252 For la Patria suppression of life"; and Adm. Enrique Molina Pico acknowledged that the navy used "mistaken methods which caused unacceptable horrors even in the context of a cruel war." 44. This is a synopsis and paraphrase of parts of the "Informe presentado ante el Consejo de Seguridad Nacionál por el Comandante en Jefe del Ejército de Chile, General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte," March 27, 1991, reprinted from La Nation, March 28, 1991, and in Estudios Públkos 41 (Summer 1991), offprint. 45. "Bando No. 5 emitido por la Junta de Comandantes en Jefe de las FE AA. y Director General de Carabineros de Chile el 11 de Septiembre de 1973." 46. The armed forces make reference here to the "Acuerdo de la Cámara de Diputados sobre el grave quebrantamiento del orden constitucional y legal de la Republica," Santiago, August 23, 1973; and the "Pronunciamiento de la Corte Suprema sobre la quiebra de la juridicidad en Chile," May 7,1973. 47. This is a paraphrase of parts of the army's official response to the Rettig Commission's report. As with the Villegas defense of General Camps, this paraphrase does not do full justice to the army's document but seeks to capture the main thrusts and "spirit" of the response. "Informe presentado ante el Consejo de Seguridad Nacionál por el Comandante en Jefe del Ejército, General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte," March 27,1991. 48. Maj. Luis B. Olivares, Subversion politico y transition (Santiago: Estado Mayor General de Ejército, 1988). 49. E A. Hayek, Law, Legislation, and Liberty (Chicago; University of Chicago Press, 1979): 124. 50. Leigh Binford, The El Mozote Massacre (Tucson; University of Arizona Press, 1996): 3. 51. "La fuerza armada de El Salvador, Posición ante el informe de la Comisión de la Verdad," in "El Informe de la Comisión de la Verdad: Análisis, reflexiones y comentarios, San Salvador," Estudios CentroAmencanos 47 (April-May 1993): 484-86. 52. Gretchen Small and Dennis Small, El complot para aniquilar a las fuerzas armadas y a las naciones de lberoamérica, 2 vols. (Mexico: Ejército Mexicano, Secretaría de la Defensa Nacionál, 1994): l;xiv. 53. El complot (1994); 1:169-72. 54. Ibid.; 1:188. 55. Brig. Gen. Ivan Moacyr da Frota, commander of the Brazilian Air Force, "Las fuerzas armadas, El ultimo baluarte," O Estado (Säo Paulo), May 12,1993, reprinted in El complot (1994): 2:390-96. 56. Adm. Sergio Tasso Vasquez de Aquino, "Las fuerzas armadas de Brasil y la conyuntura nacionál," in El complot (1994): 2:402. 57. As this book was going to press, toward the end of 1998, General Augusto Pinochet was arrested in England, at the request of a Spanish judge, for possible extradition to Spain in a case regarding the death and torture of Spanish citizens during his dictatorship in Chile. And in Argentina, General Jorge Videla was arrested on charges regarding children of the "disappeared" who had been "adopted" by military families. These cases illustrate once again the political significance of international human rights treaties and the profound impact of "globalization" for the Latin American armed forces. Sö^rdi fty*^ C i\ - jo u 9 La Patria and Perestroika Toward the Twenty-first Century Hemispheric security partners, like dancing partners confronting unexpected music with a different rhythm, must confirm shared perceptions and review their complementary roles and agreements before trying out new dance steps. —Lt. Col. Richard Downes, USAF (ret.), 1995' The army that was born with la patria in May 1810 will finish its second century in a world whose uncertainty imposes unprecedented challenges on a society in a permanent process of change, demanding of its basic institutions systematic adaptation... . The army will more than fulfill [this mission] . . . always maintaining upright its traditions and the ethical values that are the foundations of the military profession. —Lt. Gen. Martin Balza, Argentina, 19951 Latin American militarylore tells the same story from Mexico to Chile: the armed forces created new patrias in nineteenth-century wars, then defended their sovereignty and national values until the end of the twentieth century. When la patria is threatened, the armed forces rise to the challenge. The true military leader has a "gift," or don de mando, a vocation for the sacred duty of leadership and command. In times of crisis this don can be transferred from strictly military to political salvation of la patria. La patria encapsulates all that the armed forces hold dear—family, religion, community, solidarity, territory, and honor. In a dangerous world, full of potential and actual threats (or SPOCs, using Argentine General Laifio's acronym),3 it must be defended against the machinations of politicians, the subversion of "exotic" movements and ideologies, and the errors of transitory governments. And in the 1990s it must be defended against the internationalism that threatens its sovereignty. Despite tireless efforts at nation-building, within each Latin American state certain social, cultural, regional, and ideological differences block a universally shared patriotic vision and impede national development. Militarylore attributes the failure to overcome these impediments to national development mainly to generations of nefarious partisan politics and to civilian neglect—of la patria and of military institutions. 253 254 For la Patria Military institutional doctrine from the 1880s to the 1990s wove antipolitical, antipartisan, and anticivilian threads into the fabric of military thinking. In part, this ethos was anti-Marxist, especially because of Marxism's appeal to internationalist (and therefore antinationalist and antipatriotic) values. This anti-Marxism and anticommunism repeatedly led to repression of anarchists, socialists, Communists, and so-called subversives from the beginning of the twentieth century. But military anti-Marxism was part of a broader emphasia, on nationalism, sovereignty, and anti-internationalism that linked the military institutions to the modern nation-state. While Latin American national security laws and doctrine preceded the Cold War, post-World War II versions of national security doctrine that inspired the draconian repression of socialists and Communists from the 1950s to the 1990s also emphasized traditional themes of military lore: the importance of strong governments, the directive role of the nation-state for social and economic development, and the connection between economic modernization, political order, and national security. These aspects of militarylore blended colonial traditions and legislation with the doctrines /of European military missions in Latin America from the 1870s to World War II / This concept of national security was associated with enhancing govern-I ment capacity aj^wirtwemforcmg sovereignty—both menaced by the linkages between'internal subversion and international political movements, i especially international communism after 1945. Threats to national security ; were threats to sovereignty, to autonomy, and to national independence, \ whether from internationalist doctrines, internal insurgencies, or U.S. hegemony. Neither Brazilian nor Peruvian versions of national security doctrine in the 1950s, and their adaptations elsewhere in the hemisphere, accepted U.S hegemony or a dependent role for their nations or their armed forces. Nowhere in Latin America did the armed forces willingly accept the substitution of U.S policy objectives for their own or willingly acquiesce in subordinating their own institutional and national interests to those of the United States. When guerrilla struggles broke out in the 1960s, the armed forces faced threats from self-declared revolutionary enemies. They accepted U.S. assistance and adapted U.S. training and doctrine to their own circumstances. But they sought to limit the "contamination" of this influence to the greatest extent possible, and they recognized that U.S. interests often diverged from their own. Latin American military institutions quietly resisted, as best they could, inconvenient "contributions" of U.S. advisers and objectionable policy constraints imposed by Washington. s Not surprisingly, as the armed forces battled revolutionary insurgencies (as they had deployed against workers' organizations and strikes since the nineteenth century), Marxists and other analysts of military political behavior identified the military as the armed instruments of certain class interests—first of the landowners,, then of industrial, financial, and commercial elites, land then of the "middle class."4 This class conflict-based interpretation oTt'he"military's political role is~co~nsistent with theories of politics and social change that emphasize the dependent and instrumental functions of military institutions and military elites. An updated and more complex version of this approach attributes coups and repressive military «governments to linkages between transnational capital, U.S. foreign policy, domestic capital, and the armed La Patria and Perestroika 255 forces.5 Others attribute the iterated coups in Latin America to deep cultural fand institutional contradictions between democracy, modernization, and the ion's inherited Hispanp-Catholic values and institutions. According to this w, political democracy and more egalitarian societies are incompatible with_ Hispanic tradition. Whenever popular demands become too radical or eatening, the military restores political equilibrium—as it has in Spain and the Spanish American colonies since the 1780s. The class-conflict and culturally based explanations of military behavior overlap. In both, the military is seen primarily as an instrument that exercises an assigned role as^enfbrce?^ for the politically dominant groups. After World War II,still otherspomtědto-iheinflu-el^^ and the impact of military assistance programs in supporting coups and military governments.6 Again, the Latin American military was doing the bidding of others—in this version, acting as instruments of U.S. Cold War policies and defending the interests of transnational corporations. A variation on this explanation characterizes many of the region's armed forces as merely U.S. surrogates (and fails to identify the corporate, institutional, and political reasons for the military's repression of insurgencies while using U.S. assistance and public rationale to carry qut-theirliwrrobj^ct^ves). __ In the mid-1960s,- Guillermo O'DonnelLVinfluential work on "bureaucratic-authoritarian" rggÍiTi&q..hyppŕhgRÍawí-ŤTíat frhŕ» 1 QfiO^í rniipg fhaŕJj^H ťn rnjljj-ary dictatorships in the more industrialized Latin American countries resulted from \ their inability to contain popular demands and new forms of social mobiliza- j tíón. An acute social crisis threatened society and the muitar^mäking'ťhe"armed / forces "theTast hope" and "also an organization which~had acquired technical v skill, training in 'social problems,' and sufficient internal unity to involve thern- _} selves directly and successfully on the socioeconomic battlefront."7 Others / emphasized the extent to which coups were precipitated by the military's perception that incumbent governments (or soon-to-take-office presidents, in the case of preemptive coups) threatened its institutional and professional interests.8 A more recent interpretation asserts that factions within the armed forces often engineer coups to secure dominance over military institutions, making them an instrument for resolving internal factional battles even when effected in the name of patriotic and salvational motives.9 —-^ All these explanations for coups and military rule, as well as more idiosyncratic ones (deposing a drunkard president, for example), are useful for understanding particular military decisions to "save la patria." All coups involve . personal decisions, factional behavior, immediate social, economic, and political circumstances, professional and institutional histories, national political structures and institutions, and international contexts. Depending on the level and detail of explanation sought, hundreds of potential explanations for coups, involving countless variables (whether "predispositional" or "triggering"), may be relevant. None of these explanations and variables applies to all coups, which occur for many reasons and under greatly differing circumstances. Social, economic, cultural, institutional, conjunctural, and personal variables contribute to military ousters of incumbent governments. Sometimes the interplay of these variables and the immediate motives for coups are fairly clear; at other times they are more confusing, even bizarre. In all cases they are embedded in a more 256 For la Patria enduring system of civil-military relations that routinely allows military influence and participation in policymaking. Explaining why coups d'etat occur in Latin American countries requires careful understanding of their political systems, since the coups are an integral part of political crisis resolution in most of the region. Understanding why a certain coup occurred requires the application of some theory of coup behavior to the immediate circumstances (the one in which General A ousted General B, for example, was the result of factional conflict within the armed forces), plus a detailed analysis of its idiosyncratic features {General A's faction had lost influence relative to General B's faction and sought to restore the balance). Most important, however, coups are a recurrent part of complex national systems of civil-military relations, more so in some countries than in others, but not the essence of civil-military relations or of the armed forces' influence and participation in politics and policymaking. Civil-military relations consist of complex cultural, structural, and behavioral interactions among civilian government agencies, diverse social groups (religious, labor, business, landowner), mass media, political parties, and military institutions. And the particular patterns of civil-military relations that develop within each nation-state are framed by international and transnational systems. Explaining different aspects of these relations in particular cases, at particular historical moments, thus requires reference to an array of variables that encompass the broad cultural, institutional, and behavioral influences that create the contingencies from which emerge momentary political outcomes. Which variables exert the most influence at a specific historical moment it is not possible to predict; but the fact that changes in certain variables have tended to induce military coups or other sorts of