This resistance has shown up the limits of Washington's policies and given new heart to the Latin American left. The Sao
Paolo meeting organized by the Brazilian
Workers Party (PT) is a first step in the direction of marking out a way to go from resistance to a new alternative project.3
Nicaragua in disorder
The US State Department was as surprised by the UNO victory as anyone
1. At a meeting in 1988 in Esquipulas, the Central
American presidents — including Nicaragua's Sandinista goverment - started negotiations, without the
United States (although of course the US put pressure on some of the governments present) to find a solution to the region's crisis. The negotiations led to agreements on aid to the Nicaraguan Contras and also on the
Salvadoran FMLN.
2. See Georges A. Fauriol: "The Shadows of Latin
America" in Foreign Affairs and the World 1989-
1990, and William Perry in "In Search of a Latin
American Policy" in Washington Quarterly, Spring
1990.
3. In July 1990 the PT organized a meeting of left
America. A second meeting is scheduled to take place 11 wing organizations Caribbean and Latin in Mexico. June 10, 1991• #208 International Viewpoint
LATIN AMERICA else, and had no clear plan of what to do
However Bush rapidly worked out the basic approach, which remains in force. He started from the fact that Chamorro's victory did not automatically imply the conquest of power by the right or the total rout of the FSLN. On the contrary a prolonged situation of dual power had begun. The US aim therefore has been to use the government to eat away at the FSLN's social base and its control over
This "Leninist" vision has involved the use of economic aid as a way of imposing a policy of adjustments on the new government, while encouraging the far right of UNO to show its teeth. The first phase of this policy established the interdependence of the negotiation of the agreements between the UNO moderates and Humberto Ortega and the demobilization of the Contras. The FSLN leadership also rapidly recovered from the shock of defeat. Daniel Ortega promised that the FSLN would "govern from below" and that this was the foundation of all negotiations with the government.
For its part, Washington has used two forms of pressure: the demobilization of the Contras and pressure on the FLN from the European social democratic governments, the USSR, Mexico and Venezuela to extract concessions. The agreements envisaged the demobilization of the Contras by April 30, 1990 under United Nations supervision. At the same time, the US ordered the Contras to reenter Nicaraguan territory en masse even before the elections. UNO, meanwhile put forward a demobilization plan which proposed the creation of zones where the armed Contras would concentrate in the down their arms if they thought they had won enough guarantees, that is to say after negotiations with the new government, and on the basis of making a parallel between themselves and the army.
In this way Bush and the Contras got something that they had been unable to win during ten years of war. Contra pressure led Nicaragua to the brink of civil war. The FSLN had to give up its control of the interior ministry, while the Contras International Viewpoint #208 • June 10, 1991 where their fighters had gathered. The
Humberto Ortega, remained the main Sandinista element in the new state, while being reduced in number by three quarters.
In the parliament, UNO's majority was not enough to start amending major basic articles of the constitution.S
During the street mobilizations and the clashes between FSLN and Contra supporters, whatever was left of the coun try's economic structure collapsed like a pack of cards. The need to replace Soviet oil deliveries required $500m in 1990, and wages in the nationalized sector and the maintenance of a minimal infrastruc-
The International Development Agency (AID) supported the economic plan put forward by the economy minister Franannounced 15,000 redundancies and the demobilization of 10,000 EPS soldiers.
promised to the demobilized Contras never materialized, and, finding themselves without resources, they began to attack the Sandinista cooperatives.
While the FLN leadership found itself divided and tried at all costs to maintain the structures of the EPS, the FNT unions took the initiative and launched two general strikes that paralyzed the country in July and September 1990.
Parliamentary harassment and economic pressure
The State Department understood that these strikes had established a balance of forces that meant that an offensive by the extreme right would only lead to the isolation of the government, divide UNO and make the FSLN the only national alternative. The process of parliamentary harassment would continue, along with economic pressure and pressure for the reduction in the EPS in the framework of negotiations on disarmament in Central America. The mobilization of the far right was re-centred in the countryside, where the town halls controlled by supporters of Virgilio Godoy, with the support of the church, tried to exploit the unfulfilled promises to the Contras made by the government.
