Abstract
The coming to power of the left-wing Sandinista regime in Nicaragua in 1979 heralded the start of a ten-year effort to unseat it by its right-wing Contra opponents. Many of the Contras were based in neighbouring Honduras, and received huge amounts of aid from the United States — although the President was often keener on this policy than the purse-string-holding Congress. The war resulted in the death or wounding of, proportionately, very large numbers of people, and helped to devastate the economy — annual inflation in 1988 being said to be more than 25,000 per cent! Not surprisingly, the Government was receptive to nudges in the direction of a settlement from both the Soviet Union and the other Central American states — some of whom also had a civil war problem. But equally, the regime was determined to safeguard the social and political progress it had achieved.
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Further Reading
Jan S. Adams, ‘Change and Continuity in Soviet Central American Policy’, Problems of Communism, XXXVIII (2–3) (March–June 1989).
Pat Hayes, ‘ONUCA Reconnaissance Mission’, An Cosantoir 50 (2) (February 1990).
International Institute for Strategic Studies, Strategic Survey 1988–1989 (London: IISS, 1989).
Ethan Schwartz, ‘Central America: Send in the U.N.?’, The InterDependent, 15 (2) (Spring 1989) (published by the United Nations Association of the United States).
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© 1990 International Institute for Strategic Studies
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James, A. (1990). The Peace Process in Central America (1989– ). In: Peacekeeping in International Politics. Studies in International Security . Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21026-8_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21026-8_13
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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