changes in civil-military relations is clear from the historical record. Military leaders and coup-makers often proclaim their revolutionary intentions, their determination to transform and thereby reconsecrate la patria. Coups have occurred not only to prevent change, to preempt the rise to power of certain parties or politicians, and to restore order but also to create new political regimes. This is seen clearly in the common use of such slogans as Patria nueva and Gobierno revolucionário de lasfuerzas armadas, or even the less common "People-Army-Third Force" proclaimed in the 1950s by Gustavo Rojas Pinilla in Colombia, the worker-army alliance of Argentina's Peronismo, and Bolivia's mid-1960s "peasant-military pact."10 Sometimes military governments have imposed their programs brutally, sometimes with restraint. They have responded to economic crisis, social unrest, political polarization, and public disorder. Military leaders have also toppled governments because of personal ambition, institutional malaise, and even "strikes" by enlisted personnel and noncommissioned officers (as in the "sergeants' movement" led by Fulgencio Batista in Cuba in 1933).!1 r ~ ~~~ ~ "——-—iy Underlying all these motives fordirect assumption of political power and also for the insistence on some partiop^tiwuiiL^iolLcyjna-k^ng^ndv^fftaial autonomy in certain defense and institutional matters is the military's belief in its supposed mystical connection to la patria and its historic mission as ultimate guardians. Whatever these officers did, whether seeking to defend the status quo or transform it, their action was justified publicly as political salva- La Patria and Perestroika 257 tion, a return of the warrior-priest to protect, cleanse, and redeem la patria. They called on their sacred images, historical imperatives, and constitutional duties—on all the elements of militarylore—to legitimate their political decisions and actions. Even when such evocation of national symbols and patriotic *• catechism was cynical, it was still an essential ritual for sanctifying the military's political role. Importantly, this political role (that is1, military guardianship) has been an integral element of Latin American constitutions and legislation since independence and is a premise widely shared by the general population and civilian political elites. Protected democracy and military guardianship evolved as part of Latin American political culture, with national variations in institutions and style. They were reinforced and further enhanced by the Cold War, the challenge of the Cuban Revolution and regional guerrilla movements, and several decades of counterinsurgency politics. And they were reaffirmed again by the transitions back to elected civilian governments and the "wave of democratization" from 1978 to 1993. Thus, militarylore was a quasi-religious, catechistic foundation for military political action that was partly shared by popular political culture and was (is) embedded in constitutions, law, political rhetoric, and political practices. Ritual language justified recurrent crusades against multifarious threats to la patria. It framed military self-perception, was broadly shared, and changed slowly. Its transmittal in military schools and academies joined generation after generation of officers in the "priesthood of la patria";12 it also pervaded civics textbooks for primary schools. In its national variations it outlasted in consistency and coherence all the major political ideologies and party programs proclaimed from the 1920s until the 1990s: indigenismo, social democracy, socialism, Marxism-Leninism, Aprismo, Peronismo, fascism, Christian democracy, Fidelismo, and many others. Militarylore informed a political subculture mythologizing and rationalizing the armed forces' role in society and national politics.13 Significantly, no modern political ideology or militarylore itself justified permanent military rule. The presumption always existed that eventually civilian government would be restored. While military institutions could be guardians of the national interests and paladins of la patria, they could never assert the historical and constitutional authority of a vanguard political party such as Cuba's Communist party, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and even a dominant revolutionary party such as Mexico's PRI. No legitimacy existed for permanent military government. Transition to civilian government was always a matter of circumstance and timing, even for the longest-lasting military regimes. Historical and constitutional definitions of popular sovereignty, "democracy," and representative government were as much a part of militarylore as was patriotism. Of course, "democracy's" many meanings and interpretations were so contradictory that even most officers also favored some form of it, usually preferring Rousseauism and other versions emphasizing a "general will" and common good {bien común) to that based on the more individualistic ideas of John Locke, John Stuart Mill, and other liberal writers. Constitutions and statutes adopted by military governments in Brazil, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, El Salvador, and Guatemala in the 1970s and 1980s left no doubt. Military- 258 , For la Patria imposed constitutions, decrees, and laws specified an eventual return to "democracy" and civilian rule while embedding new prerogatives for military institutions and legal limits on elected governments. Officers favored democracy with qualifications: "protected democracy," "limited democracy," "authoritarian democracy," or "true democracy."14 (But so did many civilian political leaders.) To achieve this outcome they took additional precautions before transition back to civilian regimes, such as new laws to regulate political parties, elections, and the civil service, and legal guarantees of military professional i autonomy..,.___.-— .----------------------_______ ...'While eventual transition to civilian government was always expected, the end of the Cold Waj;.andita.challenges were not. LafhvAmerican armed forces hacTffěquénfíy returned formal government authority to civilians in the twentieth century after episodes of military rule. The post-1978 transitions were not, in this sense, unfamiliar. But they had never before confronted the complex regional and global threats to their institutions and nations that were unleashed in the 1980s and 1990s.15 La Patria and the New World Disorder Militarylore and much of what the armed forces cherished were questioned with the end of the Cold War in the 1980s and 1990s. The disappearance of international communism as an internal threat, the international "democratization" fad, severe budget and debt crises, and pressures to reduce military expenditures forced the Latin American armed forces to retrench: to redefine their missions and to defend their political and economic prerogatives. Meanwhile, revolutions in communications, transportation, and military technology made traditional notions of sovereignty ever less viable—particularly in poor, less powerful, and less technologically advanced countries. Global production systems, investments, financial flows, and markets clouded the meaning of "national" enterprises. All nation-states were permeable and vulnerable as never before—to ideas, information, capital and commercial flows, immigration, disease, and environmental transformations. Global television and computer networks invaded sovereign spheres and imperiled national integrity. Nonstate actors, from bankers, multinational enterprises, nongovernmental organizations, and drug lords to religious prophets, sometimes exercised more influence than government officials in a postinternational world.16 Attacks on the concept of sovereignty and the increasing interdependence imposed by economic and technological globalization conflicted with military values and institutional interests. Disjunctures between the idea of sovereign authority and the reality of increasing international constraints on national policymaking made evident the further erosion of state autonomy. For most countries, sovereignty was a legal fiction and autonomy in making and implementing national policy an illusion. This was most obvious for.small, less powerful countries, but even larger, more industrialized countries such as Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico chafed at the globalizing supranationalist impositions of the new world disorder. With the 1990s reconfiguration of international relations there emerged nastier, less containable external and internal threats to national identity and sovereignty:17 ethnic^and religious conflicts, economic La Patria and Perestroika 259 sabotage, narcotics trafficking, private armies, weapons smuggling, money laundering, currency counterfeiting, political corruption, international terrorism, and sundry other dangers from nonstate actors. Nation-states (and the human race) faced security threats ranging from environmental deterioration to backyard scientists experimenting with biological and chemical agents. For the armed forces, whose professional identity and worldview were coterminous with the nation-state, these developments were appalling. Worse still, even where they had retained considerable political influence, they could not expect to be spared the budget cleaver that hacked resources from the state. They had maintained their roles as guardians of la patria, but "democracy" slowly whittled away other prerogatives and economic privileges. To this were added attacks on their morality, probity, and professionalism from international and national human rights activists still unwilling to forget the recent past and to acknowledge the salvation of Latin America from international communism. The Latin American militaries in the 1990s perceived themselves to be under siege. In response they sought to rejustify their historical missions and to identify new defense and security challenges that would make them even more indispensable. In particular, they focused on the multitudinous threats to sovereignty and national values—from traditional enemies and from more recent and exotic perils—the gamut of SPOCs identified by General Laiňo. As usual, they reaffirmed their role as the last bastion of defense of la patria. They would uphold its values, defend its long-term objectives, its resources and patrimony. Indeed, they would guarantee its very existence in the new world disorder. Taking seriously the implications of globalization and the communications revolution, most of the region's armed forces presented their visions of the military role in national development in the post-perestroika world on elaborate Internet Web sites, replete with national symbols, histories of their institutions, and glorified descriptions of their contributions to la patria. According to their views, the end of the Cold War and economic globalization did not mean the end of traditional military missions. To the contrary, the ultimate origin of warfare, human nature, remained the same; the sources of conflict within and among states were found in this immutable curse of humankind: The first thing that must be kept in mind is that the existence of the armed forces as an indispensable resource of societies that organize themselves to achieve the common good for their members is in the political nature of things (es de naturaleza politico). ... As long as situations of insecurity exist that affect directly or indirectly this objective, such as the severe poverty associated with critical levels of unemployment and external debt, corruption of the political and administrative systems, migration to seek ways to satisfy the necessities of life, drug production and trafficking, and violence ... the sovereign expression of the popular will requires the presence of armed forces.18 The confusing and violent reshaping of the international system seemed to confirm this military assessment. Nation-states proliferated in the 1980s and 1990s. Some states self-destructed. Age-old ethnic, linguistic, and religious cleavages resurfaced as the putative boundaries of new nations.19 Predictably, and paradoxically, these new nations asserted traditional sovereign authority in internal and external affairs. As interdependence in all domains intensified, 260 For la Patria the new states proclaimed their independence and autonomy on the model of post-1789 European nation-states. The myth of sovereignty prevailed. As in the past, its application resulted in bloodshed and mayhem. On every continent, subnationalists sought more political autonomy, if not outright independence. The resurgent ethnic, religious, cultural, agrarian, industrial, and regional conflicts compounded the legacies of the 1980s recession, the debt crisis, civil wars, and increased criminal violence. The armed forces sought to meet these threats to la patria and to their own institutional survival. REPUBLIC* DE COLOMBIA MINISTERIO DE DEFENSA NACIONÁL COMANDO GENERAL FUERZAS MILITARES DE COLOMBIA ■KMOrMUMr *M*rwucTV*A * vALomem FVHMMErrrAima ■momxrxffoa MmsrrructOHAtzs * MCMirMMH imfOMMA 1IKB ® EN NÜESTRO RESUMEN INFORMATTVO: A PESAR DE LA ARREME71DA QUERILLERA. *UTOfffMDgS ASEGURARON ELECCIONES ^§P1WBMM<Ü» ACTÜAUZADA El Ol de Junto de 1998 Escribonos i intprne^wcefnumiico Figure 9-1. Colombian Ministry of Defense Web site, 19^8. La Patria and Perestroika 261 Supranational Military Missions and National Sovereignty One sign of the times was the ever more frequent deployment of supranational peacemaking and peacekeeping forces to trouble spots by the United Nations and regional security regimes, such as the Organization of American States/ Rio Treaty alliance. Military, political, electoral, and humanitarian intervention occurred around the globe.20 Supranational observer delegations and the supervision of elections and plebiscites also became more common. Elections, the supposed expressions of popular sovereignty within various countries, came to resemble more those in the Caribbean and Central America from 1900 to the 1930s (supervised now by the United Nations rather than by the U.S. Marine Corps). Peacemaking and peacekeeping missions by multilateral forces belied claims of sovereignty, as did renewed U.S. unilateralism. Would UN or regional armed forces impose environmental and human rights decisions on Latin American countries? Would foreign troops supervise trials by international tribunals of military officers charged with "crimes against humanity" (as in the former Yugoslavia)? Would Washington disregard territorial sovereignty (as it did in Mexico and Panama) to apprehend persons charged with crimes in the United States? Was U.S. unilateral military intervention in Panama a portent of the consequences of the end of the Cold War for Latin America? Could Latin Americans ignore the possibility that the United States, the OAS, and the United Nations would impose settlements in border disputes and internal political matters?21 Of course, no important military and economic powers allowed such missions. U.S., British, German, Japanese, Chinese, and Russian sovereignty were Comando Conjunto de las Fuerzas Armadas Minister» de Defense Nacionál Quito, Ecuador. 