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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 October 2021
While much has been written about the United States’ efforts to undermine Nicaragua's Sandinista government (1979–90), historians have paid little attention to Latin American state perspectives on the only successful armed revolution in the region since Cuba. In fact, the war that subsequently emerged between Sandinista armed forces and US-backed contras was a thoroughly regionalized affair: at least 12 Latin American countries—including the five largest—became directly involved in efforts to broker peace by the mid 1980s. How and why did they become involved? What can Latin American diplomacy vis-à-vis the Sandinista Revolution tell us about the shape of inter-American relations in the twilight years of the Cold War?
To answer these questions, this article uses diplomatic archival sources and oral history interviews from Nicaragua, the United States, Mexico, Cuba, Costa Rica, and Panama to trace Latin American state responses to US intervention against the Sandinista government between 1982 and 1986. While the Reagan administration viewed Nicaragua as the place where it would begin to roll back Soviet-sponsored communism in the Third World, a bloc of Latin American governments—especially those associated with the Contadora peace process—saw Central America as the site where they would push back against US unilateralism and the threat it posed to their real interests and shared hopes for regional sovereignty. In stark contrast with the earlier reaction to the Cuban Revolution, most Latin American states rejected US intervention and sought to legitimize Managua's left-wing government. The regional dimensions of Nicaragua's civil war therefore show how the political fault lines of Latin America's Cold War shifted over time.
I wish to thank Kirsten Weld and Odd Arne Westad for their advice on this research project, which was made possible by generous grants from Harvard University's David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS). I also thank Tanya Harmer, Eline van Ommen, the anonymous reviewers at The Americas, and my colleagues in the Clio Reading Group at Chapman University's Department of History for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article.
1. NSDD 17: Cuba and Central America, Washington, January 4, 1982, Reagan Presidential Library, National Security Decision Directives, https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/archives/reference/scanned-nsdds/nsdd17.pdf, accessed August 26, 2021.
2. See LeoGrande, William, Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, 1977–1992 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Sklar, Holly, Washington's War on Nicaragua (Boston: South End Press, 1988)Google Scholar; and Grow, Michael, U.S. Presidents and Latin American Interventions: Pursuing Regime Change in the Cold War (Lawrence: Kansas University Press, 2008)Google Scholar. For an opposing view that de-emphasizes Washington's role, see Hager, Robert P. and Snyder, Robert S., “The United States and Nicaragua: Understanding the Breakdown in Relations,” Journal of Cold War Studies 17:22 (2015): 3–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hager, “The Origins of the ‘Contra War’ in Nicaragua: The Results of a Failed Development Model,” Terrorism and Political Violence 10:1 (1998): 133–164.
3. See recent essays by former FSLN and EPS leaders: Humberto Ortega Saavedra, “Ayer y hoy, reflexión diciembre 2019,” La Prensa, December 11, 2019; and Luís Carrión, “40 años de la revolución nicaragüense: ¿Pudo haber sido de otra manera?” Envío 448, November 2018. In the scholarly realm, see Bendaña, Alejandro, Una tragedia campesina: testimonios de la resistencia (Managua: Centro de Estudios Internacionales, 1991)Google Scholar; Agudelo, Irene, Contramemorias: discursos e imágenes sobre/desde la Contra, Nicaragua 1979–1989 (Managua: Instituto de Historia de Nicaragua y Centroamerica, 2017)Google Scholar; and Horton, Lynn, Peasants in Arms: War and Peace in the Mountains of Nicaragua, 1979–1994 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.
4. For example, historians have only scratched the surface of socialist bloc engagement with the FSLN government. See Storkmann, Klaus, “East German Military Aid to the Sandinista Government of Nicaragua, 1979–1990,” Journal of Cold War Studies 16:2 (Spring 2014): 56–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Radoslav Yordanov, “Outfoxing the Eagle: Soviet, East European and Cuban Involvement in Nicaragua in the 1980s,” Journal of Contemporary History, 2019: 1–22, https://doi.org/10.1177/0022009419860896, accessed July 5, 2021.
5. A major exception is Ariel Armony, who demonstrated the Argentine military's primary role in founding the Contra. See Armony, Argentina, the United States, and the Anti-Communist Crusade in Central America, 1977–1984 (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1997). More recently, Gerardo Sánchez Nateras put Somoza's 1979 ouster in Latin American context: “The Sandinista Revolution and the Limits of the Cold War in Latin America: The Dilemma of Non-Intervention During the Nicaraguan Crisis, 1977–78,” Cold War History 18:2 (2018): 111–129.
