Conclusion

Abstract

The contribution of this book to the understanding of insurgency in Latin America is to bring in the actors and their agendas. Central American political actors are power seekers, not solely social-class spokespersons. Their political agenda is shaped by a variety of conditioning factors, not just those derived from some compelling socioeconomic ‘reality’. This ‘reality’, constantly invoked by politicians and scholars alike, is an intellectual construct, predicated on multiple beliefs and dispositions whose origins are both narrower (the immediate environment of ideologues) and wider (ideas shared by a generation of ideologues) than suggested by exponents of the dominant paradigm. The structural and historical grievances identified by Booth and presented as the ‘most promising theories’ on the roots of national revolts in Central America are supported by a significant, though not sufficient, body of evidence. An important source of dissatisfaction with the dominant paradigm stems from the discovery that residual variables related to the insurgents themselves help to explain not only the short-term causes of the emergence of Latin American insurgencies in the wake of the Cuban revolution (the so-called ‘guerrillas’), but also, conceivably, the immediate causes of their development and rapid decline in the 1970s (South America) and 1980s (Central America).

Obviously, the accords of Chapultepec wouldn’t have been possible without the relative de-ideologisation of both side; in this sense the signature of the accords and the compliance with the first phase of the transition — beyond international pressure — are an indication of the realism of the national political elite. (Castellanos Moya, 1993)