Word: rdova
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...revise the 1954 Bilateral Assistance Military Agreement, under which the U.S. can bring a wide range of military equipment to Honduran soil, and in particular a secret 1982 appendix that made possible the creation of the Regional Military Training Center. The government of President Roberto Suazo Córdova has also been discreetly pressuring some 10,000 Honduran-based contras to move into Nicaragua. After playing host to as many as 5,000 U.S. servicemen and conducting joint military exercises with the U.S. almost continuously over the past 18 months, Honduras now houses fewer than 700 U.S. troops...
...choice of Honduras was yet another sign of that country's growing role in the Reagan Administration's Central American strategy. Since 1982, the government of President Roberto Suazo Córdova, 56, has allowed American-backed anti-Sandinista rebels to use Honduras as a staging ground for raids into Nicaragua. The U.S. has built new concrete runways capable of landing C-130 military transport planes and has installed a radar station on Tiger Island in the Gulf of Fonseca, while 6,000 Honduran soldiers, roughly half the nation's army, are being taught American field tactics...
Much of the anxious talk in Tegucigalpa centers on one man: General Gustavo Alvarez Martínez, 45, the fervently anti-Communist commander in chief of the Honduran armed forces. When Roberto Suazo Córdova was sworn in last year as Honduras' first civilian President in a decade, Alvarez vowed that the army would be at the service of the state. But growing U.S. military involvement in Honduras may have weighted the delicate power balance in favor of Alvarez. Critics argue that Alvarez, who was scheduled to visit Washington this week, now plays such an important role...
...talks with the government's representatives continued, the guerrillas apparently dropped some of their demands, including a call for U.S. military advisers to leave the country. President Roberto Suazo Córdova, after visiting the scene, predicted a peaceful end to the standoff. So it was. At week's end, the guerrillas released their last 34 hostages and were flown out of the country to an undisclosed destination...
...obvious danger in Honduras' new antiguerrilla campaign is that Suazo Cordova and Alvarez will seek to suppress subversion too zealously while trampling on the citizenry. Some Hondurans are already alarmed at Decree 33, an antiterrorist law that Suazo Córdova has pushed through the National Assembly. A countervailing danger is that antiguerrilla efforts by the 14,000-member Honduran armed forces will prove ineffective, leading to an increase in guerrilla activities within the country. "Honduras is poor," notes one prominent diplomat in Tegucigalpa. "If [its leaders] want to play this game, they'd better be damn sure...