of what was given was diverted to military security
against social revolution in the 1960s. Social revo-
lution and a more equitable distribution of wealth
and land was condemned by the powerful elites in
Latin America, who claimed these measures would
open the way for communism. Just as fearful of
far-reaching reforms were the Latin American
middle classes. Thus there was no will for political
and social change among the ruling and influential
groups. Yet this lay at the very heart of what the
Alliance for Progress was supposed to be about.
With the death of Kennedy, and Johnson’s grow-
ing preoccupation with Vietnam, the Alliance
petered out as more democratic and socially
responsible regimes failed to evolve. The Alliance
for Progress did not achieve for Latin America
what the Marshall Plan had done for Europe. The
cycle of violence, deprivation and revolution was
not broken; the answer given to Marxist revolu-
tion was military suppression.
However, in some of the Central American
states a certain amount of progress was achieved,
especially in Costa Rica and Honduras; but even
here it was too little; in the others – Nicaragua, El
Salvador and Guatemala – repression and the
murder of peasants and of the urban opposition
goaded into armed terrorist resistance created a
thirty-year cycle of bloodshed and violence.
Despite Washington’s good intentions in pushing
for democratic and economic improvements and
for an end to the abuse of the most fundamental
human rights, the image of the US was marred,
especially during the two Reagan administrations
(1981–9) by the priority given to security and to
efforts to halt the spread of Marxism in the
Caribbean and South and Central America. The
misery and destruction borne by the people
through the years of revolution, civil wars and
conflict were a terrible price to pay. Even after
they were settled in the mid-1990s corruption
blighted the region.
Costa Rica
Costa Rica is the most fortunate of the Central
American states, free from civil war (except for a
brief period in 1948), with a GNP per capita in
1987 of $1,610 with the highest income per head
of population and one more equitably distributed
than elsewhere in Latin America. It is also the
only Latin American nation with something
approaching an established democratic parlia-
mentary system. Abuses of human rights are not
totally absent, as Amnesty International reports
reveal, but their scale is small compared to those
of the other states.
Costa Rica had established a constitutional
liberal state in the 1920s with free and fair elec-
tions. The collapse of coffee prices, on which it
depended, had a devastating effect throughout
Central America. The more liberal oligarchic par-
liamentary governments in the region gave way to
the strongmen, the caudillos, who would preserve
the interests of landowners and merchants and
meet the threat of labour and social unrest. Only
in Costa Rica, with its strong constitutional tradi-
tion, was the caudillismo somewhat softened
in the 1930s and 1940s by regular presidential
elections. José Figueres was the outstanding
political leader to emerge in the post-1945
period. Reformist Costa Rica enjoys an extensive
social-welfare programme, and José Figueres’s
revolutionary junta (1948–9) strengthened the
parliamentary tradition. Women were enfran-
chised and after losing the elections Figueres
1
CENTRAL AMERICA IN REVOLUTION 707
Population (millions)
1920 1940 1960 1980 1989 2000
Costa Rica 0.42 0.62 1.25 2.2 2.7 4.0
Nicaragua 0.64 0.83 1.41 2.6 3.7 5.1
Honduras 0.72 1.15 1.95 3.7 5.0 6.4
El Salvador 1.17 1.63 2.45 4.75 5.1 6.3
Guatemala 1.23 2.2 3.8 7.3 8.9 11.4
