Long Live the Vietnam Syndrome: The Transnational Central American Anti-Interventionist Movement, Reagan, and El Salvador

“How close we could look into a bright future,” Ernesto Che Guevara declared in 1967, where “two, three or many Vietnams flourish throughout the world with their share of deaths and their immense tragedies, their everyday heroism and their repeated blows against imperialism....” In 1980, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) made Guevara’s dream a reality in El Salvador by launching a guerrilla war against the U.S.-backed Revolutionary Government Junta. Like in Vietnam, the contest soon became an international affair, with both state and non-state actors choosing sides. In 1980, Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan campaigned on the promise to kick the “Vietnam syndrome, which had discouraged U.S. intervention abroad. Reagan hoped to cure the United States of this pernicious disease in El Salvador by providing its government with massive amounts of economic and military aid. Meanwhile, the FMLN found an ally in the U.S.-based Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES). This paper will also look at the guerrilla public diplomacy carried out by CISPES and U.S.-based representatives of the FMLN political-diplomatic commission. CISPES helped organize numerous “solidarity tours” of FMLN leaders across the United States. CISPES and the FMLN repeatedly conjured the ghosts of the Vietnam War to warn Americans about the consequences of meddling in El Salvador, raising the political costs for the Reagan administration to intervene. With Reagan restrained, CISPES and the FMLN joined other Central Americans leaders in promoting peaceful solutions to the conflict, ultimately preventing further escalation and another Vietnam.