1998 @ Escr[bar)os -~ Darechos Reservatio» Figure 9-2. Joint Command, Ecuadorian Armed Forces Web site, 1998. 262 For la Patria one thing; Haitian, Somalian, Angolan, Nicaraguan, and Salvadoran sovereignty were quite something else. What did the new world disorder imply for the various regional armed forces and their nations' sovereignty? While Latin America faced fewer ethnic, linguistic, and religious demands for reconfiguring or dividing existing countries than did other regions, efforts by indigenous peoples (and their international supporters) to secure more political and cultural autonomy nonetheless challenged Brazil, the Andean na- CENTRO DE ADIESTRAMIENTO Y OPERACIONES ESPECULES "KAIBIL" BOSQUEJO HISTORICO Con el propóuto de Iacrementar la mbtics de combate, compaieriamo, iaiciattva, agretividad, lealtad y dúdpUaa ea lo* miembraa del Ejérctto, el 5 de diriembre de 1974, he creed« la "ESCUELA DE COMANDOS". Inlrialmeate se le coaociä eoao "ESCUELA DE COMANDOS" kasta que d 5 de mano de 1975, el leior Minntro de la Defnaa NaefaMwl, ordeaó qae el «ombre de dtcha Eacuela faera el de "KAIBIL". Elnovbre "KAIBIL" lecorreepondiaa an Rey del fanperio Mam, qalea gracias a sa astacia nuaca pndo ser eaptarado por las faenas »vasor» coaqotaladorai Eapaftoha de Pedro de Alvarado, KAIBIL BALAM en coasMendo coao an verdadero ettratega y rectbfa coasattaa de cadqaei de otraa tribus. El 12 de enero de 1989, ike el traabdo de la Escnda de AdteatramieBto y Operaciones Eipeeialea "Kalbil", de las fincat deoomlaadaa El lafknio y La Potvora en el maakipio de Melcaor de Mcacoa, Pctea, a U> anttgaas fautalaeioaM de b Zaaa MiKtar No. 23, cob aede ea Poptán, Petto. "KAIBIL" signifies: HOMBRE ESTRATEGA, EL QUE TfENE LA FVERZA ¥ LA ASTVCIA DE DOS T1GRES. Figure 9-3. Guatemalan Special Forces, Kaibil Web site, 1998. La Patria and Perestroika 263 tions, and parts of Central America.22 Even Mexico confronted rebellious ethnic insurgents in the 1990s. Other aspects of the new world disorder directly impinged on the Latin American nation-state: the reach of drug lords and narco-terrorism; the pressures to adhere to regional and global environmental treaties, trade agreements, and human rights standards; unregulated international migration (and extensive internal migration as a result of the economic dislocations induced by neoliberal reforms); the penetration of multinational capital, technology, information systems and mass media, and the challenges of innovation in military doctrine and technology. For the armed forces, the external and internal attacks on the concept of sovereignty and traditional patriotism threatened their basic purpose, their razón de ser, while economic and budget crises brought demands for force reductions and mission redefinition.23 Defense spending in the region declined from 3.7 percent to 1.6 percent of gross national product from 1987 to 1992. Latin America and the Caribbean had the lowest military budgets and fewest uniformed personnel per capita of any world region.24 Military salaries declined generally, although periodic readjustments were obtained through behind-the-scenes and public discussion, particularly in Chile, Brazil, and Ecuador. More and more military personnel, struggling to maintain the dignity that they associated with their service to la patria, took second and third jobs driving taxis, waiting on tables in restaurants, or operating small businesses in the informal economic sector. Officers' spouses entered technical and professional occupations, sometimes earning more than majors and colonels. The welcome addition to family income thus also complicated military careers and family life when duty assignments took officers to provincial garrisons and their spouses remained behind. Social modernization, changing gender roles, the job market, and economic necessity also threatened traditional military values at the brink of the twenty-first century. If la patria began with the family, did transformation of the family (especially military families) mean reimagining la patria? Were feminism and the women's organizations that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s also a "security threat"? The answer, at least for some officers, was yes, for they believed that feminist movements threatened the very foundations of la patria: the idealized nuclear family. And the same held for abortion, divorce, and excessive birth control. Many countries gradually incorporated women into the armed forces in the 1970s and 1980s in conflict with fundamental precepts of militarylore. Demands for gender democratization also required modifying historic versions of la patria, but such changes were not easily digested. Even as social and economic change menaced la patria and its traditional values, guerrillas, terrorists, drug-lord armies, and organized crime syndicates bloodied the region. Headlines from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Colombia, and Brazil announced surging rates of violent crimes and waves of economically motivated kidnapping. Governments could not maintain law and order. Did "democracy" imply personal insecurity and pervasive criminal violence? Some military personnel derided civilian regimes for their complacency, while others contributed to the violence through death squads, kidnapping rings, smuggling, collaboration with drug producers and traffickers, and 264 For la Patria the most varied sorts of corruption. Naturally, such activities affected some military institutions more than others, but nowhere in Latin America were the armed forces completely immune from these nefarious influences. Still, the armed forces' institutional myths and credos insisted that they protect la patria from traditional threats as well from such new afflictions, just as they had defended and conserved it for almost two centuries.Jn the 1980s and 1990s they organized more specialized, highly trained antiterrorist, antinarcotics, and intelligence units. After a disastrous 1985 attack on the Palace of Justice in Bogota, occupied by members of the M-19 politico-guerrilla movement, Colombia created the Fuerzas Especiales Antiterroristas Urbanas (AFEAU).25 A multiservice force, its missions ranged from hostage rescue and security for diplomats to attacks on targeted drug lords.26 Guatemala's elite counterinsurgency force, the Kaibiles, posted signs at their training base: "If I advance, follow me; if I stop, grab me; if I retreat, kill me."27 And in Mexico the Grupo Antiterrorista (GAT) combined Federal Judicial Police and army personnel "to perform a range of missions dealing with hostage-taking, terrorist and guerrilla violence and associated problems. . . . GAT members are also trained to infiltrate subversive or guerrilla groups such as the Revolutionary Workers Party and the Zapatista Liberation Army. ... In a recent operation, elements of GAT were thought to be deployed to the Mexican states of Guerrero, Michoacán, Jalisco, and Chiapas."28 In the past such specialized units played central roles in coup-making and military political initiatives in Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, and Guatemala. The great autonomy that they required for intelligence gathering and "black" operations made subordination to civilian control and the rule of law unlikely. The armed forces had learned from Jose de San Martin that everything was licit when la patria was threatened; it could not be allowed to perish. They had learned from Simon Bolivar that necessity recognizes no law. In the 1990s they were forced to ask again: What patria, and what necessity? How were they to fulfill their historic mission and keep their pact with la patria as they entered the twenty-first century? As in the past, some of the answers to these questions depended on changes in international politics and on U.S. hemispheric security policy, some on regional and domestic politics and political leadership in Latin America. The U.S. Hemispheric Security Agenda in the 1990s With the Sandinistas' electoral defeat in 1990 in Nicaragua, and the implosion of the Soviet Union after 1991, Washington's Latin American policy lost its Cold War rationale. Pieces of old policies and programs survived: a hard line against Fidel Castro's Cuban government, new initiatives to "promote democracy" concocted in the State Department and the Department of Defense, and a general return to the traditional focus on limiting European and other non-American influence in "our" hemisphere.29 Other programs lost favor, such as the Inter-American Foundation's focus on grass-roots development and nongovernmental organizations. Overall, U.S. Latin American policy floundered because of underfinancing, excessive rhetoric, poor coordination among many government agencies, and minimal pragmatic initiatives. It returned to La Patria and Perestroika 265 unilateralism, moral condescension, and a propensity to condition aid and favorable commercial treatment on compliance with declared U.S. objectives such as antinarcotics programs, trade liberalization, market-oriented economic reforms, and "democratization."30 Latin America took a back seat to European and Asian concerns, with special exceptions made for policies toward Mexico and Cuba. In the latter case, policymakers and military strategists speculated on the implications for the United States and the hemisphere of an eventual departure of Castro as head of the Havana government. Scenarios ranging from the assassination of Fidel and Raul Castro by dissident military officers to Fidel's liberalization of Cuban politics and negotiations for his "possible retirement in exile" were published in U.S. military journals.31 The lengthy list of possible activities in which the U.S. Army might participate after a Cuban political collapse could hardly have reassured Cuban nationalists (even anti-Fidelista nationalists) about the island's political future: reception, control, and processing of refugees; ecological cleanup; public health management; security of key installations, notably former military bases; prison management and inventory; control and recovery of small arms; inventory and disposition of major weapons systems; mapping support; formation or reformation of public forces; restoration of domestic order and police operations; establishment and enforcement of interim landlord-tenant rules; regularization of real property dispositions; provision of basic services; replacement of infrastructure; protection of U.S. citizens; resistance to criminal organizing (probable counterdrug emphasis); control of counterfeiting; self-protection security operations; temporary reinforcement of Guantánamo Bay's perimeter; peacekeeping, peace enforcement, conflict resolution, or war termination; counterguerrilla operations; registration of graves.32 While this scenario was not the official view of the U.S. Army, its publication in Militari/ Review in 1994 gave new meaning to déjä vu. What could Latin American military readers of this article imagine? Did the Clinton administration intend to create a U.S.-led peacemaking and peacekeeping force to impose its own version of democracy on Cuba? Would it do the same elsewhere? Proposals in military publications for the creation of a new U.S. military force, specially trained, equipped, and solely dedicated to "expeditionary police service," added to the apprehension.33 Meanwhile, public and congressional support in the United States for military assistance to Latin America waned. U.S. and Latin American officers and key civilians struggled to secure continuing funding for the main inter-American military institutions: the Inter-American Defense Board; Inter-American Defense College (Fort McNair); Inter-American Air Forces Academy (Lackland Air Force Base); and the Naval Small Craft and Technical Training School (Panama). Reduced budgets also affected training and professional interchange programs at facilities such as the School of the Americas (Fort Benning), which, though with fewer instructors after 1993, still survived as a locus for officer-to-officer contacts despite critical journalism, revelations regarding a counterinsurgency manual that taught torture techniques to Latin American military personnel, and films labelling it a "school for dictators."34 The School of the Americas now included a mandatory course on human i rights and required instructors to be certified in this area. Supposedly, Latin 266 For la Patria American officers would return home and introduce such courses in their military curricula. The School also sought to respond to the new world disorder, "preparing the armed forces to confront the conditions of the post-Soviet world."35 An expanded International Military Education and Training program (E-IMET) was partly justified by programs promoting greater respect for democracy and for civilian control of the military. These programs included civilians in courses related to defense and military matters. In theory, their inclusion would make civilian defense ministries and legislatures more able to communicate with, and exercise informed control over, the military. ' Central to U.S. hemispheric defense and security policy after 1989 was a redefinition of roles for the Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) and for the military more generally, and also for Caribbean operations in a world without a Soviet threat.36 This same challenge faced the Latin American armed forces, each in the unique way required by political and security circumstances in their own countries.37 In December 1994 the leaders of every Western Hemisphere government except Cuba met in Miami for the Summit of the Americas. The United States claimed that this meeting was "impressive testimony to the progress of democracy in the region, bringing together 34 countries with democratically elected leaders."38 Washington's policymakers were convinced that democratization would be assisted by promoting free trade, opening markets, encouraging private investment, and downsizing the Latin American states Ironically, this approach sounded remarkably similar to President Dwight D Eisenhower's policies for Latin America during the intensely Cold War 1950s.39 Confusing democracy with capitalism, neoliberal economics with eternal economic truths, and the "end of history" with the global uncertainty and disorder after 1989 might appeal to U.S. policymakers, but it would not reassure many Latin American military officers and their civilian allies.40 Once again they saw the United States divert its attention and resources to other regions while peddling rhetoric on democracy and the advantages of market economies and capitalism to its southern neighbors.41 If more liberal regimes promised overall economic growth and quicker modernization, they also brought unemployment, hunger, and displacement for millions in the short term. Poverty, internal migration, social dislocation, and increased concentration of income and wealth were juxtaposed to the return of electoral democracy. Many of the socioeconomic conditions that made the Cuban Revolution a hopeful alternative for millions in the 1960s (and that were to be improved with the Alliance for Progress) persisted. The post-1964 military regimes, defeat of most guerrilla movements, and implosion of communism had killed the Utopian dream of socialist revolution—but had not overcome the socioeconomic and political origins of discontent. Indeed, in the 1980s and 1990s misery and despair increased in much of the hemisphere. What greater threat to la patria could exist? In mid-1995 the Defense Ministerial of the Americas, "the first-ever gathering of the hemisphere's civilian and military leaders," reached a consensus agreement (at least according to William J. Perry, U.S. Secretary of Defense); "The bedrock foundation for our approach to the Americas is a shared commitment to democracy, the rule of law, conflict resolution, defense transparency, and mutual cooperation. To make this vision real, our vital security La Patria and Perestroika 267 interests must be protected through diplomacy, peacetime engagement, rapid response capabilities, and close defense cooperation with our friends and allies in the region."