CENTRAL AMERICA:
Poverty and Violence in
Times of Peace
By Inés Benítez*
GUATEMALA CITY, (IPS)
- Twenty years after the
signing of the agreement
that laid the
foundations for peace in
Central America, the
economic and social
causes of the civil wars
that shook the region
are still in place, and
represent latent threats
of new conflicts,
analysts warn.
In the mid-1980s, three
armed conflicts were
raging in this region.
The oldest broke out in
1960 in Guatemala
against a historical
backdrop of foreign
interventions, the
struggle for the right
to land by the country’s
indigenous majority, and
authoritarian
governments.
In Nicaragua, the
U.S.-financed "contra"
fighters were combating
the government of the
leftwing Sandinistas,
who toppled the Somoza
family dictatorship in
1979.
And in El Salvador,
guerrilla forces that
were active since the
1970s and formed a
united front in 1980
were fighting an
authoritarian regime
that was becoming more
and more violent.
In May 1986, the
Guatemalan city of
Esquipulas hosted a
summit meeting of the
presidents of Honduras,
El Salvador, Guatemala,
Nicaragua and Costa
Rica, which came to be
known as "Esquipulas I".
Costa Rican President
Óscar Arias later
submitted a peace plan
that evolved from the
meeting, which was aimed
at bringing about
democratisation,
cessation of internal
hostilities, full
respect for human
rights, national
reconciliation, regional
security and economic
cooperation in the
region. It also laid the
groundwork for
international
verification procedures
and provided a timetable
for implementation.
The "Esquipulas II"
accord was signed by the
five governments on Aug.
7, 1987, forming the
basis for the national
treaties that eventually
brought the armed
conflicts to an end.
The document stated that
in freedom and
democracy, the countries
of Central America will
adopt agreements aimed
at accelerating
development, in order to
achieve more egalitarian
societies, free of
extreme poverty.
When Guatemala’s 36-year
armed conflict finally
came to an end in 1996,
the country experienced
a new political openness
and democratisation of
its institutions. But in
2007, the basic aim of
breaking the cycle of
marginalisation and
poverty is still
pending, say experts.
Twenty percent of the
Guatemalan population
was living in extreme
poverty (on an income of
less than a dollar a
day) in 1990, a
proportion that was
reduced to 16 percent in
2000 but rose again to
21.5 percent in 2004.
And 48 percent of
children suffer from
chronic malnutrition.
"Hunger in times of
peace. That is a
contradiction," Karin
Slowing, coordinator of
the latest United
Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) report
on Guatemala, remarked
to IPS. She pointed out
that there have been
virtually no changes in
the distribution of
land, ownership of which
is heavily concentrated,
since 1979.
Economist Miguel Arturo
Gutiérrez told IPS that
with respect to poverty
and social inequality,
"little has changed"
since Esquipulas II, and
since the signing of the
1996 peace accord.
The 1996 agreement
formally ended the
conflict between the
Guatemalan National
Revolutionary Unity (URNG),
which claimed the lives
of 200,000 people,
mainly Mayan Indians.
According to the
U.N.-sponsored
Historical Clarification
Commission, the army was
responsible for more
than 90 percent of the
atrocities committed
during the war.
"The army today plays a
marginal role in
society, but wealth is
still heavily
concentrated, and income
has not been
redistributed," said
Gutiérrez, who took part
in drafting Guatemala’s
second follow-up report
on compliance with the
Millennium Development
Goals, published by the
UNDP in March 2006.
(The MDGs were adopted
by the international
community in 2000.)
The report said that
social spending rose
from 3.2 percent to five
percent between 1995 and
2004, but remains below
the Latin American and
even Central American
averages.
"There is peace, but
there is also more
poverty. The wealth
remains concentrated in
just a few hands,"
former president Vinicio
Cerezo (1986-1990), one
of the signatories of
Esquipulas II, told IPS.
Economic and social
marginalisation and the
need for regional
integration are the most
pressing
development-related
problems today, said
Cerezo.
