lost to opposition leader Violeta Barrios de
Chamorro.
The other Hispanic nations of Central
America—Costa Rica, Honduras, and
Panama—experienced fewer troubles in
the 1980s and therefore generated fewer
refugees seeking safe haven elsewhere.
Costa Rica has a long tradition of relative
stability and democratic government,
owing in part to the abolition of its army in
mid-century. Honduras, which borders
Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua,
received massive aid from the United
States during this period; it had some civil
disorder and economic trouble, but not on
the scale of its neighbors. Panama
remained fairly stable, though only under
the harsh dictatorial hand of Manuel
Noriega. Noriega’s excesses eventually led
the United States to turn against him. U.S.
troops invaded Panama in 1989, capturing
Noriega and bringing him to the United
States, where he was tried and convicted
for drug trafficking. With hundreds of
Panamanians killed in the U.S. invasion
and damage estimated at $2 billion, immi-
gration out of Panama increased, though
not to the degree that had occurred else-
where in Central America.
Immigrants or Refugees?
With their countries in turmoil,
Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Nicara-
guans fled in vast numbers to other
nations. In Guatemala alone, about 1
million people became refugees during
the civil war, seeking shelter not only in
the United States but in other Central
American countries and Mexico.
Even though many of the Central
Americans who made their way to the
United States were fleeing oppressive,
violent governments, they had a hard
time proving to U.S. officials that they
were political refugees. Under U.S.
immigration law, political refugees
received special consideration and were
not subject to the same restrictions as
other immigrants. But because the
United States was publicly aiding the
governments of El Salvador and
Guatemala, U.S. officials were not
inclined to acknowledge that the hun-
dreds of thousands of Salvadorans and
Guatemalans begging for political asylum
had really been politically persecuted by
those governments. Instead, newcomers
who entered without the proper immi-
gration visas were regarded as illegal
immigrants and subject to deportation as
such, unless they could prove a “well-
founded fear of persecution”—which in
most cases was impossible to prove.
Nicaraguan refugees were treated
more sympathetically than refugees from
El Salvador and Guatemala because they
were fleeing the Sandinista government,
which U.S. officials regarded as Marxist
and therefore by definition oppressive.
Even Nicaraguans, however, were subject
to shifting factions in the U.S. govern-
ment; they were sometimes welcomed,
sometimes not. The cause of the refugees
was aided by the sanctuary movement,
operated by a national network
of churches and synagogues that shel-
tered undocumented Central AmericanA CHANGING COMMUNITY 211During the 1980s, civil war, political turmoil, and the the covert involvement of the
administrations of U.S. presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush in Central
America combined to ignite protests in the United States. Out of these protests came
the sanctuary movement, an effort that involved hundreds of churches and other reli-
gious organizations across the United States and Canada, through which refugees—
mostly from El Salvador and Guatemala—were smuggled out of their home countries
and into the United States, where, in violation of U.S. law, they were sheltered in
church basements, private homes, and elsewhere. Angered that the U.S. government
denied Salvadorans and Guatemalans fleeing violence at home the same political asy-
lum status given to those leaving Nicaragua, leaders of the sanctuary movement
argued that U.S. government was refusing to grant asylum because it refused to
acknowledge that its Guatemalan and Salvadoran allies were violating their own cit-
izens’ human rights.
In 1982, Southside Presbyterian Church in Tuscon, Arizona, became the first church
in the United States to declare itself a sanctuary, becoming an important stop in what
movement activists came to call an “underground railroad.’’ Among the refugees the
church aided was a Guatemalan woman identified at the time as “Juana Beatriz
Alvarez.’’ The wife of a labor leader who had been killed in 1984, the woman soon
realized that she too was in danger when she noticed that she was frequently being
followed.
According to a series of articles in the Arizona Daily Starnewspaper, the woman,
whose real name was Marta, then made a dramatic escape to the United States in 1984.
Fleeing north over Guatemala’s border into Mexico, she was met by Jim Corbett of
Southside Presbyterian. The two then flew to Hermosillo; drove to Nogales, Sonora;
walked across the U.S. border; and finally drove the last stretch to Tucson. After a stay
in Tucson, a terrified Marta continued to move from shelter to shelter, to keep ahead of
U.S. federal agents who hoped to extract incriminating evidence from her that would
help them arrest Corbett.
In 1985, after paid informants for the Immigration and Naturalization Service infiltrat-
ed Tucson’s sanctuary movement, eight local activists were convicted of alien smuggling.
None served time in prison, recieving probation instead, but as Rev. Fife of the
Southside Presbyterian Church told the Arizona Daily Star,the episode was an “extraor-
dinarily difficult time.” Nonetheless, he added, “it was a joy to be a part of a movement
that was standing up for human rights.’’THE SANCTUARY MOVEMENT