Central America, November and Beyond
Today, when the word has gone round That these people are bankrupt We on the other continents (which are indeed bankrupt as well) See many things differently and, so we think, more...
...The Left's own political skills have atrophied...
...Today, when the word has gone round That these people are bankrupt We on the other continents (which are indeed bankrupt as well) See many things differently and, so we think, more clearly...
...2 Nevertheless, the Democrats' position is a long way from the Reagan Administration's...
...Nonetheless, the long-term challenge is clear enough...
...policy remain silent during the 1984 election, their fears that an elected Democratic Administration will sell out Central America could all too easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy...
...Nor does it support "democratic freedom fighters" trying to overthrow the "Marxist-Leninist" government in Nicaragua, urge a buildup of U.S...
...Already, Reagan's support among young voters aged 18-25 has grown astonishingly over the last four years...
...Military Strategy in Central America," Report on the Americas (May-June 1984), pp.51-53...
...If Mondale is elected, the initial 100-day "honeymoon" period, in which a new president is allowed a certain latitude to fulfill campaign promises, will be his opportunity to turn the tide of events...
...But for any of this to be a realistic possibility will mean a forceful articulation of the anti-intervention stance, both within the Democratic Party and in the broader movement...
...6 His promise was borne out when the Republican platform listed Central America as the nation's key foreign policy problem, before the Soviet Union, Europe and the Middle East...
...Elite debate, as expressed in such journals as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy and The New Republic, question the character of U.S...
...The positions of the major parties are substantially different...
...P ACCA WAS FOUNDED IN SEPTEMBER 1982 to build a network of U.S...
...It places no new or dramatic issues on the political agenda: rather, it is a test to preserve democratic rights already wonaffirmative action, reproductive freedom, equal rights before the law, the right to organize at the workplace, environmental protection...
...If Mondale wins, its existence within the Democratic Party will compel attention to a progressive domestic and international agenda...
...troops in Honduras and pledge sincere support for the efforts of the Contadora nations-Colombia, Panama, Venezuela and Mexico-to find a negotiated solution to the crisis...
...HOW much will events there be affected by the differences between the two parties...
...So does the important support he receives from AFL-CIO president Kirkland, long-time Cold Warrior and signatory of the Kissinger Commission Report...
...The moment is a difficult one...
...Those have been Reagan's positions, and they are reflected in the Republican platform...
...4. Speech to Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, March 14, 1984, edited transcript...
...PACCA's work is an attempt to develop feasible policy alternatives and to expand the range of political debate to encompass progressive views...
...It is a constraint on what the Reagan Administration can do, and leverage against the right wing of the Democratic Party and Mondale's own Cold War proclivities...
...Changing Course also received the endorsement of Democratic conREPORT ON THE AMERICAS 52tenders Jesse Jackson-who adopted it as his formal position-and George McGovern...
...Grassroots pressure over the Central America issue continues to hold the key...
...31Are the Democrats ADifferent...
...Mondale inspires little confidence...
...7 For the people of the Central American region-indeed, for the whole hemisphere-the 1984 U.S...
...A ND WHAT OF CENTRAL AMERICA...
...The Democrats' position is less distinguishable from the Administration's on El Salvador, where it promises support to the Salvadorean government if it curbs death squads and human rights abuses and promotes agrarian reform...
...T HERE IS A FRIGHTENING CONSENsus in Latin America, in Washington policy circles and among Central American experts that a reelected Reagan Administration will at some time order a full-scale military invasion in Central America, perhaps with air-strikes on key Nicaraguan targets or a troop landing on Nicaragua's troubled Atlantic Coast...
...VIETNAM is history, the New Left a footnote...
...PPOSITION AT BOTH THE ELITE AND the mass levels has made the Central American issue a major line of division between the parties...
...6. The Washington Post, July 24, 1984...
...San Francisco...
...The Democrats promise a dramatic reduction in the presence of U.S...
