HOW TO UNDERSTAND CENTRAL AMERICA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP86M00886R001200330031-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 10
• Document Creation Date: December 21, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 29, 2008
• Sequence Number: 31
• Publication Date: September 6, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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THE QIRECTOR OF
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
NOTE FOR THE DIRECTOR
6 Sep 1984
FROM: Herbert E. Meyer, VC/NIC
Here's the piece I mentioned
yesterday.
Herbert E. Meyer
Attachment
Distribution:
1 - DCI
1 - DDCI
1 - ER
1 - VC/NIC Chrono
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How to Understand Central America
Mark Falcoff
Ir is now more than three years since
Central America became the United
States' most dramatic and divisive foreign-policy
issue since the Vietnam war. It has dominated the
front pages of newspapers for many months; co?
opted almost all of the prime moments of national
television news; fueled acrimonious exchanges in
Congress; and ignited a national protest move-
ment, centered in the universities and the churches
but reaching into unions, professional associations,
and the cultural community. For a while it even
became a bone of contention between the two
leading candidates for the Democratic presidential
nomination, and it is certain to become one of the
three or Eour major issues of,the 1984 campaign.
Alongside all of these facts-impressive in them-
selves-one more must be placed. In spite of the
vast menu of information, allegation, and misin-
formation served up to them, most Americans
know almost nothing about Central America and,
it would appear, are determined to keep it that
way. An April poll conducted by CBS News found
that only 25 percent of those interviewed knew
which side the United States was supporting in El
Salvador, and a mere 13 percent could correctly
affirm that the United States was (at the time) sup-
porting antiSandinista rebels in Nicaragua. More-
over, knowledge about EI Salvador is now lower
than it was a year ago, when 37 percent could cor-
?rect{y state that the United States supported the
government there.
~Nhat, then, is the argument about? And who is
doing the arguing? In a very general way it could
be said that the Central American controversy is
really the latest installment in a fifteen-year-old
civil war between two branches of the foreign-
policy establishment and its affiliates over the
proper uses of U.S. power; over the causes of po-
litical insurgency; over the moral and political
character of "revolutionary" regimes in the Third
World; and, preeminently, over the nature of se-
curity threats to the United States and the proper
measures to meet them.
These are important subjects, even iE only a
MARK FA[.OOFF is resident fellow at the American Entcr?~
prise Institute. His most recent book (with Robest Royal)
is Criris and Opportunity: US. Pofiry in the Caribbean and
Central Americo, published by the Ethia and Public Policy
Center.
small percentage of Americans have the interest
or the time to think much about them. They are
fraught with consequences for our Foreign policy
generally, and the fact that they nicely mesh with
partisan political considerations does nothing to
detract Erom their charm. The form and intensity
with which they are debated also illustrate a point
about the United States which' many foreigners
persist in missing: this is a country where political
controversy often rnncerns ideas.
Where, then, do people get their ideas about
Central America? The variety of sources is wide,
but two in .particular are of great significance to
policy-makers and foreign-policy professionals, if
not to the public at large. One is the reports issued
by commissions of distinguished citizens, "con-
cerned" laity of some religious denomination or
other, or equally "concerned" academics who have
made a trip to El Salvador- or Nicaragua or (often)
both. The best-known such document-the Report
of the 1Vatiunal Bipartisan Commission on Central
America, chaired by former Secretary of State
Elenry Kissinger-is actually the ,least typical of
all, since it alone found .itself, with slight quibbles
here and there, Ettndamentally in accord with the
policies of the Reagan administration. Far more
characteristic of the genre is The Americas in
1984: A Year Jor Decisions, the report of the Inter-
American Dialogue, a panel of distinguished po-
litical and business leaders Erom I~'orth and South
America, chaired by Ambassador Sol M. Linowitz
and Eormec Ecuadorian President Galo Plaza.
While this document deals with several aspects of
U.S: Latin American relations, the sections con-
cerned with Central America have been regarded
(quite properly) as the most newsworthy.
The second source is the collective studies con-
structed by teams of academia (and, sometimes,
policy-makers temporarily ou of government).
1\~eacly a dozen of these have e~peared since 1981,
some edited with a Heavier ideological hand than
others but virtually all primly or not so primly
disapproving of our present course. The most in-
teresting and original is Central America: Analo-
--ty o/ Conflict, edited by Robert S. Leiken Eor the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
This group, three of whose members held positions
in the Carter administration, was at work roughly
during the same time as the Kissinger commission,
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and its study tivas published almost ',simultaneously.