For the FSLN, the strikes have played an important role in the debate before the congress to be held on July 19, 1991. After months of retreat by an FLN reeling from the shock of its electoral defeat and the malaise among many of its cadres, the reappearance of a mass movement opened a new stage. Sandinism now faces the task of combining two apparently contradictory elements: to encourage an independent mass mobilization against both sectors of UNO, while maintaining the country's governability through pacts with the moderate wing of UNO, against Godoy's faction and the constant pressure
El Salvador: war and negotiations
The FMLN's military offensive had five main objectives: to improve the military balance of forces; show that the FMLN is an alternative power in El Salvador and force the Cristiani government to accept it as a partner in the regional peace process; restrain the repression against the urban popular movement; exacerbate the contradictions between the most right wing sectors of the army, La Tandona, the majority of the ruling ARENA party and the president, on the one hand, and the four bourgeois parties, above all the Christian Democrats, on the other; and underline the failure of the US' counter-insurgency policies and bring back to life the debate in Congress over aid to the El Salvadoran army.
The 1989 offensive achieved all these objectives, above all that of the defence of the mass movement in the cities, where the wave of atrocities of 1989 has not been repeated. The military balance and the regional dynamic of the peace process have obliged Cristiani and his backers in Washington to open negotiations with the
The defeat of the Sandinistas and the crisis of Stalinism in Eastern Europe, together with the effects of this in Cuba, led the Bush administration to believe that the moment had come to impose capitulation on the FMLN. The thinking was that, in the new context, the FMLN's logistical capacities would be significantly weakened, while the political projects of the revolutionaries would be thrown into question. Using the analogy of the impose elections under international control in which the Salvadoran left would be defeated, after being disarmed. It is clear that the Sandinista defeat provoked an intense debate among the Salvadoran left, notably over the question of the aims of
The Caracas and Geneva accords set September 15, 1990 as the date for a ceasefire, given that preliminary political 4. The Tandona is the name given to the military class from which many of the current leaders of the Salvado-
agreement had been reached. In the meantime the FMLN reserved the right to continue to carry out military operations and thereby put pressure on the government. The accords also recognized the UN's role as mediator, contrary to the wishes of the United States.
After the killing of the Jesuits, the US Congress decided to send a mission to El Salvador to investigate human rights. The State Department accepted this idea, but did its best to neutralize it, at the same time trying to soothe the Salvadoran far right — lest the latter should decide to launch total war on the Guatemalan model. A 30% reduction in military aid, tied to the search for an agreement between the government and the FMLN in three months, and a promise from Cristiani to look into the murder of the Jesuits, was to certain army officers making feroand rejecting reform of the army. Furthermore a new campaign of repression began in spring 1990, along with a military offensive.
At the meeting between the government and the FMLN in Costa Rica in July 1990, agreements on respect for human rights were reached, and a UN commission was set up to oversee the ceasefire. Meanwhile, the army had again resorted to death squads.
It became clear that there would be no accords on the reform of the army before September 15, 1990, and it also became clear that the US was not going to put pressure on the army, their last instrument of domination in El Salvador, nor permit any concession to the FMLN from whom they demanded unconditional surrender.
In August 1990, the Salvadoran revolutionaries revised their analysis of the situation and changed their public attitude to the negotiations. The main plank in the new position is the demilitarization of the country and the parallel reduction of the two armies, leading up to the abolition of the two forces. Only on these terms would the FMLN accept a ceasefire. The failure of the negotiations to advance further as soon as the issue of army reform was raised led to the resumption of hostilities. The army stepped up its efforts in the north. The FMLN, aware that the army's control of the air had been limited by the March 1990 votes in Congress, launched attacks on the military airbases.
