Failed Buyout

Abstract

Since postwar settlements involve compromises, injustices, and ironies, reconciliation, like revolution, has its losers. The Central American peace agreements of the 1990s included many forward-looking provisions, including constitutional and electoral reforms, restructuring of the armed forces, and land distribution to war veterans and/or their civilian supporters, but the accords in El Salvador and Guatemala were not negotiated revolutions, nor was the 1990 electoral defeat of the Sandinista National Liberation Front in Nicaragua a counterrevolutionary victory (Abu-Lughod, 1992; Dye et al., 1995; Vickers and Spence, 1992; Vilas, 1987; 1992). The parties to the peace agreements publicly answered the Who won? question in uniformly brief terms-peace, all of us, or democracy-that masked the enduring sources of social and political tension. This article examines one component of the peace agreement in Nicaragua-land rights for demobilized Contra combatants (or ex-RN, for Resistencia Nicaragiuense, or Nicaraguan Resistance)-to offer a more nuanced answer. The study of postwar settlements and reconstruction should help us understand the conditions that prevent renewals of conflict (Licklider, 1993; Zartman, 1995). Treatment of war veterans merits particular attention given their potential for protest, as evidenced in their post-World War I mobilizations in Russia and in Italy and in Portugal in 1974. In the United States, elites