Indeed, there is reason to believe that, in a man-
ner wholly characteristic of Washington, tl-e
Leikcn group was hastily assembled to provide a
readymade alternative to the findings of the' Kis-
singer commission; this, certainly, was the way it
was received by administration critics, although in
reality, as we shall see, Central America: Anatomy
o/ Gon/lict contains a Ear greater diversity of views
than one would have gathered from i[s reception.
These documents and their analogs playa dis-
proportionate role in determining the parameters
of the Central American debate. Indirectly, but
no less decisively, they shape the ~k'inds of ques-
tions the President and others are asked at press
conferences, the agendas of congressional commit-
tees, and eventually the notions-however watered-
down or inaccurate-held by a majority of the
American people. They therefore deserve serious
examination.
BY rvow a majority of Americans-5Z
percent according to the April poll
of CBS News-think that "the greater cause of
unrest in Central America [is) poverty and lack of
human rights in the area, [as opposed to] subver-
sionfrom Cuba, Nicaragua,. and the Sgviet Union."
Yet as Richard Feinberg and Robert Pastor point
out in the Carnegie Endowment study, the image
of these countries as primitive, stagnant "banana
"republics"-held even by many educated Ameri-
cans=is vastly out of date. In fact, few regions
since World War dI have experienced such rapid,
dramatic, and sustained economic and social de-
velopment. Between 1950 and 1978,. the Central
American republics registered a 5.3 percent annual
rate of economic -growth, during which time real
per-capita income doubled, exports diversified,
and there was a significant growth in manufac-
turing, due largely to the creation in 1960 of a
Central= American Common Market (CACM).
Moreover, meaningful.progress was made in health
and education: between 1960- and 19;77 the num-
ber of physicians doubled at a rate ',twice as fast
as. the population, and the number of nurses six
times as .fast. Adult .literacy during 'roughly he
same period nearly doubled from 44' to 77 per-
cent, and -the number of secondary students as a
percentage of their age group increa"sed from 12
to 29 percent.
Of course, as Pastor and Feinberg hasten. to
point out, there were considerable variations
among countries. Moreover, in Central America -
as elsewhere in the developing world; moderniza-
tion brought unforeseen (and undesired) conse-
quences: Pastor and Feinberg point specifically to
dramatic improvements in public health which
unleashed a "demographic earthquake'-between
1950 and 198(1, the .region's population tripled,
and today half.are under the age of fifteen. (Signifi-
candy, had the population only replaced itself,
per-capita income during tl~e same period would
have quintu?lcd.) The development of commer-
cial agriculture provoked new tensions over land
tenure in tl~e countryside, just as industry gener-
ated new conflicts between management and a
struggling labor movement. While the "floor" be-
neath Central Americans rose dramatically, the
gap widened between rich and poor, and particu-
larly between rural and urban dwellers. Much of
the new infrastructure-roads, schools, hospitals,
and other public services-was financed either by
U.S. aid or by the international lending institu-
tions~ tax collections generally remained low, so
that what the foreigner was not willing to finance
,generally remained undone. That is why, in spite
of nearly two decades of progress, as late as 1981
it was estimated that 42 percent of the population
remained in "extreme poverty."
Even iE the process of development just de-
scribed had continued in a linear fashion, raising
the floor still further to include most of those left
out. the region would have experienced serious
political instability because of the challenge posed
by economic and social change to existing politi-
cal structures, particularly in Guatemala and EI
Salvador. But after 1978, Pastor and Feinberg
write, the problem was compounded "by the im-
pact of a global recession on small, open, depen-
dent economies," which, in the opinion of these
authors, put into place "the classic preconditions
for a revolutionary situation."
In other words, the causes of instability in Cen-
tral America are both the successes of past policies
and their failings; the promise of overcoming un-
derdevelopment and its lack of fulfillment the
achievements of foreign aid arid' .its limitations;
the imagination and flexibility 'of local elites and
their selfishness and myopia. Poverty i;.part of the
picture, and from a Humanitarian point of view
perhaps the most, important. But relative depriva-
tion and- the sudden interruption of an ongoing
process, combined with .political developments
both internal and external to the region, have
raised the stakes, costs, and risks of almost any
course of action designed to deal with .poverty.
