies toward Nicaragua—the lodestar of Latin American revolutionary Left in the early 1980s—signaled that the revolutionary moment in the hemisphere had been decisively contained.34
But military regimes also failed to achieve legitimacy in the face of economic challenges and international opposition to their human rights abuses. On the economic front, strategies of debt-led growth pursued by Latin American autocrats backfired when the international debt crisis
34 On the Soviet Union, see Mervyn J. Bain, Soviet-Cuban Relations 1985 to 1991: Changing Perceptions in Moscow and Havana (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2007), pp. 125-26.
311 of the 1980s bankrupted state treasuries and forced governments to seek debt relief or face insolvency. Politicians—like Raul Alfonsín in Argentina—along with a growing class of academic and civil society institutions specifically targeted the poor economic record of authoritarian governments in order to challenge their legitimacy. Although the United States and international financial institutions were eager to provide additional credits to these regimes, the debt crisis undercut Reagan officials’ previous assumption that military regimes were logical partners to oversee neoliberal reforms—loosening price controls, reducing public sector expenditures, and attracting foreign investment. Instead, Reagan officials found civilian reformers and newly elected democratic administrations throughout the hemisphere more willing—and more able—to undertake the structural adjustments prescribed by lending institutions in order to meet the needs of voters.
Local and international human rights pressures also weakened the power of the authoritarian Right in Latin America during the 1980s. Victims and solidarity groups forged links with transnational NGOs and they scrutinized and exposed practices of repression throughout the decade. Although authoritarian control typically made prosecution of responsible officials impossible, democratic openings provided a new avenue for the opposition to press claims for justice. During most democratic transitions, the deplorable human rights records of the military framed the debate that mobilized the formation of new political parties and coalitions. Numerous candidates—notably Alfonsín in Argentina and Aylwin in Chile—gained legitimacy by virtue of their role in the civil society movements that challenged the human rights records of the dictatorships. As the national security ideology of the 1970s gave way to a growing sense among Latin American elites that counterinsurgent violence was an embarrassing aberration, human rights pressure helped push the military back to the barracks.
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The Reagan administration embraced, supported, and in some cases insisted on these changes, even when democratic transitions threatened to rupture relations with anti-communist allies. This reorientation toward Latin America was part of a larger strategic shift that led the administration to support regime change in places like the Philippines, Haiti, and South Korea as well.35 Reagan deserves a large share of the credit for U.S. support of democratization in these cases, if only because it was in his mind that virulent anti-communism co-existed organically with a vision of freedom that gave policymakers a way of adapting constructively to changes at the end of the Cold War. At times, Reagan’s failure to reconcile the contradictions in this ideological framework led to the most egregious aspects of U.S. policy in Latin America: a wanton disregard for the economic and human costs of the U.S. role in Latin America’s Cold
War, a singular fixation on regime change by force in Nicaragua, and a tacit approval of illegal policies in the Iran-Contra scandal.36 But just as Reagan’s anti-communism had guided Oliver
North and Jeane Kirkpatrick to embrace paramilitaries and excuse dictators in Latin America, so, too, his faith in freedom allowed George Shultz to affirm human rights and democratic change.
35 There are numerous similarities between these cases and democratization in Latin America, though I do not pursue the comparative angle in this study. In South Korea, much like Chile, the Reagan administration sought to reassure the regime’s economic and security interests while also urging it to permit democratic elections. In the case of Haiti, although Reagan celebrated the removal of Jean-Claude Duvalier, U.S. involvement was much less constructive to that outcome. On these episodes see Tony Smith, America’s Mission: the United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), pp. 280-83. In the case of the Philippines, Reagan remained extremely reluctant on a personal level to abandon Marcos, even when confronted with evidence of his brutality and fraud. The best summary of Reagan’s role in that episode is George P. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993), pp. 623-37. William I. Robinson’s critical analysis of U.S. democracy promotion efforts argues that they were designed primarily to protect the status of capitalist elites. See William I. Robinson, Promting Polyarchy: Globalization, U.S. Intervention, and Hegemony (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). See also John Owen and Michael Poznansky’s article, which analyzes the conditions that allowed Reagan to abandon support for Marcos in 1986 after Carter had not done so in the late 1970s. John M. Owen IV and Michael Poznansky, “When Does America Drop Dictators?” European Journal of International Relations, (2014), pp. 1-28. 36 The dilemma presented by Reagan’s thought is nicely summed up in chapter 6, “‘A Crusade for Freedom,” in Justin Garrison, “An Empire of Ideals”: The Chimeric Imagination of Ronald Reagan (New York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 101-22.