Nor have the two decades
that have passed since
Esquipulas II brought
solutions for such
problems in El Salvador,
said economist Alfonso
Goitia.
After the country’s
12-year armed conflict
was brought to an end by
a peace deal in 1992,
hopes were raised for
better distribution of
wealth in the country
and for a narrowing of
the gap between rich and
poor, "but the policies
implemented" by the
right-wing National
Republican Alliance
(ARENA) governments
since 1989 "have led to
greater inequality and
concentration of
wealth," said Goitia.
A report on El
Salvador’s compliance
with the MDGs published
by the UNDP in June says
that 31.5 percent of
households were poor in
1991, compared to 22.8
percent in 2005.
But the report’s author,
Carlos Acevedo,
questioned the
government’s figures and
told IPS that the
Consumer Price Index
used to establish the
poverty line included
products listed at costs
that were lower than the
real prices.
"What is suspicious
about this national
poverty line is that it
reflects a gradual
decline in the cost of
the basic food basket,
so that today it is
supposedly much cheaper
than 10 years ago, which
is something that people
don't believe," said
Acevedo.
Besides, El Salvador is
still among the 20
percent of countries
with the highest levels
of inequality in the
world, adds the report.
According to the UNDP,
the richest 20 percent
of households had 54.5
percent of the national
income in 1992 and the
poorest 20 percent had
just 3.2 percent. Ten
years later, the
proportions were 58.3
percent and 2.4 percent,
respectively.
The January 1992 peace
agreement signed by the
government of Alfredo
Cristiani (1989-1994)
and the leftist
Farabundo Marti National
Liberation Front (FMLN)
brought to an end a war
in which some 80,000
people, mainly
civilians, were killed,
and 50,000 were left
disabled.
"Today, furthermore, we
are once again facing
the problem of
authoritarianism,
repression and
persecution, under legal
or pseudo-legal
mechanisms; we are
returning to a situation
that could trigger a new
social conflict," said
Goitia, referring to
threats and attacks on
social and human rights
activists.
Like Guatemala and El
Salvador, Nicaragua has
seen the last 20 years
pass without becoming a
"viable country" for the
majority of its 5.6
million people, despite
the climate of peace,
economist Alejandro
Martínez Cuenca told IPS.
"The survey on living
quality by the
Nicaraguan Statistics
and Census Institute
found that 70.3 percent
of the rural population
still lived in poverty
in 2005," Martínez
Cuenca said in a forum
held in Managua by the
Violeta Barrios de
Chamorro Foundation to
analyse progress made
since Esquipulas II.
Civil war in Nicaragua
finally came to an end
in 1990. Eighteen years
of armed struggle
against the Somoza
regime were followed by
11 years of fighting by
the Contras in their
attempt to overthrow the
Sandinista National
Liberation Front (FSLN)
governments.
The stagnation of the
civil war, the plunge in
living standards that it
caused, and the U.S.
trade embargo against
Nicaragua led the
Sandinistas and Contras
to end the conflict,
writer Sergio Ramírez,
who was a member of the
Sandinista governing
junta from 1979 and vice
president between 1985
and 1990, told IPS.
But beyond the economic
damages, what ended the
war was the official
count of more than half
a million refugees and
around 43,000 victims
(other sources put the
total at 30,000), said
Ramírez, who has
distanced himself from
the FSLN and has retired
from politics.
In his view, "the
greatest achievement,
apart from peace itself,
is that no one believes
anymore that problems
can be solved with
weapons. People have
understood that killing
each other for
ideological reasons is a
crime in and of itself."
Nicaragua is now at
peace. But it is the
second-poorest country
in the Americas after
Haiti.
The last U.N. report on
Nicaragua, published
last year, says the
country has made little
progress in terms of
development, with
extreme poverty
shrinking only slightly,
from 19.4 percent of the
population in 1990 to
14.9 percent in 2006,
still far from the
target of 9.7 percent
that it must reach in
order to meet the MDG
poverty reduction goal
by 2015.
* With additional
reporting by Raúl
Gutiérrez (El Salvador)
and José Adán Silva
(Nicaragua). |
