Lost Chance for Wisdom — The 1837 Precedent for the Sandinista-Contra War

Lost Chance for Wisdom:

The 1837 Precedent for the Sandinista-Contra War 

By William R. Meara

Contras in Yamales 1989

Each spring the U.S. National War College sends groups of students and faculty members on week-long trips to countries around the world.  The students use these trips to gather material for their research projects, and to get some experience interacting with U.S. Embassy staff and senior host government officials. Before the students travel they are enrolled in seminars that focus on the country or region they will visit.  In 2019 I was tasked with taking students to Central America, and I was the lead faculty member for the Central America seminar. It is often said that the teacher of a course can learn more than the students.  I hope our students learned something, but I came away thinking that I may have benefited from the course more than they had.  I thought I knew a lot about Central America, but I learned  that even though I had worked on the region for ten years, I had done so without a full understanding of key aspects of Central America’s history and political culture. 

To get ready for our trip, we read a really wonderful history of the region,  “Central America — A Nation Divided” by Ralph Lee Woodward Jr.  I had been pleased to include this book in the reading list not only because it is excellent, but also because of the author’s background.   Dr. Woodward is Professor Emeritus of Latin American History at Tulane University.  He is the author of more than 60 scholarly articles and 17 books on the region.   His academic credentials are impeccable, and his book is very well written. Also important was the fact that he had been a United States Marine. You might think that his military service should have been irrelevant, but at the National War College it was an important consideration.  As I drew up the reading list for our seminar, I saw that most of the books had been written by journalists or academics who write from a leftist, often pro-revolutionary perspective. I did not want our students to suspect that I was trying to give them an unbalanced view of the region, so for each book or article that seemed to come from the left side of our political spectrum, I tried to find another whose author seemed to have links on the other side of the ideological divide.  Woodward’s USMC background seemed to provide some of this.  Two of our seven students were Marines — I hope that they and their classmates found Woodward’s Marine status at least somewhat balancing.   

With my students in Huehuetenango, Guatemala 1979

In his early chapters, Woodward had been helping us understand the important ethnic and social divisions in Central America, and especially in Guatemala.  In colonial times, at the top of the social hierarchy had been the Peninsulares (the Spaniards). Just below them, were the more numerous Creoles — these were  people of Spaniard family background, but who had been born in Central America.  Then there were the Ladinos — these were people of mixed European and Indian heritage.  They were culturally and linguistically Hispanic — they spoke Spanish and had a pattern of life that was closer to the Creoles than to the Indians.  Finally, at the bottom of the social structure were the Indians.  These were the survivors of the slaughter and disease that had followed the arrival of the Spaniards.  

The Ladino-Indian split evolved into the most significant ethnic feature of modern Guatemala.  The Indians continue to live largely apart from Hispanic Guatemala — they speak indigenous languages, wear traditional Indian dress,  and live in Indian villages, usually in the mountains. They continue to be exploited by those higher up on the social spectrum. I had some experience with Guatemalan Indians — I had spent my 20th and 21st summers in Guatemala’s Western Highlands, in the Cuchumatanes mountains in a town called Huehuetenango.  While there I had helped teach English to middle school students, half of whom were Indian kids who the Christian Brothers were bravely trying to help.  In Huehuetenango I’d seen some of the cruelty and abuse that characterizes Guatemala’s ethnic split.  Especially memorable was the plight of a very homesick little Indian girl forced to work under harsh conditions as a live-in servant for a Ladino family.  

The little Indian girl, with volunteer Kathy Spellman, 1979

As he went through the history, when Dr. Woodward got to around 1837, his book gave me what I guess we could call “a history epiphany.” Woodward was describing the big post-colonial 19th century political divide in Central America between the Conservatives and the Liberals. This was the period of the Central American Federation. Colonial rule from Spain had ended.  Central America was then just one country — not the five we know today.      The Conservatives were the defenders of the old order, of the system that had been set up by the colonial rulers from Spain. They were also the defenders of the power and privileges of the Catholic Church.   The Liberals were the reformers, the modernizers.  Woodward was writing about Guatemala in the 1830s and 1840s, but his book made me think of Nicaragua in the 1970s and 1980s.   