313
In spite of his self-consciously conservative worldview, Reagan’s commitment to familiar
American tropes—free men and free markets—made possible the evolution of U.S. policy.
For the vast majority of Latin American citizens, liberalization only went so far.
Democracy did not mean peace. Returning to the ballot box limited but did not end practices of state repression and extralegal murder that had been used to silence political opponents throughout the long Cold War.37 Elections brought military establishments under civilian oversight and made them subject to judicial punishment for human rights violations. But even in cases where civilian control was most effective, the ability of governments to prosecute remained weak.38 In fact, by relinquishing their involvement in the political sphere, militaries ensured uninterrupted access to aid, security assistance, and training from the United States.
Nor did democracy bring economic development and social justice to Latin America’s vast underclass of impoverished and marginalized citizens. The problem was not the economic stagnation of Latin America’s “lost decade,” but the politically-driven solutions applied to ameliorate structural causes of economic stagnation. Political democratization did not lead to a more fair distribution of the benefits of economic growth. Throughout most of Latin America, concentrated land ownership, restricted access to capital, and underdeveloped labor forces perpetuated massive inequality between the rich and the poor. Although democratically elected regimes in the region rhetorically advocated the expansion of social services, their efforts were circumscribed by poor economic performance and by the structural adjustments required by international lenders. By the start of the 1990s, chronic unemployment, malnutrition, and poor
37 See Gilbert M. Joseph, “What we Know and Should Know,” in In from the Cold: Latin America’s New Encounter with the Cold War, Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniela Spenser, eds. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), pp. 5-6. 38 The literature on post-conflict justice in Latin America is voluminous. For two examples regarding the themes discussed here, see Margaret Popkin, Peace Without Justice: Obstacles to Building the Rule of Law In El Salvador ( University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000) and Cath Collins, Post-transitional Justice : Human Rights Trials In Chile and El Salvador (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010).
314 living standards continued to exist almost everywhere in the region, and were exacerbated by the lack of a social safety net in all but a handful of Latin American countries.39
Nor did democracy lead to respect for human rights. This was perhaps the most crucial shortcoming of liberalization, because human rights concerns had played a central role in motivating social resistance to state violence during the Cold War. The model of democracy that emerged in the late 1980s was one in which the continuing power of the military and the weakness of civilian institutions undercut citizens’ claims to justice and social progress.
Governments like Raul Alfonsín’s in Argentina and Vinicio Cerezo’s in Guatemala quickly abandoned their initial enthusiasm for accounting for the dead and the disappeared, and for punishing the perpetrators of violence during the previous two decades. Although national and international jurists tried to make perpetrators accountable, their efforts were limited by inadequate access to information and by the legal protections enjoyed by military defendants. In
Chile, for example, the 1991 report of the Rettig Commission did not name perpetrators of crimes and did not fully account for the causes of state violence.40 Guatemala’s truth commission, widely seen as successful for its acknowledgment of the historical forces that made genocide possible, nonetheless did not bring many of the perpetrators—most notably Efrain
Rios-Montt, who gained immunity while serving as a congressman—to justice.41 Democracy
39 Exceptions were Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, and Uruguay. For the social costs of the “lost decade” see Victor Bulmer-Thomas, The Economic History of Latin America since Independence (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 402-403. 40 Phillip Berryman, Report of the Chilean National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation (Notre Dame: Published in cooperation with the Center for Civil and Human Rights, Notre Dame Law School, by the University of Notre Dame Press, 1993). 41 “Conclusions,” Memoria del Silencio: Report of the Commission for Historical Clarification, 2000, English translation
315 expanded civil rights and opened political space, but did not deliver the social and economic rights of citizens who had been disenfranchised during Latin America’s Cold War.
