Repression And Resistance

The Struggle For Democracy In Central America

Edelberto Torres-rivas

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367301163
• eBook ISBN: 9781000309737
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Democracy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book summarizes the multiple origins of the crisis that Central Americans are suffering today. It focuses on an analysis of the revolutionary popular movements as a form of social movement capable of joining together a diversity of class-based groups.

1
Introduction

Seeds of the Regional Crisis

The origins and evolution of the Central American crisis have in recent years demanded our attention more powerfully than ever, as much for that crisis’s originality as for the vitality of the forces actively involved. Analyses produced to date have displayed both quantitative abundance and a wide variety of approaches. What has been created, then, is something unknown before the contemporary period: a body of literature about the crisis.

The magnitude of the political turmoil—especially since the Sandinista rupture of July 1979—has imbued the analysis with an exceptionally urgent quality. And that urgency to understand the entire course of events has created an almost irresistible tension, leading to the production of textos de circunstancias, or “instant books,” as they have been called in English. Those books, in tum, have been destined for a reading public whose interest is directly proportional to its lack of knowledge. The risk in responding to that urgency is that the author’s ideological separation from the present may be poorly achieved, that the separation from immediate surroundings required by all knowledge—in order to filter out the secondary, the circumstantial, and the emotional—may not be established.

Throughout the five essays brought together in this book I was aware of those risks. Thus I attempted to trace contemporary developments to their deepest historical roots while interpreting the behavior of the actors for what it was rather than what some might have wished it to be. Social forces were at times embodied by a political movement, confronted by social conflict, or otherwise brought together in order to pursue alternative programs. Sometimes these forces were involved in each of those forms of organization at the same time, and other times they even went beyond them.

Another difficulty exists. The diversity of situations in the five nations produced over a long period of time but reinforced by the effects of the crisis makes it increasingly difficult to consider Central America as a regional unity. That is, establishing a general analytic hypothesis, compatible with the heterogeneity of nationally specific situations, would hardly be an easy task. To speak of a “regional crisis” can lead to abuses of excess in some cases, and of insufficiency in others.

If we consider the nature of the economic crisis, for example, we find that it is international, impacting on all of the countries in the region. Nevertheless, due to specific circumstances of the political crisis, the effects have been more negative in Nicaragua and El Salvador than in Guatemala or Costa Rica.

Similarly, from a political-military viewpoint, the presence in El Salvador and Nicaragua of armed opposition forces—which have been difficult to defeat in both countries, though for opposite reasons—confers on those societies dimensions approaching economic chaos and social dissolution. In contrast, Honduras and Costa Rica have not experienced—in terms of either duration or depth—the kind of political violence and civil war that has affected the other three countries of the region.

But what Central American countries probably do have in common is a history as underdeveloped societies within a particular geographic region of the U.S. sphere of influence. And that is exactly what constitutes the “explanatory axis” of any responsible analysis of a Central American crisis that has affected the region’s political, social, and ideological structure. As we will see, it was the persistence of oligarchic components within that structure that gave rise to the crisis of the contemporary period.

Latin American literature has frequently dealt with “the crisis of oligarchic domination.” That phrase has been used, from multiple perspectives, to refer to the phenomena that had gradually been altering the monopolistic control of power enjoyed for decades by commercial-agricultural groups.

Originally, the state, the economy, and the society itself were placed at the service of local interests, which established links with the global capitalist market through the export of primary products. However, the dynamic axis gradually began to change, strengthening itself more and more within the domestic market. In South America that process generally took place in the 1930s, though with slight variations from country to country.

But in Central America, that process did not begin until the post-World War II period. For good or ill, it soon became evident that the oligarchic, authoritarian, and exclusivist style of domination had begun to fall apart. Changes were most obvious among the sponsors of social integration, among the various kinds of political movements that had begun to appear, and with the unprecedented nature of internal conflicts—the latter phenomena expressing an increasing differentiation within those dominant groups generically referred to as “the oligarchy.”

The crisis of the coffee republic—as the oligarchic period is sometimes called—only began to appear clearly in Central America after the end of World War II. And much as happened elsewhere in other regions, the crisis first emerged as a political crisis. That is, the immediately visible expressions of that crisis arose in the spheres of political relations and ideological conflict.

The fall of military dictatorships in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, as well as that of an increasingly authoritarian regime in Costa Rica—all of which occurred between 1944 and 1948—marked the beginning of that crisis. New social-democratic movements, political parties, and intellectual debate surged to the fore while Central American society, in imbalanced fashion, took on the challenge of modernization.