Thus even a resumption of massive economic aid
in and of itself may not guarantee a return fo
social peace. Lt does, however, hold `out far~greater
.promise titan cheap political "fixes;' or, worse, an
.attitude o[ pious indifference as iE';poverty;' the
condition of centuries,. were irremgdiable, and
therefore whatever unsavory political arrange-
ments may seem in the offing-namely armed
iiictatorships of the Left-must be accepted-as the
just retribution for an evil past.
OWHGRE has the con(iict between eco-
N nomic growth and outdated social
structures been more Pointed than in El Salvador.
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In this tiny republic-slightly smaller than the
state of Massachusetts, with a population of five
million-no sewer than four revolutions are under
way.
One is among the military, which, alarmed by
the outcome of the Sandinista revolution in Nica-
ragua, divided in 1979 over continued support for
the traditional order. The second is among the
emerging political forces of the middle class and
the infant peasant and labor movements. For a
brief moment in 1979, these groups ruled in con-
junction with the younger officers who had ousted
dictator Carlos Humberto Romero. During that
time they decreed a series of extensive land, tax,
and banking reforms. However, shortly thereafter
the leadership split, with asocial-Democratic com-
ponent under Dr. Guillermo Ungo going over to
the Farabundo MartE National Liberation Front
(FMLN), the political directorate of the guerrillas
who are fighting-this is the third revolution-to
impose aMarxist-Leninist regime on El Salvador.~
The fourth is actually a counterrevolution in the
most technical sense of the term-former military
officers (and some still on active duty), and a
coterie of landowners, businessmen, and profes-
sionals who object more or less equally to the
first three and who seek to extinguish their lead-
ers and supporters, real or imagined, by recourse
to political assassination. Hence the macabre term
which has entered our political vocabulary, "death
squads."
During the past five years the United States has
been supporting the efforts of those civilians and
military personnel willing to carry forward the
original objectives of the revolution of 1979. In
March 1982, elections were held for a constituent
assembly, and in May 1984 the Christian Demo-
crat Josh Napole6n Duarte (president of the first
junta in 1979) was elected president of El Salvador
by a majority of the popular vote. Meanwhile, the
country has received a massive infusion of U.S.
economic and military aid, both to combat the
rising guerrilla movement and to stabilize an
economy doubly beset by war and recession.
The Reagan administration is riding a difficult
tiger in EI Salvador, in that its scenario calls for
some unwieldy pieces to fall neatly into place.
Duarte must meet some minimal popular expecta-
tions as a reformer and a democrat, without un-
duly antagonizing the large conservative minority
-approximately 45 percent of the electorate-
who voted for his Ear-Right opponent, Roberto
D'Aubuisson of the ARENA party. These two
agendas may be very hard to reconcile, given the
fact that the political spectrum in El Salvador is
far wider than in the United Stares and opinion
Ear more polarized. Like most Latin American
Christian Democrats, Duarte cherishes funda-
mentally pre-capitalist notions of property, and'
favors the use of state power to reduce social and
economic inequalities. His views on that subject,
by no means extreme by Latin American stand-
ards, would shock most Americ:iii consctvativcs
if they knew more about them; in [act, were
Duarte only anti-American :is well, Ise anti not Dr.
Ungo would enjoy the status of a cult figure
among the elegant Le[t in 4Vestcrn Europe and
the United States.
This is not all: Duarte must also demonstrate
his capacity to control the armed Forces, and to
reduce iE not to eliminate human rights abuses
and the activities of private vigilantes of the
Right. He must advance investigations of past
misdeeds, particularly chose in which the U.S. Con-
gress and public have a strong and legitimate in-
jerest. And lastly, the military itself must demon-
strate not merely that it can respect civilian au-
thority but also that it can prosecute effectively
the war against the insurgents. Tlie contributors
to the Carnegie Endowment study who have exam-
ined whether this is possible point to the enor-
mous historical baggage which must first be dis-
carded, and one of them (Howard J. Wiarda) ar-
gues that the professionalization of the armed
forces, rather than producing less military inter-
vention in politics, may actually increase the ten-
dency of the officer corps to play a political role.
He also emphasizes the difficulties of trying to
reform an -essentially praetorian army, in which
clan, family, and patronage loyalties may be
stronger than ties to the nation or its civilian
government.
