Peacebuilding in Cold War Central America: Refugee Repatriation and International Collaboration, 1987–92

On 16 January 1992, the government of El Salvador and the leftwing revolutionaries of the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) signed a historic peace accord in Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City. After more than a decade of violence and foreign intervention, the Salvadoran War had officially come to an end. In the years leading up to January 1992, the international community had played a key role in brokering the peace agreement. Facilitators to the negotiations included United Nations (UN) Secretary General, Javier Perez de Cuellar, Latin American and European ambassadors, and high-ranking members of the United States government. Peace in El Salvador, however, was also a grassroots endeavor. In the 1980s and early 1990s, thousands of Central Americans worked towards peace, not just seeking to end to violence, but also struggling for human rights, reconciliation, justice, and democratic participation. To achieve these aims, Salvadorans collaborated with a range of international organizations and NGOs, who offered local peacemakers an international platform and, as such, a certain level of protection from Salvadoran state forces. Seeking to challenge the idea of Central America as a region typified solely by violence, this paper combines historiographies of peace, Latin America’s Cold War, and international relations. It uses the case study of the refugee repatriation to analyze how and with what results Salvadorans and a transnational network of supporters envisaged and worked for regional peace. In doing so, this paper aims to contribute to a new history of the Central American peace processes, which includes the perspectives of often marginalized groups and peoples.