COLUMN ONE : Reining in the Latin ‘Tiger’ : Central America’s armies are under pressure to thin ranks, and Washington is backing the effort. But all are resisting, clinging to formidable powers under civilian presidents.

Students waiting for the bus to the Vicente Caceres Central Institute here were stunned one morning to be surrounded by Honduran soldiers brandishing automatic weapons. The soldiers went down the line, picked out older teen-age boys and herded them onto trucks. By the time they should have been in class, 400 boys rounded up at several bus stops were being inducted into the army.

Military service is obligatory in Honduras and the army’s random and often brutal conscription in movie theaters, pool halls and soccer stadiums is a feared but familiar ritual of growing up here. The outcry over this incident, however, was unusual. Led by the boys’ parents, teachers and classmates, who shut down the city’s largest high school for one day, the protest echoed a rising chorus in Central America against militarism.

Those boys nearest graduation were released, but not before 15 congressmen had called for abolishing the draft. Their bill came on the heels of legislation seeking to banish army-manned security roadblocks from the nation’s highways.

Reaction from the barracks to these events last May was swift. Gen. Arnulfo Cantarero, chief of the armed forces, condemned the legislation as part of an “anti-patriotic” crusade by leftists. The military is “autonomous and should be respected as such,” the general warned Congress.

“Don’t annoy the tiger,” he growled.

Across Central America, the tiger is on the defensive--and showing its claws. Since the overthrow of Gen. Manuel A. Noriega’s military regime in Panama, the electoral defeat of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and their settlement with the Contras, bloated armies are under pressure to thin ranks and trim expenses. While some are yielding, others are resisting, but all cling to formidable powers and privileges.

With the Cold War over and elected pro-American civilians taking office all over its tropical front yard, the Bush Administration is running out of reasons to maintain large client armies in the region. And with the Iraqi takeover of Kuwait certain to shift a greater share of military aid to the Middle East, American diplomats are encouraging efforts by Central America’s new civilian leaders to rein in their military forces.

Noriega’s Panama Defense Forces, defeated by a U.S. invasion force last December, have been stripped of their senior officers and relegated mainly to police work. The Sandinista army’s manpower has been cut in half since the February election and the Contras disbanded. Honduras’ new government has lowered defense spending by 10%, the first cutback here in a decade of civilian rule. The size and impunity of El Salvador’s army, now the region’s largest, has become the central issue in the Salvadoran government’s peace talks with leftist guerrillas.

In separate negotiations begun July 31, four Central American nations have agreed on a procedure for setting limits on their armies’ sizes. Even Costa Rica, which abolished its army four decades ago, is debating whether its police forces have become too powerful.

“All of a sudden, military establishments are not in good graces,” said a U.S. official. “I cannot think of a single civilian leader in Central America who would espouse an increase in military forces. Everyone is talking about economic development.”

Central America became a focus of East-West tension after the 1979 Sandinista guerrilla takeover of Nicaragua. Prompted by the Soviet-sponsored expansion of the Sandinista army and the rise of El Salvador’s Cuban-backed insurgency, America’s military aid to its clients in the region jumped from $14.2 million in 1981 to a peak of $212 million in 1986. The security forces of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Panama more than doubled in that period.

The superpower largess of the 1980s made these military establishments wealthier, increasingly sophisticated and more resistant to civilian authority, politicians in the region say. Finding a way to take power from them and integrate them into civilian-dominated societies is a troubled and complex task.

After the Salvadoran government agreed to put militarism on the agenda of peace talks, the army flatly refused to slash its ranks as part of any deal with the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front.

The Guatemalan army, fighting a smaller leftist insurgency, insists that its forces cannot be cut even in peacetime.

New civilian leaders in Nicaragua and Panama have stirred controversy by choosing, for the sake of stability, to retain many officers and soldiers of their defeated predecessors’ armies.

Honduran pacifists lost their battles to end conscription (when their bill withered under military pressure) and to remove the army roadblocks (when a congressional order was simply ignored).

In Guatemala, American officials wary of corrupt civilian leaders have turned to the army to help them fight drug trafficking--a move that could make the army even more independent.

“Our military leaders think they are heroes,” said Edmond Mulet, president of Guatemala’s congressional commission on military affairs. “They believe that society owes them so much. We must find a way (to demilitarize) that keeps their privileges and salaries intact. Otherwise, we could destabilize the whole democratic process.”

