When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, Central America was in flames. Long a semifeudal paradise for tyrannical oligarchs and US monopolies, the region was then consumed by revolutionary and counter-revolutionary violence.

In 1979, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) had overthrown the US-backed Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua, igniting the hopes of revolutionaries throughout the isthmus and lighting a fire under the cold warriors in Washington. In 1980, five leftist organizations united in El Salvador to form the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN). In Guatemala, where the United States helped overthrow a democratic reformist government in 1954, leftist insurgents had been waging an unsuccessful but persistent battle against the military regime since the 1960s; by 1982, four guerrilla forces had merged to form the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG).

Under President Carter, US aid to Central America dropped to historic lows. Assistance to Guatemala was cut off over human rights concerns, and military aid to El Salvador was also restricted. In 1979, however, things changed. After an October coup ousted a president who had been elected two years earlier in a vote broadly denounced as fraudulent, Carter restored non-lethal military assistance to El Salvador. The administration hoped that the new “centrist” junta would achieve in El Salvador what the United States hadn’t in Nicaragua — namely, tempering revolutionary aspirations and installing a modestly reformist, US-friendly bourgeoisie democracy. But El Salvador’s recalcitrant elites forcefully opposed the junta’s land reform proposal, and the government’s civilian members were soon forced out.