XABIER GOROSTIAGA Peace With No Losers
Doggett, Martha Lyn
"We are at a very important juncture in U.S./Latin American relations," Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega told a group of visiting North Americans just days before he flew off to meet his...
...What about the squabbling that went on within the Nicaraguan opposition about naming candidates for the Reconciliation Commission...
...We have to build it from inside the region...
...The Central Americans said enough, basta...
...Does creating what you have called "a U.S.-Central American coalition for peace, democracy, economic development and collective security" presuppose a Democratic Administration...
...But if you go to the rural areas, the old Guatemala of the military regime is intact, with strategic hamlets, special forces, compulsory civilian militia, bombing...
...Report editor Martha Doggett met Gorostiaga in Washington in early September...
...Remember that the Arias Plan, or more importantly, the Guatemala Accords, are the result not only of a very strong commitment on Arias' part, but also a multilateral effort culminating a long process in keeping with the spirit and principles of Contadora...
...The Central Americans said 'enough, this is our turn, we have to find a solution.' Because the solution will not come, as we say, desde afuera, y desde arriba, from outside, or from above...
...I think that was the last straw...
...Yes, I think so...
...There the repression is basically the same, and the military control the country...
...If the Democrats spelled out a clearly defined line to the Central American presidents, the peace agreement in Central America would be easier...
...Alfredo Cristiani (of ARENA, representing the opposition...
...Let's see if these democratization processes are real democratic movements...
...But the key factor in forging peace was the war-weariness and yearning for peace of the Central American people...
...In the short run they appear to be in a disadvantageous position...
...How does the Arias Plan that has been adopted differ from what was originally laid out...
...Today, war-weary Central Americans talk of little else...
...Allow Central American people to figure out how to handle their own contradictions...
...I think so, unfortunately...
...It allows him to start negotiations with JULY/AUGUST 1987 1 7the guerrillas without losing face...
...But I maintain that there are no losers in Central America: some people will be more unbalanced than others in some stages...
...manipulation of the Arias Plan and Iran-Contragate-all that was leading to a complementary position between the Arias Plan and Contadora...
...Then when they have to discuss who will represent all of them, there is no figure other than Obando...
...I'm almost sure that it is one of the lowest in the world...
...I think even though the FMLN and the guerrillas in Guatemala in the short run are in a weak situation, I think a general dynamic for peace and democracy will help them...
...I would say that no government in Latin America would last more than six months under the economic conditions Nicaragua faces...
...Cerezo has no more than 30% of the power, according to him...
...They are dedicated to small things instead of really building a personality and a strong party...
...In addition to that, Senator Dodd came to Central America and played a positive role in bridging relations between Costa Rica and Nicaragua...
...Central American timing--the timing in Central America has little to do with Washington timing...
...If social change in the region affects national security here, that is a problem, because change is a prerequisite for peace, development and democracy in Central America...
...Well, for instance, the conditions of the peace treaty for the FMLN are more narrow than earlier negotiation procedures with one intermediary, the archbishop of San Salvador, and no preconditions...
...I think so...
...The key question is how to maintain a democratic process domestically under these dramatic economic conditions...
...Vinicio is too weak to even start minimal agrarian and economic reform...
...Let's test real democracy, not a farce...
...At that time I was in El Salvador and I heard the foreign minister, Ricardo Acevedo, on television saying 'if Nicaragua doesn't sign this agreement in 15 days, all of the Central American countries will declare a political embargo on Nicaragua.' On February 15, all the presidents except Daniel Ortega met in San Jos6...
...I fear that Washington may be attempting to co-opt the peace agreement in Central America, that they will not allow Central America three key conditions: Central American space in order to solve their own problems...
...If they fail to establish a coalition, a national opposition consensus, this is their problem, because the chances are there-the municipal elections next year and the Central American Parliament...
...I would say that the key obstacles for the peace agreements would be first Honduras, second Duarte, third Guatemala-not Vinicio, but the military people and the oligarchy of Guatemala...
...and the UN/OAS insistence on supporting the Contadora process as fundamental for peace...
...Paraj6n has had a lot of trouble with the Sandinistas over the Miskitos and some church matters...
...Change is an essential condition for the national security of the United States in its own backyard...
...xamler iorostiaga Nicaragua...
...a newspaper...
...In the short term, what aspects of the Arias process are detrimental for the guerrillas in these two countries...
...It was the first document signed by all the presidents and was the political framework for Esquipulas II...
...I don't see that within the Republican Party there is even a substantial minority to build such a coalition...
...Some would say this is due to totalitarian repression, but anybody who has lived in Nicaragua knows that is false...
...Everyone, even President Duarte of El Salvador...
...Duarte is very weak, and one way in which he could become again a national figure was to get involved in a big adventure...
...He has always been constructive but not dependent...
...forces, military and economic aid, the contras, a very weak president, a divided opposition...
