At the end of last year, an avalanche of virulence toward Nicaragua and Cuba rumbled out of the Reagan administration, with Secretary of State Alexander Haig, Jr. as chief mouthpiece. The rhetoric was deposited in Mexico, St. Lucia, and Washington as Haig traveled to a variety of meetings. His abrasive accusations toward Nicaragua initiated a caustic exchange between Washington and Managua that Mexican President Jose Lopez Portillo referred to as "verbal terrorism."
The substance of the accusations is that the Soviet Union, acting through Cuba, is using Nicaragua in its scheme to export revolution throughout Central America, beginning in El Salvador. Haig said at a meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) in St. Lucia on December 4: "Havana calls the leaders of violent opposition groups together, forges unity pacts among them, trains their men, provides their arms and sends them back to mount a violent challenge to legitimate governments."
Reagan administration officials have claimed publicly that up to 2,000 Cuban military personnel are in Nicaragua. The destruction of the De Oro Bridge in El Salvador by the leftist opposition in October, a blow to military control of the eastern portion of the country, was credited to the presence of 500 Cubans. Cuba and Nicaragua have both denied the allegations, and even members of the U.S. intelligence community dispute the administration's assertions.
In early December a second administration white paper on Cuban intervention in Central America appeared. Perhaps because the first was riddled with misinformation and falsehood and therefore discredited (see "Smudged Papers and Fudged Facts," September, 1981), the second makes no attempt to present evidence for its assertion that Cuba is the "primary ally of terrorism in the hemisphere."
Just where the escalating rhetoric will lead is uncertain. From all appearances it is equally unclear to those who are making policy, many of whom were baptized into U.S. foreign policy in Vietnam, as it is to those of us watching the storm clouds gather. The official word has been a series of contradictions.
On November 10 President Reagan said he had no plans to send combat troops to any area of the world. The next day, at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, when asked for assurances that no covert or overt actions were being planned for overthrowing or destabilizing Nicaragua, Haig replied, "I'm not prepared to say anything of that kind." The fact that the Pentagon had been asked to analyze possible military actions, including a naval blockade of Nicaragua, was written off as "just standard procedure." The question comes to mind, standard procedure for what?
A few days later Lieutenant General Wallace Nutting, commander of U.S. troops in Latin America, said that El Salvador must not be lost, that the "bandits" (referring to the guerrillas) must be brought under control, and "military action must be part of the response." Meanwhile, Haig told Lopez Portilla in Mexico "openly, categorically, and unconditionally that for the moment the United States would not intervene militarily" in Nicaragua or Cuba. One has to ask, how long is "the moment"?
The final quarter of last year produced a disturbing array of events that further raise suspicions about intervention. A closed conference of military commanders and intelligence officers from the United States and 20 Latin American countries took place in Washington in November. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and his Salvadoran counterpart, Jose Guillermo Garcia, were the keynote speakers. Nicaragua, which had been present at similar meetings in the past, was left off the invitation list this time.
In October two large-scale military maneuvers, involving U.S. forces and directed by the Pentagon, were carried out in the region, the larger also involving the navies of several South American countries and more personnel, warships, and aircraft in the Caribbean than at any time since World War II. The organizers of the operations hoped on the one hand that they would appear to be just routine exercises in the region, while at the same time they wished to communicate a strong show of force to Nicaragua and Cuba. The maneuvers point to the dilemma of an administration which faces increasing opposition to its Central America policy: a need to downplay U.S. military entanglements and escalations while speaking in superlatives about the threat that Soviet influence in the region offers to the United States and freedom everywhere. The intent is to create a climate that will make increasing intervention palatable to Congress and the U.S. public.
El Salvador remains the thorn in the Reagan administration's side. The opposition appeared to gain strength in a campaign in October that included the destruction of bridges and power lines. While in the United States, Defense Minister Garcia was placed in the awkward position of insisting that his forces still had control of the country while hoping to receive more military support. Haig, calling the situation a stalemate, echoed the need for aid.
Elections in El Salvador, which are scheduled for March, are receiving support from the United States and the Salvadoran junta but from few other places. Recognizing a history of fraud and military control of elections, the opposition is asking for negotiations. Former ambassador to El Salvador Robert White pointed out that any opposition candidate would not live a week in El Salvador, and Garcia has said, "Elections will be carried out, even amidst flying bullets, and then the subversives would have to face the decisions freely made by the Salvadoran people."
On August 28 of last year France and Mexico publicly recognized the opposition as a "representative political force" in El Salvador and called for negotiations between it and the junta. In early December, while Haig was in St. Lucia drumming up support for elections, 61 countries, including many U.S. NATO allies, passed a UN resolution calling for negotiations, signifying a growing international consensus which is isolating the Reagan administration's posture.
Domestic opposition to Reagan policy has come from many sectors. At their annual conference in November, the U.S. Catholic bishops passed a strong resolution asking for a non-military solution to the conflict in Central America and an end to U.S. military aid. On September 24, in what the Washington Post called "the clearest foreign policy defeat of the year," the U.S. Senate voted to put conditions on military aid to El Salvador that would make the administration responsible to certify twice a year that progress is being made toward reform, respect for human rights, a negotiated settlement, and investigation of the still unsolved murder of the four U.S. church women.
On November 22 Haig said that "it serves no constructive purpose to draw fences around the limits of American policy when nations are proceeding to push against our fundamental values." By not putting fences around U.S. policy, a military stranglehold is being put around all of Central America. U.S. military aid continues to tighten the reigns of the cruelest regimes. Despite domestic and international opposition, dissension in its own ranks, and counter advice from its allies, the administration has turned every chance for deflating tension in the region into an opportunity for battle.
Its short-sighted policy refuses to recognize that the greatest threat to Central America is not an external one, but the long-standing system of injustice and oppression, which is enforced by torture and mass murder and being carried out in an increasingly barbaric and grotesque fashion. In trying to prevent a Cuba in Nicaragua, Reagan may be creating a Vietnam in El Salvador. That would be among the grandest of bellicose errors.
In St. Lucia Haig asked the OAS, "Should we not be discussing together how to prevent the import of heavy offensive weapons--by any country in Central America?" The administration's policy is simply one of hypocrisy and propaganda. Not only is it making accusations without a shred of evidence, it fails to acknowledge that the United States is the largest offender in the import of weapons and military aid into the region and the primary ally of terrorism, carried out by right-wing governments. The United States is clearly the interventionist power in Central America.
As the avalanche builds, more and more victims will be destroyed in its path. Our compassion for those poor and vulnerable ones who suffer most must drive us in making our continuing opposition to our government's policy clear and strong.
Joyce Hollyday was associate editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.
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