By the early 1970s, the extreme land concentration and poverty in the region gave rise to peaceful mobilizations demanding reform. When demands for social justice were met with fierce repression, guerrilla insurgencies, with mass followings, ensued. The U.S. insisted that these insurgencies were Soviet and Cuban inspired and supported the brutally repressive regimes in the region with massive military aid. The 1984 Kissinger Report refused any negotiation with the guerrilla movements and insisted upon their military defeat. Arms sent by the U.S. to defeat guerrillas flowed into insurgent hands, a development that kept the conflicts going, particularly as governments lost legitimacy. Operating from bases in Honduras from 1979, the U.S. worked to destabilize the revolutionary Sandinista government through supporting the “Contras,” most of whom were former members of the Nicaraguan National Guard. In Honduras, the U.S. supported the country’s most reactionary and repressive forces.
Peace eventually came to the region in 1987 when the Central American countries signed their own peace agreements, without U.S. involvement. However, these agreements failed to address the social root causes of the conflict, particularly land redistribution. While political violence declined, criminal violence quickly replaced it. Prolonged civil war had entrenched violence into everyday life. At the same time, the failure of this liberal peace to address widespread poverty and the high levels of inequality fueled recourse to criminal activities in the absence of alternative economic opportunities, particularly among young men. The massive quantities of small arms that had entered the region during their civil wars provided the means for this upsurge while the militarization of policing further exacerbated the level of violence. At the same time, Central Americans, mostly El Salvadorians fleeing their war-torn countries in the 1980s, formed and joined criminal gangs in Los Angeles. In the 1990s, many of these gang members were deported back to their Central American countries of origin, producing a sharp increase in criminal violence.
The Neoliberal Imperative and the Honduran Coup
Moreover, peacebuilding was accompanied by neoliberal (market) reforms that not only failed to produce sustained economic growth but arguably contributed to social deprivation given the insistence on trade liberalization and privatization—policies that increased unemployment. Most recently, the U.S. funded “Alliance for Prosperity Plan” to curb migration from Central America, like past initiatives, combines military aid (which ratchets up the level of violence) with measures to attract foreign investment. This latter provides only problematic economic opportunities in the form of insecure and low paid employment in such activities as export processing firms or community disruption and environmental degradation in the case of mining investment.