And it was from that point on that regional heterogeneity became increasingly manifest. The varying responses—in terms of installing less authoritarian or even clearly democratic regimes—were uneven. After 1948 the Costa Rican electoral system was further consolidated under liberal democratic principles. In the ten years that followed World War II Guatemala undertook an initial, notable experiment in social and cultural renovation. In Nicaragua, the Somozas’ dictatorship-for-life prevented—through both force and co-optation—the entrance of new social forces onto the political scene.

Democratic change was also blocked by various means in Honduras and El Salvador. But the entire region’s economy benefited from the new dynamism of international markets, and what resulted was a reinforcement of the structural foundations—that some observers would qualify as economic—of the oligarchic groups. That dynamism, in tum, was therefore detrimental to the democratic struggles against the oligarchic system of domination.

Underlying Costs of Dependent Development

The preceding discussion, though brief, is important as an aid to understanding the following chapters’ analyses and the various interpretations that I will propose in each one. In any case, though it is difficult to summarize the multiple origins of the crisis that Central Americans are suffering today, the whole should be seen within the parameters of a necessary—but incomplete—process of modernization. The reasons for that relative failure must be sought in both domestic and international factors.

In very general terms, since the decade of the 1950s, criticism of the antioligarchic system has at the same time been a struggle to implant structures of social participation. Indeed, the so-called democratic struggles have always voiced demands for a law-abiding state, for effective universal suffrage, for independent political organization, for a free press, and for freedom of conscience. That is, the leaders of these struggles have pursued liberal manifestations of democracy.

We now know that none of those goals was tolerated by oligarchic power brokers. Their authoritarian character was extremely slow to change, allowing for the emergence of only a very limited form of democracy.

And as I intend to explain in the following pages of this book, the political crisis in Central America—which exploded in the mid-1970s—was born of the defeats suffered by the democratic and reformist political forces of the immediate postwar period. Guerrilla warfare sprang from the failure of reformism. Popular violence (violence perpetrated by the common people) was the response to state violence; one fed the other in a tragic cycle without apparent end.

Projects of political change could have been initiated parallel to economic changes; the so-called development style could have satisfactorily confronted the enormous inequalities inherited from the past. For that reason, in order to understand contemporary Central American history, it is necessary to make at least brief reference to the economic antecedents of the crisis. That is, there must be an analysis of the manner in which the economic system—with its agro-export base—became modified, in what directions, and in response to the impulse of which social forces.

Beginning in about 1950 the regional economy experienced a period of significant growth, which lasted for more than twenty-five years. The gross domestic product (GDP) grew at an average annual rate of 5.3 percent—higher than the average of Latin America as a whole. That rate was also significantly higher than the rate of population growth. By 1970 the per capita GDP had increased more than 80 percent in relation to 1950. These statistics both indicate the relative importance of the change and reveal its comparative limits. During the same period in the United States, for example, per capita income increased 400 percent.

The industrial sector’s contribution to GDP rose from 13.3 percent in 1960 to 18.1 percent in 1970, due to the stimuli created by the Central American Common Market (CACM), which in reality was nothing more than a successful regional free trade zone. The new industry consisted above all of the production of immediate consumption goods, but it also initiated the formation of a manufacturing base through import substitution mechanisms.

Those years—especially since the end of the 1950s—were also very favorable to the modernization of export agriculture. Significant additions to the brief list of traditional export products (primarily coffee and bananas) included cotton, sugar, and beef, almost all of which were headed for the North American market.

The introduction of those new agricultural preferences changed the agrarian structure, making it ever more mechanized and capital oriented. But the ensuing expansion also increased the considerable inequalities already existing between the export sector and campesino forms of agriculture, where family-based subsistence farming and basic grain production—for popular, domestic consumption—were combined in order to survive.

The underlying nature of that economic growth is what must be well understood, because statistical indicators by themselves explain very little. The expansion of manufacturing meant that the commercial deficit increased, since that expansion implied the import of high-priced manufactured products—in exchange for raw materials as well as semifinished and capital goods—in proportions greater than those that could have been compensated by the region’s rising exports.

In commercial terms, whereas the region’s 1960 trade balance registered a deficit of less than $83 million, by 1970 that deficit had risen to $226 million. That is, the deficit increased together with industrial expansion, as a result of the openness of the region’s economies to international trade. Again, it must be noted that the agricultural sector was the one—in the best as well as the worst of years—that financed current and capital account imbalances, via its consistent trade surpluses.

However, the social problems that have been produced by that dependent model are even more dramatic. The modernization of export agriculture was accomplished literally at the cost of campesino lands, which were expropriated either violently or “discreetly,” depending on the moment and the location of capital expansion.

