Central America: Last Exit to Costa Rica

As U.S. exercises begin, Honduras dumps a general

New tremors rattled the volcanic landscape of Central America last week, but they owed nothing to the region’s earthquake-prone geology. The stresses came as the Reagan Administration further extended its armed diplomacy in the isthmus. On Capitol Hill, the Administration’s attention remained firmly fixed on securing $61.75 million in emergency military aid for El Salvador. Last week the Senate approved the aid by a 76-to-19 vote. But for the moment a sizable portion of Washington’s energies seemed to have shifted from the military and political battleground of El Salvador to neighboring Honduras. Not only had that nation assumed a major role in U.S. strategy, it had also just undergone an extraordinary hierarchical shakeup.

In the capital of Tegucigalpa, windows shook as A-37 attack aircraft of the Honduran air force swooped over the coffee-colored National Assembly building to celebrate the leadership change. Inside the legislature, deputies broke into nervous laughter at the noise as they voted 78 to 0 to install Air Force General Walter López Reyes, 43, as the new commander of the armed forces. The next day a tight phalanx of 17 colonels and lieutenant colonels from the 35-member superior council of the armed forces watched approvingly during López’s brief swearing-in. The junior officers were the key actors responsible for the sudden ouster of López’s ambitious predecessor, Defense Minister Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, 46, who was also the country’s biggest booster of the U.S. military presence in Honduras.

After his installation, López made a special point of describing Alvarez’s removal as a “highly patriotic act, which raises the standing of the constitutional government” headed by Civilian President Roberto Suazo Córdova, 57. Much the same line was taken by the U.S. Meanwhile, some 800 U.S. Army engineers were maneuvering heavy earth-moving equipment off the docks of Puerto Cortes and into the rugged countryside. Their task: to prepare two Honduran army airstrips on the borders with El Salvador and Nicaragua for use in upcoming combat assault exercises. The maneuvers, known as Granadero I, are the latest in a series of large-scale U.S.-Honduran exercises that began in February 1983; as many as 5,000 U.S. troops may be involved over the span of three months.

The early arrivals for Granadero I swelled an already considerable U.S. military Establishment in the country, numbering some 1,750 men and women. Many of those already on the ground will be involved in the operation, but at least 300 members of the 224th Military Intelligence Battalion, based at the Honduran airfield of Palmerola, are actively engaged in the war effort in neighboring El Salvador. The mission of the 224th: to fly reconnaissance missions over El Salvador, collecting military intelligence on the 10,000 guerrillas of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (F.M.L.N.) for relay to the Salvadoran army.

In addition, Honduras is playing host to an unknown number of CIA-sponsored paramilitary operatives, who secretly train and supply an estimated 10,000 Nicaraguan contras waging a hit-and-run war against their country’s Sandinista government. Recently, those operations have taken on a new international dimension through the mining of Nicaragua’s harbors by the contras: so far, at least four Soviet, Dutch, Panamanian and Liberian ships have been damaged by this sabotage. Last week the U.S. vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the attempted sea blockade. The government of France, long critical of Reagan Administration policy in Central America, has quietly consulted with some Latin American countries over the possibility of helping to remove the mines as a “humanitarian” measure. The French condition for such help is that “one or several friendly European powers” also offer to cooperate. Declaring that it did not intend to join France in the minesweeping venture, the British government nonetheless added that it disapproved, in the words of a spokesman, “of any threat to the principle of freedom of navigation.”

The coincidence of Alvarez’s ouster with the start of the latest U.S. exercises raised immediate speculation about Washington’s role, if any, in what amounted to a Honduran housecleaning. For the past two years, Alvarez has been accused of being the de facto strongman of Honduras, pulling both military and political strings behind the folksy, conservative Suazo. The charge was one that Alvarez took no great pains to deny. A colonel when he took over as armed forces chief, he arranged his own series of promotions to five-star general. Fiercely antiCommunist, he launched a harsh antiterrorist campaign and enthusiastically backed the Reagan Administration in creating a regional military training center in Honduras. There, some 100 Green Berets are now training as many as 1,000 Salvadoran troops for their war against the F.M.L.N. While negotiating the training-center deal with Washington, Alvarez largely ignored the foreign policy prerogatives of the Honduran national assembly.

Alvarez’s blatant cronyism had become a source of rancor in the Honduran armed forces; so had increasing rumors of corruption within his clique. The Defense Minister began avoiding meetings of the armed forces superior council. When he did attend one last month, says a participant, Alvarez was “gross and vulgar.” Younger officers suspected that he was tapping their telephones and following their personal movements. Some junior military men may have been bothered by Alvarez’s embrace of the U.S. training center in Honduras for Salvadoran troops: many Honduran officers have lingering memories of their country’s 1969 war with El Salvador. Some soldiers fear that at a future date border disputes between the two countries might trigger a return engagement, this time against Salvadoran troops trained in Honduras.

When it finally came, Alvarez’s downfall was both quick and ignominious. The day before his ouster, the Defense Minister traveled to a meeting of conservative civilian supporters in the Honduran industrial center of San Pedro Sula. After a party that lasted until 2 a.m., Alvarez arrived groggy and Unshaven at the local military airport for his return to Tegucigalpa. When Alvarez stepped inside a private airport office, he was informed that he was under arrest. He was then handcuffed and hustled aboard an airplane for the 90-minute flight to Costa Rica. On Friday, Alvarez surfaced in Miami.

In praising President Suazo following the ouster, U.S. officials said that they were surprised but undisturbed by the sudden purge. There is considerable justification for Washington’s confidence, since for the past two years Suazo has faithfully echoed Alvarez’s boosterism on every aspect of U.S.-Honduran military cooperation. Some Hondurans, however, appear to feel differently. As the Granadero exercises rolled ahead, an estimated 4,000 demonstrators marched through the streets of Tegucigalpa denouncing government oppression and demanding an end to the U.S. military presence in Honduras. It was the first significant protest demonstration in the country in more than two years. —By George Russell.Reported by William McWhirter/Tegucigalpa and Barrett Seaman/Washington