America; an end of support to guerrilla movements; and the eventual institution of democratic, pluralist governments, with socioeconomic reconstruction.126 The proposal was drafted into treaty form and circulated to the nations of the hemisphere for discussion. The following year Argentina, Brazil, Peru, and Uruguay formed the Contadora Support Group (or Grupo de Lima) to lend support for a negotiated peace settlement.
The Reagan administration publicly stated its support for Contadora but undermined the negotiations.127 The Contadora proposal recognized the legitimacy of the Sandinista government and called for an end to US support for the Contras, which were terms that the administration refused to accept. Administration officials insisted that the Sandinistas could not be trusted to uphold the terms of the peace accords, and the United States would ultimately have to reestablish its military presence in Central America. The Unites States enlisted the aid of Honduras, El Salvador, and Costa Rica (the so-called Tegucigalpa Bloc) to help stall the peace process by challenging individual points in the proposed plan. By the end of 1985, the United States had succeeded in stalling the negotiations.
By 1987, however, a new political climate facilitated the renewal of diplomatic efforts. Throughout the 1980s, the US Congress had become increasingly critical of the Reagan administration's militaristic policies, and by 1987 had significantly reduced aid to the Contras and to El Salvador, eroding Reagan's national mandate. The Sandinistas, in turn, had been able to contain the Contras to the border of Honduras, albeit at great moral and economic cost to their country, and exacerbating the popular discontent that would eventually displace them at the voting booth. In Costa Rica, newly elected president Oscar Arias Sánchez was less willing than his predecessor to allow his country to be used by the United States in their geopolitical agenda. Arias took the initiative and resumed the regional peace talks in 1986 (for which he was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize). The presidents of El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Costa Rica met in Esquipulas, Guatemala. (Interestingly, Esquipulas is home to the shrine of the Black Christ, which attracts the second largest number of pilgrims in the Americas, after Mexico's shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe. The choice of setting perhaps symbolized regional leaders' hopes—and prayers—for peace.) Finally, on August 7, 1987, the participants signed a peace accord appropriately entitled “Procedure for the Establishment of a Strong and Lasting Peace in Central America” (also called Esquipulas II or Arias Plan.) The peace plan addressed national reconciliation; democratization and free elections; the termination of aid for insurrectionist forces; the nonuse of territory to attack other states; arms control; economic development; international verification and follow-up by UN peacekeeping forces; as well as a timetable for fulfillment of these commitments.
As part of the negotiated settlement, the Contra leadership agreed to a disarmament plan, and the Sandinistas agreed to open and democratic elections and an amnesty program for Contra soldiers who wished to be reintegrated into Nicaraguan society. However, when both parties refused to act in good faith, the five Central American presidents were twice forced to reconvene—in Tesoro, El Salvador (in February 1989), and Tela, Honduras (August 1989), to discuss ways to overcome the impasse. As a result of these meetings, the Sandinistas agreed to move up the scheduled elections to February 1990; to allow opposition parties freedom to organize and campaign; and to allow international observers access to the country to guarantee the fairness of the voting process. In turn, the United States and Honduras were asked to immediately demobilize the Contras. Both nations agreed to cooperate; US cooperation was secured, in part, because of the international outcry that came after the 1989 murder of six Jesuit professors of the Central American University and their two housekeepers.128 However, when the Contras refused to demobilize, the United Nations Observer Group in Central American (ONUCA), a 625-member peacekeeping agency staffed by Canadians, Spaniards, and West Germans, stepped in to assure compliance along the Nicaragua-Honduras border.129
The various multinational accords tried to restore peace and address some of the fundamental issues that had caused civil war. However, in 1990, Central America was worse off economically than prior to the civil wars.130 Democratization and social and economic reforms have come slowly and unevenly, and some have argued that the accords only served to restore US hegemony in Central America. In February 1990, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro and her UNO coalition assumed the presidency of Nicaragua. The United States finally lifted its economic embargo and provided millions of dollars to help rebuild Nicaragua's war-shattered economy. But many of the social problems that produced war—intense poverty, unemployment, and illiteracy—have continued to plague Nicaragua into the next century. In El Salvador, the guerrillas and the government agreed to a negotiated settlement on December 31, 1991. The electoral process facilitated an FMLN presence in the Salvadoran legislature, but the right-wing ARENA party—the party of D'Aubuisson and other death-squad leaders—continued to dominate Salvadoran politics. In Guatemala, UN-led discussions between the URNG and the government failed until 1996, when a peace accord was finally signed. However, thousands continued to disappear or suffer political violence. In Guatemala there were 1,406 documented violations of human rights in 1996 alone: 112 unlawful executions, 785 assassinations, 302 threats, 179 attempted murders, and 6 cases of torture.131 Years after the peace accords were signed, people continued to be murdered or “disappeared,” among them Guatemalan Bishop Juan Gerardi, who only two days before his death released the Catholic Church's official documentation of human rights abuses during the country's thirty-six-year civil war.132
In the Esquipulas II accords, the Central American presidents agreed to address the problems faced by refugees, repatriates, and displaced persons. In May 1989, representatives from the five Central American nations, Belize, and Mexico, as well as the UN general secretary, the UNHCR, and over sixty NGOs working in the region, convened the International Conference on Central American Refugees (CIREFCA), in Guatemala City, to discuss refugee rights, repatriation and integration, and assistance to the internally displaced.133 In preparation for the conference, each nation evaluated the assistance needed to either integrate or repatriate the refugees and illegal immigrants within its borders.134 CIREFCA then discussed specific development and assistance projects and ways to attract international funding for these projects.135 From 1989 to 1992, local and international NGOs channeled 238 million dollars in international funds to assist in the repatriation or reintegration of these populations.136
Although small numbers repatriated as early as 1983, full-scale repatriation to Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala did not begin until each nation had negotiated a cease fire and guaranteed basic rights, including the right to live in safety and without retaliation and the right to participate in the political process. For example, the majority of Nicaraguan refugees who chose to repatriate from Honduras, Costa Rica, and El Salvador did not do so until after the Sandinistas' electoral defeat in February 1990; 25,000 repatriated immediately following the elections, and 71,500 returned by 1993.137 In El Salvador, 30,000 refugees had returned within a year after the negotiated peace settlement.138 Similarly, while thousands of Guatemalan refugees had returned from Mexico by 1990, the vast majority returned after the peace accords in 1996.
2
DESIGNING A REFUGEE POLICY
Mexico as Country of First Asylum
People arrived in long lines, tired, sweaty, pale and sick, seeking Don Toño, to ask him for shelter and a little food. Some stayed in stables, others at the foot of the mountains with makeshift tents against the rain: a multicolored array of plastic sheeting was to be seen everywhere; bins containing corn and rice were quickly emptied; there was no longer anything to eat and everywhere there were hungry, underfed people, with malaria, tuberculosis and gastrointestinal disorders. They started to die.
FELIPE SÁNCHEZ MARTÍNEZ, COMAR
For this reason we want you to understand what we refugees have suffered, so that you will do us the favor and tell all that the murder of Guatemalan campesinos continues.
GUATEMALAN
