Central America No Winners, Only Losers

By Jill Smolowe

"Reagan is going, the revolution stays." The billboards adorn the dusty roadways of Managua, a pitiful yelp of triumph in an exhausted country that has little else to celebrate. Yet the Sandinistas can cheer at least this: while Ronald Reagan will be just another private citizen in two months, Daniel Ortega Saavedra -- the man Reagan once called a "dictator in designer glasses" -- will remain firmly at the helm of a government that the White House terms an "outlaw regime."

For Reagan, it is a disappointing conclusion to one of his most persistent campaigns, and certainly his most passionate. Throughout his presidency, Central America has been a laboratory for the twin goals of the Reagan Doctrine: to promote democracy where such tendencies show promise and to sponsor surrogate armies where Soviet-backed regimes appear shaky. But after eight years, Reagan has presided over neither the democratization of Central America nor the disintegration of the Communists. His policy has spawned no winners, only losers.

The Central America that George Bush will have to deal with come January is a place that will require fresh approaches to frustratingly old problems. While the Reagan Administration can claim credit for laying the groundwork for democracy in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, all three governments remain dependent on the support of military establishments that continue to exert considerable influence in civilian affairs. Death squads with links to the military still use guns to silence critics, making a mockery of the precepts of democratic dialogue and respect for human rights. And regionwide, the basic standard of living has sunk to the levels of the early 1970s.

Among the biggest losers have been the people of Nicaragua. Those who have survived the war against the U.S.-backed contras are losing the battle for daily survival. Economic growth has been less than zero during the past two years. In January, with inflation running at nearly 1,500%, the cordoba was pegged at a rate of 10 for each U.S. dollar; today the rate is 1,600 to $1. In Managua outdoor markets are bordered by garbage mounds where malnourished scavengers pick through the debris in search of food. Stagnant waters have become a breeding ground for dengue fever. In rural areas a plague of rats threatens the country's sugarcane crops.

All this does not even begin to address the toll of a war that, by Managua's count, has taken 28,547 lives. The Nicaraguan government is asking the U.S. for $12.2 billion in reparations, 25% of which would cover what they call "moral damages." But who is going to assess damages against the Sandinistas for their own incompetence and chronic mismanagement? Since 1979 the Sandinistas' most salient achievements have been to consolidate their power, build a formidable military machine and suppress dissent. While the Sandinistas claim they could triumph in any election, Nicaraguans are voting otherwise with their feet. More than 500,000 have fled to the U.S. and Honduras, and half again as many are expected to flee during the next year.

The Nicaraguan refugees pouring into Honduras once could count on shelter in U.N.-sponsored refugee camps. Now newcomers who are caught are forcibly returned. Hondurans, with an unemployment rate of about 40%, insist they cannot accommodate this job-hungry tide of dispossessed Nicaraguans. With 12,000 armed contras sitting in Honduran base camps, some Hondurans feel the U.S. has dragged them into a war that they never chose to fight. Though Washington understandably becomes annoyed when officials in Honduras and other Central American countries privately implore the U.S. to act tough with the Sandinistas but offer little public support, it is these countries that must live with the consequences of U.S. policies. Last month Honduras proposed to the U.N. General Assembly the creation of an international peacekeeping force to patrol its borders with Nicaragua and El Salvador. Honduras has refused to sign a new military cooperation agreement with the U.S. Perhaps more to the point, President Jose Azcona Hoyo recently suggested that the U.S. will have to "move to one side" in deliberations over Central America's future.

In El Salvador a bitter civil war is in its ninth year, and the leftist guerrillas are stepping up their assaults on military and economic targets. Last March voters gave control of the legislative assembly to the ultraconservative Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), which has been linked in the past to death-squad activity. In presidential elections next March, ARENA is expected to defeat the moderate Christian Democrats, currently headed by President Jose Napoleon Duarte, who is dying of cancer. The new government, backed by a reshuffled military, can be expected to move more aggressively against the guerrillas, which will probably mean a heavier civilian toll.

The resurgence of the right has already meant a return of the death squads. Amnesty International issued a report last month charging that government security forces were responsible for a significant increase in killings and disappearances in the past two years. Moreover, despite $3 billion in U.S. military and economic assistance since 1981, living standards have declined. Malnutrition is on the rise, basic services are deteriorating, and joblessness hovers around 50%. Official corruption remains endemic.

