latin american essays maclas

The Jimmy Carter Administration (1977-1981), seeking to use Nicaragua
to showcase its much vaunted human rights policy, put strong pressure on
Somoza to liberalize and to open the way to a democratic succession. But it
soon became clear that the Administration did not want the Sandinistas to come
to power under any circumstances. However, in spite of numerous maneuvers
designed to promote a non-Sandinista outcome, the regime collapsed and the
FSLN found itself in power in July 1979.
The Sandinista victory set alarm bells ringing in the halls of power in
Washington, San Salvador, and Guatemala. The Carter Administration
maintained cool, but correct relations with the new regime in Managua, while
putting pressure on the military rulers of Guatemala, and especially El Salvador,
to initiate social and political reforms that would preempt the revolutionary
threat.
The revolutionaries responded vigorously to the new situation. Both in El
Salvador and in Guatemala, previously fragmented insurgencies cobbled together
unified fronts: the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) in El
Salvador and the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Union (URNG) in
Guatemala. 2 The FMLN actually staged an offensive in January of 1981, seriously
attempting to seize power, though ultimately failing. A very strong insurgency
then continued to control large areas of the country through the 1980s in spite of
strong US backing for a repressive counterinsurgency program.
The URNG in Guatemala was in a distinctly weaker position than the
FMLN, but it made a significant effort to broaden its popular base by reaching
out to the country’s huge rural indigenous population in the western highlands.
They had enough success to provoke the Armed Forces to two coups (1982 and
1983) seeking to establish a regime capable of a sophisticated counterinsurgency
operation. The General Efraín Ríos Montt (1982-83) engaged in a bloody
program of repression in the indigenous areas which brought unwelcome
international attention. Ríos Montt was then replaced by General Humberto
Mejía Víctores, who kept a lower profile without changing the fundamentally
repressive stance.
First Jimmy Carter, then Ronald Reagan were anxious to prevent “another
Nicaragua.” While the Carter Administration pushed for a reduction of repression
and the implementation of democratization, the Reagan Administration initially
rejected that approach and followed the advice of United Nations Ambassador
Jeane Kirkpatrick (1982) to support anticommunist authoritarian regimes. By the
mid-1980s, however, Reagan adopted a policy of countering the threat of
revolution by promoting democratization. This latter policy was rehorically
disctinct from Carter’s, but in practice very similar. A key component of both
policies was promoting a transition from openly authoritarian regimes to elected,
formally democratic regimes. This transition took place from 1979-1984 in El
Salvador, and from 1982-1985 in Guatemala. In both cases, Christian
Democratic presidents were elected and then kept on very short leashes by their
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