However, in November 1990, a new change began. The UN delegate brought in a new mechanism that strengthened the UN's role and stepped up the pressure on the army. The FMLN launched a new offensive and was able to challenge the army's control of the air by using SAM
Bush's policy had clearly failed. If he went to Congress to ask for more aid, this would be recognition that Cristiani was in danger. Washington therefore decided to limit itself to exercising indirect pressure on the FMLN via Mexico, Venezuela and the EEC, at the same time giving the government the $48m agreed for reconstruction in 1991. Hopes for a recomposition on the Salvadoran right also evaporated. Cristiani remained weak and the most fascistic sectors of ARENA, around Major D'Aubuisson, became While it is impossible to predict what will happen in the coming months, it is clear enough that 1990 ended with the failure of Washington's attempts to politically and militarily cut off the FMLN. The guerillas had regained the initiative in all
The summit of the Central American presidents in Antigua in June 1990 was supposed to set the seal on the peace process and the restoration of US hegemony.
economic problems, incapacity, in the future, increase aid; instead it offered to "coordinate" Japanese and EC aid.
Japan and Europe: unwilling
Five months later, an "Association for Democracy and Development in Central America" was created, but at its first conference this body had to admit that the EC and Japan seemed rather unwilling to see their aid "coordinated" by the US. Meanwhile the US Congress had not only refused to increase aid, but had declined even to keep it at existing levels.
In December 1990, the Central American presidents were told by the US that, not only were they not going to get any more aid, but that US priorities had
The negotiations for regional disarmament - dreamt up chiefly as a means to
LATIN AMERICA put pressure on the Sandinista army, which is now the smallest of the region's armies, leaving aside Costa Rica - have nowhere. The Salvadoran, and Honduran armies had too much business on their hands fighting the FMLN or the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Union (URNG) to take such negotiations very seriously.
Emergency aid "to consolidate democracy" — $320m and $400m to Nicaragua approved by Congress at the end of March 1990°. Nine months later, Nicaragua's Vice-President Godoy was complaining that the aid hadn't arrived in his while in Panama it was swallowed up by the refinancing of banks and businesses; in the areas destroyed during the invasion, Panamanians are still living
There has been little sign of the democratic stability that was supposed to see the light of along the canal: Endara has not caught up in the forby one sector of the former dictator Noriega have gone their tortuous way in Florida.
While Panama has faced growing misery and social tension, Washington has been mainly preoccupied with imposing a the Panamanian government that would oblige that country's banks to allow their accounts to be inspected by the US authorities.
In Guatemala, the development of the negotiations between the guerillas, the coordination of the political parties and the employers' associations has led to the intervening before the meeting between the URNG and the government. The new regional context has encouraged the army to decide who was going to win "scorched earth" policies. In 1990 Guatemala received $115.9m in civilian aid, mainly for police training programmes financed by AID. But the American aid is peanuts compared to the money coming in from the drug traffic. Guatemala has become the staging post for cocaine on its way to the US, while some 2,000 hectares are given over to the cultivation of opium. 5. During a trip to the US, the Nicaraguan presidential adviser, Antonio Lacayo, and the economy minister, Francisco Mayorga, requested $300m aid for 1990 and $200 more in 1991. Congress voted through $40m for fot Nicare a and Panama was only agreed io on 13 the demobilization of the Contras, but emergency aid June 10, 1991 • #208 International Viewpoint
LATIN AMERICA
The US" third objective for the subcontinent, and its most ambitious, is the attempt to coordinate and redefine a new overall framework for relations with the
Latin American countries, with the aim of assuring control of the region as Japanese influence grows in the Pacific and
Europe approaches the introduction of the single market in 1993.
The Initiative for the Americas
Bush's project is based on five ele-
1. The need to re-negotiate the Latin
American foreign debt to the commercial banks, in the framework of the Brady Plan. The need to provide US or World Bank standby credits to sustain debt service payments, according to the importance of the particular national economies
2. The defence of a neo-liberal adjustment policy, giving priority to the agro-export sector, in order to maintain debt repayments. The privatization of the state sector — nationalized under populist and protectionist policies in the 1960s and 70s in the interests of stimulating the growth of domestic markets - is part of this logic, supposing as it does the sale of such property to foreign investors. Thus, under the guise of seeking new investments, wealth is exported.
3. The struggle against the drugs traffic, which, at the Cartagena summit, was used to justify, in the name of the "common good", the US military presence in in coordination local armies. While the Latin American governments have sought to replace the cultivation of narcotics with other products, the US is attempting to use systematic repression to control the supply of drugs on the market.