A shorthand way of describing the situation in
El Salvador is to say that :the Center, or perhaps
more accurately the Center-Left, is split, with one
part in an uncomfortable relationship with the
military and the United States, the other in an
even more problematic relationship with the
FMLN, the Nicaraguans; the Cubans, and ulti-
mately the Soviets. The Right has so Ear been
unable to reassert itself as the dominant political
force, but it still possesses the capacity to under-
mine amoderate solution; this, U.S. officials and
not a few Salvadorans fear, would simply lead to
the worst of both worlds-first a coup and repres-
sion from the Right. followed by a revolution and
repression of a more systematic and permanent
kind from the Left.
I N rHe United State,, debate over EI
Salvador has centered on two issttes-
how to use U.S. influence to bring about an elimi-
nation of human-rights abuses, and whether and
under what circumstances it is possible to recon?
stitute the two sundered wings"of the Center-Le[t
so that each can afford to abandon its respective
dependence on the army or the guerrillas. The
first turns on some incredibly arcane formulations
? The.FMLN is an amalgam of five guerrilla groups uni-
fied undtr Cuban sponsorship in 1979. Those elements of
tl~c tint junta who went over to it arc formally construed
as the Democntic Revolutionary Front (FDR), alriliatcd
with the Socialist International. The rnrrect designation of
the guerrillas' united directorate is thus FMLN?FDR.
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about the "conditionality" of U.S. aid. In the view
of some of the administration's critics, as long :is
the Salvadoran military can take [oc granted U.S.
arms sliipmerrts and other forms of assistance, it
will have no incentive to eliminate human-rigf~ts
abuses. Those who served in the Carter adminis-
tration now point with some pride to the "lever-
age" which they supposedly obtained in EI Salva-
dor in 1980, following athree-year arms embargo.
This, they assert, demonstrated to the Salvadoran
military how serious the United States was about
the issue--a lesson now lost by the "blank check"
supposedly issued by the Reagan team.
Unfortunately, whatever leverage might have
been obtained by the Carter policy was more meta-
physical than actual; for 1980 was the worst
year in Salvadoran history. in terms of political
murders, disappearances, and other serious abuses.
This is not to argue against the concept of condi-
tionality, but merely to suggest that in practice it
may be unattainable. or that policies intended to
promote it may have consequences Ear different
from those intended. It is also possible-though
admittedly unprovable-that a clear reading by
Salvadorans of the general mood of the U.S. pub-
lic and Congress, combined with strong represen-
tations by U.S. envoys and military representatives,
may accomplish just as much or even more. We do
know, for example. that estimates of civilian
deaths attributable to political violence in El
Salvador over the past two and a half years retiect
a very significant pattern of decline.
T HE SECOND issue-how to reconstitute
the Center-Left-is even more compli-
cated. It begins with the notion that the United
States is pursuing a military victory, which is im-
possible, instead of a "negotiated solution," which
is supposedly within reach. Precisely what form
the latter would take varies from source to source.
President Duarte has in fact offered to negotiate
a reconciliation with those forces of the non-Marx-
ist (or at any rate non-Leninist) Left who have
gone over to the guerrillas;. this would allow them
to reenter Salvadoran political life with no re-
striction, much as occurred in the 1970's in Vene-
zuela. Dr. Ungo and his associates, as well as their
many Foreign apologists, claim that the incapacity
of President Duarte to guarantee their safety from
the military and the death squads makes this impos-
sible; they favor negotiations leading to "power-
sharing."
The latter is a solution with which no Ameri-
can political figure has yet become identified, al-
though it has already found .some resonance in
the foreign-policy community. The Inter-Aineri-
can Dialogae' rccommemds "negotiations among
the belligerents" which would not supplant the
recent Salvadoran elections but would somehow
modify their outcome in important (though not
wholly specified) ways; it hotiy denies. however,
that this would be power-sharing pure and simple.
A number of the contributors to the Carnegie
Enclowmcnt study favor power-sharing quite open-
ly, but with an original twist-they suggest sym-
~nctrical solutions be imposed both on El Salvador
and Nicaragua. In the former, the Left would be
brought into the government; in the latter, the
Center would be restored to ,the posts it held im-
mediately after tl~e fall of Somoza. (One dissenting
voice in this group is that of Tom J. Facer, who
favors power-sharing in El Salvador but not in
Nicaragua.)
