CENTRAL AMERICA Socialist debates State Department attacks U.s. policy

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Henry Kissinger, head of the bipartisan commission on Central America at drafted policy recommendations for the Reagan administration.

The State Department would have us believe that its aim is to support the existence of "democratic" regimes in the region, promote economic recovery, and growth through private enterprise, restore peace (but only in terms of a democracy which is left conveniently undefined) and to end the "Soviet and Cuban threat" to the sea lanes. Just as a P.S., we also have trade and investment goals. All these goals, moreover, are shared by Congress and both political parties.

1 find myself in agreement on two points. The United States does have trade and investment goals in Central America, and the policy of defending them has indeed been bipartisan. It's a policy that goes back far before the present administration and can be corrected only by attacking its premises, The Evergreen Students For a Humane Foreign Policy (SFHP) at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., sponsored on April I1 a teach-in on U.S. intervention in Central America and the Caribbean. The day-long event-attended by over 400 peopleincluded workshops on the region, and featured a debate between David Cox, deputy director of the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs of the U.S. State Department, and Evergreen professor of history, Stephanie Coontz. The debate centered on the Kissinger Report on Central America. Socialist Action is reprinting the entire debate for our readers. We would like to give special thanks to Susan Ann Mott and the other members of the SFHP for making this material available to us.

not the way one particular president is carrying out the policy.

I don't think I'll leave my remarks in "outline form" because it seems to me that it's precisely when you get past the broad high-sounding phrases and down to the specifics that you get to the crux of U.S. policy in Central America.

But I want to argue today that the regimes this bipartisan policy has supported depend upon the systematic oppression of their populations; that the economic "recovery" we're sponsoring involves the same kind of economic intervention that caused most of the original problems in the area; and that the main source of "destablization" in Central America has been our government.

This started with the U.S. government's original imposition of dictators in places such as Nicaragua, moving on to its massive military training of the officers who led coups in Guatemala and El Salvador. It now involves taking major steps toward war with the commitment of U.S. forces for combat support operations in El Salvador, the massing of 5,000 troops in Honduras, and the CIA-led mining of Nicaraguan ports.

And to top it off, while Reagan and Kirkpatrick tell us this is necessary to maintain our "credibility" abroad, they have cynically declared that they will withdraw from the World Court to avoid Nicaragua's claims for the seven ships that have been damaged, the numerous injuries, and the setback to trade.

The main document used by the State Department to justify government objectives in Central America is the Kissinger Commission Report. I want to discuss this in detail because it provides the "evidence" behind the generalizations we've heard today. The report provides an analysis of the crisis that traces the earliest problems back to "oligarchic rule" in the 1890-1930 period, followed by "pluralism" in the 1950s and 1960s, but "retrogression" in the 1970s as centrist governments "gave way" to "repression and intransigence"

The report admits the "bloody" repression in El Salvador and Guatemala, and characterizes the Somoza regime overthrown by the Sandinistas as so corrupt "it might well be called a kleptocracy, defended by "systematic" and "pervasive" repression. But then the report makes a sudden leap—to the "export" of revolution to these countries by Cuba. I'll come back to this issue, but I'd like you to notice first what is left out of this history.

Note first of all the use of the passive voice. Centrist governments "gave way" to dictatorships. "A period of repression" began. As any bureaucrat knows—or any kid, for that matter— the passive voice is a great device to avoid taking responsibility: "The vase got broken;" "full employment gave way to high rates of unemployment? You never find out who did what to whom. And it is impossible to understand the crisis in Central America unless we realize that the repressive regimes that started it were not themselves indigenous but were direct results of U.S. economic, political, and military intervention.

The period of 1890-1930—singled out by the report as the origin of distortion in Central American development-was the period of U.S. gunboat diplomacy. The U.S. invaded Panama in 1901 and 1902, Honduras and the Dominican Republic in 1903, Panama and the Dominican Republic in 1904, Cuba from 1906-1911, and Honduras in 1907 and 1919. U.S. Marines first invaded Nicaragua in 1909, before the Soviet (continued on page 8, in “David Cox defends State Department”)

SOMOZA: Gone for good BELIZE EMALA HONDURAS EL SALVADOF.

NICARAGUA KISSINGER TO COSTA RICA HEADI CENTRAL MERICA COMMISSION PANAMA