*2 In September 1995 the Department of Defense (DoD) released United States Security Strategy for the Americas, which defined the "strategic challenge for the United States in its neighborhood."43 The report proclaimed that democracy, peace, and prosperity in the region are the best guarantees of U.S. national security. DoD's regional strategy is to use the defense assets at its disposal to promote these goals."44 It also identified three "threats to democracy, peace, and prosperity": 1) internal conflicts (such as guerrilla movements in Colombia, Peru, Guatemala, and Mexico); 2) border disputes (such as the brief Ecuador-Peru War in 1995); and 3) transnational threats (drug trafficking and terrorism). This statement was followed by two "opportunities for advancing global peace and security": 1) arms control (the Treaty of Tlatelolco on nuclear devices, the Mendoza Accord in which Chile, Argentina, and Brazil agreed to halt development, production, and purchase of biological and chemical weapons, and the 1992 OAS General Assembly resolution that endorsed various UN arms control and antiproliferation agreements); and 2) international peacekeeping. Latin American Armed Forces and International Peacekeeping While the DoD vision of regional security was only partly shared by Latin American military leaders, the new international disorder presented numerous "opportunities" for international peacemaking and peacekeeping operations. In June 1995, twenty American countries supported fifteen of the sixteen peace operations of the United Nations, contributing over 9,000 military and police personnel in missions from the former Yugoslavia to India, Pakistan, the Western Sahara, Angola, and Haiti. Some Latin American armed forces had limited experience in international peacekeeping efforts as military observers with the UN Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO, 1948) in Lebanon and the India-Pakistan observer mission (1949). Colombia sent troops to Korea (1953-54); Brazil and Colombia, to the first UN Emergency Force (UNEF I) in the Suez (1956); Argentine pilots went to the Congo (1960); and Peru sent personnel to the Golan Heights (1974).45 In the 1990s, Latin American participation in peacekeeping missions mushroomed. The number of Latin American countries deploying personnel in peacekeeping and observer missions increased from 1994 to 1997, as did the number of personnel and the variety of missions. Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil played a particularly active role in such missions. U.S. policymakers viewed these developments as encouraging. Latin American armed forces were participating in multilateral peacekeeping operations, upgrading their technical and professional skills, and cooperating with other military units in the region and with their international counterparts. All this activity would keep them out of domestic politics, serve as confidence-building measures with officers from neighboring countries in some cases, and commit them further to economic development and democracy.46 It might even make young officers more cosmopolitan, less nationalistic, and more resistant to calls for military "salvation" via coup in times of crisis. 268 For la Patria Table 9-1. Latin American Participation in UN Missions, September 1994 (including Troops, Military Observers, and Civilian Police)_________________________----------------------------- UN Mission Country [number of personnel) UN Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) UN Peacekeeping Forces in Cyprus (UNFICYP) UN Angola Verification Mission (UNAVEM II) UN Iraq-Kuwait Observer Mission (UNIKOM) UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINUliSO) UN Observer Mission in El Salvador {ONUSAL) UN Protection FoTce in former Yugoslavia (UNPROFOR) UN Mission in Mozambique (ONUMOZ) UN Observer Mission in Liberia (UNOM1L) UN Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR) UN Mission in Haiti (UNOMIH) UN Mission in Georgia (former Soviet Union) (UNOMIG)_________ Argentina (6), Chile (3) Chile (3), Uruguay (3) Argentina (391) Argentina (5), Brazil (24) Argentina (56), Uruguay (6), Venezuela (2) Argentina (7), Honduras (16), Uruguay (19), Venezuela (8) Argentina (2), Brazil (43), Chile (15), Colombia (23), Mexico (29), Venezuela (3) Argentina (890), Brazil (43), Colombia (12), Venezuela (3) Argentina (48), Bolivia (10), Brazil (264), Uruguay (874) Uruguay (16) Uruguay (27) Guatemala (2) Uruguay (1) Source: UN Military Staff Committee, September 30, 1994/ Officers recognized some of the benefits of such missions, especially the opportunity to modernize doctrine, tactics, logistical capabilities, and weapons systems, and to collaborate with officers from around the world in warlike operations.48 Argentine General Carlos Maria Zabala, former UN sector commander in Croatia, noted many advantages of peacekeeping for his nation's army: "On a professional level, it is an occasion to operate in a complex operational environment. You have the opportunity to work with other armies and appreciate their capabilities as well as your own. It provides firsthand knowledge of the effects of war, allowing our troops to appreciate the importance of the UN and its peace operations. On a personal level, it lends opportunity for La Patria and Perestroika 269 travel to foreign locations and exposure to other cultures and customs. Additionally, it allows the troops to feel as representatives of their country in an important mission abroad."49 In some cases, the United States facilitated weapons and materiel transfers to support Latin American peacekeeping, including sending surplus C-130 transport planes to Argentina and Uruguay, frigates to the Argentine navy, and helicopters and spare parts to Chile to support its role in Kuwait during the 1990 Persian Gulf War.50 While these missions enhanced the experience and international prestige of Latin American armed forces, more fundamental questions remained regarding their domestic political role and that of their nations in the post-Cold War world. In these matters, much of the U.S. security agenda for the hemisphere was viewed with concern by Latin American officers. Latin American Security Agendas and Civil-Military Relations As always, the diversity of Latin American politics and military institutions makes it difficult to generalize about a shared security agenda in the late 1990s and beyond. Common concerns existed; each country also had a unique national security and defense agenda, and the armed forces confronted political conjunctures bequeathed by institutional histories and by the last decades of debt crisis and the end of the Cold War. In some cases, such as Argentina and El Salvador, the armed forces' political influence declined. In other cases, such as Mexico, Cuba, Ecuador, and Chile, their influence increased or remained very strong. Nowhere, however, did the armed forces' influence in politics evaporate. Nowhere could their subordination to civilian authority be taken for granted. Overall, the performance of elected governments in the 1980s and 1990s did little to erase the military's historical conviction that political parties and elected politicians were corrupt, venal, and lacking in patriotism. International circumstances, particularly the apparent consensus on "democracy" (or at least on the desirability of elected governments), and the lack of internal support for renewed military government, kept the armed forces from direct intervention. Nevertheless, elected governments in the region were far from universally proving their probity, efficacy, or patriotism. In many cases they ruled by default rather than from deep public support for elections and democratic norms. Cynicism toward legislatures, courts, and public administration augured poorly for more than an instrumental commitment to democratic procedures and governance. The weakness and inefficacy of civilian governmental institutions, political parties, and nongovernmental organizations in most of Latin America remained an Achilles' heel for efforts to consolidate democracy. Officers were left in a quandary. They neither regarded the moment propitious for direct intervention, nor favored a return to the presidential palace and the burden of administration. In any case, for professional, institutional, and political reasons, they generally preferred elected civilian governments. Yet they desired more material and symbolic support as well as greater commitment to military institutions, to the positive redefinition of missions and doctrine for the next century, and to modernization, professionalization, 270 For la Patria improved status, and prestige. They wanted defense and security issues to be treated seriously by competent policymakers. How were they to wrest these commitments and resources away from the weak, economically hard-pressed elected governments that dotted the hemisphere in the mid-1990s? How could they create the political conditions to encourage legislative support for the military wish list? Almost no Latin American legislators lobbied for defense expenditures to appeal to the electorate's economic interests (as occurred in the United States, where the defense industry had constituents in almost every congressional district). How could they contend for scarce resources against the pent-up demands for social services, investment in infrastructure, and more politically attractive programs? What could they legitimately stake out as national defense and security objectives? How could they contribute to national development? And how could they avoid the pitfalls of the U.S. hemispheric security agenda that sought to make them gendarmes, road builders, and international peacekeepers rather than truly professional military officers? Despite their diversity, the Latin American armed forces shared these concerns at the end of the twentieth century. They also had a common, if implicit, security and national defense agenda that involved several related policy priorities.51 First, maintaining national sovereignty," "their most traditional and legitimate role, in the new world disorder preoccupied Latin American military leaders. Attacks on sovereignty and national territory revalidated the need for professional, modern military establishments. Budget constraints and civilian intrusion into defense policymaking threatened the armed forces' ability to plan, organize, and implement military modernization. Thus, the post-Cold War milieu both justified their claims on resources for national defense and made it more difficult for them to obtain them. New threats to sovereignty, both internal and external, exacerbated this frustrating paradox in most of Latin America. The Brazilian armed forces' security planning in the 1990s was typical in its concern for sovereignty, border defense, internal security, countersubversion, internal social and economic development, and inclusion of the military in policymaking and implementation. An important statement on the role of sovereignty in national security thinking in the 1990s was published by Brazil's Colonels Alvaro de Souza Pinhe^ro-and Päúld"Cé^á71^ir^ncrä""cl?