With the expansion of cotton cultivation, for example, campesinos were expropriated along the Pacific coast of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. Meanwhile, cattle raising (beef production) took campesino lands in various other geographic zones—especially in Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua—in a process that affected more than two million people. As is well known, the essence of the social problems of Central America since the mid-1970s has been the question of land—its distribution and cultivation. Campesino struggles to defend their land, and later those to recover that land, have marked the history of the region.

In order to illustrate the way in which the land question underlies the regional crisis, we will consider—as one of many possible examples—the problems experienced in the labor market. When Guatemala and El Salvador initiated the industrialization process within the framework of the CACM’s program of economic integration, in 1960, urban unemployment in both countries was about 12 percent. However, population growth far surpassed the levels of employment creation, especially in the countryside. For Central America as a whole, the economically active population increased at an average annual rate of 2.4 percent, while the population grew at a rate of 3.1 percent. Industrial expansion—at an annual rate of 8.4 percent—was incapable of providing jobs for a rapidly swelling urban population of working-age adults. That population’s rapid growth was due primarily to the vast number of people who, expelled from the countryside, had no other choice but to migrate to the cities.

In effect, industry itself was not responsible for unemployment. Rather, it was largely a consequence of the simultaneous combination of two circumstances. On the one hand, there was the incapacity of the agricultural sector to absorb a significant part of the work force—despite considerable export-crop expansion—or to retain that population via various means of reorganizing patterns of land tenure. The latter type of solution was proposed by neither governments nor the agrarian bourgeoisie. On the other hand, industrial growth was capital- rather than labor-intensive—based therefore on that which was most expensive and scarce in the region, rather than responding to employment needs.

The quantitative importance of economic growth did not reflect the social effects of that process. Though the social stratification of society was gradually modified, the amount of poverty increased significantly throughout the isthmus. The economy’s growth was achieved to the benefit of a minority, as almost every study of Central America produced in recent years has repeatedly demonstrated. Sometimes that reality has been concealed behind statistical indicators such as “per capita national income.”

But social development is of a qualitative nature and therefore needs to be interpreted and judged with other analytical tools. How does one explain, for example, that while GDP grew, poverty actually increased? The wealthiest 5 percent of the population saw their incomes rise at a rate fifteen times greater than that of the poorest 50 percent of the population. In 1977 the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) estimated that 65 percent of the Central American people were living in an extremely perilous situation in which it was impossible for them to acquire in sufficient amounts life’s necessities: food, housing, clothing, and education.

Moving Beyond Descriptive Analysis

Based on the preceding comments, it might appear that the political crisis in Central America—particularly in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala—originated in an accumulation of misery, and that the reaction to that situation had been “the revolution of the poor.” But we know that it did not happen that way. Clearly, poverty led to discontent, but desperation does not always acquire the conscious forms of organized political protest that appeared in the region. In other words, the analysis must go beyond objective description and explore subjective factors.

The essays brought together in this book attempt to offer explanations of many issues raised by the crisis. Chapter 2 contains a series of assertions, often presented in the form of hypotheses, which are intended to serve as the foundations of an interpretation of Central American history from 1930 to the present. In that chapter, a distinction is made between the political and the economic aspects of the crisis in order to examine the various ways in which the two have affected the traditional oligarchic system of domination—a system of undisputed monopolistic control, over a period of many years, by the lords of the land.

The general proposition is that the historical rupture represented by “Sandinismo” is in effect the conjunction of two crises—the old one (of the traditional oligarchic system) and a new one (affecting the capitalist system and its political offspring). That second chapter was published in Centroamérica: Más Allá de la Crisis, edited by D. Castillo Rivas (Ediciones SIAP, México, 1983).

Chapter 3 focuses on an analysis of the revolutionary popular movements as a form of social movement capable of joining together a diversity of class-based groups. Those movements are also marked by a confluence of diverse ideological orientations, unified by a shared condition as “politically subordinated sectors” and convinced—within the limits created by the failures of democratic aspirations—that armed struggle is the only possible response. The disorder that accompanies the political crisis, in effect, is seen as a creation of the forces of order. This third chapter was originally published in La Crisis Centroamericana, a book edited by Daniel Camacho and Manuel Rojas (FLACSO-EDUCA, San José, 1984).

In that third chapter, Central America is viewed in allegorical fashion as the recipient of all the evils that escaped from Pandora’s box. Though its analysis refers either directly or indirectly to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua rather than to the entire region, the themes discussed are very closely related to...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Two Crises in Central America: Some Hypotheses
• 3 Who Took the Lid Off Pandora’s Box? Reflections on the Crisis in Central America
• 4 Eight Keys to Understanding the Central American Crisis
• 5 The State Against Society: The Roots of the Nicaraguan Revolution
• 6 The Possible Democracy
• Index