Latin America's "long, bloody chapter ends"

Jim Wyss and Glenn Garvin have a terrific overview of Latin American guerrilla movements finally coming to an end in the region for the Miami Herald. With the hopeful signing of a peace agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC, there will be no serious active guerrilla movement anywhere in the region. Yes, there will still be some active guerrillas in Paraguay (EPP), Colombia (ELN), and Peru (SL), but none have the military strength or popular support of their predecessors.

I did find this paragraph surprising.

Two other guerrilla movements came tantalizingly close to victory. In 1981, the Guatemalan army was down to a two-week supply of ammunition and near panic at its impending defeat. At about the same time, guerrillas in El Salvador were so confident that they launched what they billed as the “final offensive” on the nation’s capital. In both cases, last-minute military aid from the Reagan administration turned the tide.

I don't remember hearing that the Guatemalan military was that close to losing it all - two weeks of ammo? From some of my conversations with Guatemalan guerrillas, they argued that they received a tremendous influx of recruits in 1981 because of the military's brutal counterinsurgency program which had shifted its focus from the cities to the countryside at that time. They had too many volunteers. At the time, they didn't have enough weapons for everybody. Nor did they have the organizational capacity to integrate so many recruits at the same time. The Guatemalan guerrillas might have been at the height of their strength at this time but on the verge of emerging victorious, I am not so sure.

In El Salvador, the FMLN launched its final offensive on January 10, 1981, ten days before Ronald Reagan assumed the presidency in the US. President Jimmy Carter had suspended some aid to El Salvador following the murders of the four churchwomen in December 1980. However, he soon allowed much of that aid to go forward when he feared that he would "lose" another government to anti-American forces. According to Brian Bosch, the US released $5 million of non-military aid on January 14th and then an additional $5 million in lethal aid two days later. When US military supplies arrived on the 17th, the Salvadoran military responded:

With a combination of politically motivated nationalistic rhetoric and genuine pride, Colonel Garcia remarked to the press that the new U.S. equipment will "come in handy because it will help consolidate what we ourselves have accomplished."

From what I understand, the conditions for revolution were somewhat more ripe in 1979-1980. However, the FMLN wasn't ready. When the FMLN was ready, sort of, their moment of opportunity had passed.

Here is a little of what Alberto Martin and I wrote in Unity and Disunity in the FMLN.

 One early event in which the FMLN’s lack of cohesion undermined its performance came during the failed January 1981 “final offensive.” According to McClintock (1998, 54), the FMLN disagreed on whether national conditions were appropriate for an attack, the RN did not participate, and the ERP did not share its weapons. The FPL insisted on a strategy of prolonged popular war while others supported a popular insurrection (Montgomery 1982, 131). The difficulties were compounded because the organizations still did not trust each other, which led them to overestimate, or lie about, how many fighters each would provide. According to ERP interviews, all five organizations participated, but the other four left forces in reserve. These internal frictions were not the only reason for the failed offensive, but they highlight the difficulties of reconciling the operations of distinct political-military organizations.

Gotta go prepare for a meeting.