How well power?sharing would work in El Sal-
vador depends wholly upon one's view of what
the FMLN-FDR is and what it represents. Robert
S. Leiken, who directed the Carnegie study and
is its most widely-quoted author, has been Eor
many years a student of the Central American
revolutionary Left, and his portrait of the Salva-
doran insurgents draws upon a wide range of
personal contacts. He does not deny that the guer-
rillas are Marxist-Leninisu, but the heart of his
analysis is that the largest, best-armed, and most
powerful faction in the rebel camp is, if not posi-
tively anti-Soviet, at any rate the one that "stand(s)
at greatest distance from the Soviet Union." Our
policy, by ignoring this Eact, "pushes the non-
aligned Left into the arms of chose who are pro-
Soviet." Leiken continues:
U.S. national security would indeed be threat-
ened by Soviet-aligned regimes in the Caribbean
Basin, but not necessarily by independent left-
ist regimes-even if they speak` the language of
Marxism and seek to practice socialism.
This presumably puts our security concerns co
rest. It still leaves open the question, however, of
whether the integration of putatively anti-Soviet
Marxist-Leninists into the Salvadoran govern-
ment would advance the cause of human rights.
Or rather, it circles right around it, by taking for
granted that power-sharing would lead'to some
sort of "moderate" leftist regime. All Leiken can
'offer by way of? assurance .on this score is the
FMLN's own assurance that as: part of a negoti-
ated settlement, it would be (in Leiken's words)
"prepared to participate in elections, and to guar-
antee anonaligned foreign policy and a mixed
economy."
Leiken's co-contributor Leonel G6inez, a former
land-reform official who fled El Salvador in 1981,
is far less certain what the outcome of such an
arrangement would be: ~,
~Nhile the true popular support of the FMLN?
FDR coalition is difficult to measure, given the
choice between the Left and the Riglit most
Salvadorans would choose the Left, due to its
less violent and corrupt history. Still, they won-
der how the Left would evolve if it came to
power.
However, given tl~e Salvadoran centrists' lack
o[ trust toward the i.eft, and given the divisions
within the Le[t itself, a left-wing government in
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LI Salvador might prove more repressive and
Icss Ilcxible than that in Nicaragua.
~1-o summarize, then: as an alternative to cxist-
inl; policy, with all of its admitted perils and dif-
Gcultics, we are invited to believe that by with-
holding military aid from EI Salvador-or at any
rate, credibly threatening to withhold it-we will
best serve the cause of human rights, notwith-
standing that doing so may lead in the meantime
to the victory of the Left revolutionary forces. Al-
tltotrgh these forces openly and unashamedly avow
a totalitarian ideology which, among other things,
points to a deep affinity with the Soviet Union,
we are asked to sponsor their entry into a govern-
ing coalition in El Salvador on the strength of the
fact that they say they favor nonalignment, Eree
elections, and a mixed economy. In a word, we
are urged not to take Marxism-Leninism any more
seriously than loyalty to a brand name; if we per-
sist in taking it seriously, we are warned that we
will actually bring about the outcome we most
fear. All this rings with a certain depressing
familiarity.
THE familiarity stems Erom the fact that
the same arguments were advanced a
mere five years ago on behalf of a similar policy
toward Nicaragua. There, a vast popular revolu-
tion against the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza
was at its culminating moment, led by the Marxist
FSLN but including a wide range of moderate,
even conservative political and social groups. In
exchange for promises of free elections, a mixed
economy, and a nonaligned foreign policy, the
Organization of American States (including a re-
luctant United States) took the unprecedented
step of withdrawing recognition from a sitting
government. This had the effect-deliberately in-
tended-of opening the road to power of its
armed opponents.
The victorious revolutionary coalition in Nica-
ragua lasted an extraordinarily short time. Somoza
fled the country in July 1979; in April 1980,
Violets Chamorro, publisher of the courageously
independent newspaper La Prensa, and business-
man Alfonso Robelo resigned from the new Coun-
cil of State, largely in protest against a plan by
tl~e Sandinistas "to reflect the concrete and ob-
jective reality of political forces in Nicaragua,"
which is to say, to swamp it with representatives
from the revolutionary army and other, hastily-
organized Sandinista groups.
Alter several weeks of Harsh verbal exchanges
between the Sandinistas and their quondam allies
in the private sector, a temporary peace was
achieved. Banker Arturo Cruz and Supreme Court?
.iustice Rafael Cordova Rivas were brought into
the Council of State; decrees confiscating lances
and privately-owned companies were canceled;
elates crere set in 1981 :uul 1982 for elections to
municipal rouncils and a constituent assembly.