Making the same point in Nicaragua, a newspaper editorial warned President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro that any attempt to impose radical changes on the Sandinista army would be “like trying to defuse a land mine by stomping on it.”

Central America’s armies are a crushing burden in a region where, according to United Nations statistics, 18 million out of 30 million people live in “extreme poverty” and children die mainly of parasites.

While spending nearly $600 million on defense, the six nations produce goods and services worth $30 billion per year. By comparison, California’s Orange County has a gross domestic product of $55 billion a year for 2.3 million people.

By the late 1980s, the Sandinistas had more than 100,000 active-duty soldiers under arms and were spending most of the national budget on defense. Honduras, which rivals Nicaragua as the poorest land on the isthmus, acquired $100 million worth of F-5 jet fighters from the United States to assemble the region’s strongest air force. El Salvador increased its armed forces from 16,000 to 56,000 during the 1980s and spends about one-fourth of its budget to sustain them. Guatemala’s military, 42,000 strong, is supported by a militia of “civil patrols” numbering 600,000 people.

Critics of U.S. policy warned during the 1980s that this buildup was strengthening brutal and corrupt armies, undermining the stable democracies that Washington claimed it was trying to foster. U.S. officials say the balance between these contradictory goals was tipped in favor of the civilians by three pivotal events.

First, the corruption of the Panama Defense Forces under Noriega, who was indicted in Florida on drug trafficking charges in 1988, taught U.S. policy-makers that client armies unchecked by civilian authority could turn against American interests. Then the murder of six Jesuit priests by a Salvadoran army death squad last November put the Bush Administration under congressional pressure to cut military aid to El Salvador. Finally, Chamorro’s election in Nicaragua removed a revolutionary government that Washington called a threat to its neighbors, and made regional disarmament a cause that could help the new pro-American president tame an army still commanded by Sandinistas.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III articulated the new U.S. policy at a Central American summit in Antigua, Guatemala, in June. “This region,” he said, “has a historic opportunity to realize three goals: democracy, disarmament and development.”

After the presidents of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua agreed then to start negotiating limits on their armed forces, the State Department sent a memo to each government prescribing decisive action.

“The proliferation of weapons and the size of national (military) forces has contributed significantly over the decade to regional insecurity,” the memo said. “Development of smaller, apolitical and professional forces can meet the threat posed by insurgent forces better than large, offensive forces.”

That position is likely to be forced on some countries by congressional cuts in U.S. military assistance. Aid to the Honduran armed forces has already dropped from a peak of $81 million in 1986 to $21 million this year. And in 1991 budget negotiations, more aid may be directed toward Turkey and other U.S. allies in the Mideast who have demonstrated their value in the current showdown with Iraq, at the cost of deeper cuts to Central America.

Even in a guerrilla war, El Salvador’s army faces cuts of up to $30 million in the $85 million first proposed by the Administration, according to congressional staffers.

“The United States has reasserted its hegemony over Central America, so now it can talk about disarmament,” said Gabriel Aguilera, a political scientist affiliated with Guatemala’s Social Democratic Party. “Leftist insurgencies (in El Salvador and Guatemala) continue, but they are viewed now as more isolated, less of a security threat. The United States feels stronger than ever. Its power is no longer questioned. It no longer needs such big armies.”

But the armies themselves don’t see it that way. Guatemalan Defense Minister Juan Leonel Bolanos, an army general, has rejected defense cutbacks. In an Army Day speech, he asserted that the military had played a “constructive role” in restoring civilian rule in the mid-1980s and was still needed to protect it. Cantarero, the Honduran army chief, recently warned skeptical Hondurans that a tiny leftist guerrilla band that was all but wiped out in the 1980s is making a comeback.

In the regional talks on arms limits, held by military and civilian officials, Guatemala and El Salvador got the others to agree to exempt them from any ceilings set in the coming months as long as they are still fighting guerrillas. Meanwhile, it is unlikely that Nicaragua, having cut its army from 80,000 to 40,000 troops under Chamorro, will accept further reductions, participants in the talks said. Nor will Honduras, which fought the Salvadorans in a never-forgotten 1969 war. After a June naval showdown in the Gulf of Fonseca, civilians accused military leaders in both countries of trying to justify big defense budgets.