Nonetheless, during the 1980s the Reagan administration’s policies helped lead to the establishment of a regional order in Latin America based primarily on the spread of liberal democracy. The practical limits of democracy outlined above should not detract from the fact that this was a major development with far-reaching implications for U.S. and Latin American policymakers alike. By the end of the decade, a majority of the region’s citizens had mobilized to vote and chosen to reject authoritarian governments.42 Removed from the schema of East-
West superpower confrontation, Latin American conservatives and revolutionaries—somewhat encouraged by former patrons in Washington and Moscow—were able to abandon the worldviews that had fueled decades of violence. Electoral processes offered an institutional means to reconcile long-standing political and social grievances. This was perhaps most notable in Nicaragua, where the 1990 election of moderate opposition member Violeta Chamorro displaced the Sandinistas from power but allowed them to remain a viable political force for decades to come. And although Guatemala and El Salvador required international oversight to finalize the peace accords that ended civil war, the democratic process served as an arena where formerly armed groups could now seek political legitimacy by winning elections. As one
After Rios Montt’s immunity ran out in 2012, Guatemalan Attorney General Claudia Paz y Paz opened proceedings against him for crimes against humanity. Rios Montt was convicted in 2013, but the trial was later nullified and a retrial has been indefinitely postponed. See International Justice Monitor, “Efrain Rios Montt and Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez.”
316 eminent Latin American historian noted, referring to the Left’s classic refrain, “‘Victory or
Death’ no longer seemed the only opportunities.”43
Political transitions to democracy throughout the hemisphere, and U.S. democracy promotion efforts that supported those transitions, shaped inter-American relations in the post-
Cold War period. Regimes were no longer fixated on defeating the threat of externally-supported subversion; now popularly elected governments confronted a shared set of policy problems that originated from within a system of liberal democratic states. The ideological crises of the Cold
War gave way to the challenges of the 1990s: debt, trade, immigration, and narcotics to name the most prominent. 44 To Reagan, these were unequivocally positive developments for U.S.-Latin
American relations. “We’ve had well-intentioned policies in the past that resulted in the United
States being thought of as the colossus of the North, and we offered a lot of advice and rarely heard theirs,” Reagan reflected to the National Security Council in 1987.45 The expansion of liberal democracy in the region and the end of the Cold War, U.S. policymakers felt, created the framework in which the United States and Latin American allies could cooperate as democratic partners.
Reagan was wrong. The expansion of liberal democracy did not alter the fundamental power dynamics between the United States and Latin America. To the contrary, officials like
George Shultz and Elliott Abrams had embraced democracy promotion as a means of achieving national security goals in the region precisely because they believed it would preserve U.S. influence amidst changing circumstances. Promoting competitive elections gave the
43 Tulio Haleperin Donghi and John Charles Chasteen, The Contemporary History of Latin America (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), p. 403. 44 See any one of a number of books on democratization published at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s. For example, Exporting Democracy, Abraham F. Lowenthal, ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991). 45 NSC Memo, “South American Democracy,” 13 March 1987, The Reagan Files Website.
