dinista revolution in July 1979. The Sandinista government was regarded by the administration of Ronald Reagan as involved with efforts by Fidel Castro's Cuba with Soviet support to subvert other governments in Central America. From 1982 until the election of Violeta Chamorro as President in 1990, the United States provided substantial military and economic aid to the non-communist Nicaraguan Resistance or Contra movement.
Although El Salvador had avoided direct foreign interventions, it, too, suffered from misrule, economic exploitation and social misery. Those tensions were aggravated by global economic problems of the 1970s, recessions in the developed world, high crude oil prices and low prices for commodity-exporting nations. The result in El Salvador throughout the 1980s was "a bloody civil war . . . with army-guerrilla clashes in the countryside and right-wing death squads operating in the cities." The United States supported the El Salvador government in its struggle with the Frente Faribundo Marti para la Liberacion Nacional (FMLN), but civil war continued into the early 90s.
ONUCA's mandates progressively broadened because of the confluence over time of three factors: regional initiatives, diminished great power conflict and political changes in Nicaragua. Between 1984 and 1987, the Contadora Group (Mexico, Panama, Colombia and Venezuela) attempted to begin the peace process in Nicaragua. The Arias Plan which was incorporated in an Agreement among five Central American presidents (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua) known as Esquipulas II committed those five states to grant amnesty to political prisoners and to establish national reconciliation commissions; arrange a cease-fire; support democracy and free and fair elections in their countries; end cross-border support for insurrections; disarm rebels; cope with refugees and displaced persons; cooperate on economic development; and set up an inte...