“El Salvador Is Spanish for Vietnam”: The Central America Solidarity Movement and the Long Shadow of the Vietnam War

For some Americans, leaving Vietnam offered the United States an opportunity to transform its role in the world, especially through the promotion of human rights. Still others balked at the notion that a new morality should guide U.S. foreign policy. For the remainder of the 1970s, the former perspective had become predominant as a “Vietnam syndrome” discouraged U.S. intervention abroad. However, in 1980, Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan repeatedly promised to kick the “Vietnam syndrome.” To cure the United States of this pernicious disease, Reagan looked to El Salvador.

Yet, as Reagan aimed to strengthen the U.S.-supported Salvadoran government, activists in the United States conjured the ghosts of the Vietnam War to warn Americans about the consequences of meddling in El Salvador. I argue that the Vietnam analogy helped the more radical anti-interventionists and anti-imperialists associated with groups like the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) attract ordinary Americans to their cause. While many Americans could not point to El Salvador on a map, they knew that the same policies undertaken by Reagan in Central America—sending military aid and advisors to El Salvador and authorizing covert actions—resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers in a country most had never heard of prior to the 1960s. As a result, CISPES and other groups ensured that the United States remained infected with the “Vietnam syndrome” and prevented Reagan from expanding the war in El Salvador.