An estimated forty thousand Salvadorans and Nicaraguans were assisted in Costa Rica by 1989.116 According to Hayden some twenty thousand Salvadorans entered the country, most of them arriving between 1980 and 1982, and as many as two-thirds obtained refugee status.117 A dozen camps were established to house the refugees; international NGOS sponsored durable solutions projects, which were designed to make the refugees self-supporting.118 Refugees were allowed to seek employment outside these projects but more often than not found the bureaucracy difficult to navigate—a process made deliberately tedious to discourage competition with nationals.119 Not surprisingly, most refugees who came to Costa Rica bypassed the official refugee network, as they did in other countries; they preferred freedom of movement and economic self-sufficiency in the underground economy, even if it meant forfeiting rights, protections, and services. According to the UNHCR, by 1989, as many as 100,000 Salvadorans and Nicaraguans in Costa Rica lived undocumented. Government agencies placed the number as high as 290,000, 90 percent of which were believed to be Nicaraguan.120
As the strongest economy and democracy in Central America, Costa Rica offered migrants safety and opportunities for advancement regardless of their legal status. Thus, refugees who chose to settle here during the 1980s were among the least likely to return to their homelands once repatriation became possible.121 In 1992, President Rafael Calderón Jr. signed a decree that allowed Central American refugees to legalize their status and apply for permanent residency if they could prove residence in the country for at least two years.122
Refugee-producing nations also became refugee-receiving nations. Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua all signed the UN Convention and Protocol but exhibited different levels of commitment to refugee assistance. An estimated 145,000 Nicaraguans and 70,000 Salvadorans lived in Guatemala by the end of the 1980s, but the government barred UNHCR participation. El Salvador, in turn, did allow the UNHCR to help, and by 1991 the UNHCR had assisted 750 Nicaraguan refugees; however, an estimated 20,000 Central American refugees lived illegally in the country, assisted primarily by the Salvadoran Catholic Church, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and other international NGOs. The Salvadoran Catholic Archdiocese, for example, operated several camps that provided haven for roughly six thousand refugees.123
Nicaragua had the most liberal policy: over seven thousand migrants, most of them Salvadorans, received official refugee status and were granted freedom of movement and work permits. With the assistance of the UNHCR, the Sandinistas resettled some three thousand to cooperatives along the Pacific coast. Even though the Nicaraguan government encouraged refugees to regularize their status and become permanent residents, and granted them a host of benefits unavailable in other countries, one study showed that 77 percent wished to return to their homeland, a rate comparable to refugees in other countries.124 Some twenty thousand lived and worked undocumented during the 1980s, preferring to remain outside the reach of the government.125
By 1989, six nations—Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Belize—reported an aggregate eight hundred thousand immigrants, of which 10 percent were officially documented as refugees and received assistance from local governments and international agencies.
THE CENTRAL AMERICAN PEACE PLAN
Most countries in the Western Hemisphere rejected the Reagan administration's categorization of the political conflict as an East-West struggle, and opposed the administration's emphasis on a military solution. In January 1983, representatives from four Latin American governments—Mexico, Panama, Venezuela, and Colombia—met on the island of Contadora, off the coast of Panama, to try to draft a regional peace plan independent of the United States. In 1984 the so-called Contadora Group offered a twenty-one point proposal for a peace settlement that tried to address the concerns of the various parties involved. Included in its list of recommendations were the removal of foreign military advisers from Central America; an end of support to guerrilla movements; and the eventual institution of democratic, pluralist governments, with socioeconomic reconstruction.126 The proposal was drafted into treaty form and circulated to the nations of the hemisphere for discussion. The following year Argentina, Brazil, Peru, and Uruguay formed the Contadora Support Group (or Grupo de Lima) to lend support for a negotiated peace settlement.
The Reagan administration publicly stated its support for Contadora but undermined the negotiations.127 The Contadora proposal recognized the legitimacy of the Sandinista government and called for an end to US support for the Contras, which were terms that the administration refused to accept. Administration officials insisted that the Sandinistas could not be trusted to uphold the terms of the peace accords, and the United States would ultimately have to reestablish its military presence in Central America. The Unites States enlisted the aid of Honduras, El Salvador, and Costa Rica (the so-called Tegucigalpa Bloc) to help stall the peace process by challenging individual points in the proposed plan. By the end of 1985, the United States had succeeded in stalling the negotiations.
By 1987, however, a new political climate facilitated the renewal of diplomatic efforts. Throughout the 1980s, the US Congress had become increasingly critical of the Reagan administration's militaristic policies, and by 1987 had significantly reduced aid to the Contras and to El Salvador, eroding Reagan's national mandate. The Sandinistas, in turn, had been able to contain the Contras to the border of Honduras, albeit at great moral and economic cost to their country, and exacerbating the popular discontent that would eventually displace them at the voting booth. In Costa Rica, newly elected president Oscar Arias Sánchez was less willing than his predecessor to allow his country to be used by the United States in their geopolitical agenda. Arias took the initiative and resumed the regional peace talks in 1986 (for which he was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize). The presidents of El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Costa Rica met in Esquipulas, Guatemala. (Interestingly, Esquipulas is home to the shrine of the Black Christ, which attracts the second largest number of pilgrims in the Americas, after Mexico's shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe. The choice of setting perhaps symbolized regional leaders' hopes—and prayers—for peace.) Finally, on August 7, 1987, the participants signed a peace accord appropriately entitled “Procedure for the Establishment of a Strong and Lasting Peace in Central America” (also called Esquipulas II or Arias Plan.) The peace plan addressed national reconciliation; democratization and free elections; the termination of aid for insurrectionist forces; the nonuse of territory to attack other states; arms control; economic development; international verification and follow-up by UN peacekeeping forces; as well as a timetable for fulfillment of these commitments.
As part of the negotiated settlement, the Contra leadership agreed to a disarmament plan, and the Sandinistas agreed to open and democratic elections and an amnesty program for Contra soldiers who wished to be reintegrated into Nicaraguan society. However, when both parties refused to act in good faith, the five Central American presidents were twice forced to reconvene—in Tesoro, El Salvador (in February 1989), and Tela, Honduras (August 1989), to discuss ways to overcome the impasse. As a result of these meetings, the Sandinistas agreed to move up the scheduled elections to February