6. Oydén Ortega, interview with the author, January 24, 2017, Panama City. Ortega developed this analysis in Contadora y su verdad (Madrid: Rufino García Blanco, 1985).
7. Sergio Ramírez M. to Cmte. de la Rev. Daniel Ortega Saavedra, Presidente de la República, “Asunto: misión a México y países sudamericanos,” July 15, 1985, Princeton University, Firestone Library, Sergio Ramírez Papers [hereafter Sergio Ramírez Papers], Box 62, Folder 8b.
8. For an excellent overview, see Vanni Pettinà, Historia mínima de la guerra fría en América Latina (Mexico City: COLMEX, 2018).
9. Tanya Harmer, “The ‘Cuban Question’ and the Cold War in Latin America, 1959–1964,” Journal of Cold War Studies 21:3 (2019): 151.
10. Turn of phrase borrowed from journalist Stephen Kinzer's account of these attacks in Blood of Brothers: Life and War in Nicaragua (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), 97.
11. The military dictatorships of Argentina (which had sold weapons to the Somoza regime) and Brazil voted in favor of the resolution; the military regime in Uruguay and the Pinochet government in Chile abstained from the vote. “OAS Votes for Ouster of Somoza,” Washington Post, June 24, 1979.
12. For example, Torrijos refused to attend the revolution's first anniversary celebrations in July 1980 because he disapproved of Fidel Castro's attendance. A month later, at the closing ceremony for a Nicaraguan literacy crusade, Carazo and Sandinista commander Humberto Ortega publicly quarreled when the Costa Rican president reminded the Sandinistas of their promise to hold elections.
13. See Avery, “Connecting Central America to the Southern Cone: the Chilean and Argentine Response to the Nicaraguan Revolution,” in this issue.
14. Armony, “Transnationalizing the Dirty War: Argentina in Central America,” found in In from the Cold: Latin America's New Encounter with the Cold War, Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniela Spenser, eds. (Chapel Hill: Duke University Press, 2008), 155.
15. Mexico's ambassador to Honduras documented Tegucigalpa's concerns in diplomatic cables. See “Estado que guardan las relaciones entre Nicaragua y este país,” Telegrama no. 861, Archivo General de la Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores [hereafter AG SRE], III-3433–1.
16. LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard, 286.
17. Carta de los presidentes Luís Herrera Campins de Venezuela y José López Portillo de México al president de Estados Unidos, Ronald Reagan, September 7, 1982; Carta de los presidentes Luís Herrera Campins de Venezuela y José López Portillo de México al coordinador de la Junta de Gobierno de Reconstrucción Nacional de Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega; al presidente de Honduras, Roberto Suázo Córdova, reproduced in La paz en Centroamérica: expediente de documentos fundamentales, 1979–1989, Ricardo Córdova and Raúl Benites Manaut, eds. (Mexico City: Centro de Investigaciones Interdisciplinarias en Humanidades–UNAM), 256.
18. Quoted in a report from the Mexican embassy in Managua: “Comentario sobre las declaraciones del Presidente de Venezuela relativas a la política interna de Nicaragua,” Managua, September 24, 1982 AG SRE III-3490-1. See also René Herrera and Mario Ojeda, “La política de México en la región de Centroamérica,” Foro Internacional 23:4 (1983): 432–433.
19. Letter from President Reagan to Mexican President José López Portillo and Venezuelan President Luís Herrera Campins, October 1982, found in American Foreign Policy Current Documents (Washington, DC: Department of State, 1985), 1464.
20. Propuesta norteamericana de ocho puntos presentados por el embajador Anthony Quainton a los Cros. Victor Tinoco y Julio López, April 8, 1982, and Propuesta nicaragüense de trece puntos presentados por el Embajador Fiallos a Thomas Enders el 14 de abril de 1982, personal archive of Vice Foreign Minister Alejandro Bendaña Rodríguez [hereafter Archivo Bendaña], Box 4.
21. US Ambassador Francis McNeil, quoted in Roy Gutman, Banana Diplomacy: The Making of American Policy in Nicaragua, 1981–1987 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 114.
