Central America

Conclusion

Envío team

Tendencies:

1) US intransigence will increase and the war will be prolonged. The defeats dealt to the contras by the Sandinista Popular Army in Nicaragua, the increased military capacity of the Salvadoran FMLN and the Guatemalan URNG’s ability to resist and advance add up to a favorable military situation for the revolutionary forces. At the same time the US remains as committed as ever to resuscitating its global hegemony, and international tolerance makes a continuation of the conflict likely.

2) The US strategy for opposing the new historic subject is not working. Alexander Haig announced that the US plans would eliminate the Salvadoran insurgency in 1981. Since 1983 the contras have repeatedly promised the overthrow of the Sandinistas. Latin America has assumed a progressively more confrontational stance against the US. The most important element in the failure of the US project is the reduced involvement of the oligarchy and the bourgeoisie in the Central America economies. The US project has also not succeeded in rebuilding investor confidence, or even stemmed the tide of decapitalization. It has instead made these groups more parasitic and dependent on US aid.

3) The prolongation of the conflict increases the suffering, further distorts the economy and increases people’s frustration. In the face of this, the population is maintaining a seemingly inexhaustible capacity for survival.

4) The reformist capacity of “democratization” is rapidly being used up, so it has to fall back on the military situation.

5) The projects of the new historic subject are losing the ideological struggle internationally but are winning at the national level. The fatigue arising from the struggle for peace in Central America, the “evil empire” ideology to which it has been subjected and the appearance of new hotspots of international attention like South Africa and the Philippines have given rise to a “low-intensity solidarity” that permits the prolongation of the conflict. This is a serious situation because international solidarity could be the decisive factor in the negotiation of a just peace. It could also prevent the escalation of the conflict from the first phase of intervention to a direct invasion.

The possible scenarios are: (a) the total or partial paralysis of the Central American revolutionary processes; (b) the unleashing of anarchic incidents and regionalization of the conflict without direct US military intervention; or (c) effective resistance by the Central America revolutionary subject, which could either lead to an escalation from low-intensity war to a direct invasion or to the collapse of the super-power’s political will. In the medium term, the most likely scenario seems to be consolidation of the resistance and the escalation of the intervention.

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