On the Honduras-Nicaragua border 1989

By 1988, about eight years after my college visit to Guatemala, I was a U.S. Embassy officer in Honduras.  I was working with the Nicaraguan Indians who formed the rank and file of  the anti-Sandinista counter-revolution: The Contras.  Years after we left the region, my former boss in Honduras, Dr. Tim Brown, explored the ethnic dimensions of the Contra war in his book "The Real Contra War — Highlander Peasant Resistance in Nicaragua."   He wrote of the Contras (Comandos): 

The peasant Comandos made it clear to me that they saw themselves and the peasantry from which they had emerged as different from others in their country.  They also saw themselves in "us versus them" terms and their war as not only a battle against a revolution, but also as a peasant fight against urban, Pacific lowland espanoles, or Spaniards. Of the forty-four Comandos formally interviewed, all but one identified himself as indio.  This strongly suggests that the Comandos had consciously placed themselves on the Indian side of Nicaragua's principle ethnic divide. 

The Nicaraguan Indians were far more culturally Hispanic than were the Guatemalan Indians, but their indigenous identity was very important and created an ethnic divide similar to that of Guatemala. 

Very few American officials actually worked with the Contras; those of us who did all spoke Spanish and had significant experience in Latin America.  We were fairly confident that we understood the people we were working with.  But in reading Woodward, I realized there had been big gaps in our knowledge of Central American history, gaps that had weakened our understanding of a very basic question about the Contras:  Why did they fight?  

Critics of the Contras often tried to portray them as U.S.-paid mercenaries.  But those of us who worked with them knew this could not be a true description — they just weren’t getting paid enough.  At best, most of them could count on a meager ration of rice and beans and a tortilla each day.  Those were not mercenary wages.  But this situation begged the question:  Why were these thousands of young Nicaraguans fighting against the Sandinistas? I think most of the U.S, officers involved with the Contras had a deep understanding of why we were opposing the Sandinistas:  They were allied with our geo-strategic enemy in the Soviet Union. Our motive in this conflict was very clear.  But what about the Contras?  Why were they in it?  We had heard them talk about their dislike for the Sandinistas, but in the back of my mind I sometimes wondered why this group of dark-skinned Indians who had been oppressed and abused for so long by the Nicaraguan elite was so violently opposed to a group — the Sandinistas — who claimed to be working on behalf of the downtrodden. 

With a Contra commander on the Nicaraguan-Honduran border 1989

Over time, after dozens of interviews with Contras, I came to accept their rationale for their war:  They just didn’t like big changes being pushed on them by people they saw as privileged, white, city-slicker, do-gooders.  They disliked the effort to collectivize agriculture.  They disliked Sandinista efforts to indoctrinate the children.  They deeply resented Sandinista moves against the Catholic Church. For many of them, the last straw was Sandinista military conscription — if they were going to have to be in an army, they preferred to be in the anti-Sandinista army.  I understood these grievances, but still, I was a bit perplexed by the incongruity of downtrodden peasants rising up against the leftist revolutionaries who claimed to be fighting for their liberation. 

I wasn’t the only one with these kinds of questions.  On a hilltop overlooking an improvised parade field in the Contras’ sanctuary area on the Honduran side of the Nicaraguan border, the senior military leader of the Contras had once turned to me with an odd question. “Do you know anything about poor, country people (campesinos)?”  This commander was hard to talk to.  He was sullen and brooding and he was not impressed by visiting gringos.  I knew I had to give him a good answer if there was any hope of continuing the conversation.  I told him that I had learned that campesinos are generally very conservative, averse to change.  He agreed with me, then commented on how — in spite of this — some 15,000 of them had taken the very bold step of joining a counter-revolutionary army.  This commander seemed to be wondering about the same incongruities that I saw. Why had the Contras risen up against their would-be benefactors?  It always seemed kind of odd. I thought of it as being unprecedented.  And that is where I was wrong. It never occurred to me that this had all happened before, but it had, in Guatemala, starting around 1837. 