22. Jeane Kirkpatrick, “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” Commentary, November 1979.
23. “Reagan Condemns Nicaragua in Plea for Aid to Rebels,” New York Times, March 17, 1986.
24. LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard, 108–109.
25. Gabriel García Márquez, Nobel Lecture, “The Solitude of Latin America,” Stockholm, December 8, 1982, Nobel Foundation: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1982/marquez/lecture/, accessed August 26, 2021.
26. Transcript of meeting between US Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. and Cuban Vice Premier Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, Mexico City, November 23, 1981, Cold War International History Project (CWIHP), Wilson Center: https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/111221, accessed August 26, 2021.
27. Carlos Andrés Pérez to Willy Brandt, Caracas, July 13, 1981, Sergio Ramírez Papers, Box 61, Folder 11.
28. Mario Vargas Llosa, “Nicaragua: año dos,” in Contra viento y marea (Barcelona: Seix y Barral, 1983), 436.
29. Soviet Policies and Activities in Latin America and the Caribbean, Central Intelligence Agency, Special National Intelligence Estimate, Secret, June 25, 1982, CIA FOIA Reading Room, Document No. CIA-RDP84B00049R000701830026-0: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/19820625.pdf, accessed August 26, 2021. Sepúlveda rebuts the “East-West” thesis in his foreword to Relación de Contadora, Mónica Ortiz Taboada and Victor Flores Olea, eds. (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1988).
30. “Discurso del presidente mexicano José López Portillo,” Revista Tricontinental, 82:4 (1982).
31. “Memorándum: Resúmen de acontecimientos en Centroamérica y reacciones latinoamericanas,” Tlatelolco, July 23, 1983, AG SRE III-3643-1.
32. Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, Notas de Nicaragua, September 11, 1979, AG SRE III-3379-1.
33. See Sepúlveda's foreword to Relación de Contadora, Ortiz Taboada and Flores Olea, eds., 11.
34. Jorge G. Castañeda, “Don't Corner Mexico!” Foreign Policy, July 19, 1985.
35. See Oydén Ortega, Contadora y su verdad, 11–25.
36. Quoted in “La difícil herencia de Vinicio Cerezo,” El País, December 11, 1985.
37. “Entrevista del Cro. Sergio Ramírez Mercado con el Presidente de Argentina Raúl Alfonsín y el Canciller Dante Caputo,” July 28, 1985, Sergio Ramírez Papers, Box 62, Folder 8b.
38. Carlos Andrés Pérez to Willy Brandt, July 13, 1981.
39. De la Madrid, quoted in foreword to Relación de Contadora, 7.
40. Because Washington pursued policies that militarized the region and “would inevitably lead to regime change in Nicaragua,” its “interests were not reconcilable with Contadora's political project.” Bernardo Sepúlveda Amor, interview with the author, Mexico City, October 10, 2016.
41. Quoted in Gutman, Banana Diplomacy, 226.
42. Márquez, “Nobel Lecture.”
43. Sepúlveda, foreword to Relación de Contadora, 8.
44. Declaración de Cancún para la paz en Centroamérica,” July 17, 1983, in Relación de Contadora, 361.
45. Caracas Declaration of Solidarity for the Preservation of the Political Integrity of the American States against International Communist Intervention Adopted by the Tenth Inter-American Conference, March 28, 1954, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale University: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/intam10.asp, accessed August 26, 2021.
46. A year prior, following the Cancún Declaration, Contadora had published a 21-point “Document of Objectives.” Relación de Contadora, 376.
47. Alma Guillermoprieto and David Hoffman, “Document Describes How U.S. ‘Blocked’ a Contadora Treaty,” Washington Post, November 6, 1984.
48. Alma Guillermoprieto, “Torpedoing Latin Interests,” Washington Post, November 11, 1984.
49. Most notably, Resolution 562 at the UN Security Council reaffirmed “the sovereignty and inalienable right of Nicaragua and other States to freely decide” their own government and called upon all states “to refrain from carrying out, supporting or promoting political, economic or military actions of any kind against any State in the region which might impede the peace objectives of the Contadora group.” United Nations Security Council Resolution 562, May 10, 1985: http://unscr.com/en/resolutions/562, accessed August 26, 2021. Previously, Resolution 702 at the OAS General Assembly urged Central American countries to sign Contadora. Additionally, Contadora won awards from UNESCO (May 1985) and the Spanish government's Prince of Asturias Prize (October 1984).
