Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977–1980. Volume XV: Central America, 1977–1980. Editor: Nathaniel L. Smith.

Abstract

“Central America is a real volcano,” remarked William Bowdler, the Carter administration’s director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, in October 1979. With the Sandinista Revolution triumphant in Nicaragua, Guatemala’s hardline military regime assassinating dissidents with impunity, and El Salvador teetering on the brink of civil war, Bowdler was right. Noting the region’s deep socioeconomic inequality and history of dictatorial rule, he observed that “the surprising thing is that it has not erupted before now.”1 The extent to which prior U.S. policy helped produce that eruption, and how exactly Carter’s team might mitigate its effects, are much discussed in volume XV of the 1977–1980 Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series [hereafter FRUS XV]. The volume covers the United States’ relationship to the troubled isthmus (minus Panamá, which, owing to the complex politics of the 1977 Torrijos–Carter Treaties, receives a separate anthology) during the Jimmy Carter years. During that time, U.S. officials struggled to balance Carter’s stated goal of promoting human rights, democracy, and non-intervention with perceived Cold War security imperatives on the ground, a losing battle waged throughout the volume’s roughly 1,300 pages. As such, FRUS XV will be of interest not only to historians of Central America, but to scholars of empire, human rights, decolonization, revolutions, counterrevolutions, and U.S. foreign policy more broadly.