Like the Sandinistas, the Liberals of 19th century Guatemala had an ambitious agenda for change, an agenda that was based on foreign ideas. Both groups sought to address the region’s underdevelopment.  The foreign ideology of the Sandinistas was Marxist-Leninism.  The 19th Century Liberals were influenced by the Enlightenment, and by progress in the UK and the U.S.  Both groups had a hard time getting the lower social classes to accept their plans.  Woodward wrote about 19th Century Central America:  

“At the heart of the heart of the difficulty lay the Liberals’ reform program — the logical extension of changes inspired by Enlightenment philosophers… The creoles added a new dimension, however, when they  made a conscious effort to emulate the rapidly advancing English-speaking world.  Direct contact with English and North American merchants and diplomats in Central America was responsible for part of this, but probably more important were the readings and travels of Central Americans.  Morazan and Galvez believed that enlightened legislation could transform Central America into a modern, progressive republic. Convinced that their nation’s underdevelopment was the result of Spanish colonialism, they sought to destroy Hispanic institutions and laws and to create new ones modeled upon the successful experience of Great Britain and the United States.”  

For the 19th Century Liberals, the bogey man was the colonial legacy and the Hispanic institutional framework the Spaniards had left behind. For the Sandinistas the bogey man was North American Capitalism.

As was the case with the Sandinistas,  the Liberals were often insensitive and tone deaf in pushing their agenda. Woodward wrote that “The Guatemalan Liberals displayed exceptional ineptitude in converting a population accustomed to paternalism to their well intentioned reforms.”   Faced with a need to increase government revenues, the Central American government imposed a direct “head tax” similar to a widely disliked tax that the Spaniards had levied. In an effort to build infrastructure, the government required all residents to work on the roads three days each month.  Those with resources were able to substitute a payment, but poorer Guatemalans found themselves required to participate in forced labor.  They didn’t like it. 

Contras, 1989

And as with the Sandinistas, the Liberals of 1837 were often vengeful and brutal in their exercise of power. In both cases the government was, in effect,  militarized. And in both cases opponents faced harsh treatment including exile, confiscation of property, or worse.  

Liberal land reform efforts backfired — the Liberals of 1837 pushed for a system of individualized land ownership that was alien to the Indians who had used the land as common property.  The new law allowed outsiders to become owners of that land — the Indians soon found themselves as “sharecroppers or debt peons.” This was, for me, very similar to the complaints I heard from many of the Contras about Sandinista efforts to collectivize agriculture. . 

Like the Sandinistas, the Liberals went after the Catholic Church, and in both cases this was a major contributor to popular resistance.  The Liberal government of the Federation moved against clergymen aligned with the conservatives, including the Archbishop.  Monastic orders were suppressed. Church funds were seized. Religious holidays were abolished, Civil marriage was authorized, and divorce was legalized.  The government moved to set up secular schools, taking education out of the hands of the church. The Catholic Church reacted forcefully to these changes, using its enormous grass-roots influence to oppose the government.

Contra with crucifix

The Nicaraguan Contras  were very religious, very Catholic.  Devotion to the Virgin Mary was quite evident. Many of the Contras wore rosary beads around their necks. Some of the Contra military encampments along the Honduras/Nicaragua border featured improvised chapels. Contras disabled by war-wounds had created something of a cottage industry turning U.S. M-16 rounds into crucifixes; in a bit of politico-religious humor, one of the Contra leaders joked that they had tried to make these “Contra Crosses” out of Soviet AK-47 rounds, but “for some reason” it never worked. It was easy to see why people like the Contras would reject the efforts of those who described religion as “the opiate of the masses.” Whenever the Contras would complain about life under the Sandinistas, they would talk about Sandinista hostility to the church. 