...La Prensa and Radio Cat6lica may be opened but Washington will then raise another issue in order to avoid bilateral negotiations or find accommodation with the Sandinistas...
...The third thing is international conditions for verification...
...Marco Ren6 Revelo (the Church...
...Even with a 9Democratic victory here, the Reagan era will continue...
...The new convergence of Latin America, the U.S...
...Then the key question is not how bad is Nicaragua's economy, but how strong is its capacity to resist under appalling conditions...
...But in the long run, if a democratic process develops in Guatemala and El Salvador, and if real negotiations start between Cerezo and the URNG and between Duarte and the FMLN, well, this is what they have been demanding...
...The economic crisis in Nicaragua adds a lot to the political legitimacy of the Frente Sandinista-I don't think any government in Latin America without incredible legitimacy could survive for seven years under these conditions...
...Not only the FMLN but also the URNG [the Guatemalan guerrillas] are vital for the completion of the peace plan...
...Now Cerezo is the new Duarte, but he has realized that he faces conditions he cannot control, and the whole image that he has been able to create for Guatemala and for himself will disappear...
...Was Arias in on it from the beginning...
...There is a sort of alliance between the military and the 3% or 4% of the oligarchy that control agro-exports, and Vinicio Cerezo can't even increase the tax burden...
...Nowadays, I think there are more substantial differences, not only in taste but in substance...
...We are at a very important juncture in U.S./Latin American relations," Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega told a group of visiting North Americans just days before he flew off to meet his counterparts...
...They have made a lot of gestures, with absolutely no reciprocity...
...Alvaro Magafia (private citizen...
...It is important to remember that the Guatemala Accords could not have been born nor can they be completed without the Contadora process...
...This involves among other things the crucial Caraballeda Agreement of January 1986, signed by the five presidents...
...Remember that the last elections were without their participation...
...Well, that they don't understand, that the Frente Sandinista considers the FMLN probably the most important guerrilla movement in history...
...Another key factor is public opinion and the role of "civil society"--churches, trade unions, the peace movement, academics...
...In the first stage, it was a sort of threat to Nicaragua...
...First the Somocista inheritance: all these parties are very weird, with no representation at the national level-they are tiny parties...
...Sam Hall...
...Then the treaty allows Cerezo more space to work because it implies more control over the military and more verification of human rights...
...The second thing is that the figure of Cardinal Obando y Bravo has been a hindrance to the parties because he is the key political figure, and the parties don't want to compete with him...
...A Jesuit who advised Omar Torrijos during the Panama Canal negotiations, Gorostiaga heads the Regional Office for Economic and Social Research (CRIES) in Managua...
...There were a lot of intricacies, but Hural Guatemala: The military regime is intact the first attempt to build this plan was clearly manipulated by Elliott Abrams, Philip Habib and Madrigal...
...Administration was manipulating the Central American countries in order to polarize internal antagonisms and regional contradictions...
...Salvadorean refugees in Honduras: Can they go home...
...It is very important to define security: if security means that the United States has to maintain control of events and continue to interfere in the countries, I would be sorry...
...I'm sure Cerezo doesn't want repression...
...Is Honduras going to get away with not appointing a Reconciliation Commission...
...The United States does not understand the political divisions within the Christian Democratic Party, the Army's control over everything in El Salvador, that Duarte has no power and that Duarte is unpopular nowadays even in the Christian Democratic trade unions...
...This is a risky operation for the Frente Sandinista...
...Imagine Nicaragua...
...Can we expect the opposition to work better together in the future...
...Our destiny is ours...
...The verification has to be done under the framework of Contadora plus the United Nations, the Organization of American States, with some technical aid from Canada, Sweden and the European Economic Community...
...Rodolfo Antonio Castillo Claramount (the government...
...If you allow free elections in El Salvador, that means bringing back the FDR with Guillermo Ungo and Ruben Zamora, having Radio Venceremos an open, legitimate radio...
...But none of these symbols has any sort of effect in Washington...
...The United States will have to seriously re-think its relations with the region...
...By adopting Latin American solutions to Latin American problems, we are setting a historical precedent...
...a lot of concessions on the peace agreement...
...Now instead of only one intermediary, the guerrillas have the National Reconciliation Team, and obviously the National Reconciliation Team * is not a neutral intermediary for the Salvadorean guerrillas...
...Honduras is my headache...
...What is for sure is that none of these guerrilla groups will give up their arms until peace negotiations have started, a real peace process has matured and a real democratic framework is established allowing the participation of the Left in political life, just as Nicaragua has established with the Right, even the extreme Right of the Coordinadora Democratica...
...The third important factor was the Reagan peace plan...
...That seems very shortsighted of him...
...some 3,000 contras and 7,000 Miskitos have been accepted back this year...
...I would think El Salvador will have the hardest time implementing the peace agreement...
...Also very important was the perception at that time that Reagan was losing and that the Central Americans were betting on a caballo perdedor, a defeated horse...
...that was a very tough plan...