317 administration its best prospects for accommodating popular pressure for democratic change and acknowledging human rights, while protecting long-term U.S. interests in undermining revolution and maintaining free markets in America’s “neighborhood,” as Frank Carlucci called it.46
This was particularly true in the economic sphere, where U.S. policymakers in the 1990s became even more aggressive about pressuring regional allies to adopt liberal democratic policies as a condition of receiving aid. By the end of Reagan’s second term, the administration and international financial institutions had acknowledged that Latin American debtor nations were best served by access to additional credit that would facilitate policies of growth. The
International Monetary Fund and World Bank rewarded democratically elected regimes with access to new loans, in large part because U.S. officials saw them as responsible economic partners that were more responsive to pressures for structural reform. The Brady Plan, introduced in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush’s treasury secretary Nicholas Brady, allowed for the amortization of Latin American debt. But whereas reformist leaders in the 1980s had politicized the issue of debt and resisted some of these structural adjustments, during the 1990s Latin
American leaders had little choice if they wanted to access international credit. The so-called
“Washington Consensus” of reforms dictated by the IMF and World Bank were designed to help
Latin American economies promote export-led growth and to attract private investment from abroad. These policies led to moderate economic gains throughout the region, but more often they subjected new governments to the uncertainties of global markets, which undermined their ability to govern effectively.47
46 NSC Memo, “South American Democracy.” 47 Donghi, Contemporary History, pp. 401-402.
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While the effects of democracy promotion in Latin America were uneven, its impact on
U.S. foreign policy was indisputable. In diverse Latin American cases like El Salvador, Chile, and Argentina, the Reagan administration created a blueprint for preserving U.S. hegemony amidst instability and domestic political opposition: by wielding U.S. power in the name of democratic ideals to pressure regimes—friendly and unfriendly—towards a model of liberal democracy defined by elections and free markets. This legacy was obvious when the administration of George H. W. Bush acted unilaterally in 1989 to remove Panamanian dictator
Manuel Noriega and justified the decision based on the dictator’s failure to permit legitimate elections. But it was also true of the Clinton administration, which emphatically embraced the spread of democratic ideals and equated them with improved human rights across the globe during the 1990s. As Clinton’s 1996 national security strategy stated, “the more that democracy and political and economic liberalization take hold in the world . . . the safer our nation is likely to be and the more our people are likely to prosper.”48 Indeed, several scholars have drawn a direct line between U.S. policies in Latin America in the 1980s and those that the administration of George W. Bush pursued in the Middle East following the attacks of September 11th, 2001.49
In spite of these global-historical connections, historians have more work to do in illuminating the complicated legacy of the end of the Cold War in the Western Hemisphere itself.
In this dissertation I have tried to show that electoral politics were not the handmaiden of military and economic intervention but a field of intervention in itself that had serious consequences for U.S. policy and for development in Latin America. Scholars of U.S. foreign relations must continue to interrogate how the Reagan administration—and congressional
48 See Brian Loveman, No Higher Law: American Foreign Policy and the Western Hemisphere Since 1776 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010) p. 350. 49 This argument is made most clearly in Fred Rosen, “Introduction” in Empire and Dissent: the United States and Latin America (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008) and Greg Grandin, Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006).
319
Democrats—linked the concepts of human rights and democracy in Latin America, a problematic conflation which remains fundamental to U.S. policy today. Scholars of U.S.-Latin
American relations who have focused on the binary between the so-called “Salvador option” of military influence and the “Chile option” emphasizing the promotion of free markets, must overcome their disregard of the vast expansion of public-private democratization programs that became a permanent fixture of hemispheric relations in the 1980s.50 This expansion created numerous transnational encounters between local actors and international agents of democratization that have yet to be fully explored. But scholars need to illuminate more fully how the resumption of elections affected the everyday lives of Latin Americans, sometimes by widening and, at other times, restricting avenues for political engagement with the state.
By first acknowledging that Reagan’s policies did nurture Latin American democratization, scholars can then proceed to investigate how the return to free elections subsequently shaped the political culture of the region. They will then be able to explain how the end of the Cold War in Latin America did not constitute an ideological triumph for one side, but comprised a complicated and often limited attempt to move beyond revolution and repression.
