Military forces in Central America: to 30 years of signature of peace agreements

Abstract

In the seventies and eighties of the twentieth century military forces were key actors in the authoritarian regimes of Central America. The military tutelage
offered to these governments provoked armed conflicts and destabilization of the Central American democracies. The Peace Agreements of the 1990s pointed to the subordination of military power to civil power in Central America as the main factor of pacification and
democratization in the region. Three decades later, the military forces of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua have been strengthened and have adopted citizen security functions in the face of the insufficiency of the weak national civil police to fight against the dynamics of organized crime that affect
this region. This article demonstrates the strengthening of these military forces in these states of law still that are still in consolidation and indicates a warning signal to the possibility that the history of the seventies and eighties is repeated once again Central America.