"Then sucldcnly in :\ugust 1980 the Sandinista
directorate announced that elections would be
postponed to 1985, and in November all the re-
maining non-Sandinista 'members of the Council
walked out in protest over an attack on the office
o[ an independent political party in Managua;
the directorate also forbade a rally which had been
convoked by Robelo's National Democratic Move-
rnent. On that occasion-the first of many-cen-
sorship was applied to non-government media,
most notably La Prensa.
Dates are important here, because so many for-
eigners leave claimed that the unfortunate turn of
events in Nicaragua is in some undefined way a
reaction to hostility and incomprehension on the
part of the United States. The ?truth is that in
September 1980 the U.S. Congress-after a long
and bruising battle-finally approved X75-million
worth of economic aid to the new Nicaraguan gov-
ernment, and, what was surely more important, at
the very same time U.S. bankers rescheduled the
country's $582-million Foreign debt under favor-
able and even generous terms. The conciliatory
posture of the Carter administration, its support-
ers in Congress, and the financial community
quite clearly had no impact whatsoever on un-
folding events in I~Ticaragua, except possibly in a
counterproductive fashion.
During this same period, when the United
States was straining to conciliate the Sandinistas,
they also received . X262-million worth of loans
from international financial institutions. Private
U.S. sources disbursed an additional X45 million
in gifts and grants to assist in reconstruction, and
equally impressive sums were forthcoming Erom
Western European governments, churches, and
private relief organizations. Meanwhile, the gov-
ernment in 114anagtta, Ear from remaining non-
aligned, was supporting the Soviets?at the United
I~`ations and elsewhere on issues where Moscow
could normally count on the backing only of its
most faithful followers-namely, on the questions
of Afghanistan, Kampuchea, and China.
The illusions ~vhich a self-effacing U.S. policy
inevitably nourished in the Sandinista directorate
came to alt abrupt end in ,January 1981, when the
Carter administration, having already transferred
$G5 million in aid, suspended further disburse-
ments in its final days to protest Nicaraguan ship-
ments of arms to the SalvadoQran rebels. The
Reagan administration went, fur$ier still. It began
training anti-Sandinista exiles, and by the end of
1982 Irit-and?rtrn attacks, launched from bases in
neighboring Honduras, were becoming increasing-
ly common. The United States permanently can-
celed any further economic aid, opposed new
Nicaraguan loan applications, and canceled the
country's quota of sugar imports. By 1988, several
thousand U.S. troops were engaged in "training"
exercises in Honduras, and a massive naval and
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intelligence presence ,~.i, clispatcl-ed to the area.
Even before the full I' .ti, reaction to Sandinista
policy was in eviclencc. Managua announced (in
March 1981) that its :u n~ecl force would be ex-
panded to 50,000, makin}; it by far the largest in
the region and twice the size o[ the National
Guard under Somoza. "1'he presence of rebel com-
mandos operating on ,he atlantic coast was used
as a pretext to "relocate" tl,e 1~4iskito Indians un-
der exceedingly cruel, if ?mot genocidal, conditions.
Growing unrest over economic policies, censor-
ship, and the harassment of opponents led to wide=
spread domestic turmoil. In April 1982, EdEn
Pastora, who as "Comn-ander Zero" had been one
of the greatest heroes o[ the anti-Somoza revolu-
tion, broke with his former comrades over their
failure to fulfill their promises of "political plural-
ism and the practice of free elections with respect
for individual rights." From exile in Costa Rica,
lie called upon his fellow-citizens to overthrow a
regime of "traitors and assassins."
While many critics in the United States and
elsewhere may be willing to acknowledge that it
was the Sandinistas who turned away the friendly
overtures of the Carter administration, they re-
gard the stepped?up countermeasures of the Reagan
administration as disproportionate and tending to
strengthen the hard-liners among4 the nine co-
mandantes who now rule Nicaragua. This position
has a superficial plausibility, but those who hold
it must still deal with two inconvenient facts. First,
in April 1982 Nicaragua was tendered an eight-
point U.S. plan which would leave ended military
training of exiles, resumed economic aid, and re-
duced t1.S. military presence in the area. All the
Sandinistas lead to do vas to make good their
promise to the OAS of nonalignment and Eree
elections, and to cease meddling in the affairs of
their neighbors. The offer was haughtily rejected.
Second, Venezuela, which originally opposed the
termination of U.S. ai