with the FMLN, ending the civil war,
which had killed about 75,000
Salvadorans. The FMLN laid down its
arms and was converted into a legitimate
political party. A “truth” commission was
established to investigate the govern-
ment’s human rights violations.
In Guatemala’s even longer civil war,
from 1960 to 1996, the left-wing guerrilla
insurgency called the Guatemalan
National Revolutionary Union (URNG)
fought against another U.S.-backed gov-
ernment and its own associated set of
right-wing death squads terrorizing the
populace at the merest hint of dissent.
About 100,000 people were killed and
about 40,000 disappeared. The war ended
with a peace accord between rebels and a
more democratic system of government
in 1996, with concessions on each side.
In Nicaragua in the 1980s, the United
States supported not the government but
the rebels. Until 1979 the United States
had given its support to the Somozadynasty of dictators, founded in 1936. But
the last member of that dynasty, Anastasio
Somoza Debayle, was overthrown in a
revolution in 1978–1979—a revolution
led by yet another left-wing insurgency,
this one the Sandinista National
Liberation Front (FSLN), named in mem-
ory of Augusto Sandino, the guerrilla
leader who had struggled against the U.S.
military occupation of Nicaragua that last-
ed from 1926 to 1933. The new Sandinista
government redistributed land and enact-
ed social reforms, but the Reagan admin-
istration viewed it as another Soviet-
Cuban proxy and sought to undermine it
with a trade embargo and by funding and
training a right-wing guerrilla insurgency
called the Contras. Part of the U.S. aid to
the Contras came from the Reagan admin-
istration’s illegal sale of arms to Iran, in
what was called the Iran-Contra scandal.
The civil war in Nicaragua lasted from
1983 to 1990, when the Sandinistas, under
U.S. pressure, held national elections and210 ATLAS OF HISPANIC-AMERICAN HISTORY
Note: Numbers are of immigrants
admitted to the United States,
in thousands. Statistics for
Belize and Costa Rica are
unavailable.Central American Immigration to the United States, 1961–1996