50. Kenneth Roberts, “Bullying and Bargaining: The United States, Nicaragua, and Conflict Resolution in Central America,” International Security 15:2 (1990): 81.
51. See Eline van Ommen, “The Nicaraguan Revolution's Challenge to the Monroe Doctrine: Sandinistas and Western Europe, 1979–1990 ,” in this issue.
52. “Un entretien avec M. François Mitterrand,” Le Monde, July 2, 1981. Willy Brandt agreed with the French president on this issue; in a letter to Felipe González, he noted that the SI “has obligated itself, within the scope of the capabilities of our association, to defend developments in Nicaragua from external infringements and influences.” See President of the Socialist International, Brandt, to the Chairman of the Committee of the SI for the Defence of the Revolution in Nicaragua, González, June 2, 1981, CWIHP: http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/112717, accessed August 26, 2021.
53. Memorandum: Entrevista, Presidente González con señores Brandt y Kreisky, Dirección General para Europa Occidental, Tlatelolco, April 9, 1984, AG-SRE III-3783-1.
54. David Ronfeldt, “Geopolitics, Security, and US Strategy in the Caribbean Basin,” RAND, January 1, 1983: 29.
55. Mensaje de Caraballeda para la Paz, la Seguridad, y La democracia de América Central, Caraballeda, Venezuela, January 12, 1986, Revista Mexicana de Política Exterior 10 (1986): 97–98.
56. Conversación sostenida por el Cdte. HRH con Miguel de la Madrid, Embajada de Nicaragua en Cuba a la Dirección Nacional del Frente Sandinista, March 5, 1983, Centro de Documentación MINREX, Havana, Cuba, Nicaragua, Box 3.
57. Entrevista del Cro. Sergio Ramírez Mercado con el Presidente de Argentina Raúl Alfonsín y el Canciller Dante Caputo,” July 28, 1985, Sergio Ramírez Papers, Box 62, Folder 8b.
58. Reunión Dr. Sergio Ramírez Mercado con Canciller Enrique Iglesias, October 10, 1985; Sergio Ramírez Mercado to Daniel Ortega, Presidente de la República, “Asunto: Misión a Argentina, Uruguay, y Perú,” October 11, 1985; Entrevista Dr. Sergio Ramírez Mercado y Belisario Betancur, October 4, 1985; Sergio Ramírez Papers, Box 62, Folder 8b.
59. Reunión Cdte. Daniel Ortega and Wilson Ferreira, March 2, 1985, Centro de Documentación MINREX, Havana, Cuba, Box 3.
60. Sergio Ramírez M. to Cmte. de la Rev. Daniel Ortega Saavedra, Presidente de la República, Asunto: Misión a México y países sudamericanos. According to Ramírez's notes, García claimed that “Nicaragua's internal affairs (dialogue with the opposition, press freedom) are items which should not be the subject of any type of foreign interference.”
61. The 1984 elections received a mixed response in Latin America. Although an independent commission of the Latin American Studies Association verified the cleanliness of the elections, and although he recognized the disruptive role played by US diplomacy, Carlos Andrés Pérez said he felt cheated, because sufficient guarantees were not given to the opposition. Letter from Pérez to President-Elect Daniel Ortega, January 1985, reproduced in The Central American Crisis Reader, Robert Leiken and Barry Rubin, eds. (New York: Summit Books, 1987), 300–302.
62. Central America Strategy for the Second Term, US National Security Council, Top Secret, Action Memorandum, January 31, 1985, Digital National Security Archive [DNSA], Nicaragua Collection (ProQuest ID: 1679104100).
63. Steven Volk, “Contadora: War by Other Means,” NACLA Report on the Americas, 18:4 (July 1984); Bruce Bagley, “Contadora: The Failure of Diplomacy,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, 28:3 (1986): 1–32.
64. See Leogrande, Our Own Backyard; Gutman, Banana Diplomacy; Sklar, Washington's War on Nicaragua. See also Robert Pastor's Not Condemned to Repetition: The United States and Nicaragua (New York: Routledge, 2018); and Thomas Carothers, In the Name of Democracy: U.S. Policy Toward Latin America in the Reagan Years (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 98.