-Azevedo.51 Significantly, they emphasizöd^threats to their nation's sovereignty.irom "international greed and attempts to mterfertuH the Brazilian-Amazon area."53 • The Environmental Defense Fund and the National Wildlife Federation have pressed the Inter-American Development Bank to provide protection for the rain forest and the Indians. In December 1987 the Bank suspended the U.S. $58.5 million project loan because Brazil's Federal Government "had failed to create institutions to prevent unchecked devastation of the forest and the overrunning of Indian lands." • In 1989 a subsidiary of Japan's Mitsubishi Corporation offered to buy Brazil's U.S. $115 billion foreign debt in exchange for mining rights over Amazon gold fields. Then-president Jose Sarney said that "Brazil's sovereignty cannot be swapped for anything." La Patria and Perestroika 272 • U.S. President George Bush, influenced by environmentalists, prevented Japan from financing construction of a road linking Brazil and Peru—the first road from the Pacific into the Amazon. • French President Francois Mitterrand stressed a variety of social colonialist ideas, which he defended at the 1991 Conference on Ecology at the Hague. He urged the formation of a supranational body to evaluate the behavior of governments on environmental matters and raised the principle of devoir ďingérence (duty to intervene). The two colonels concluded, with wicked understatement: "Such statements suggest that international designs on the Amazon could directly affect Brazilian sovereignty."54 To counter such threats, the Brazilian armed forces took an active role in expanding military installations in the Amazon and in COI2^'^l^t£3nsborchir smuggling, drug trafficking, illegal mining, and guerrííla^per^tirms^on the Colombian and Venezuelan borders. They also redefinedtheir mission, in accordance with" the new constitution, to meet the challenges of the 1990s: 1) training men for jungle warfare (including upgrading the Jungle Warfare Training Center [CIGS] created in 1964, which also trains personnel from other Latin American countries, Portugal, and the United States); 2) operating where needed to safeguard Brazilian sovereignty and the national patrimony; 3) exercising surveillance of border areas; 4) establishing new settlements with civilian populations around remote military bases; 5) promoting education in all frontier units through high school; 6) providing health care to civilians and military personnel (80 to 85 percent of health care by military personnel was to civilians in the mid-1990s); and 7) improving transport throughout the Amazon. The Brazilian armed forces' focus on the Amazon had parallel expressions of concern over "internal frontiers," countering paramilitary, insurgent, and guerrilla forces and promoting socioeconomic development in Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Chile. Such concerns reemerged as part of the armed forces' efforts to clarify and reaffirm their importance to la patria after perestroika. Nation-building, development, "democracy," and protection of sovereignty all gave familiar rationales for conserving and protecting la patria.55 Second, every military establishment was primarily preoccupied with national geopolitical objectives, strategy, and doctrine as well as with the relationship of the armed forces to politics and development. Military leaders were absorbed with securing resources and respect for their institutions. They wished to conserve as many of their traditional prerogatives as possible without appearing openly to oppose democratization.56 In any case they did not associate democratization with any erosion of professional autonomy or with the elimi-;v nation of their historical and constitutional mission to defend la patria. This gave priority to traditional internal security, law and order, external defense, nation-building, and economic development missions. Possible threats from neighboring states remained a focus of military exercises, war games, and con-■'. tingency planning in most of the hemisphere—although to these were added 272 , For la Patria numerous multilateral exercises involving "military operations other than war/' such as refugee evacuation, disaster relief, hostage rescue, urban insurgency, and peacekeeping. To these missions the armed forces cautiously and selectively added from the agenda proposed by the United States. Most were particularly reticent to identify their institutions fully with the drug eradication and interdiction programs that alienated local populations and corrupted the Latin American armed forces. In contrast, many of the other "military operations other than war" incorporated into U.S. defense doctrine and taught at the School of the Americas in the mid-1990s coincided ^th the traditional subsidiary rrussicms.j^.thfiXatin Americarimilitary.JDisaster relief, public health services in remote areas, mapping and technical education, nation-building, and even international peace- \ keeping were part of the armed forces' historical experience. ~' -Third, military leaders everywhere accepted some sort of developmentalist mission as a supplementary task, ranging from road building and communications to more exotic and comprehensive regional development projects as in Brazil, Ecuador, and Chile. Nowhere did officers accept economic development as their primary mission, although they readily agreed, as in the past, that poverty, despair, and backward economies threatened national security. They recognized the utility (and ambiguity) of the new U.S. doctrine introduced in the Army manual FM 100-5, Operations, regarding "military operations other than war" (MOOTW). Ironically, while this might be a new focus for U.S. officers, the Latin American officers at the School of the Americas found little that was innovative in such a doctrine. They fought few wars; most of their operations— from mapping, building roads and airports, maintaining internal order, break- I ing strikes, managing public enterprises, and operating internal political intelligence networks to occasionally ousting governments—had been "other ., than war" for most of the twentieth century. *---------------------~~ Why riot add "supporting democracy and promoting human rights" to the list? A Honduran general wrote in 1993: "The armed forces of this country, in addition to fulfilling their fundamental missions, must assume a new role: reinforcing the success of the process of democratization and supporting respect for human rights; supporting and stimulating economic development; impeding drug trafficking; protecting the environment to assure rational use of natu- ) ral resources; actively joining in the Central American peace process; developing antiterrorist capabilities; and preventing a cholera epidemic."57 Similarly, the Argentine Gendarmeria commander, Juan Obdulio Sainz commented in 1994 that in deciding the numbers and composition of Latin America's armed forces, potential sources of regional and national instability had to be considered: "economic insecurity, the result of underdevelopment, of lack of productive capacity, of unjust social structures, of regressive distribution of income and lack of minimal subsistence conditions for much of the population; social insecurity, the result of unemployment and hunger, of the increase in crime and the absence of opportunity; political insecurity, that provokes frustration and grave social tensions that permanently threaten social peace."59 To prepare the Latin American armed forces for the post-Cold War era, Sainz urged more emphasis on professional education, improved promotion and specialization procedures to ensure a lean and efficient officer corps, technological modernization with La Patria and Perestroika 273 special attention to interservice operations and rapid deployment capabilities., and more flexible, collaborative, and decentralized leadership. In short, the armed forces needed to modernize and fully participate in national development—hardly a new theme for the region's military leaders. According to this view, in many "operations other than war," the Latin American armed forces were still the vertebrae of la patria. They retained their external defense mission, contributed to internal security and development, and gained international prestige in peacemaking and peacekeeping missions around the globe. While some officers resisted these latter roles as diversions from their principal tasks, most "operations other than war" were as compatible with the Spanish Bourbon reforms of the 1780s as with the fads of "development" and "democratization" of the 1990s. Fourth, despite the acceptance of subsidiary missions and the reluctant \ genuflection to "democracy" and human rights, none of the Latin American military establishments wished to be converted into quasi-police forces focused primarily on drug-eradication and -interdiction programs, immigration control, and environmental issues. The antidrug mission was particularly objectionable (as it was to many U.S. officers): it diverted professionals from conventional military tasks, corrupted military institutions and personnel, and turned officers into policemen. U.S.-Latin American multiagency antidrug programs involving the region's military forces had negligible success from 1989 until the mid-1990s. Fancifully named operations such as Green Sweep, Green Merchant, Ghost Dancer, Ghost Zone, Grizzly, Wipeout, Badge, and Blast Furnace did almost nothing to reduce the supply of drugs reaching the United States while increasing levels of narco-terrorism, peasant resentment, corruption, and government frustration in Mexico, most of Central America, Colombia, Bolivia, and Peru. In testimony before the U.S. Congress in March 1995, SOUTHCOM's commander, General Barry R. McCaffrey, stated that in Bolivia "[coca leaf] cultivation has also increased to record levels despite U.S.-funded eradication programs."59 Occasional "misunderstandings" between U.S. law enforcement and military teams and Latin American military units and police even led to violence. "Accidental" shootdowns of U.S. aircraft and the use for drug trafficking by Latin American military personnel of aircraft supplied to counter drug trafficking added to the nightmare.60 Officers recognized the security threat represented by the narco-terrorists. Some accepted fighting the drug industry as a legitimate task if the police and other security agencies could not contain threats to government authority and public order. Moreover, given changing U.S. priorities, antidrug operations financed training, materiel, and weapons acquisitions. They generally believed, however, that controlling the demand for drugs in the United States and Europe would be more effective than the militarized supply-suppression policies that bloodied their nations and cost thempopular support. Why should Bolivian, Peruvian, and Guatemalan troops confront thousands of peasant producers of coca leaf and poppies? Protecting U.S. and European consumers seemed a poor excuse for the enmity gained in eradication programs. Perhaps pursuit of processors and traffickers made more sense. But wasn't this essentially a police function? 274 For la Patria The political and professional ramifications of collaborating with the Undeclared war on drugs were frequently negative for Latin American mihtary institutions. Some argued, referring to the prohibition of alcohol m the United States that decriminalizing consumption would so reduce the price of drugs that the power and influence of the drug lords would be destroyed. Instead, the huge profits to be reaped in the international drug trade guaranteed that the traffickers and their sometimes guerrilla allies had larger budgets than most national armies- Such conditions brought to mind General Alvaro Obregón s cynical remark during the Mexican Revolution: "No general can resist a cannonade of pesos." It also angered Latin American military officers who were expected to protect their nations with decreasing budgetary resources and at the same time protect U.S. drug consumers from themselves. Fifth for these officers, "democracy" and "human rights' remained ambiguous 'terms-more instrumental rhetoric imposed by the United States and its temporary Latin American civilian allies than inviolable norms. Military institutions continued to press for amnesty decrees for earlier human rights abuses and to emphasize political stability and respect for law and order as the requisite conditions for development. for the armed forces, democracy and subordination to civilian authority did not mean intrusion of politicians into military education, training, promotion and duty assignment decisions, or formulation of doctrine, strategy, and tactics Until competent civilians could be found, defense policy was still considered a military bailiwick. In Chile, as in Brazil in the past, civilians were invited to study in military schools to obtain proper orientation toward defense issues and to understand the needs of mihtary institutions. Elsewhere, research centers and universities provided new places for intellectual exchange and social contact between officers and civilians interested m defense and security issues. For the moment, however, a consensus existed that defense and security policies were too important to be left to civilians Sixth, whether implicitly or explicitly, commitment to the residual military guardianship role persisted, even when referred to less frequently m public due to international and regional trends that delegitimized direct military intervention in governance. Officers recognized that the United States had more than once exported the same democratic tonic in different bottles, only to withdraw it from the market" under the stress of international or regional tensions They worried that the U.S. security agenda for the 1990s had forgotten the real missions of the Latin American military: external defense, internal order, defense of la patria, and its transcendental national objectives.61 Even as the United States sought to invent a more economically integrated hemisphere at peace, with countries cooperating in regional security tasks such as fighting drug dealers and terrorists, preventing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, impeding arms smuggling, protecting the environment, and monitoring illegal flows of immigrants, the Latin American militaries remembered historic border disputes and recent conflicts (see Map 9-\). They lived in increasingly violent societies. In Central America, governments failed to provide land, pensions, and economic opportunities to demobilized veterans and former guerrillas; armed bands engaged in political violence and cnme-for-profit In Bolivia, Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, and Peru, armed forces and La Patria and Perestroika 275 police engaged in guerrilla wars and destructive conflicts with drug lords- For officers, pressures to create leaner, more efficient, and tougher military institutions meant more sophisticated weapons; better communication and logistics systems; higher quality, more specialized personnel; more training and military exercises; and smarter intelligence operations—usually accompanied by Belize-Guatemala (territorial and maritime claims) UNITED STATES North Atlantic Ocean North Pacific Ocean I Colombia-Nicaragua (dispute over San Andres islands) Colombia-Venezuela (maritime and land disputes) Guyana-Venezuela (Venezuela does not recognize 1899 arbitral award) El SaIvador-Honduras-Nicaragua (border dispute settled by World Court; Gulf of Fonseca claims unsettled) Guyana-Suriname (unresolved borders) Ecuador-Peru (negotiations continue fůr permanent resolution after renewed hostilities in 1995) South Pacific Ocean Bolivia-Chile (Bolivia seeks sovereign access to the sea lost in 1879-84 War of Pacific) Argentina-Chile (Papal mediation has helped resolve 22 of 24 border disputes) South Atlantic Ocean assist n una-« Bin Map 9-1. Territorial Disputes. U.S. Department of Defense, Office of International Security Affairs, "United States Security Strategy for the Americas," September 1995; 13. 