Peace in Central America--When did this happen?

[Gala_Matrix_Fire]

Apparently while I wasn’t look peace broke out in Central America. Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras…all of them now have democratically-elected governments. Can someone point me to a web site that explains how this happened? I’ve been trying to find out and coming up dry.

Also just wondering if that means that the days of the desaparecidos are over.

[Squink]

U.S. Steps Up Criticism of Sandinista
Updated: Sat, Oct 06 12:58 PM EDT
By GEORGE GEDDA, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON AP) - The Bush administration warned Saturday that the leftist Sandinista party in Nicaragua, which hopes to return to power in elections next month, has maintained ties over the years with Iraq and Libya.
It was the second time in three days that the administration sought to link the Sandinistas to international terrorism.

[Alessan]

They probably ran out of ammo.

[Guinastasia]

Iran Contra kinda made it look stupid, I guess.

[Little_Nemo]

Turns out the Domino Effect was true after all; it just didn’t work for Communism.

[GIGObuster]

One of the best sources is the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/country_profiles/default.stm

Check the profiles for the Central American nations

In the case of Nicaragua it was negotiations and the peaceful (although under the barrel of the US gun) loss of power of the Sandinistas in 1990, for El Salvador it was a peace treaty negotiated by the UN in 1991, similar to what happened in Guatemala.

Truth commissions of El Salvador and Guatemala revealed later that more than 80 percent of the violence and crimes were caused by the extreme right wing death squads and the Armed forces.

And Little Nemo, while it is true that communists were a part of the revel forces the fact is that I saw the truth commission reports and I concluded (and I saw it personally too) that people do revolt when the powers that be are trying to kill them. The communists may have been part of the revolt but they were not the main reason or cause of the revolutions (more than revolutions I see them now as common sense self defense) The true level of their involvement, at least in Nicaragua, showed when the communists decided to separate from the Sandinistas at the end of the revolution and formed a small opposition party (it remains small to this day) the communists however were part of the coalition that defeated the Sandinistas in 1990! Many in the US did not heard that because the Sandinistas were called communists by the Reagan and Bush administrations, the fact that the Nicaraguan communists actually were part of the coalition that defeated the Sandinistas is one of the most amazing ironies of history. More so when after the Sandinistas were defeated the US embargoes and restrictions to trade to Nicaragua were lifted then.

As for the Desaparecidos the problem is that the current governments are stonewalling against the resolution of the cases of the past and new ones are occurring even today:

http://web.amnesty.org/web/ar2001.nsf/

http://web.amnesty.org/web/ar2001.nsf/webamrcountries/NICARAGUA?OpenDocument
http://web.amnesty.org/web/ar2001.nsf/webamrcountries/HONDURAS?OpenDocument
http://web.amnesty.org/web/ar2001.nsf/webamrcountries/GUATEMALA?OpenDocument
http://web.amnesty.org/web/ar2001.nsf/webamrcountries/EL+SALVADOR?OpenDocument

[Guinastasia]

Actually, the Sandinistas WERE Marxist/Communist whathaveyou. However, that should not have been a factor.

[Colibri]

Much of the credit, I think, goes to the “Contadora Group,” founded in 1983 and comprised of Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, and Panama. From this site on the Guatemalan conflict:

**
While political liberalisation was moving ahead fitfully, similarly fragile moves were also under way to kick-start a regional process to resolve the conflicts in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala. These moves were spearheaded by the Latin American ‘Contadora Group’, comprising Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia and Panama, all of whom feared the destabilising regional implications of the escalating violence. Launched in January 1983, the Contadora initiative drew increased international attention to Central America’s conflicts and pressured for a softening of the militarist stance of the US in the region.

On 3rd September 1983, mediated by the Contadora group, the foreign ministers of the Central American countries adopted a Document of Objectives in Panama City. This document declared a shared intention to promote democratisation and an end to armed conflict in the region, to act in compliance with international law, to revitalise and restore economic development and co-operation in Central America, and to negotiate better access to international markets.

A year later, on 29th September 1984, the Contadora Act on Peace and Co-operation in Central America was also presented. This document included a range of detailed commitments to peace, democratisation, regional security and economic co-operation. It also provided for regional committees to evaluate and verify compliance with these commitments. The agreement was tentatively approved by the Central American presidents, but did not gain the crucial backing of the US due to its de facto recognition of the revolutionary government in Nicaragua. A revised version of the accord failed to assuage these objections and was finally laid to rest on its formal rejection by Costa Rica, El Salvador and Honduras in June 1986.

While the Contadora group ultimately failed to forge a credible peace formula with the backing of all regional governments, it did lay the foundations for such a plan to emerge in subsequent years. Inspired by the Costa Rican president Oscar Arias, the so-called ‘Esquipulas process’ emerged from the ashes of Contadora in 1986-87. With substantive backing from President Cerezo and the Guatemalan government, this new process led to a fundamental remoulding of Central American politics. Within five years, it had inspired a return to liberal democracy in Nicaragua, the signing of a general peace agreement in El Salvador, and the first tentative steps toward a negotiated settlement in Guatemala.

**

However, it was really the end of the Cold War and U.S.-Soviet rivalries in the area that allowed these peace initiatives to have a successful result. Costa Rican President Oscar Arias won the Nobel Prize for Peace for his efforts.

[Gala_Matrix_Fire]

I knew somebody here would know this stuff. Thank you very much, Colibri, GIGObuster, and Squink.

Nobel Peace prize for Oscar Arias, that’s awesome.

(I wonder if Pres Bush will investigate hard enough to find out that terrorist acts were committed by troops trained and paid by his dad.)