50 See, for example, Rosen, “Introduction”, p. 3; Grandin, Empire’s Workshop.
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Archives and Bibliography
United States Archival Materials Center for Human Rights Documentation and Research at Columbia University: New York, NY Amnesty International-USA Archive Digital National Security Archive: Online Argentina, 1975-1980 Collection Chile and the United States Collection CIA Covert Operations: From Obama to Carter, 1977-2010 Collection El Salvador, 1977-1984 Collection El Salvador, 1980-1994 Collection Guatemala and the U.S. Collection Iran-Contra Affair Collection Nicaragua Collection Hoover Institution: Stanford, CA Richard V. Allen Papers 1948-1999 William J. Casey Papers 1928-1996 Fred C. Iklé Papers 1972-1988 Library of Congress: Washington, DC National Endowment for Democracy Founding Papers National Archives, The Center for Legislative Archives: Washington, DC Record Group 46, Records of the U.S. Senate, 1789 - 2015: U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Staff Files of the Subcommittee on Latin America of the Committee on Foreign Relations during the 87th through 101st Congresses National Archives II: College Park, MD Record Group 286, Records of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) CIA Records Search Tool (CREST) Ronald Reagan Library: Simi Valley, CA White House Staff and Office Files, 1981-1989 Executive Secretariat, NSC Country Files Executive Secretariat, NSC Meeting Files Executive Secretariat, NSC Subject Files Latin American Affairs Directorate, NSC Ludlow “Kim” Flower Files Constantine C. Menges Files Oliver L. North Files Roger W. Fontaine Files William P. Clark Files White House Office of Records Management (WHORM) Subject Files Human Rights Country Files U.S. Department of State Freedom of Information Act Virtual Reading Room: Online
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Foreign Archival Materials Archivo Nacional de la Administracion (ARNAD): Santiago, Chile Ministerial and Public Services Collections Ministry of Defense Documents Collection Ministry of the Interior Documents Collection Private Collections Social Organizations Documents Collection Central Archive of the Argentine Foreign Ministry: Buenos Aires, Argentina OAS and UN Collection Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales: Buenos Aires, Argentina Documents and Complaints about the Terrorism of the State Collection Thematic Documentation Chilean Foreign Ministry Central Archive: Santiago, Chile U.S.-Chilean Collection Guatemalan Foreign Ministry Central Archive: Guatemala City, Guatemala La Vicaría de la Solidaridad: Santiago, Chile
Oral Histories
Abrams, Elliott. Interview with author. 27 April, 2010. Washington, DC. Bushnell, John A. Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. 19 December 1997. Arlington, VA: The Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. http://www.adst.org/OH%20TOCs/Bushnell,%20Ann.toc.pdf. Chapin, Frederic L. 25 May 1989. Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. Arlington, VA: The Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, 1998. http://www.adst.org/OH%20TOCs/Chapin,%20Frederick%20L.1989.toc.pdf. Deaver, Michael, Miller Center Ronald Reagan Oral History Project. 12 September 2002. Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 2010. http://web1.millercenter.org/poh/transcripts/ohp_2002_0912_deaver.pdf. Pickering, Thomas. Interview with Author. 21 April 2015. Charlottesville, VA. Piedra, Alberto M. 26 September 1991. Arlington, VA: The Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, 1998. http://www.adst.org/OH%20TOCs/Piedra,%20Alberto.toc.pdf. Schifter, Richard. Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, 8 September 2003. Arlington, VA: The Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, 2004. http://www.adst.org/OH%20TOCs/Schifter,%20Richard.toc.pdf. Shlaudeman, Harry W. Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. 24 May 1993. Arlington, VA: The Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, 1998. http://www.adst.org/OH%20TOCs/Shlaudeman,%20Harry.toc.pdf Weinberger, Caspar. Miller Center Ronald Reagan Oral History Project. 19 November 2002. Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 2005. http://millercenter.org/president/reagan/oralhistory/caspar-weinberger.
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