4. The protection of the environment, with the use of so-called debt for nature swaps. These nicely dovetail pandering to American public opinion with the needs
5. The recoupment of aspirations to Latin American integration, which reappeared during the Maivinas War, in a form that serves US interests. The Organization of American States (OAS) is to be reinvigorated, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) is to re-financed and so on. On June 27, 1990, in the presence of the Latin American ambassadors, Bush launched his "initiative for the Americas" involving three axes:
• Trade: The US undertook to take the lead in the last meeting of the GATT negotiations in putting forward the protests of the Latin Americans over the EC's agricultural policies. The US is, furthermore, ready to to make temporary agreements for special quotas for countries that want to join the Initiative, even 14 if they do not want to go so far as to accept the free trade agreements as MexiInternational Viewpoint #208 • June 10, 1991
• Investment: The IDB foresees a technological development fund of $300m, with equal contributions from the US, Japan, and the EC. The aid will be conditional on the application of neo-liberal
• The foreign debt: The possible cancellation of some of that owed to the US is envisaged via bilateral negotiations; the creation of a system of swaps of debt investments; release of IMF and World Bank funds for standby credits if the countries concerned fulfil those institutions' demands. The openly "ideological" aspect of the Bush Plan has not prevented the Latin American governments from applauding it. The fear of seeing the recession lead to even greater shrinkage of their US markets has weighed here, as well as the chronic problem of debt repayment and the increasing exasperation of the population over the social costs of the adjustment
For many among the Latin American oligarchies, the Bush Plan has become the last hope in the face of chaos.
The Gulf crisis has reduced the real importance of the Initiative. At the same time, while a wave of mass strikes against the adjustment policies and their effects has swept the continent - breaking out in the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Peru, Brazil and Argentina - the IDB has stuck to its guns. In its annual report on "Economic and Social Progress in Latin America", the IDB affirms that only this new orientation can permit the region's economies to win back ground lost in the "lost decade" and, furthermore, achieve a growth rate of 5.5% per year, thanks to the private sector and regional coordination in the framework of the Ini-
During the 2nd Conference on Poverty in Quito, it was revealed that the past ten years have seen half the continent's population fall below the poverty line; according to one authority $228bn - 70% of the debt — would be needed to provide housing and basic services to all the "new
The struggle against the drug traffic, another of Bush' favourite themes, does not seem to have achieved its goals. The
Colombian government of Cesar Gaviria, failing to receive the satisfaction of its demands for aid and trade quotas from the US, has ceased extraditions of drugs' traffickers to the US, and has opened de facto negotiations with the drug cartels.
The Peruvian army, preoccupied by the danger of the Shining Path guerillas gaining increased support in the Huallaga region, has vetoed the signing by President Fujimori of an agreement on antidrug collaboration. In Bolivia, similarly, the government has had to give into army demands to participate in the suppression of the crop to obtain the $33.3m of prom-
Finally, the Bush administration maintains its intention to destroy the Cuban revolution. After 30 years of blockade, the crisis of Stalinism has opened up the possibility of starving Castro out. But relations with the USSR and the absence of significant opposition on the island itself have led Washington to maintain its traditional policy and wait, hoping that the Cuban regime will collapse under the weight of its own economic and social Blockade of Cuba stepped up
The US is putting pressure on the USSR to cut off supplies to Cuba and thus tighten the blockade; meanwhile, the Floridabased Radio Marti is trying to encourage
The Cuban-American Foundation, led by Jorge Mas Canosa, who wants to be the new president of Cuba, exercises the decisive influence on US Cuban policy both in the White House and Congress. The president's son supports this association with implications for the funding of the Republican Party in Florida.
The crisis of the embassies in July 1990 showed the limits of US policy - with the arrival of thousands of new immigrants, which would provoke a
The US has tried to exploit Cuba's line in the Gulf crisis — where it abstained in the Security Council vote on sanctions against Iraq and voted against the January 15 ultimatum — to try to reinforce the isolation of Havana and justify the block-