Pubdate: Sun, 24 Mar 2002
Source: New York Times (NY)
Webpate: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/24/international/americas/24LATI.html
Section: International
Copyright: 2002 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: David Gonzalez

CENTRAL AMERICA WAITS FOR DIVIDENDS OF PEACE

SAN SALVADOR -- The United States lavished money and concern on El Salvador 
during its 12-year civil war, and in the decade since the fighting ended, 
Jose Jacobo Jimenez has held fast to the idea that this nation's 
hard-fought democracy must still matter to Washington.

"Today, El Salvador is united with the United States," said Mr. Jimenez, a 
security guard. "They should take us into account."

He really wants the United States to take him in. The needs here are deep 
and lingering, he said: too much crime and not enough jobs or housing. Like 
many Salvadorans, Mr. Jimenez has found the rewards of peace and political 
loyalty to be elusive. He now hopes the United States will remember the 
past by allowing him to move there.

"Everything is difficult here," Mr. Jimenez said. "We'd like to go there 
because you can work better. The hard part is getting there."

When President Bush arrives here on Sunday for a Central American summit 
meeting on free trade, security and migration, he will encounter a region 
transformed yet stubbornly familiar. During the last decade, peace accords 
ended grisly cold war conflicts between authoritarian governments and 
Marxist guerrillas, and made way for nascent democracies where the former 
combatants trade political barbs, not bullets. Human rights are generally 
respected, armies have been scaled back and civilians dominate the 
political discourse.

But the disillusionment of people like Mr. Jimenez, who thought life after 
war would be safe and prosperous, is also part of the American legacy. 
Violent crime plagues large cities, and despair afflicts countless peasant 
farmers who have suffered drought, official neglect and plummeting prices 
for their crops.

Courts and prosecutors struggle to reform justice systems as people clamor 
for safer streets and an end to the impunity enjoyed by organized 
criminals, corrupt officials and past violators of human rights, including 
some who were once allies of Washington in the fight against Communism.

For Mr. Bush, whose administration includes several officials who guided 
United States policy in Central America in the 1980's, this trip is 
intended to send a clear signal that the region has not drifted into the 
shadows after Sept. 11 and remains a valued ally. Central American leaders 
have been buoyed by the visit, hoping for a trade pact to bolster their 
economies and extensions of protected immigrant status for their countrymen 
in the United States who send home much-needed dollars.

However, taking a hard look at President Bush's political priorities, 
Central Americans are coming to realize that this isthmus of small 
countries is unlikely to regain the importance it once commanded.

"The 80's were a strange episode where the United States was concerned 
about Soviet advances in the third world at the same moment that the region 
experienced social revolution," said William M. LeoGrande, a professor of 
government at American University. "The U.S. focused intently on the region 
for that. There is a feeling that the U.S. put a lot of money and attention 
to the region during the war and in some sense helped fuel the war. In a 
sense, we owe the region more for reconstruction."

Those who supported the anti-Communist policies of the United States see 
today's Central America as a vindication of their efforts. In El Salvador, 
Nicaragua and Guatemala, wars ended, elections were held and free-market 
changes were adopted to attract investment. Political dissent no longer 
brings a swift death sentence.

The region's governments value good relations with the United States and 
have pledged to help fight terrorism and drugs. American troops have 
returned to assist in counternarcotics efforts, even in Nicaragua, where 
reservists have run training exercises and provided aid.

"There is genuine peace," said a senior United States official. "The three 
countries that had wars have had one election after another, clean and in 
peace, and the results have been respected. This is a major step forward."

Yet the past continues to haunt the region. The crime wave is fueled by 
easy access to weapons left over from war. Political parties born of the 
cold war conflict have been unable to move beyond old divisions to win the 
allegiance of an increasingly cynical public.

Perhaps nowhere are the challenges as daunting as in Guatemala, where a 
36-year war left some 200,000 dead, mostly at the hands of the government. 
A peace accord full of bold language and optimism ended the shooting but it 
has hardly brought tranquillity.

Human rights groups have repeatedly been subjected to intimidation, 
break-ins and surveillance. Earlier this month 11 forensic anthropologists, 
who helped unearth evidence used in cases against present and former 
officials accused of genocide, received death threats. A member of an 
opposition party was murdered.

Although President Alfonso Portillo came to office promising to dismantle a 
military intelligence group linked to assassinations and human rights 
abuses, he has not. A shadowy alliance of former and present military 
officers is believed to be involved in organized crime, including drug 
trafficking. In a sign that civilian rule remains tentative, a recent 
directive requires local police commanders to submit daily reports to 
military officers.

Mr. Portillo faces mounting criticism over the recent disclosure that he 
and several close associates opened bank accounts in Panama.

Efforts to carry out the peace accords have "stalled because the government 
has had no will since they were signed," said Jaime Reina, a college 
student. "It was all a show."

A different hurdle faces Nicaragua, where the United States backed an army 
of contra rebels that fought the Sandinista government until it ultimately 
called free elections in 1990. The divisions of the past, while peaceful, 
nonetheless continue to be the defining political framework.

Memories of economic free fall, confiscation of property and forced 
military service under the Sandinistas are fresh in the minds of opponents 
and their backers. Those recollections were encouraged by American 
officials during last year's presidential election, when Daniel Ortega, the 
former Sandinista president, lost to a longtime nemesis, Enrique Bolanos, 
the Liberal Party candidate.

Mr. Bolanos has vowed to root out corruption, and he may already have a 
target in former President Arnoldo Aleman, who has been tainted by 
accusations of cozy land deals and a recent scandal involving the theft of 
hundreds of millions of dollars from a television station.

El Salvador comes out looking like the region's postwar success story. The 
peace accords there, brokered by the United Nations, led to essential 
reforms that included reducing the size of the army, demobilizing the 
guerrillas and establishing a civilian police force.

For a while they also propelled the country into a period of robust 
economic growth, with businesses competing to meet long pent-up consumer 
demands. Foreign-owned apparel factories came with thousands of jobs for a 
people famed throughout the region as hard workers.

El Salvador "is a small place and to the extent it was known in the world, 
it was known for its civil war," said a Western diplomat. Now, the diplomat 
added, "it is probably the most successful United Nations peacekeeping 
effort in history."

Yet even here people fear for their safety in the face of lawlessness, as 
the years after the peace accords turned out to be almost as violent as the 
civil war. Kidnappings became common, and not just among the rich, with 
people sometimes held hostage for a few hundred dollars.

While soldiers were dismissed and rebels demobilized, governments did not 
do enough to provide them with land or jobs, said Laura Chinchilla, the 
former minister of security for Costa Rica. A culture of violence that 
helped many survive in war fostered the growth of organized criminal gangs. 
The situation has been complicated by a United States policy of deporting 
criminals, including many street gang members.

Security has become crucial for democracy, Ms. Chinchilla said. "If we do 
not see a successful response to that," she said, "there is a temptation on 
the part of citizens and government to resort to authoritarian measures."

United States officials, criticized for neglecting the region in recent 
years, have begun to warn governments that they should not use the fight 
against terrorism as a pretext to roll back democratic reforms.

President Bush has also emphasized that corruption will not be tolerated in 
the name of national security. Last week, to back that up, the State 
Department revoked the visa of a retired Guatemalan general and adviser to 
Mr. Portillo who is suspected of drug trafficking.

"I have always believed that the source of instability in Central America 
was not poverty, but the lack of democracy," said Robert A. Pastor, a 
former National Security Council official and a professor of political 
science at Emory University. "Now that the countries are democratic, but of 
a very fragile nature, this is the moment we could have the most decisive 
impact on their long-term security."
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