...In the months ahead, we face an enormous dilemma...
...hegemony in the Caribbean Basin...
...certain books don't get read or written...
...It is to defeat the Right and make the questions of justice, democracy and peace central to American life...
...South Bronx, New York, 1971 within the women's movement, on the periphery of the peace movement and even within the AFL-CIO...
...It is also, of course, a message of hope to Central Americans and an important element in any future mass politics of the Left...
...Furthermore, lacking a unified vision and buffeted from within by contradictory demands, the Democrats in power may succumb to bureaucratic pressure within the Pentagon and political pressure from the Right to escalate the Central American war...
...Internationally, it is little more than an elementary test of the superiority of diplomacy over military force...
...4 The Hart position shared the East-West framework but put primary emphasis on local causes...
...N O STUDENT OF U.S...
...Can it defend both...
...Bertolt Brecht "Late Lamented Fame of the Giant City of New York" ' T HE 1984 ELECTION IS ONE OF THE MOST important of this generation...
...It also suggests a model for integrating intellectual and activist work more effectively into a new progressive movement...
...CENTRAL AMERICA, NOVEMBER AND BEYOND 1. Bertolt Brecht, Poems 1913-1956 (New York: Methuen, 1976), p. 1 7 1 . 2. Democratic Party Platform, July 1984...
...certain ideas and projects appear suddenly unfashionable, dogmatic or antiquated...
...old analyses, old strategies and old alliances must be scrutinized and, if need be, changed...
...The Right is very powerful, the liberals in decline and the Left in disarray...
...The most dire scenario argues that a second triumph for the Right in November could mean its dominance until the end of the century...
...An old dictum from the liberal/progressive battles of the 1940s says that the liberals do the politics, while the Left has the ideas...
...Are the Democrats Different...
...During those 100 days, Mondale, as commander-in-chief, could order a withdrawal of most, if not all, U.S...
...It means the impossible burden of medical bills, children who do not receive an adequate education, minorities trapped in deteriorating neighborhoods, women without a community of support, workers without the solidarity of unions...
...In July Vice-President George Bush claimed that, "The Democrats have been working on an erroneous premise about what has been going on in Central America," and promised that the Republicans would use "the Latin issue" in the campaign and denounce the Marxist threat in Nicaragua and the region...
...We will also feel the more subtle repressive climate that results from the ideological sway of the Right...
...REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 50For those on the left of the political spectrum, the decline of Liberalism means a time of searching...
...ONE OF THIS WILL BE EASY...
...military capability in Honduras, pledge military aid to El Salvador to fight "brutal" guerrillas without regard to human rights abuses, or ignore and cynically SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1984 0 manipulate the efforts of Contadora...
...Indeed, the Republicans seem likely to raise the issue vigorously in an effort to keep the Democrats on the defensive...
...7. For a discussion of possible invasion scenarios, see Allan Nairn, "Endgame: U.S...
...In either case, the Rainbow Coalition will be a key force in the future course of American politics...
...election may be the most important in history...
...The question at hand is whether we can re-invigorate the goals of social justice and peace...
...Forcing Central America onto the campaign agenda will not be the problem...
...In contrast to so many other elections in the last 40 years, the 1984 contest offers much more than Tweedledee and Tweedledum politics...
...Can the United States live with leftist regimes-as long as they are not aligned with the Soviet Union-or must it exercise more direct control...
...Jackson drew many of his advisers on Central America from the activist community and argued vigorously throughout the campaign for a new Central America policy...
...The change in the intellectual and cultural climate has already begun...
...If those committed to reversing the present course of U.S...
...1984...
...Those arguing for the anti-intervention plank kept the issue before Democratic Convention delegates through the Central America Peace Campaign, a grouping of organizations working on the region, including PACCA, IPS, the Coalition for a New Foreign and Military Policy and the solidarity networks...