276 For la Patria pressures to downsize. They wished to be patriotic, professional, technically modern, and respected. Moreover, they resented the second-rate role assigned to them in the U.S. scheme and were unable to ignore the fact that most Washington policymakers still had not learned much about Latin American military traditions and their historic contributions to la patria. (Of course, the progressive corruption of these armies by drug wars, smuggling, off-the-books businesses, and demoralization called into question all of militarylore's patriotic and virtuous discourse.) Inconsistent efforts by the United States to withhold sophisticated technology and weapons, limit Latin American arms production and exports, relegate the region's armed forces to subsidiary and surrogate missions, and update the Monroe Doctrine's pretense of excluding foreign systems from the hemisphere alienated Latin American nationalists—among them most military officers. The 1989 invasion of Panama (Operation Just Cause, or "Operation Just Because," as cynics labeled it), with the subsequent destruction of the U.S.-trained Panama Defense Force, dramatically illustrated to Caribbean and Central American officers the U.S. disposition to unilateralism and disrespect for the sovereignty of small Latin American countries. The asymmetry of bilateral relations between Washington and most of the region's capitals was further evidenced in pompous congressional debates over whether Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, and Guatemala had spilled enough blood fighting the drug cartels, made enough progress in protecting human rights, or implemented sufficient structural reforms in their economies to merit resumption of military or economic assistance. (Latin American officers reasoned that if similar standards were applied to the U.S. Customs Service, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and Congress itself, the United States would fail the test of probity and efficacy required of Latin America.) The U.S. Congress also sought in the early 1990s to condition assistance to the Nicara-guan government on its choice of an "appropriate" commander for its armed forces and to dictate the political behavior of Honduran, Dominican, Salva-doran, and even Argentine officers. How were the lastbastions of sovereignty, the Latin American armed forces, to react to such blatant hegemonic pretensions? What sort of democracy was the United States promoting? Why had the military institutions that buttressed U.S. Cold War strategy in the hemisphere become less valued, if not expendable, assets in the 1990s? And what could they do to reaffirm their value to la patria? Resuscitating old border disputes and ancient geopolitical threats was one obvious answer. Most Latin American states had pending disputes with neighbors over borders or redemptive claims from nineteenth- and twentieth-century wars. As described in Chapter 2, nationalism and independent military traditions in Latin America had originated to a great extent in1 nineteenth-century conflicts. In 1995 war erupted in territory disputed by Peru and Ecuador in the Cenepa Basin. Elements of the dispute originated in claims that went back to Spanish colonial demarcations; the most recent juridical origins stemmed from ambiguity in the 1942 Rio Protocol that ended the June-August 1941 war be- * tween the two countries. The 1941 war not only resurrected historical animosities between Ecuador and Peru but also forged the reformist officer generation La Patria and Perestroika 277 Figure 9-4. "Armed Forces, True National Valor," Lima, Peru, 1997. that had founded Peru's Centra de Altos Estudios Militares (CAEM). In Ecuador, which had lost territory in several wars since independence and sought to regain access to the Amazon Basin, the 1941 war contributed to its peoples' sense of victimization by larger, more powerful neighbors. The basis for Peru's and Ecuador's competing claims were both historical and technical, ultimately involving questions regarding the topography and watershed between the Zámora and Santiago rivers.62 More important than the details of the claims was the fact that two countries in South America governed by elected civilian presidents did not avoid armed conflict despite the high cost in lives and resources that such an engagement exacted, and despite Peru's ongoing battle against Sendero Luminoso, other guerrilla movements, and narco-terrorists. The war involved high-performance aircraft, antiaircraft missiles, global-positioning satellites to pinpoint targets, and adaptation (by Ecuador) of "active defense"'and "air-land battle" concepts from the Israeli and U.S. armed forces.63 The motto, "Ecuador Is an Amazonian Country and Always Will Be," reflects the importance of traditional patriotism and national claims on civilian and military thinking. (A similar slogan in Bolivia exhorts its soldiers to regain access for la patria to the Pacific Ocean, lost to Chile in the 1879-1883 War of the Pacific.) Ecuador's defense minister, General Jose Gallardo, remarked in June 1995 that "the knowledge among the members of the armed forces of the immense territorial loss of our patria has createöVa sentiment of decisive-ness'that never again will the country be the victim of territorial plunder, of aggression against its dignity, its honor."64 In the 1990s, Ecuador's military was still generally respected and its budgets secret.65 Military budgets increased significantly after the transition from military to civilian government, and the armed forces exercised considerable autonomy in defense policymaking and other areas defined as part of their 278 For la Patria extremely broad national security functions. Direct allocation of oil revenues to the armed forces and operation of numerous private enterprises contributed to this autonomy. Congressional oversight remained minimal. Peru's military, in contrast, had lost prestige after its direct rule of the country from 1968 to 1980. It had been engaged in gruesome combat against Sendero Luminoso and other guerrilla movements throughout the 1980s and was accused of massive human rights violations against civilian, especially peasant, populations. It was also riven with corruption and, along with the national police, tarnished by the penetration of drug cartels and organized crime. Caught by surprise in the 1995 war, the Peruvian military sought to rearm, modernize, and regain its prestige in the next two years. Mobilization of public opinion against what was characterized as Ecuador's brazen violation of the 1942 Rio Protocol, and President Alberto Fujimori's support for enhanced military preparedness, renewed the Peruvian commitment to "appropriate" budgets and attention to the armed forces in their traditional patriotic role. Meanwhile, Chilean, Colombian, and Brazilian army, navy, and air force officers took note of the Ecuador-Peru conflict. New purchases of aircraft and naval armaments followed shortly Regional spin-offs of the conflict created markets for arms dealers in Europe and the United States, even as the latter preached arms control. Figure 9-5. "To Love Peru Is to Construct Its Development," Peruvian Army Web site, 1998. Toward the Twenty-first Century The resuscitation of dormant conflicts and the reality of border wars between ostensibly democratic states provided new political ammunition for the region's armed forces, even in the Southern Cone, where many historical disputes were being resolved diplomatically. Seeking to carve a suitable niche for themselves in the post-Cold War era, the military continued to insist on the importance of La Patria and Perestroika 279 sovereignty, to concern themselves with internal security and external defense, to be the guardians of their nations' values and institutions, and to be the last bastion of defense for la patria's transcendental interests. To do all this meant continued involvement in many different ways in politics: as guardians, as institutional interest groups, as potential allies for civilian movements and parties, as arbiters of political conflict among civilian politicians, as administrators and technocrats in numerous public agencies, and as symbols of national unity, patriotism, and destiny. On a day-to-day basis, the visibilty oř military participation in politics varied considerably from country to country. Also, the influence of the Cold War national security doctrine ideology within some of the region's officer corps had declined. But whether quietly lobbying legislatures for funds, operating internal intelligence agencies, preparing for civil defense and disaster relief tasks, or publicly reminding civilian leaders of their responsibilities, the Latin American armed forces remained committed to their historical missions: internal and external security, public order, law enforcement, political intelligence, economic development, and defense of sovereignty. These missions were inherently political. The legal, institutional, and professional legacies of Spanish colonial militarism and the nineteenth-century European missions were still evident in the 1990s. The fusion of civil and military authority, the overlapping military and police functions, and the virtually mystical-religious identification of the armed forces with la patria persisted. Militarylore changed slowly despite the profound transformations wrought by technology, global economic interdependence, and the end of the Cold War. The twenty-first century will bring new challenges from both domestic and international threats. The Latin American armed forces will likely continue to uphold their centuries-long traditions, perhaps redefined and repackaged for the era of "democratization" and globalization, but without abandoning reference to their ultimate justification and commitment: the patrias they had created, helped to shape and develop, ruled, and misruled since the 1820s. Whatever action taken would be in the name of la patria. In parts of Latin America such as Chile and Ecuador, the armed forces could count on substantial support if they were once again "forced" by circumstances to save their nations from subversion, civilian incompetence, and political corruption. Civilian corruption and political disorder in Colombia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Peru, Venezuela, and Mexico could provoke a more overt military presence in government and policymaking, even without coups, with substan-tiaľpopular approval. In other countries, such as Uruguay and Argentina, their lackluster performance as economic managers in the 1970s and 1980s and their horrendous human rights violations have inhibited broad support for more overt military participation in policymaking and governance.66 Nowhere did the armed forces lack some civilian social base if economic and political crises pushed countries to the brink. This social base was not usually majoritarian, but it was always politically and economically powerful. Everywhere, with the arguable exception of Costa Rica, the idea that the armed forces were ultimately responsible for preventing political chaos and for conserving the sovereignty and integrity of la patria was still a basic premise of politics in the late 1990s. This premise, shared by many civilians and military / 280 For la Patria officers alike—glorified in historical traditions, public holidays, and school texts, sanctified in constitutions, codified in statutes and military regulations, reified in military oaths and national hymns—ensured a continuing political role for the Latin American armed forces in the post-Cold War era. Paradoxically, political liberalization and erosion of military prerogatives in the 1990s did not alter the fundamental premises regarding the military's constitutional and political roles. Nevertheless, contestation over particular prerogatives, such as whether defense ministers should be officers or civilians, the extent of congressional review of military budgets and promotions, and the number of officers appointed as managers in public enterprises, went against the armed forces in many countries. The end of the Cold War and of insurgencies in most of the region brought reductions in military budgets and personnel. The mass media gradually risked more open coverage of security and defense issues. Obligatory military service, an article of faith for the armed forces since the early twentieth century, was eliminated in several countries and debated in others. Emphatic support for "democracy" (usually simply meaning elected governments) by U.S. policymakers, the European Community, and the Organization of American States made coups less acceptable. The threat of nonrecognition and economic sanctions discouraged military intervention even where civilian governments exceeded past levels of incompetence and corruption, as with the impeachments of presidents in Brazil and Venezuela in the early 1990s and the ouster of Ecuador's iconoclastic president in 1997. Support by Latin American civilian political leaders for their counterparts generally reinforced the "tide of democracy." With the exception of Haiti, no successful military coups occurred from the 1980s through 1998. These changes altered the immediate balance in civil-military relations and allowed more effective exercise of civil liberties in much of the region. The military felt more constrained by hemispheric and global circumstances, inhibited from overt intervention against elected leaders. But none of this changed militarylore regarding guardianship of iß patria or the military's basic constitutional and statutory missions, nor did it blank out the social memory of fear bequeathed by the 1970s and 1980s. Democracy was conditional; national security and antiterrorist legislation actually increased military jurisdiction over civilians in some countries, and human rights violations increased after transition to civilian rule in Peru, Guatemala, and Honduras. Military influence was also increasing in Mexico and Cuba. Civil-military relations in Latin America thus varied greatly as the twenty-first century approached. Generally, military forces and budgets were being reduced, military prerogatives were under attack, and the armed forces struggled to adapt to the new world disorder. Yet nowhere had the normative and legal foundations for protected democracy and military guardianship been removed. Civilian leaders still lacked expertise in defense and security issues— a legacy of neglect, if not