65. Quoted in “Now That Contadora is Dead,” New York Times, January 8, 1986.
66. Jorge G. Castañeda, “Don't Corner Mexico!”
67. José León Talavera, interview with the author, Managua, August 23, 2016.
68. The Reagan administration's “conceptualization, which pretends to explain the region's crisis as part of the East-West conflict, is incorrect, because the peoples of Central America have rebelled against this situation throughout history, long before the existence of the Russian and Cuban revolutions.” Posición de Nicaragua ante la Crisis Centroaméricana—Documento de Base,” Archivo Bendaña, Box 4.
69. “Nicaragua ofrece ayuda militar a Argentina,” El País, June 7, 1982.
70. Susan Kaufman, “War and Debt in South America,” Foreign Affairs 61:3 (1982).
71. “Fidel Castro confía en el éxito de Contadora,” El País, January 13, 1985. When Nicaragua signed the subsequent Esquipulas Peace Agreement, Castro's camp “expressed Cuba's full support for [Nicaragua's] policy of pursuing peace in the region,” Reporte de la Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, Mexico City, August 1988, AG SRE III-4283-1.
72. Acta de la Reunión Ortega-Stone, November 8, 1983, Archivo Bendaña, Box 3. A 1984 Foreign Ministry analysis lamented that “there is not the political will within Contadora to directly confront the United States. In fact, Contadora is becoming an obstacle to U.S.-Nicaraguan dialogue.” Informe y Plan de Trabajo: Comisión Kissinger, Foreign Ministry, November 6, 1983, Archivo Bendaña, Box 1.
73. Humberto Ortega Saavedra, La odisea por Nicaragua (Managua: Lea Grupo Editorial, 2013), 22.
74. Quoted in “Danto 88: la batalla final,” La Prensa Magazine, July 4, 2004.
75. For Contra leaders’ perspective, see Donald Castillo, Gringos, contras y sandinistas: testimonios de la guerra civil en Nicaragua (Bogotá: Tercer Mundo, 1994), 149.
76. Ricardo Valero, interview with the author, Mexico City, September 13, 2016.
77. Luís Guillermo Solís Rivera, interview with the author, San José, February 23, 2017.
78. See Tinoco's interview in Envío 413, August 2016.
79. Luís Guillermo Solís Rivera, “The Peace Equation: The Need for Further Regional Cooperation,” Harvard International Review 17:2 (1995): 26–28.
80. Alan Rouquié, Guerras y paz en América Central (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1992), 284.
81. Oscar Arias Sánchez, Acceptance Speech, Oslo, December 10, 1987, Nobel Foundation: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1987/arias/acceptance-speech/, accessed August 26, 2021.
82. “The most important thing was to end Contra aid.” Arias, interview with the author, February 25, 2017, San José.
83. Referring to Esquipulas's impact on US Congressional support for Contra funding, majority whip Tony Coelho said, “This kills it; it's dead.” See also “Costa Rican President Wins Nobel Peace Prize,” Washington Post, October 14, 1987.
84. Sergio Ramírez M. to Cmte. de la Rev. Daniel Ortega Saavedra, Presidente de la República, Asunto: Misión a México y países sudamericanos, July 15, 1985, Sergio Ramírez Papers, Box 62, Folder 8b.
85. Segunda Reunión del Mecanismo Permanente de Consulta y Concertación Política, constituido por los ministros de relaciones exteriors de los países integrantes de los grupos de Contadora y de apoyo, Campos de Jordao, Brazil. Proceedings reproduced in Relación de Contadora, 261–262.
86. Manuel Montobbio, “La crisis centroamericana y la construcción de un nuevo orden internacional en América Latina,” Revista CIDOB d'Afers Internacionals 37 (1997): 131–149.
87. Blanca Torres Ramírez, “La participación Mexicana en esfuerzos de concertación política y económica,” in Bernardo Sepúlveda: juez de la Corte Internacional de Justicia, Gustavo Vega Cánovas, ed. (Mexico City: COLMEX, 2007), 214.
88. Stella Krepp, “Cuba and the OAS,” Wilson Center: https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/cuba-and-the-oas-story-dramatic-fallout-and-reconciliation, accessed August 26, 2021.
89. Michel Gobat, “The Invention of Latin America: A Transnational History of Anti-Imperialism, Democracy, and Race,” American Historical Review 118:5 (2013): 1345–1375.
90. Harmer, Tanya, “Two, Three, Many Revolutions? Cuba and the Prospects for Revolutionary Change in Latin America, 1967–1975,” Journal of Latin American Studies 45:1 (2013): 88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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