...The dual repression of law and ideology is the root of the declining standard of living...
...Prodded by this grassroots concern on the issue, Democratic politicians have tentatively defied Reagan-though their defiance has been checked by the president's successful insinuation that the Democrats will be to blame if the United States "loses" El Salvador and Central America...
...3. The Washington Post, August 18, 1984, citing the Republican Party Platform...
...We live in a brave new world, and the political and intellectual imagination of our time is with the Right...
...The fear of repression is real, and not only the kind of repression that derives from the law enforcement apparatus...
...forces from Honduras, end aid to the contras, convoke a meeting with the Contadora nations and dispatch his new secretary of state to pursue concrete talks with Nicaragua aimed at ending the undeclared war...
...In addition to individual scholars, its authors included analysts from the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and NACLA...
...But in the event of a Reagan victory, the Rainbow Coalition could emerge as a future alternative to Liberalism...
...But defeating the Right-even a successful effort to minimize the damage it can do in the short term-depends on the development of an alternative strategy, one that genuinely addresses the needs and concerns of working people, women, blacks, Hispanics, other minorities, the poor and the elderly...
...This largely reflected the position set forth in a report prepared by the Carnegie Endowment for Peace and published as the book, Central America: Anatomy of a Conflict...
...The Democrats focus the Central American crisis within a hemispheric context and downplay-without eliminating-its East/West dimension...
...Does the United States have greater interests at stake in Central America than in the Middle East...
...Hart, meanwhile, though more equivocal on questions of Third World nationalism and self-determination, also mounted an effective attack on the Mondale position...
...5. See Alan Tonelson, "Mondale's G.O.P...
...It is based 6n concerns for human rights and domestic priorities and on memories of Vietnam...
...It does not define the crisis primarily in East-West terms...
...Mondale's anti-communist track record and his support for the Vietnam War suggest he would be a very half-heartedly anti-interventionist president...
...During the primaries, both the Hart and Jackson campaigns adopted positions on Central America to the left of Mondale...
...HISTORY CAN BE sanguine about the prospects of the Democrats' keeping their platform promises...
...policy analysts and progressive Latin American scholars, and to bring a new dimension of scholarly analysis and policy backup to activist groups working on the Central America issue...
...Reagan is dangerous...
...Walter Mondale has promised to end the covert war on Nicaragua in his first 100' days...
...The present Democratic Party is not the Rainbow Coalition, and in this campaign it may not even be able to find a meaningful place for Jesse Jackson...
...Latin Policy," The New York Times, August 24, 1984...
...At a mass level, there is strong opposition to current Central American policy among the religious community, the black and Hispanic communities, Democratic National Convention...
...so too did some Mondale delegates, in defiance of the classic East-West analysis of Central America with which their candidate had started his campaign...
...The platform clause on Central America that was adopted in the end represented a compromise among the three candidates' positions, but it leaned heavily toward Hart and Jackson...
...Will involvement in Central America lead to another Vietnam-style entanglement...
...Under this strong pressure from his left, Mondale modulated, and eventually dropped the harsh anti-communist tone and the bipolar analysis of his original position...
...It is enough to recall Woodrow Wilson's promise "to keep us out of the war" in the 1916 election, or Lyndon Johnson's characterization of himself as a "peacemaker" against Barry Goldwater's mad bomber in 1964...
...The Jackson position was interesting because it adopted-virtually verbatim-the position of PACCA (Policy Alternatives on the Caribbean and Central America), as laid out in its book, Changing Course: Blueprint for Peace in Central America and the Caribbean...
...Changing Course, its first major endeavor, was prepared from papers drafted by prominent progressive Latin Americanists and policy analysts and was offered in January 1984 as an alternative to the Kissinger Commission Report...
...PACCA sought out the endorsement of more than 500 leaders of the religious, minority, labor, feminist and academic communities...
...Neither is true anymore...
Vol. 18 • September 1984 • No. 5
