“Communists Win These Kinds of Negotiations”

In an endeavor to bolster regional peace efforts in an isthmus racked by revolutionary and counterrevolutionary violence, the foreign ministers of Mexico, Panama, Colombia, and Venezuela established the Contadora Group, named after the Panamanian island where the first meeting took place in January 1983. Under the informal leadership of Colombian president Belisario Betancur, five Central American governments (Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua) began talks under the Contadora auspices. Within a year, the Contadora Group had come up with a draft treaty that focused on security and stability as opposed to domestic democracy. This version would have required the Sandinistas to end their aid to the Salvadoran guerrillas as well as evacuate Cuban and Soviet-bloc military personnel.

Perhaps assuming that Managua would reject it, the Reagan administration reacted positively to the draft. Remarkably, though, within weeks, Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega announced that his government supported the treaty “in its totality, immediately, and without modifications.” Citing that U.S. assistance to the contras as well as Nicaragua's dependence on Cuban and Soviet military support undermined the treaty, the Costa Rican, Salvadoran, and Honduran governments failed to embrace the draft.

By 1986, the Contadora process struggled to develop a credible program that all the regional governments would endorse, but another accord, Esquipulas II, would come to fruition. Esquipulas II was named after the Guatemalan town where it was signed by the five Central American presidents in early August 1987. Based on a plan created by Costa Rican President Óscar Arias, Esquipulas II called for an end to hostilities, open elections, and the end of external assistance to irregular actors. Of particular significance to the Salvadoran case, Esquipulas II emphasized the “incorporation of [the] region's insurgents into the political process” through “internationally supervised democratic elections.