Most of Professor Peter Deshazo’s professional life has been related to Latin America. He was a member of the career U.S. Foreign Service, with diplomatic assignments in Washington and the region. Outside of government, he directed the Americas program at a leading think tank in Washington, D.C. and headed a non-profit organization affiliated with Harvard University that is dedicated to strengthening higher education in the Americas. His research and teaching interests include U.S. foreign policy, Latin American history, and issues related to security, governance, international affairs and energy in the region, as well as music and film. I had the honor of interviewing Professor Deshazo; our discussion was a chronological analysis of Nicaraguan political development, as well as the various opinions of the Nicaraguan issue from his time at Dartmouth and with the US Foreign Service department. The interview video and text are presented below.

1. What was your first experience studying Nicaragua?: I really didn’t I didn’t focus on very much on Nicaragua I didn’t focus much on Latin America during my time at Dartmouth I toke one course on Latin American History that really I found quite interesting and actually wrote a paper on Guatemala, but I didn’t know much about Nicaragua and I didn’t have much of an opportunity to learn about Nicaragua while I was at Dartmouth.

2. What were your early perceptions of the political culture and social climate in Nicaragua?: I really began thinking about Nicaragua while I was a graduate school and the rebellion against Somoza in the mid 70’s. [The revolution in the mid 1970’s is what got most people attention focused on Nicaragua. From that vintage I saw Nicaragua as sort of a traditional kind of civil military authoritarian regime where a small group of people controlled a country. Again, it was mostly from just my views from the outside not from any kind of experience with the country [Nicaragua] at all.

3. Would you say the US [United States] Somoza relationship during the 1970’s was an overall good relationship for both parties?: Well as the revolution progressed and I had learned more about Nicaragua; I was at that point after 1977 in the US Foreign Service and was assigned abroad in Bolivia. It was pretty clear to me that he revolution was moving in a direction of being able to topple Somoza and it was a regime that was, again in terms of the perspective from the Carter administration, was one that violated human rights it was authoritarian not democratic and therefore there was sympathy for those who sought to bright about a democratic regime in Nicaragua.

4. Would you say there was a difference between the Latin American perceptions versus the United States’ perception of the Somoza dictatorship during this tumultuous period?: People in the United States saw the Somoza dictatorship in different ways. There were those who were friendly with the dictatorship and saw it as a bulwark against communism in Nicaragua and in Latin America and were very sympathetic to it and there were other who saw it as too radical and repressive and that were in favor of seeing it [the dictatorship] come to an end. So there was no single view about Nicaragua in the United States. In Latin America, at the time I would say the outlook was somewhat similar [to the United States]. There were a lot of military regimes in Latin America in the late 1970’s who looked on the Nicaraguan revolution against Somoza as being really problematic. That this was communism on the march, this was Cuba that was instigating it, and the Soviet Union was behind it. And especially in military regimes in the Southern cone, like Chile Argentina Uruguay [and] Brazil, the rebellion against Somoza was seen as dangerous and problematic. For other in Latin America, it [the rebellion] was seen as a rising of the people against a oppressive dictatorship and there was a lot of sympathy for it.

5. During the Somoza dictatorship and the development of this United States foreign policy in Nicaragua, you began your career in foreign services. Would you say that your occupation as a representative of the US state department complicated your thoughts of the civil war during that time?:       I had my own views about the whole Nicaraguan affair and the conflict; first of all the overthrow of Somoza and then the development of the Sandinista regime, the rise of the Contras and all of that. I was never stationed in Central America and did not work on Central American affairs during that entire period. So I was not personally involved in any of it. My own assignments were in South America where I could see the transition between the Carter years and the concern for human rights but also the fact that even within the carter administration there were cold war concerns about communism subversion in Latin American, but there was much more of an emphasis on human right under Carter, and then the early years of the Reagan Administration where the hardliners who were focused on Cold War issues, focused on concerns about the rise of revolutionary ideologies in Latin America. Especially focused on Central American; all of that came to the forefront. So there was a big debate going on even within the US government about how to deal with Nicaragua.

6. In the aftermath of the civil war the Sandinistas clearly emerged as the victor. In the eyes of Latin America versus the United States would you say the civil war was effective in bringing about positive change?: Well the presence of the Contra certainty had an effect on the conduct of Nicaragua. The conduct of foreign policy and of the domestic policy of the Sandinista regime had a big effect on the Nicaraguan economy. The outcome in 1990 if you want to see that as a final outcome of an election in which the opposition group won; Violeta Chamorro being elected president, that was seen in the United States in most circles as being positive. But the Contra movement itself and the funding for the Contra was something that was very controversial in the US. You saw Congress very divided on the issue of contra funding. The relationship between the Reagan Administration and Congress was deeply strained over the issue of Contra funding. The good part was that as the Cold War phased out, the United States was able to phase out of support for the Contra’s and in the end there was a democratic election in 1990 and there was change in the administration as a result of the election so Nicaragua was able to take a democratic path at the end of that period.

7. Great! If possible could you just elaborate on the Sandinista government’s relationship with other Latin American governments during this early development period?: Well it depended on what governments. If you were talking about governments that were military governments in South America that relationship was very poor. If you’re talking about Cuba and some of the other regimes in Latin America, not military regimes it was ok, but, an in fact, there was a lot of support from governments in the region for the rebellion against Somoza in the late 1970’s. So there was considerable sympathy for the Sandinistas and for the rebellion against Somoza but at the same time there was concern about it depending on the ideological orientation of the regime in power in Latin America at the time in the different countries.

8. During the time of the Sandinista-Contra war would you say there was a difference in US media sensationalism of the conflict compared to Latin America’s perception of the conflict?: Well in the United States the Contra War got a lot of attention because the Contra War was a big political issue between the Congress and the [Reagan] administration. Even within the administration there were different points of view regarding whether there should be funding for the Contra’s or not, the role of the Contra’s, who the Contra’s were all of that. And again Latin America, there were different points of view regarding this. Some saw Contra war as US imperialism. From the point of view of the left this was certainty additional US interference in the affairs of Latin America, on the right they saw the Contra’s as a way of reining in the communist inspired Sandinista regime as they saw it so people viewed the Contra’s in different way depending on their ideologies. There certainty was a lot of media coverage in Latin America on Nicaragua; and again that coverage depended a lot on the ideologies of the specific media and also the political conditions in the specific countries, whether they were military regimes or not.

9. In the aftermath of all the wars and of communism, which played a major role in the United States’ perception to Nicaragua, would you say that Nicaragua was an issue of American security and if so was the threat political, economic or drug-related?: You can look at it and say oh there was no security threat to the United States. From the point of view of the reference point of the Cold War, there were those in the United States who definitely saw the fall of Somoza and the Sandinista regime as threatening to the security of the United States, in the sense that they were concerned that the revolution would be exported, not that Nicaragua was a powerful country that in it of itself constituted a threat to the United States but the fact that the image of Nicaragua, the example of Nicaragua would be replicated elsewhere in South America that the Sandinista would support the ongoing insurrection in El Salvador for example or there would be support for gorillas in Guatemala. There were other pats of Central America that were going through extremely difficult political strife at the same time so from the point of view of the hardliners of the Reagan Administration there definitely was a threat to the US security in the Sandinista’s for many other that was not the case. The Sandinistas were a group of Nicaraguan nationalist of far-left conviction but that in it of itself, Sandinismo was not going to be a threat to the United States, and probably not to other countries in the region, so there were certainly differences in the way it was viewed. I would probably say that from my own point of view I tend to see it much less of a threat then those within the Reagan Administration at the time.

 Great those were all my questions, thanks so much for your time!