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Contadora: A Cat With Nine Lives
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10218 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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8 / 1986 |
1,403 Words |
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Richard A. Nuccio
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In January 1983, representatives of four Latin American countries met on a resort island off the coast of Panama to discuss what they could do collectively about the Central American crisis. Mexico, Colombia, Panama, and Venezuela each had different perspectives on and relations with key countries in Central America, but all had a common interest in deterring unilateral action by the United States in the region and in seeking a negotiated solution to conflicts within and among the Central American countries.
As a student of the Contadora process has noted, this regional initiative is, like motherhood and apple pie, rhetorically supported by all parties to the Central American conflict. Yet Contadora has yet to reach its objective of forging a peaceful settlement and has appeared at times to be ignored or contradicted completely by important actors in the region. Why?
The key to understanding Contadora lies in understanding the nature of the process of negotiation. From the beginning, the Contadora countries have labored under the assumption that their role was to achieve a balance among all the forces at work in the region. That meant making some concessions to the Sandinista government, its external opposition; the Duarte government and its guerrilla opposition; Nicaragua concerning its fears about the United States; and, to a lesser extent initially, the United States and certain Central American countries about their fears about the Sandinistas. Contadora can make progress only to the degree that the main parties to the conflicts in the region, the Central American countries and the United States, are willing to accept such concessions. Since January 1983, different actors at different times and for different reasons have been unwilling to concede ground to their adversaries.
In 1985 the issue of what to do about a Sandinista Nicaragua became the main stumbling block to negotiations. Contadora, by its very nature as a negotiation process among existing actors, was designed to leave the Sandinistas in power, while creating agreements through a treaty backed by international supervision that would protect the order Central American countries from Nicaragua, and Nicaragua from the United States. As it became clear that the Reagan administration would never trust any Sandinista government to fulfill treaty commitments and that the Sandinsitas would not voluntarily surrender power, Contadora foundered.
Contributing changes
Among the Contadora four, domestic changes have made cooperation more difficult. During 1985 Panama's first elected civilian president in 16 years was deposed by the military, and Mexico held gubernatorial elections roundly condemned as fraudulent by the opposition. The irony of these two countries attempting to bring democracy to Central America became too glaring to ignore. Mexico's increasing financial woes encouraged President de la Madrid to deemphasize Mexico's support for Nicaragua within Contadora in the hopes of gaining greater flexibility on the part of the United States in debt renegotiation. Colombia and Venezuela, with less questionable democratic traditions, themselves became increasingly concerned about Sandinista intentions.
Among the other Central American countries, Costa Rica continued to tread a tightrope between avoiding entanglement in the Central American turmoil and
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