...They went to the mountains when they realized that the elections were a fraud, and hundreds of their leaders were assassinated...
...These people were participating in the elections in the 1960s and 1970s...
...I would say that the first step of the Arias process was clearly a sort of parallel process...
...This peace process is a victory for common sense and pragmatism...
...Everyone...
...The problem is that the peace treaty was a surprise for them...
...I feel very sorry for Duarte...
...It was an old Arias idea...
...And he is not gaining power because of domestic contradictions...
...Vinicio Cerezo maintained that without Nicaragua, there would be no peace in the region...
...That worries me, because there will come a moment when Nicaragua is perhaps going to say 'enough, I need reciprocity on the other side.' The Sandinistas feel that they have made a lot of good gestures: Hasenfus...
...This is not the style of his government...
...plus the collective letter of the five finance ministers demanding a political solution in order to resolve the region's economic crisis...
...That is very serious...
...I fully refuse to accept that the United States has to be a verifier of the peace-the United States is a key problem in the area...
...I see several reasons for that...
...The key problem for the Sandinistas is the internal division of the opposition, because the Sandinistas have no interlocutor...
...Some consider the Reconciliation Commission a biased group...
...Can you imagine in a year elections in El Salvador with Ungo or Zamora participating, with Radio Venceremos, with TV programs, the trade union and peasant movement...
...Imagine that the peace agreement is signed, and the refugees come back to * Msgr...
...Duarte came to office with incredible popularity and in two years was finished internationally...
...Costa Rica and Nicaragua are in a very good position to maintain the logic for peace...
...I don't know what may happen in Honduras, because the United States has all the chips to bargain with: the U.S...
...With the new constitution and the new mechanisms within the assembly, it has already started to work better...
...JULY/AUGUST 1987 That the Frente Sandinista knows that the FMLN has such a domestic basemilitary, social--that it will not only survive, but take advantage of the dynamic...
...The Central Americans were unable to sign the act, but they signed the Caraballeda agreement...
...All of these together created the objective conditions for the miracle of Esquipulas II...
...Plus, Contadora had been unable to reach an agreement and the U.S...
...The key element in all that is Nicaragua...
...How would you answer those who say that the Sandinistas have sold the FMLN down the river...
...And in the United States, those who have been following the region's crisis consider the implications of the agreement for the future of U.S./Central American relations...
...Why was Guatemalan President Vinicio Cerezo pushing so hard to reach an agreement...
...Obviously they were not invited to discuss or design the plan...
...How did we get from a point where the Arias Plan was called a competitor to Contadora to the point where today it's embraced...
...Then Contadora accepted the Arias Plan within the peace proposal for the region...
...Duarte is a key factor in the peace agreement, because he is in an extremely weak position...
...Because, [he can say] 'well this is a Central American movement, and I'm forced to make some concessions that I was not prepared for.' How important is the FMLN's stance to the success of the plan...
...Including Paraj6n means that Nicaragua is the only nation with two religious figures on the Reconciliation Commission, which makes it difficult to sustain Reagan's image of a Marxist-Leninist government...
...Nothing has happened in relation to tax reform or human rights...
...They can join forces with other Christian Democrats and Liberals in Central America...
...It is also very important that Gustavo Paraj6n, head of the Protestant churches, was the prominent individual named to the commission...
...It started during a meeting between Rodrigo Madrigal, the foreign minister of Costa Rica, and Elliott Abrams in Miami...
...Nicaragua accepted the Arias Plan within the framework of Contadora...
...Guatemala has the lowest tax burden in Latin America...
...They have advantages...
...Later, with the presence of the Democrats and of Vinicio Cerezo, the tune and the conditions of the treaty changed...
...It's funny: Latin and especially Central Americans talking about pragmatism to North Americans, but that is the way nowadays...
...Ortega was talking about the peace process that began on the Panamanian island of Contadora in 1983 and culminated in Guatemala City on August 7, when five Central American presidents signed what is known as the Arias Plan...
...For a Central American view, we talked with Panamanian economist Xabier Gorostiaga...
...There are really two Guatemalas: the Guatemala that is trying to modernize-the metropolitan areas are quite peaceful, even though there is still some death squad activity...
...He is a founder and executive board member of Policy Alternatives for the Caribbean and Central America (PACCA) and a contributor to PACCA's recently published Forging Peace: The Challenge of Central America (Basil Blackwell, 6 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 61987...
...The Arias Plan has a very tricky history...
...The peace agreements may help the Democrats to define a policy toward Central America, because they don't have one...
...He is realizing that he may be going in the same direction as Duarte...
...But it's a 8 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 8funny biased group when the president, Cardinal Obando, is the Sandinista's key political competitor...
...I used to say the differences between the Republicans and Democrats are Pepsi-Cola, Coca-Cola differences...
...But in any case, I think Duarte won in the short run...
...I imagine that if the parties had had two or three months to prepare, they would have reached an agreement, but not in a week...
Vol. 21 • July 1987 • No. 4
