308 UNIT 3 MODERN MESOAMERICA
broad legitimacy were precipitating factors, along with blatant political meddling by
the United States. Castro’s Cuba, backed by the Soviet Union, provided a new element
that figured into the revolutionary equation, serving as both model for socialist rev-
olutions “Latin-American style” and source of military and economic aid to the Cen-
tral American revolutionaries.
The revolutionary movements in Central America differed in detail from one
another, including the degree to which the native Mesoamericans participated in
them. In the case of Guatemala, Indian involvement in the phase of the revolution
that began in the second half of the 1970s was pervasive and profoundly important.
Contemporaneous revolutions in El Salvador and Nicaragua, in contrast, had rela-
tively less to do with the Indians—especially in the Salvadoran case—either as direct
participants or as inspiration for the struggles. This dissimilarity raises the question
as to whether or not the presence or absence of the native Mesoamericans made a
significant difference in the outcome of the Central American revolutions. For ex-
ample, did the Guatemalan Revolution, where the participation of native Mesoamer-
icans was pervasive, differ from the revolutions in El Salvador and Nicaragua where
Indian participation was limited? The answer to this question is decidedly “yes,” as is
indicated by the solemn fact that the Guatemalan Revolution was the bloodiest and
lasted longer than the other two (it led to perhaps double the loss of human life
than in the Salvadoran and Nicaraguan revolutions).
The prolonged and extremely violent struggle in Guatemala can be attributed
partly to the racist, “ethnic cleansing” policy of the government forces in the coun-
try. We should note, too, that the ideology employed by the Guatemalan revolu-
tionaries was more idiosyncratic and less rigidly Marxist than in El Salvador and
Nicaragua. The Guatemalan insurgents had to accommodate to the important Indian
component in society, and this necessity resulted in serious attempts to incorporate
nativist ideas into the revolutionary program.
The Central American revolutionary wars dominated political developments dur-
ing the l970s and 1980s, and have had lasting impact on them up to the present time
(Spence 2004). This outcome is understandable, given the disasters that the wars
wrought in these countries (especially in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua).
Tens of thousands of lives were lost, their economies were devastated, the gap between
the rich and poor widened, and dependence on outside world powers and
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) increased dramatically.
The peace accords—finalized in l996 in Guatemala, in 1992 in El Salvador, and
in 1990 with free elections in Nicaragua—ended the Central American revolution-
ary wars and played a key role in transforming developmental patterns in the region:
The agreements laid the groundwork for a series of positive developmental changes
that in an uneven way have gradually taken place during the past decade and a half.
The most notable achievements have been the demise of the military dictatorships
and the emergence of a variety of democratic governments in all the Central Amer-
ican countries (only Costa Rica had a genuine democracy prior to the l990s).
In Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, the revolutionaries have organized po-
litical parties that now participate in the electoral process and the governing legis-