disdain, for military matters that had historically limited civilian oversight of the armed forces and reinforced their relative autonomy. For most civilians the military institutions, still partly totemic, inspired a combination of fear, reverence, and nationalistic pride. For their part, military leaders continued to doubt the politicians' sincerity, trustworthiness, and competency. These perceptions of the politicians and of the major political La Patria and Perestroika 251 parties were shared by much of the civilian population. Transition to elected governments did not quickly overcome generations of mistrust and misunderstanding between civilians and military elites. And for many Latin Americans the memories of recent human rights violations remained open wounds. If international economic and political conditions abruptly change, crises undermine elected civilian governments, or U.S. regionalsecurity policy veers (as it has so often in the past), the armed forces remain committed to protecting the permanent interests of their nations, as they define them. This commitment might not involve coups or direct rule by military juntas—or it might. In either case, Latin American nationalism and reactions to the supposed "end of history" will invariably involve the armed forces in their nations' political destinies. As the twenty-first century nears, there is no foreseeable end to the Latin American armed forces' historical missions in defense of la patria. However, the persistence of militarylore and of these missions does not mean that no changes in attitudes have occurred within the armed forces and within civil society. To the contrary, the traumas of the last four decades have contributed to serious political rethinking by military officers and civilian politicians, labor leaders, and the broader civilian populations. But the post-1959 traumas have yet to be thoroughly "worked through" politically and socially. Reconciliation with the recent past is more a political slogan than reality. Civil-military relations are in flux as part of the more profound political and ideological transformations of the 1980s and 1990s. The elected civilian governments that emerged after 1978 thus presided over traumatized and uncertain societies. Globalizing trends sparked reactive nationalism and widespread socioeconomic tensions. Despite the triumphalism of proponents of "market democracy" and of the neoliberal creed that temporarily dominated international politics in the 1990s, other voices proclaimed alternative futures and different political and economic visions. These quests for political and economic alternatives mean dissatisfaction with the present. Criminal and political violence have escalated; gaps between rich and poor within countries have widened. As Argentine General Laiňo argued, a multitude of "potentially critical situations" threaten la patria at the advent of the twenty-first century. These threats reconfirm militarylore in its insistence on the need for eternal vigilance by the armed forces to protect the nation's security and its "destiny." If, and when, the armed forces in Latin America choose to counter such threats, they will claim to do so for la patria. Notes 1. "New Security Relations in the Americas," Strategic Forum 47, National Defense University, Institute for National Strategic Studies (September 1995}: 1. 2. Memoria del Ejército Argentino, 3992—3995, Ministerio de Defensa, Buenos Aires, 1995. 3. Laiňo (1996). SPOCs is the acronym for situaciones potencialmente criticas (potentially critical situations). 4. Jose Nun, "The Middle-Class Military Coup Revisited," in Abraham F. Lowenthal and J. Samuel Fitch, eds., Armies and Politics in Latin America, rev. ed. (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1986): 59-65. 5. Pablo Gonzalez Casanova, Los militares y la politica en America Latina (Mexico: Océano, 1988). "Los nuevos dictadores transnacionales sonsemejantes al subconjunto de un aparato estatal que echa sus principales raices en el capital monopólico, en el gobierno norteamericano y en las 282 For la Patria fuerzasburguesas locales oligárqukas y neocoloniales___en cada pais y en cada región el aparato militar transnational actiia segun las circunstancias, con un sentido pragmático y flexible" (pp. 23-24), 6. For a discussion of the relationship between internal political motives for coups, military institutional concerns, and the role of the United States see Jan Knippers Black, Sentinels of Empire: The United States and latin American Militarism (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986). A critical view of the U.S. role is Miles D. Wolpin, Military Aid and Counterrevolution in the Third World (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath and Co., 1977). 7. Guillermo A, O'Donnell, "Modernization and Military Coups: Theory, Comparisons, and the Argentine Case," in Lowenthal and Fitch, eds. (1986): 105-6. See also the articles in David Collier, ed., The New Authoritarianism in latin America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979). 8. See Nunn (1983); and idem (1992). 9. Bruce W. Farcau, The Transition to Democracy in latin America: The Role of the Military (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996). Farcau adds: "Thus any theory of civil-military relations in Latin America must take into account the personal factor, the ambitions of the charismatic leader and his ability to form around himself a faction that could seize power. I still see the transition to democracy in Latin America as less of a transition than almost as another form of coup d'etat, simply going in the other direction" (p. 160). 10. "Rojas marshalled the army, navy, and air force men in Bogota's broad Plaza Bolivar. , .. Arranged on a platform at the foot of a statue of Liberator Simon Bolivar were a tall crucifix and eight urns containing the ashes of Colombian soldiers who fought in the Korean War and in the country's own backlands guerrilla war. Rojas then read off a solemn oath, swearing the servicemen, in the name of Jesus Christ and in the memory of Simon Bolivar, to 'fight for the domination of the Third Force until Colombians lay down their political hatreds before the national banner.' They took the oath. Next afternoon, at Bogota's Campin stadium, Rojas likewise swore in a throng of youth, labor, farm, and women's groups." "Third Force," Time (June 25, 1956): 33, cited in Vernon Lee Fluharty, Dance of the Millions: Military Rule and the Social Revolution in Colombia, J 930-1956 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1957): 306. 11. See Perez (1976). 12. Just as priests who stray from the path of righteousness do not undo the teachings of the Church, bo individual military officers who violate their sacred patriotic duties do not decrease tin; moral and professional significance of militarylore. 13. The staying power of this aspect of militarylore is impressive. Almost on automatic pilot, officers use this sort of language in speeches and also in political and academic writing. To illustrate. Maj. Concepción Jimenez of Honduras wrote in 1996: "Sacerdocio es la devoción que toda persona siente por su profesión o carrera, y como nuestra carrera militar es una proŕesión, entonces toda militar o líder, no importa su jerarquia, debe consagrarse activa y celosamente al servicio de l.i patria y desempeňar sus ťunciones con eficiencia y probidad, porque ya sea en tiempo de paz o de guerra es quién ejerce la administración controlada de la violencia; de allí que nuestra profesiou no es Uberal sino un sacerdocio al aervicio de la humanidad." "Contribución del Liderazgo a la Potencia de Combate," Military Review (Hispano-American edition, November-December 1996). 51. 14. For a recent version of "true democracy" according to Ecuadorian General Paco Moncayo, see "Las fuerzas armadas en la construcción de la democracia" on the army's World Wide Web site //www.ecuadoriannet.com/ccffaa/democracia.htm. 15 The voluminous literature on "transitions" from authoritarian regimes to elected government is replete with theories and case studies focused on the circumstances, variations in, and consequences of transition, and the dilemmas of "democratic consolidation." For an overview of the issues of "transitology" see Philippe C. Schmitter, "Transitology: The Science or the Art of Democratization," in Joseph S. Tulchin and Bernice Romero, eds., The Consolidation of Democracy in latin America (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1995): 11-44. 16. See Max C. Manwaring, ed., Gray Area Phenomena: Confronting the New World Disorder (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993), 17. Kenneth Jowitt, "A World without Leninism," in Robert O. Slater, Barry M. Schutz, and Steven R. Dorr, eds., Global Transformation and the Third World (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1993): 17. 18. "Fuerzas armadas y democracia en America," Adelante, Escuela de las Americas, Fort Benning, Georgia (Spring 1994): 47-48. 19. The implications of ethnic conflict for U.S. security quickly received attention in the early 1990s. See, for example, Thomas W. Couch, "Ethnicity, Ethnic Conflict, and Military Operations Other than War (MOOTW'): A Paper Offering Terms, Presenting Information, and Annotating Related Holdings in the A-AF CLIC Resource and Research Collection (RRC) as of 1 November 1994," Army-Air Force Center for Low Intensity Conflict, Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, November 1994; and Timothy L. Sanz, "Ethno-National Conflicts; Research Sources," European Security 3(2) (Summer 1994): 359-81. La Patria and Perestroika 283 20. For an overview of the extensive peacemaking and peacekeeping operations after 1989 see Richard Jones, Tom Woodhouse, and Oliver Ramsbotham, eds. International Peacekeeping News, Farndon House Information Trust and Bradford School of Peace Studies (accessible on the Internet). A typical entry (issue 12, September/October 1995) reads: "The first 600 Brazilian peacekeepers arrived in Luanda to serve with UNAVEM III. The 100-strong advance guard, mainly military engineers, will be joined by 100 soldiers on September 12. A further 400 peacekeepers are expected at the end of the month. The Brazilian soldiers will be responsible for bridge-building and land-mine clearance." 21. In 1990 the OAS created the Unit for the Promotion of Democracy to "support the states in the consolidation of their democratic institutions." This unit participated in observing elections and extended its activities into other areas described in a document entitled "A New Vision of the OAS." In a working document prepared by the Office of the Secretary General, titled "The Law in a New Inter-American Order" (Washington, DC, January 1996), reference is made to the Santiago Commitment of 1991—"the inescapable commitment to the defense and promotion of representative democracy"—and called for "transparency in military budgets and expenditure, which is directly linked to other fundamental issues for the Hemisphere, such as strengthening democracy, integral development, and eradicating poverty by reallocating military resources to these areas" (emphasis added). All these intended intrusions into domestic policymaking begged the question of who would decide what was meant by "defending" representative democracy, and they ignored the traditional secretiveness surrounding national security budgets not only in Latin America but also in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. Further initiatives for collective action against terrorism, corruption, and environmental'degradation and for the protection of human rights also threatened traditional conceptions of national sovereignty. (See "Remarks by the Secretary General of the OAS, Dr. César Gaviria, at the Inter-American Specialized Conference on Terrorism," Lima, April 26, 1996.) 22. For an interesting exposition of the "threat to sovereignty" of indigenous rights in Venezuela see Friderike Seithe and Dirk Staehler, "Venezuela: Politica indigenista," in Boletln Comisión Andina dejuristas 17 (February 1988): 37-46. 23. See Max G. Manwaring, "Latin American Security and Civil-Military Relations in the New World Disorder," Low Intensity Conflict & Law Enforcement 4(1) (Summer 1995); 29-43; and Carina Perelli and Juan Rial, "Changing Military World Views: The Armed Forces of South America in the 1990s," in Richard Millett and Michael Gold-Biss, eds., Beyond Praetorianism: The Latin American Military in Transition (Miami: North-South Center, University of Miami 1996)- 59-82. } 24. U.S. Department of Defense, Office of International Security Affairs, United States Security Strategy for the Americas (September 1995): 16. 25. In November 1985 the M-19 occupied the Palace of Justice. Eventually the army commanders independently decided on an assault to retake the building. Over one hundred people died, including guerrillas, soldiers, government officials, judges, and visitors. The lack of training in urban tactics was apparent and led to the reassessment of training and the creation of new antiterrorism units. See Leal Buitrago (1994): 110-15. 26. Special Warfare, The Professional Bulletin of the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, PB-93-1, 6(1) (February 1993), 27. Ibid., PB 93-2, 6(2) (May 1993). According to the Kaibil Web page (www.concyt.gob.gt/ minist/mindef/kaibil.htm), the name of the group refers to a king of the Empire of Mam who, thanks to his astuteness, was never captured by the invading conquistadors led by Pedro de Alvarado; "KAIBIL BALAM was considered a true strategist and was consulted by the chiefs of other tribes." The Guatemalan special forces explain that "KAIBIL significa: Hombre estratega, el que tiene la fuerza y la astucia de dos tigres" (KAIBIL means; a strategist, one who has the force and the astuteness of two tigers). The Kaibiles' two main bases were called El Infierno (Hell) and La Pólvora (Gunpowder). 28. Ibid., PB 80-94-4, 7(4) (October 1994). 29. For an overview of U.S. policy in Latin America after 1989 see Joseph Tulchin, "Estados Unidos y America Latina en el mundo," in Francisco Rojas Aravena and William C. Smith, eds., El Cono sur y las transformations globales (Santiago: FLACSO, North-South Center, CLADDE, 1994); 151-89. 30. This unilateralism for some policies was accompanied by an increasing multilateralism in other areas such as trade, peacekeeping operations, and hemispheric "agenda setting" in so-cafled summits of the Americas. See Peter H. Smith, Talons of the Eagle: Dynamics of U.S.-Latin American Relations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). 