ON JULY 19, 1979, THE SANDINISTA NA- tional Liberation FrontTHE(FSLN)SANDINISTAtook power(NA-)in O N JULY Nicaragua, ending nearly half a century of U.S.-supported Somoza family dictatorship. In that same year, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN)-an alliance of guerrilla groups-was formed in El Salvador, and stood poised to overthrow that country’s long-standing military/oligarchic despotism. In the early 1980s, Sandinismo led the construction of the new Nicaragua, and Salvadorans organized popular movements and base communities, revolutionizing their ways of life. In Guate-mala, guerrillas mobilized a long-suffering peasantry and entered into their own turbulent period of armed struggle. All things seemed possible, as the region edged toward the brink of fundamental social and political transformation. Central America in the 1980s became the repository of the world’s hopes and dreams, as well as its fears and nightmares. For the Left, the revolutionary movements of Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala represented the hope of humanity-the creation of new societies and the birth of the new human being. For the Right–especially in the United States-events in Central America represented nothing more nor less than Soviet/Cuban expansionism, to be stopped at any price. It was in El Salvador that Ronald Reagan’ s Secretary of State, Alexander Haig, drew his defiant line in the Cold War sand. Throughout the world, across the political spectrum and at all levels of power, people had a stake in the outcome of Central American events. I N 1990, THE SANDINISTAS WERE VOTED OUT of power, and today function as an opposition party. In El Salvador the FMLN has given up the armed struggle and, in an uncertain climate, gears up to compete in parliamentary elections. In Guatemala, popular movements no longer rely on the severely weakened guerrillas. They look for modest political openings as the awful repression continues. As progressive struggles enter a new, and decidedly more ambiguous phase, it’s time to come to grips with that revolutionary decade of Central American history. What we offer here is narrative description-based on interviews, observation and oral history-of life during the events of the time. Our stories recall how people confronted (or simply lived through) this terrible sweep of history. The interplay between individual daily life and the broader forces of history-and their mutual determination in Central America’s political struggles-is the informing inspiration for this Report. The articles by Lisa Haugaard and by Daniel Alder and Thomas Long are written in a narrative, rather than analytic style, and relate events of the 1980s to the day-to-day experiences of people from a variety of class and sectoral backgrounds. They are less an account of events than an account of the way people experienced events. They try to assess the key moments and struggles of the period; the ways in which the political situation evolved; the significant successes and failures of revolutionary forces; and the current legacy of the revolutionary period. Jim Handy, in a somewhat more analytic piece, offers a similar assessment of the period in Guatemala. The final article of this retrospective is a provocative–and controversial-interpretation of events in Nicaragua and El Salvador by long-time Central America observers Elizabeth Dore and John Weeks. Dore and Weeks place the narratives in one potential framework for understanding those events and experiences. As always, the writers for Report on the Americas represent a broad range of viewpoints on the Left. We expect this Report to spark a healthy and exciting dialogue.
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