Central America: Fragile Transition.(Review)

Central America: Fragile Transition. Edited by Rachel Sieder. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996. xvii + 298 pages. Cloth $65.00

The Guatemalan Peace Accord, signed in December, 1996 between the Guatemalan government and the guerrillas, has apparently concluded an astounding transition in Central America. For much of the 1980s, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua were all but engulfed by a series of civil wars between the various governments and guerrilla groups on the left (Guatemala and El Salvador) and the right (Nicaragua). Honduras was affected extensively by warfare in its two neighbor countries, even though it had no major civil war on its territory. With Costa Rican President Oscar Arias acting as peacemaker, the second half of the 1980s witnessed a move toward some form of reconciliation in these war-torn countries. By the early 1990s the peace process and the move toward a nascent form of democracy in Central America began to take hold. Certainly, the breakup of the former Soviet Union and the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe has had a profound effect on leftist guerrilla groups in Guatemala and El Salvador , as they began to reconsider their attempts to gain power through the barrel of a gun. The U.S. invasion of Panama in December, 1989, and the subsequent electoral defeat of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua in 1990 served to strengthen the image of U.S. hegemony in the region. The U.S. record of never allowing a Central American government of which we disapproved to remain in power was, once again, verified. Certainly it can be argued that U.S. pressure on the Sandinistas, beginning in the 1980s and continuing through that decade, was a major factor in the decision of …