In Central America, Reagan Remains A Polarizing Figure (washingtonpost.com)
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The United States was heavily involved in wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1980s in what Reagan described as an effort to stem Soviet influence in the hemisphere. The United States spent more than $4 billion on economic and military aid during El Salvador's civil war, in which more than 75,000 people were killed, many of them civilians caught in the crossfire.
The United States also organized Nicaragua's contra guerrillas, who fought that country's revolutionary Sandinista government. Reagan referred to contras as "the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers" and the United States spent $1 billion on them; the fighting in Nicaragua killed as many as 50,000 people. Honduras was a staging ground for U.S. Nicaraguan operations.
Reagan also supported the repressive military dictatorship of Guatemala, where more than 200,000 people, mostly indigenous peasants, died over 36 years of civil strife.
Reagan's support never led to a final battlefield victory in the region. Opposing sides negotiated peace in El Salvador and the Sandinistas were voted out of office in Nicaragua. But the same divisive sentiment about Reagan that existed a generation ago persists today.
Admirers credit Reagan with changing the course of Central America and helping to nurture democratic governments and free-market systems across the region. Many said Reagan's advocacy of open markets and U.S.-style capitalism sowed the earliest seeds of El Salvador's adoption of the U.S. dollar as its official currency.