As El Salvador slips backward toward the violence and chaos that characterized the country in the early 1980s, it seems plain that Washington's democratic experiment has failed. At best, the U.S. has leased a democracy in El Salvador that will struggle on only as long as Washington continues to pay the rent and Salvadoran officials agree to play along. (ARENA has already asserted that it does not intend to bow to U.S. demands even if it means a drastic reduction of aid.) The U.S. did Duarte no favor by emphasizing the fight against Communist guerrillas instead of reinforcing his agenda for reconciliation, economic growth and social reform. Washington also held Duarte -- and others in Central America -- to the pluralistic standards of North America at a time when the Latin tradition of the caudillo, or strongman, might have proved more effective. "The U.S. wants to use the rules of Anglo- Saxon culture to bring about changes in Latin culture," says Emilio Alvarez, an ophthalmologist in Managua. "It hasn't worked, and it won't work."

If the Reagan Administration foundered on its own best intentions in El Salvador, it allowed ideological zeal to hamper its approach to Nicaragua. For all the talk of a diplomatic track, it wanted nothing less than to topple the Sandinista government. But the Administration, says Wayne Smith, a Latin affairs expert at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, "was sailing between the Scylla of no more Cubas and the Charybdis of no more Viet Nams." Unwilling either to tolerate a Soviet buildup or to commit its own troops, Washington tried to wage war on the cheap by backing the contras. The result was a confused policy in which ends and means never quite matched up. "We were saying that there was a major Soviet-Cuban military menace on the mainland," says an Administration veteran of the contra political battles. "If we believed our own rhetoric, then we should have dispatched the 82nd Airborne."

Wishful thinking also gave way to misguided policy. Although guerrilla insurgencies require years of patient political organization, the CIA stepped up the contra effort long before an underground support network was in place. That left the contras totally dependent on U.S. supply flights. When Congress turned off the aid spigot, the rebels were forced to retreat to base camps in Honduras. The men Reagan hailed as "the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers" were reduced to little more than welfare recipients.

What is the next Administration to do? First, it should assume what present Administration and contra officials admit among themselves: since neither Latin nor North Americans have the stomach for a protracted fight, the contras are never going to topple the Sandinistas. Prolonging the insurgency only allows the Sandinistas to excuse their own incompetence and repressive tactics. This does not mean that the U.S. should forsake its responsibility to the contras. The U.S. has an obligation to help resettle those who cannot be reintegrated into Nicaragua's political life.

The next Administration should also come to terms with the fact that after nearly a decade in Managua, the Sandinistas are not about to do anything, including setting up a system of free elections, that might cost them their power. Rather than try to undo the Sandinista revolution, the new Administration in Washington should acknowledge the legitimacy of the Managua regime and resume direct negotiations that address U.S. security concerns. The goal: a verifiable agreement, backed by the threat of military force, that ) imposes strict limits on -- or an outright end to -- the import of Soviet and Cuban weaponry and personnel and guarantees that Nicaragua will not foment insurgencies elsewhere in the region. The U.S. could also offer to lift its economic embargo, but only if the Sandinistas allow free enterprise to flourish and become far more tolerant of dissent. "We've used the stick about as much as we can," says a State Department official. "Now it may be time to try some carrots."

The U.S. must renew serious diplomatic efforts in the region and encourage multinational attempts to forge a Central American peace settlement. Such an approach would be a logical extension of Washington's diplomatic efforts elsewhere. Says Joaquin Villalobos, a Salvadoran rebel leader: "There is a worldwide negotiations process to which the U.S. has committed itself in Afghanistan, Angola and Cambodia. Why can't the Administration play a real role in Central America?"

The U.S. must face the harsh reality that if the region's current economic conditions prevail, the outlook ahead is for more poverty, more instability, more violence. The U.S. might spearhead an international consortium of aid that would be applied to social reform and economic growth. The key here is to address the debilitating poverty that is endemic to the region. Only then is there hope of starving popular support for Central America's Communist insurgencies.

Finally, the next Administration should not rely solely on the naive if idealistic notion that the seeds of U.S.-style democracy can easily take root in Central America. It is in the interest of the U.S., both morally and strategically, to encourage the governments of Central America toward more humane and pluralistic values. But ultimately, the Central Americans must be the arbiters of their own fate.

With reporting by Ricardo Chavira/Washington and John Moody/Managua