to commit the Nicaraguan armed forces to domestic defense and to create a climate of political instability that would erode popular support and encourage revolt. The Contras were instructed to bomb industrial and other economic targets, but excerpts of a CIA training manual later published in the press revealed that they were also trained in kidnapping and murder.26 By 1983, the CIA itself was directly engaged in sabotage—bombing Nicaraguan oil reserves and mining harbors, for example—in clear violation of international law and the United States' own Boland Amendment, which prohibited assisting or using the Contras to overthrow the Nicaraguan government or to provoke conflict between Nicaragua and Honduras.27 Congress responded with the second Boland Amendment in 1984, which severed lethal aid to the Contras once and for all. Nicaragua filed a complaint against the United States in the World Court for the mining of its harbors, and two years later the court officially condemned the United States. However, neither domestic pressure nor international sanction deterred the Reagan administration from its foreign policy objectives: the administration turned to the illegal sale of arms to Iran in order to redirect the profits to its Contra protégés.28
The Reagan administration's policy in Nicaragua drew criticism at home and abroad. Critics argued that US policy only served to increase poverty and homelessness in Nicaragua, destabilize neighboring countries and producing a large-scale regional migration. NGOs such as Amnesty International, Americas Watch, Church World Service, and the International Red Cross documented the human toll produced by the militarization of Central America. While public opinion polls showed that most Americans could not locate Nicaragua on a map,29 a vocal and influential minority protested US policy and ultimately forced Congress to monitor the administration's support of the Contras. Not since the Watergate scandal had Americans taken so passionate an interest in the activities of their government, and the administration received thousands of letters from Americans who warned that Central America would become another Vietnam.30 Such popular pressure undoubtedly influenced the congressional and judicial scrutiny that followed the discovery of the illegal sale of arms to Iran.
In the years following the Iran-Contra hearings, the Bush administration continued to undermine the Sandinistas, albeit through more traditional pressure—the economic embargo, diplomatic isolation, and financial support of opposition groups. In 1989, when the Sandinista government finally agreed to elections under the terms of the Esquipulas II peace plan, most knew that their days in power were numbered. The United States funneled millions of dollars to the opposition parties to ensure the Sandinistas' defeat. In February 1990, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, representing the National Opposition Union (Unión Nacional Opositora, UNO), a coalition of fourteen political parties, was elected president of Nicaragua by over half of the war-weary electorate (the elections had an 86 percent voter turnout). The United States finally lifted its economic embargo and provided millions of dollars to help rebuild the society that, only months before, it had tried to destroy.
The opposition's victory came at a high price for the Nicaraguan people: thirty thousand dead; fifty thousand wounded; and three hundred thousand left homeless. And over half a million Nicaraguans remained outside their country, the majority of them in the United States, waiting to see what type of society would evolve in their homeland.
DEATH SQUADS AND GUERRILLAS: THE STRUGGLE FOR POLITICAL CONTROL IN EL SALVADOR
As in Nicaragua, the civil war in El Salvador was rooted in the unequal distribution of power. An oligarchy of landed elites known as the Fourteen Families controlled 60 percent of the farmland, the entire banking system, and most of the nation's industry.31 Eight percent of the nation's five million people controlled half of the nation's income, while over onequarter of the rural population was poor and had been pushed off their land to make room for agricultural estates dedicated to the production of coffee, the country's principal export.32 Since 1932, the country was ruled by a series of generals with close ties to the oligarchy, whose interests they protected, and they were equally zealous in weeding out any challenges to their authority. A peasant uprising in 1932, for example, led to la matanza: the murder of over thirty thousand Salvadorans by the army and vigilante groups.33
Nineteen seventy-two proved to be a landmark year in Salvadoran politics, as it was for Nicaragua. After the fraudulent elections of 1972, more and more Salvadorans engaged in strikes, demonstrations, and other acts of civil disobedience against the government of Fidel Sánchez Hernández. The Catholic Church played an indirect role in catalyzing such behavior. As one of the principal institutions in El Salvador (and Latin America), the Catholic Church had historically helped to maintain the unequal power relationships by encouraging the poor and the oppressed to passively accept their fate on earth in hopes of greater glories in heaven. However, by the 1960s, a more radical wing of the Catholic Church preached what it called a “theology of liberation”: the fundamental idea that poverty and oppression were not God's will, and that God's children had the right to challenge oppressive institutions, structures, and conditions in every sector of society.34 Moreover, according to liberation theology, the Catholic Church was obligated to condemn these unjust institutions and assist the faithful in their struggle for liberation. Across El Salvador, and throughout Latin America, the more radical nuns and clergy organized comunidades de base (faith communities) that encouraged villagers and townspeople to meet weekly for a closer reading of the Bible and particularly the social justice teachings of Jesus's New Testament.This theology was not new or radical, they argued, but rather a return to the original teachings of Christ.35 To those who held power in Salvadoran society, this theology—whether new or not—was certainly radical enough to threaten their positions of privilege. Particularly worrisome was the fact that this theology was preached by even the highest-ranking clergyman of their society, the archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Arnulfo Romero, who used his weekly radio sermons to condemn the abuses in Salvadoran society and to urge President Carter to withdraw military aid.36
Whether influenced by liberation theology or the Sandinista and Cuban revolutions, a number of groups emerged in El Salvador to demand social justice: organizations such as the People's Revolutionary Block, the Front of United Popular Action, and the Popular League of February 28. Each drew its rapidly growing membership from different segments of Salvadoran society—university students, teachers, trade unionists, as well as the urban and rural poor—and used a variety of tactics to challenge the authority of the elites, from traditional forms of civil disobedience to guerrilla warfare.37 A number of guerrilla armies also emerged, such as the Popular Liberation Forces, the People's Revolutionary Army, the Armed Forces of National Liberation, the Central American Revolutionary Workers Party, and the Armed Forces of Liberation.38
The protests continued even after October 1979, when a new militarycivilian junta overthrew the violent government of General Carlos Humberto Romero. The junta, comprised of junior and somewhat progressive military officers as well as civilian representatives and church leaders, passed a number of modest reforms, including an agrarian reform program, a minimum daily wage, a ban on paramilitary groups, and tax and banking reforms. However, few of these reforms were ever enforced. Within months, the civilian and church representatives had resigned from the junta in protest, and the power continued to rest with the old guard. From 1979 to 1982, three junta governments attempted to enact modest reforms, with very limited success.
The principal agencies of Salvadoran national security tried to eliminate the rebels and dissenters. The centralized intelligence agency known as ANSESAL and its affiliate, the Democratic Nationalist Organization (ORDEN), a nationwide network of government informants and paramilitary groups founded in 1968,39 used violent measures to control the civilian population. Protesters were arrested and beaten, expelled from the country, or murdered. The armed forces were assisted in these efforts by privately funded paramilitary groups such as the White Warriors Union, the White Hand, the Anti-Communist Forces for Liberation, and the Organization for the Liberation from Communism, among many others, whose interlocking membership consisted of soldiers, off-duty police officers, and “the sick young sons of affluent Salvadorans.”40 Indeed, the paramilitary groups received their funding from members of the oligarchy,
