On August 7, five Central American presidents met to discuss the prospects for peace in Central America. To almost everyone's surprise, they concluded their meeting with a peace plan signed by all five leaders. To almost no one's surprise, President Reagan and his administration have worked tirelessly since then to change and even undo the peace accord.
The Central American peace plan has provided new possibilities for progress toward peace in the region. The Reagan administration's response to the plan has also demonstrated again that Reagan is more interested in overthrowing the Nicaraguan government and maintaining control in the region than in fostering peace. And, unfortunately, the plan has shown that the major media in the United States are still unwilling or unable to do much more than repeat the tired old lies and distortions given them by the president and his followers.
Can there be peace in Central America, or even a peace treaty, if the president of the United States is opposed to it? Only time will tell. But regardless of the eventual outcome of the latest move toward peace by the presidents of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, this question has now been asked. The people of these countries and the neighboring Contadora nations will now be given an opportunity to see if they are truly able to assert and maintain some independence, or if they are still controlled against their will by the policies and dollars of the United States.
THAT THESE FIVE Central American presidents had the courage to ignore Reagan administration wishes and sign their own peace plan is a monumental feat in itself. In order to sign their own plan, they had to bypass a last-minute U.S. proposal supported by President Reagan, which contained conditions guaranteed to make the plan fail. Instead, the Central Americans worked together and eventually signed a document that was acceptable to all of them and has at least some chance of success.
Oscar Arias, the president of Costa Rica, drafted the plan and is pushing hard to see that it succeeds. He has promoted the plan in Costa Rica, throughout the region, and in Washington on Capitol Hill and at the White House. His efforts have won the support and praise of the Contadora countries that have sought a peaceful regional solution to Central America's conflicts. And both Arias and the peace plan have the strong support of the people of Central America.
This plan is also "homegrown," adding to its popularity. The signing of the document represents the first time that the Central American leaders have actually taken the initiative away from the United States and considered their own self-interest over that of their powerful neighbor to the north.
One other factor that gives the Central American peace plan a chance of success is the strong support given to it by House Speaker Jim Wright. Wright seems to have finally figured out that Reagan's intransigence is the problem, and he has simply out-maneuvered the president and taken his case to the U.S. public and to the Central Americans themselves.
When the five leaders agreed on their own plan and signed it, no one was more surprised than President Reagan and his followers. They fumbled with answers to questions about supporting the peace plan, changed their minds frequently, and finally decided on verbally supporting the peace plan while working feverishly to undermine it.
The president has ignored the facts and continued his anti-Sandinista rhetoric throughout the process. He and Secretary of State George Shultz, who has been Reagan's point man for undermining the treaty, have continued to portray the contras as something other than U.S. mercenaries. They have waged an almost daily campaign of fostering distrust of the Sandinistas while offering no documentation of their charges. And they continue to insist, contrary to the document signed by the Central Americans, that Nicaragua negotiate directly with the contras instead of the United States, who hired them.
But the administration has another weapon that is potentially much more potent than rhetoric. That is foreign aid. Even before the peace plan was signed, Costa Rica started having trouble getting U.S. aid that had been available before Arias started promoting peace in the region. Other countries that depend on U.S. aid more than Costa Rica, including Honduras and El Salvador, may succumb to the pressure either of their suffering economies or their right-wing militaries that do not want any interruption in shipments of U.S. military hardware.
Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.), a presidential candidate, went so far as to threaten Arias openly with a reduction in U.S. aid if Arias kept promoting a peace plan that is unacceptable to U.S. conservatives. Kemp warned, "It will be very difficult to get assistance to governments in Central America--particularly Costa Rica--if there is a lobbying effort by President Arias against U.S. assistance to the freedom fighters in Nicaragua."
THE ENTIRE DISCUSSION and debate over the peace plan has also highlighted the U.S. media's acceptance of the Reagan position. The Central American presidents were careful to consider their plan regionally, setting the same conditions for each of the five countries. But Reagan is not concerned with democratic reforms, media censorship, or human rights abuses in Central America's so-called democracies. The U.S. media do not appear to be concerned about this either. The media coverage of the peace plan has been almost entirely about Nicaragua and almost all from the administration's viewpoint.
The positive steps Nicaragua has taken were immediately dismissed as propaganda, not enough, or a temporary move to fool the American people or Congress. The media have not pointed out that it has been the United States, not Nicaragua, that has been responsible for misleading the U.S. public and the press in the past.
Another interesting point to note is that during the Iran-contra hearings involving Oliver North, there were almost daily news reports of increasing public support for the contras. At one point it reached almost 50 percent. That was front-page news. Now that it is back to 30 percent or less, the polls are somehow less newsworthy; if there are any articles at all about public opinion of the contras, they are buried in the back of the paper.
The major media also seem willing to let the administration rename the contras. At one time the contras were called contras. Simple enough. They wore T-shirts proclaiming they were contras and even President Reagan proudly modeled one. But as the documentation about contra murder, torture, and other human rights abuses became more public and persisted, conservatives in the United States, including the president, started calling the contras "freedom fighters," the "Nicaraguan Democratic Resistance," or simply "rebels."
The media followed their lead. Now the T-shirts are gone, and the more generic and less specific term "rebel" has replaced the deservingly negative contra label in most news reports.
The success of the Central American peace plan depends on many factors. The peace plan may represent the beginning of the end of Reagan's dream to replace the Nicaraguan government with a right-wing contra dictatorship. But even if the plan succeeds, it cannot bring back the thousands of Central Americans who were killed or injured because of U.S. policy gone awry. That will always be part of Reagan's legacy. A legacy of which no one should be proud.
Dennis Marker was a Sojourners’ assistant to the editor when this article appeared.
Got something to say about what you're reading? We value your feedback!