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. 3 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). <http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/Reference/10.19.80.html> 5 Ronald Reagan, “State of the Union Speech,” March 13, 1980, Skinner, et. al., eds., Reagan, In his Own Hand, pp. 471-79. 4 “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. <http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/reference/8.18.80.html> 7 Pursuant to disagreements over how to approach the role of ideology in decision-making outlined in note 3, scholars vary widely in their judgments of Reagan’s ideology.