A Contra Cross made from an M-16 round

The Liberal Guatemalan government of Galvez launched a program to “westernize” the Indians.  Woodward describes one program in which “uneducated children” were taken from their parents and assigned to “protectors” who would, supposedly, provide for their education.  Many of the children ended up as inexpensive maids for the wealthy.  This reminded me of Contra complaints about the Sandinistas sending Nicaraguan children to Cuba’s Isle of Pines for revolutionary education.  As with the Guatemalans of 1837, the Nicaraguans of 1981 were bitterly opposed to having their children taken away from them.   

Woodward wrote that “The grassroots reaction against the Liberals was especially violent against foreign elements and against efforts to change traditional lifestyles and patterns of rural life.” That phrase about “traditional lifestyles and patterns of rural life” resonated with me.   Working with the Contras, or with other Central American campesinos, you realize that when they contemplated change, the stakes were quite high.  The main reason they do things the same way their grandfathers did was because the new techniques might not work, and a crop failure could be devastating.  Woodward notes that in pushing their agenda, the Liberals made “substantial headway” in gaining the acceptance of the elite, but “they found the changes unwelcome among the lower classes.”  He was writing about 1837, but those statements would also have been true in 1981.

So as I read Woodward, I began to realize that the Contras were  not the first group of Central Americans to reject the efforts of educated city folks who claimed to be working for their benefit.  

As with the Contras in the 1980s, in Central America in 1837, bitter lower-class dissatisfaction led to war.  In 1837, a natural leader — a Guatemalan ladino named Rafael Carrera — emerged. Campesinos rose up across Central America.  Woodward notes that soon “The war was becoming a race war, with rural Indians, ladinos, mulattoes and zambos joining together against the white creoles and the foreigners.” As noted by Dr. Brown, ethnicity was also an important factor in the Contra war; I was reminded of this when I noticed that the Contras were sometimes referring to me as a “chele” (white guy).   

So as I walked through the Yamales valley in Honduras in 1988 and  ‘89, trying to understand the motives that had pushed the Contras to war,  I was unaware of the fact that 150 years earlier, other Central Americans had, in a similar way, taken up arms in opposition to proposals for societal change, proposals in many ways similar to those of the Sandinistas.  I may be wrong about this, but I don’t think any of the other Americans working with the Contras were aware of the 1837 precedent. I do not remember it ever coming up in conversation, and I have not seen reference to it in my colleagues’ writings. 

Through other readings for the Central American seminar, I learned that I was not the only one to have realized later that I had missed out on some of the wisdom that history can provide.  Anthony Lake was the State Department’s Director of Policy Planning (George Kennan’s old job) during the Carter Administration. Lake was aware of the big gaps in his knowledge of what had led us to the crisis of the 1980s.  Thrown into the political wilderness by Ronald Reagan’s electoral victor, Lake decided to fill those gaps by writing a book about the region.  “Somoza Falling — The Nicaraguan Dilemma: A Portrait of Washington at Work” is mostly about how the Washington bureaucracy dealt with the region, but it begins with a superb look back at how previous U.S. administrations had struggled with the area.  In the preface to his book, Lake wrote “I remember feeling at the time that I did not know nearly as much about the subject as I would have wished, that there was not enough time to study its history and nuances. This book then, offered a chance at furthering my education.” 

Not having trudged through base-camps in the Yamales valley trying to understand the Contras, my students at the National War College were not as surprised and excited as I was about Woodward’s description of a 19th century Central American peasant rebellion.  I tried to use the similarities between the two cases as an example of the benefits of studying history.   

I don't  think that knowledge of what had happened in Guatemala in 1837 would have changed what we did with the Contras, or our approach to them. But awareness of this precedent would have helped us understand the Contras a bit better, and it may have helped us  better explain their struggle to skeptical outsiders. I wish I had read Woodward’s book before I started working with the Contras — I missed out on the kind of wisdom that history can provide. 

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Post Script:

Dr. Ralph Woodward Jr. 

In June 2020, while preparing this article,  I was pleased to make e-mail contact with  Dr. Ralph Woodward.  I thanked him for all the wisdom conveyed by his books and articles. 

Copyright 2020 by William R.Meara.  All rights reserved.