31. Geoffrey B. Demarest (Lt. Col), "The Cuba Contingency," Military Review 74 (January 1994): 58-66. "J 32. Ibid.: 59. 33. Geoffrey B. Demarest (Lt. Col.), "Expeditionary Police Service," United States Army, Foreign Military Studies Office, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 1996. An early version, "Beefing Up the Low End," appeared in Military Review (June 1993): 50-56. 284 For la Patria 34. See, for example, Douglas Waller, "Running a School for Dictators," Newsweek (August 9 1993): 34-37; Caiman McCarthy, "A U.S. Finishing School for Latin Thugs," Washington Post May 10, 1994; and Kenneth Cooper, "Taking Aim at School for Assassins," Washington Post, May 19, 1994. 35. Geoffrey B. Demarest (Lt. Col.), "Una redefinición de la Escuela de las Americas," Mi/i tary Review 74(6) (Spanish Edition) (November-December 1995): 35-45. 36. Demarest proposed the creation of a new constabulary-type force with special mobility and operational capabilities for peacemaking, peacekeeping, and other "foreign policy support' missions. This would create professional specialized capabilities and prevent the deflation of morale, military prestige, and warmaking capability in the regular army. See Demarest (1996) World Wide Web: http:/leav-www.army.mil/fmso. 37. For an early 1990s view on the role of the Latin America military in the post-Cold War era and U.S. security concerns see Gabriel Marcella, ed.. Warriors in Peacetime: The Military and De mocracy in Latin America—Nem Directions for U.S. Policy (London: Frank Cass, 1994). 38. United States Security Strategy for the Americas (1995): 1. 39. See Stephen G. Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America (Chapel Hill: University of North Caro lina Press, 1988) for details on the Eisenhower administration's emphasis on private foreign investment and freer trade as the model for Latin American economic development. 40. The "end of history" here refers to the thesis of F. Fukuyama that the U.S. victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War meant that liberal capitalism would sweep across the globe as the dominant, if not exclusive, accepted political system. See F. Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992). 41. On the history of "exporting democracy" see Abraham F. Lowenthal, ed., Exporting De mocracy: The United States and Latin America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991) 42. United States Security Strategy for the Americas (1995). 43. Ibid.: 3. 44. Ibid.: 4-5. 45. On the Argentina Congo mission see Carlos EduardoAzcoitia, La guerra olvidada: Argtn tina en ta guerra del Congo (Buenos Aires: Marymar Ediciones, 1992). 46. See Gabriel Marcella, "Warriors in Peacetime: Future Missions of the Latin American Armed Forces," Small Wars and Insurgencies 4(3) (Winter 1993): 1-33. 47. Cited in Antonio L. Pala (Major, USAF), "The Increased Role of Latin American Armed Forces in UN Peacekeeping: Opportunities and Challenges," Air Power Journal 9 (Special Edition 1995): 17-28. 48. Pala (1995): 17-28. 49. Carlos Maria Zabala (Gen.), "Una oportunidad histórica," Revista del Suboficial 611 (March-April 1994): 24-25, cited in Palá (1995): note 13. 50. Palá (1995): 21. 51. For an overview and case studies of Latin American civil-military relations in the 1989-1995 period see Millett and Cold-Biss, eds. (1996). 52. Alvaro de Souza Pinheiro (Col.) and Paulo Cesar Miranda Azevedo (Col.), "A Vision of the Brazilian National Security Policy on the Amazon," Low Intensity Conflict & Law Enforcement 3(3) (Winter 1994): 387-409, reprinted by the Foreign Military Studies Office, Fort Leavenworth Kansas. 53. The original list is here abbreviated and edited. 54. De Souza Pinheiro and Miranda Azevedo (1994): 11. 55. On the Brazilian military's views on development and the nation's destiny in the mid 1990s see Max G. Manwaring, "Brazilian Security in the New World Disorder: Implications for Civil-Military Relations," in Millett and Gold-Biss, eds. (1996): 223-40. 56. See David Pion-Berlin, "Military Autonomy and Emerging Democracies in South America," Comparative Politics 25 (October 1992): 83-102; and idem, "The Armed Forces and Poli tics; Gains and Snares in Recent Scholarship," Latin American Research Review 30(1) (1995): 147-62 57. In Adelante (Winter 1993): 21, cited in Juan Obdulio Sainz (Comdr, Gendarmeria Argen tina), "El futuro de las fuerzas armadas en Centra America," Adelante (Spring 1994): 16. 58. Obdulio Sainz (1994): 18. 59. Prepared statement of Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey before the House National Security Com mittee, March 8, 1995, reprinted in Defense Issues 10(50), American Forces Information Service Washington, DC. 60. For a detailed and somewhat more optimistic account see William W. Mendel (Col., U S Army, ret), "Illusive Victory: From Blast Furnace to Green Sweep," Military Review 72 (December 1992): 74-87. 61. "Fuerzas armadas y democracia en America": 36. 62. See Gabriel Marcella, "War and Peace in the Amazon: Strategic Implications for the United States and Latin America of the 1995 Ecuador-Peru War," Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, November 24, 1995. 63. Ibid.: 11. La Patria and Perestroika 285 64. "Los grandes combates: La epopeya del Cenepa," Hoy (Quito) (Special Edition, June 1995): 5, cited in Marcella (1995): 5-6. 65. According to J. Samuel Fitch, a 1991 survey conducted in Ecuador's two largest cities found that nearly 80 percent of respondents rated the armed forces and the Church as the country's most trusted institutions. Large majorities expressed distrust in the three branches of government, and almost 85 percent lacked confidence in the political parties. Over 75 percent agreed that "if national interests are in danger in times of crisis, the armed forces should intervene to change the government"; and 77 percent agreed that "if national security is threatened, the armed forces should take over the government." Some 85 percent agreed that the armed forces should avoid coups but should pressure the government when they see that things are not going well. Fitch remarked that "the results [of the survey] were so negative for the democratic regime that we agreed not to publish the results until after the installation of the new government." J. Samuel Fitch, "Military Role Beliefs in Latin American Democracies: Context, Ideology, and Doctrine in Argentina and Ecuador," Paper delivered at the 1995 meeting of the Latin American Studies Association, Washington, DC, September 28-30, 1995: 38. 66. For survey data on citizens' attitudes toward the military in Argentina, Chile, Brazil, and Uruguay in the mid-1990s see Juan Linz and Alfred Stepán, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996): 221-30. / Glossary aguardiente popular alcoholic beverage distilled from sugarcane or other plant, whose production and sale the Spanish colonial authorities attempted to regulate. alcabala sales tax. alcalde mayor district officer, comparable to a corregidor. alférez military rank of ensign or second lieutenant. amparo court order protecting arrested prisoners or restricting govern- ment action; historically related to writ of socorro in Guatemala. armada real royal navy; Spanish navy in the colonial period. asiento monopoly concession to import slaves into the Spanish empire; conceded to England after 1713. audiencia highest court and advisory body to the regional chief executive in the Spanish colonies; also the territorial jurisdiction of such courts; territories of the audiencias were one basis for determining boundaries of Spanish American countries after independence. autogolpe "self-coup" in which the incumbent government usurps author- ity and establishes an extraconstitutional regime; illegal closure of the congress by the president and imposition of a temporary emergency government. banda oriental territory across the Rio de la Plata from Buenos Aires that be- came Uruguay. bando edict, proclamation, or decree; often refers to decrees issued to meet emergencies, rebellions, or crises. bando militar decree issued by military authorities. cacique Indian chieftain; kuraka in the Andes, batab in Mayan region; used also to refer to local political bosses. castas people of mixed racial background, including those with some Indian and African ancestry; term used to refer to Spanish American underclasses, neither strictly mestizo nor mulatto. caudillismo politics based on conflict among caudillos; refers often to 1820s- 1880s period in Spanish America. cauditlo leader whose authority is based on personal charisma. cédula decree issued by the Crown or its minister jointly with the Coun- cil of the Indies (Consejo de las Indias); a decree issued without the Council was a real decreto. comarca territorial jurisdiction in Brazil. 287 288 ' Glossary comuneros members of a community sharing some land in common; sup- porters of a popular revolt; rebels in Paraguay in the 1720s and 1730s and in New Granada in 1780. conquistadores Spanish conquerors in the Western Hemisphere; refers usually to those of the sixteenth century. consejo council; Spain was governed under a conciliar form of gov- ernment, including the Consejo de las Indias for the overseas colonies. consejo de guerra court-martial; military tribunal in wartime, or during periods of a regime of exception such as a state of siege or internal war. continuismo presidential "holding over" in office; establishment of long-term dictatorships with periodic fraudulent elections. contras members of the U.S.-supported guerrilla army opposing the Sandinistas in Nicaragua in the 1980s. coronelismo Brazilian version of caudillismo; domination of politics by local notables and landowners. corregidor magistrate and provinicial administrator in colonial Spanish America; corregidor de indios administered Indian communities, also refers to provincial administrator in colonial Brazil. corregimiento territorial jurisdiction of the corregidor. coup d'etat unscheduled ouster of an incumbent government by a force that is predominantly military. criolto or Creole, person of pure Spanish ancestry born in the colonies derecho da gcntes literally, peoples' rights; an early version of human rights. desaparecidos those persons "disappeared" by dictatorial governments, with no bodies found and their fate unknown but presumed murdered. dictabhnda "soft" dictatorship that usually refrains from the harsh measures of a dictadura. donation grant; cession of land. escuelas de clase specialized schools for noncommissioned officers. estado de exception state or exception or regime of exception, exception being a temporary suspension of civil liberties and rights with increased government authority; sometimes verges on constitutional dictatorship. estado de sitio state of siege; a common type of regime of exception, originating in France; has various legal and political consequences from country to country. estado mayor general staff; officers who have received specialized advanced training. estado mayor general general staff command. facultades extraordinary faculties, or special authority granted to presidents extraordinarias or others to meet crises; may include suspension of civil liberties and rights, emergency legislative authority, and constitutional dictatorship. Glossary 289 fijos "fixed" Spanish military units sent from Spain to garrison, the colonies. focos guerrilla cadres in the countryside; refers to Che Guevara's theory of guerrilla warfare forjando patria forging the nation, or nation-building. fueros/foros special legal and juridical privileges enjoyed by particular groups, for example, the clergy, military, and medieval towns. fueros militares special privileges extended to military personnel; refers also to the jurisdiction of military courts. fuerza publica public force, or the armed forces and police. gamonal rural landowner; manager of political party machine. garantías civil liberties and rights as guaranteed in constitutions. golpefgolpistas military coup/coup-makers. hacendado owner of large rural estate. hacienda large rural estate, usually with resident agricultural labor. junta small group of military officers, and sometimes civilians, formed to replace normal government institutions and to assume responsibilities for the management of the state. junta de gobierno executive committee directing the government; often a military junta. latifundista owner of large rural estate (latifundio); synonym for hacendado. llanero plainsman (Venezuela); similar to the gaucho in Argentina. matanza massacre; La Matanza refers to 1932 events in El Salvador. mazombo person of pure Portuguese ancestry born in Brazil. mazorca semi-official terrorist squad formed by Juan Manuel de Rosas in Argentina; an early instance of state terrorism in Latin America. mestizo person of first-generation mixture of Spanish and Indian. mita/mitayos Indian labor draft in Peru/Indians drafted to work in the mines. montoneros irregular armies or guerrillas; Peronist guerrillas in Argentina in the 1970s. mulatto person of first-generation mixture of Spanish and African. papeles sediciosos seditious writings and documents. pardo persons of mixture of Spanish (European) and African. patria nation, fatherland, or native land. patria chica subnational patria {farms, towns, province). pena de azotes punishment by whipping, common for infractions of military law and also as torture to extract information. peninsular person born in Spain or Portugal of pure European ancestry. politiqueria politics, "dirty politics," populism, or demagoguery. 290 Glossary pragmática royal ordinance or decree. presidio frontier garrison. pronunciamiento military proclamation; justification for military coup or rebellion against the government; also refers to the coup itself. quinto tax of one-fifth; the "royal fifth." reconquista reconquest; refers to the seven-hundred-year Christian war to retake the Iberian Peninsula from the Muslims that ended in 1492. repartimiento allocation of Indian labor to Spaniards by colonial authorities, forced labor system. repartimiento forced sale of merchandise by Spaniards to Indians. de bienes republiqueta mini-republic; subnational unit; guerrrilla enclave. revanchismo quest for revenge. seguridad individual personal civil liberties and rights in early Spanish American constitutions. suma del poder absolute or dictatorial power delegated by legislatures to presi- dents or chief executives to meet emergencies. tenentes junior officers, or lieutenants, in Brazil's army. terco one-third; refers to organizational unit of colonial militia. 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