Mrs. Smith Goes to Washington

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Nicaraguan flags will festoon the streets here on April 15 in honor of the state visit by Violeta Chamorro, elected president last February after a decade of Sandinista rule. Her trip comes at a critical point in relations between the U.S. and the Central American republics, as the White House maintains a freeze on promised military aid to El Salvador and worries persist that the Sandinistas have maintained effective control in Nicaragua.

Indeed, Washington’s response to the two nations illustrates the mixed signals Uncle Sam continues to send to that part of the world. In El Salvador, President Alfredo Cristiani and his economic team have begun one of the most aggressive structural reforms in Latin America, designed to overcome ten years of state control of the economy and nearly $2 billion in infrastructure damage done by the Marxist insurgency. These reforms have seen El Salvador’s gross national product grow by 3.4 per cent over last year, its inflation rate drop to the second lowest in all Latin America, and its coffee and sugar harvest double. These achievements find parallels in the political sphere, where President Cristiani is trying to reassert civilian control over the military. As Bernard Aronson, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, points out, “He has weeded out more humanrights abusers from the senior ranks of the military in 19 months than his well-intentioned and courageous predecessor was able to do in five years.”

RC

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Roxana Chahin

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WASHINGTON, D.C.—Nicaraguan flags will festoon the streets here on April 15 in honor of the state visit by Violeta Chamorro, elected president last February after a decade of Sandinista rule. Her trip comes at a critical point in relations between the U.S. and the Central American republics, as the White House maintains a freeze on promised military aid to El Salvador and worries persist that the Sandinistas have maintained effective control in Nicaragua.

Indeed, Washington’s response to the two nations illustrates the mixed signals Uncle Sam continues to send to that part of the world. In El Salvador, President Alfredo Cristiani and his economic team have begun one of the most aggressive structural reforms in Latin America, designed to overcome ten years of state control of the economy and nearly $2 billion in infrastructure damage done by the Marxist insurgency. These reforms have seen El Salvador’s gross national product grow by 3.4 per cent over last year, its inflation rate drop to the second lowest in all Latin America, and its coffee and sugar harvest double. These achievements find parallels in the political sphere, where President Cristiani is trying to reassert civilian control over the military. As Bernard Aronson, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, points out, “He has weeded out more humanrights abusers from the senior ranks of the military in 19 months than his well-intentioned and courageous predecessor was able to do in five years.”