Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, 1977-1992 (review)

Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, 1977-1992. By William M. Leogrande. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. Map. Notes. Bibliography. Index. xvi, 773 pp. Cloth, $39.95.

The title of William M. LeoGrande's latest book could read otherwise, for it is mostly a study of "Central America in the United States," of Washington's formulation and execution of policy towards Central America, and not the other way around. Furthermore, it deals mostly with the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan was in the White House, and has little to say about previous or successive administrations. However, since Central America only became a paramount issue in U.S. politics under the Reagan Administration, it makes sense for LeoGrande to focus on the 1980s.

The author's objectives are clear: describe in as much detail as possible the manner in which the last cold war warrior to occupy the White House, together with his coterie of advisors and ideologues, decided to make life miserable for the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the FMLN guerrillas in El Salvador. Into the story are mixed the Republican and Democratic Congresspeople and Senators whose support was vital for the approval of certain aspects of Washington's policy, especially the funding of the Salvadoran army and the Nicaraguan contras.

Much of LeoGrande's information comes from the mainstream press in the United States and congressional documents, so few surprises are in the offing. However, the reader is truly overwhelmed by the amount of institutional effort, political capital, and ideological blustering that went into the Central American question, especially during a time when the Soviet Union was in the process of final meltdown. In retrospect, it is very difficult to equate the real importance of Central America for the United States to that, for example, of Central Europe or the Middle East.

Part of the explanation, according to LeoGrande, has to do with Reagan's efforts to persuade the people of the United States to overcome the Vietnam syndrome and acquiesce again to the use of U.S. ground forces in combat missions in the Third World. It would seem that Central America was the ideal spot for this endeavor because of its closeness, its strategic unimportance, and the very minor costs in terms of U.S. lives that would be at risk. In fact, when one looks at the Reagan Administration's military involvements overseas, they were all very modest and, with the exception of Grenada, quite inconclusive.

Another part of the explanation was Reagan's decision to "draw the line" in the face of perceived Soviet expansionism in Central America and to prevent, thereby, the expected domino effect among neighboring countries. For the Reagan Administration, nothing short of outright military victory, the defeat of the FMLN guerrillas, and the overthrow of the Sandinista government, was acceptable because negotiations were not possible with "communist" movements and governments.

In the end, negotiations did stop the wars in both countries, disarm and incorporate the rebels into the respective political systems, and begin the construction of pluralist, representative democracies. However, the movement towards negotiations did not come from Washington: it came from the Central Americans themselves and from governments in Latin America and Europe that were at odds with Washington's militaristic stance. Eventually, the U.S. Congress, tired of the political divisiveness generated by repeated Administration requests for monies to fuel the Central American wars, decided to take an active role to wind down the fighting. If anyone in the United States deserves credit for ending Washington's involvement, it is Jim Wright, the Speaker of the House or Representatives, who became directly involved in the negotiations among the Central American adversaries after concluding that a military solution was neither desirable nor feasible.

LeoGrande rightly asks if what eventually was negotiated and agreed upon after 1990 could not have happened in 1981 or...