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Latin American Program in the News: Central American peace accord celebrates 25 years, but has it brought peace?

Cindy Arnson

Twenty-five years have passed since the Esquipulas peace agreement signing, which ended political turmoil but did not lead to peaceful societies.

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Esquipulas, on Guatemala's eastern border with Honduras, is best known today for its towering white basilica, which draws thousands of religious pilgrims each year.

But the town goes down in history as the birthplace of a landmark peace accord in Central America, signed at a time when the Contras were battling the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and death tolls were mounting in El Salvador and Guatemala as the military fought to upend leftist guerrillas.

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Esquipulas peace agreement by five Central American presidents, which paved the way, albeit not immediately, for a negotiated end to civil war across the isthmus.

Former President Arias said in a Los Angeles Times interview in 2000, when asked how he was able to get leaders to agree to a peaceful solution: “I appealed to their sense of history, to their responsibility of transferring to our children a peaceful Central America, to their dignity, not accepting what Washington was recommending.

He was also helped by international events, including the Iran contra scandal, the murder of Jesuit priests in El Salvador, and the fall of the Berlin Wall – all of which fractured US views about what was at stake in Central America, says Cynthia Arnson, director of the Latin America Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center and editor of “In the Wake of War: Democratization and Internal Armed Conflict in Latin America.”

“The end of the wars in Central America was a confluence of changes in the US that created an opening... and the region's leaders coming together around an alternative proposal,” Ms. Arnson says.

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Original article here.

About the Author

Cindy Arnson

Cynthia J. Arnson

Distinguished Fellow, Latin America Program
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Latin America Program

The Wilson Center’s prestigious Latin America Program provides non-partisan expertise to a broad community of decision makers in the United States and Latin America on critical policy issues facing the Hemisphere. The Program provides insightful and actionable research for policymakers, private sector leaders, journalists, and public intellectuals in the United States and Latin America. To bridge the gap between scholarship and policy action, it fosters new inquiry, sponsors high-level public and private meetings among multiple stakeholders, and explores policy options to improve outcomes for citizens throughout the Americas. Drawing on the Wilson Center’s strength as the nation’s key non-partisan policy forum, the Program serves as a trusted source of analysis and a vital point of contact between the worlds of scholarship and action.  Read more