Central America on the Reagan Watch: Rhetoric and Reality

1985 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Enrique A. Baloyra
Keyword(s):  
Central America ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
Unstable Equilibrium ◽  
International Context ◽  
Policy Objectives ◽  
Policy Arena

This essay discusses the Central America policies of the Reagan administration, focusing on the evolution of what has been described as a “two-track” approach to the region. The essay disputes this characterization, describing the emergence of an unstable equilibrium between different policy objectives and their proponents, underlining important differences between official rhetoric and specific initiatives, and evaluating the outcomes of those initiatives. The discussion emphasizes the complexity of the domestic and international context of the crisis and of the policy arena, underlining the failure of the administration's attempt to impose its own unilateral solution.

Freedom Tide? Ideology, Politics, and the Origins of Democracy Promotion in U.S. Central America Policy, 1980–1984

2014 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 60-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evan McCormick
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Central America ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
Democracy Promotion ◽  
The Political ◽  
History Of ◽  
Policy Objectives ◽  
Dramatic Shift

The Reagan administration came to power in 1981 seeking to downplay Jimmy Carter's emphasis on human rights in U.S. policy toward Latin America. Yet, by 1985 the administration had come to justify its policies towards Central America in the very same terms. This article examines the dramatic shift that occurred in policymaking toward Central America during Ronald Reagan's first term. Synthesizing existing accounts while drawing on new and recently declassified material, the article looks beyond rhetoric to the political, intellectual, and bureaucratic dynamics that conditioned the emergence of a Reaganite human rights policy. The article shows that events in El Salvador suggested to administration officials—and to Reagan himself—that support for free elections could serve as a means of shoring up legitimacy for embattled allies abroad, while defending the administration against vociferous human rights criticism at home. In the case of Nicaragua, democracy promotion helped to eschew hard decisions between foreign policy objectives. The history of the Reagan Doctrine's contentious roots provides a complex lens through which to evaluate subsequent U.S. attempts to foster democracy overseas.

A Corporate Stance for Social Justice

2020 ◽  
pp. 130-156
Author(s):  
Cynthia Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Central America ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Leadership Role ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
Bay Area ◽  
Political Refugees ◽  
The Social ◽  
Dominican Sisters ◽  
San Rafael

This chapter explores the leadership role the Dominican Sisters of San Rafael played in the social movement known as “sanctuary” that emerged in the Bay Area, California, in the 1980s. The enactment of the 1980s Refugee Act and the political crisis in Central America during the Reagan administration galvanized the San Rafael Sisters to make a “corporate and public declaration” of support and sanctuary for political refugees fleeing the violence of a civil war in El Salvador. This chapter examines this pivotal moment within the larger historical context of the Dominican Sisters’ mission in California since the state’s founding in 1850.

Rediscovering Democracy in Latin America

Worldview ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 26 (5) ◽  
pp. 8-10
Author(s):  
Paul E. Sigmund
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Central America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
Authoritarian Government ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
American Policy

It is not unlikely that within the next two years nearly every country in Latin America will be governed by an elected civilian regime. This might surprise most Americans, accustomed as we are to thinking about the region in terms of coup-prone military governments and repressive oligarchies. We are surprised too at the recent embrace of democracy in Latin America by the Reagan administration. Some of its leading representatives went about touting the virtues of authoritarian government; but the administration has found that it is good politics to promote democracy and free elections in Central America and the Caribbean— and politically impossible to resume aid to regimes with bad human rights records. In fact, “Project Democracy” is the latest buzzword of Reagan's Latin American policy.

The Dual Strategy Myth in Central American Policy

1984 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Vanderlaan
Keyword(s):  
Central America ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Central American ◽  
White House ◽  
Dual Strategy ◽  
American Policy ◽  
Mixed Messages

The Reagan administration is sending mixed messages on its policy in Central America, leading some observers to label the policy “schizoid” and influencing yet others to give the president the benefit of the doubt until policy implications become clearer or unavoidable. Commenting in July on White House policy as it has been iterated in the first half of 1983, Senator Christopher Dodd (1983), a leading administration critic, asserted that “there is total confusion in Washington as to what the administration's policies are, and there is a total confusion in Central America as to what U.S. intentions are.” Similar charges have been made from both sides of the aisle in Congress.Almost sadly, these charges are not part of an opposition's political ploy, but in fact are rooted in speeches, position papers, and actions formulated by the president and his Central America policy team.

Central America and the United States: Overlooked Foreign Policy Objectives

1993 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas M. Leonard
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Central America ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Gain ◽  
Policy Objectives ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The U.S

Since the fall of Nicaragua's Somoza dynasty in 1979, nearly 900 books dealing with Central America have appeared. They repeat the themes of imperialism, paternalism, and security that traditionally have characterized studies about Central America and its relations with the U.S. The imperialist theme is pursued by Walter LaFeber's Inevitable Revolutions and Karl Berman's Under the Big Stick. They assert that the United States economically exploited and politically controlled Central America in general and Nicaragua in particular. A sense of moral righteousness is found in Tom Buckley's Violent Neighbors and Richard Alan White's The Morass while the security theme is pursued by John Findling in his Close Neighbors, Distant Friends. Histories about Central America reinforce these themes. For example, the Dean of the U.S. Central Americanists Ralph Lee Woodward, Jr., and Costa Ricans Edelberto Torres-Rivas and Hector Pérez-Brignoli, and Honduran Mario Argueta demonstrate that the American businessmen capitalized upon the ignorance of region's elite for their own economic gain. Despite their diversity, all of these volumes demonstrate that the United States dominated the relationship and criticize it for so doing.

scholarly journals L’administration Reagan et le régime castriste (janvier 1981-juillet 1982)

2005 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 427-443
Author(s):  
Marie-Christine Granjon
Keyword(s):  
Central America ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Approach ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
The North ◽  
Cuban Government ◽  
East West ◽  
The Ideal

Because of the Cuban presence in Africa (Angola), President Carter put a stop, in November 1978, to the normalization procedures started with Cuba at the commencement of his mandate. The Reagan administration, far from redressing the situation, has worsened it by incessantly accusing and threatening the Cuban government. At the rime of General Haig's resignation as State Secretary on June 26, 1982, his policy of intimidation towards Cuba had failed to keep the Castro's regime in step. Moreover, the American policy has been thwarted by external obstacles — the attitudes of the Cuban and Soviet leaders, the change in the political climate in Latin America (the conflict in the Malvinas) - and by internal causes - blunders, conflicting announcements, incoherent strategies, fluctuating and equivocal appraisals of the situation by the Reagan administration. This administration has alternately advocated a military solution to the Cuban problem and an essentially economic approach to neutralise the castrist influence in the region. Cuba has been at rimes referred to as a sovereign State to be dealt with on a bilateral basis, and at other rimes as a soviet satellite to be handled with the framework of East-West relations. Under the Reagan administration, Cuba has remained more than ever the ideal scapegoat of American leaders faced with a reassessment of the "pax americana" in Central America and in the North-South relations.

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