If and when the regional talks do make dents in the armies’ numbers, civilian leaders note, the issue of military power will remain. Civilian control is not on the agenda.

“They’re talking about reducing their forces and their armaments, but not about eliminating militarism,” said Ramon Custodio, president of the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Honduras. “Militarism doesn’t depend on the number of men in arms. Any kind or quantity of arms is enough to intimidate those who don’t have them. . . . The problem is that in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, the military is a state within a state.”

Those armies are indeed notorious. Soldiers and military-controlled policemen in all three countries murder left-wing political opponents with near impunity. Such killings are reported daily in Guatemala; human rights groups last year recorded 88 in El Salvador and five in Honduras. While death squads are less active than they were in the early 1980s, no Salvadoran officer and only a single Guatemalan officer have ever been convicted of killing for one.

In each country, the armed forces also control their own bank as well as several farms, private companies and lucrative government agencies--the merchant marine, immigration bureau and phone company in Honduras; road building and disaster relief in Guatemala; a shopping mall, a Pacific resort and fishing exports in El Salvador. Corrupt officers own large estates. In Guatemala and El Salvador, they can import cars duty free. That privilege was axed in Honduras this year, but a subsequent customs raid turned up 123 smuggled cars in the country--47 in the hands of military officers.

“The danger is that these military establishments will become even more autonomous as the budget cutbacks come and they scramble to survive economically,” a U.S. official said. “The incentive for corruption and blackmail is going to increase.”

Since their party lost the elections, Sandinista officers have joined this club of armies jockeying for independence from civilian authority. Before Chamorro took office in April, the Sandinista government, by decree, transferred to the army commander its broad powers to make military promotions, procure and produce arms, enter into private contracts, deploy forces, build bases and authorize foreign troops in Nicaragua.

Her formal authority over the military thus weakened, Chamorro struck a deal allowing Gen. Humberto Ortega, the Sandinista army’s founder, to remain as army commander in return for a promise to trim its ranks and abolish the draft. The gamble, severely criticized within her coalition, has paid off in some ways; when the air force chief resisted Chamorro’s orders to cut manpower, Ortega ousted him.

But Ortega’s loyalty is so uncertain that Chamorro hesitated for two days in July before seeking army intervention to curb violent Sandinista-led labor protests that had escaped the control of the police. Even then, the army moved only to clear Sandinista barricades and did not use force against the strikers.

As Chamorro cut defense spending from one third of the national budget to one quarter, the army has tapped into other sources of income--a cattle ranch, a sports equipment factory and a fruit export company it owns. Honduran army officers, experts at this sort of thing, tell of being approached by Sandinista counterparts, once viewed as enemies, for advice on how to run profitable businesses.

Still to come is a battle over the army’s Sandinista-dominated officer corps, which survived the first round of cuts. Chamorro’s aides want it trimmed quickly, but Ortega has said that could take two years.

Nicaragua’s debate over composition of the armed forces is echoed in Panama, where Vice President Ricardo Arias Calderon is building the newly renamed, 12,000-member Panamanian Public Forces almost entirely with decommissioned officers and soldiers from Noriega’s 15,000-member army. If thrown out, Arias argues, Noriega loyalists would more likely create a violent opposition. This decision, unpopular among Panamanians, has split the U.S.-backed government.

“A corrupt army never changes,” insists Ruben Carles, Panama’s controller general. “Now is the time to build a completely new public force, while the American (troops) are still here.”

The key to new progress in disarming the region, officials everywhere agree, is peace in El Salvador. But the talks are deadlocked. The guerrillas are demanding the dismissal of about 200 senior military officers, sharp personnel reductions and the prosecution of officers involved in the most notorious death squad killings. President Alfredo Cristiani, saying the size of the army “is an effect, not a cause of the conflict,” supports the army’s insistence that the rebels first lay down their weapons.

Hoping for a breakthrough, Costa Rican officials supervising the four-nation arms reduction talks say that forum could give the Salvadoran government a way to commit itself to a smaller army without seeming to make concessions to the guerrillas. Even if that happens, Salvadoran military leaders are unlikely to accept Cristiani’s privately stated goal of a 12,000-to-15,000-member peacetime army; they have indicated a willingness to give up command of only a few thousand policemen.

Cristiani is a right-wing businessman whose upper class peers are frustrated by the army’s growing financial power and drain on national resources. But he seems powerless to exert control. One of his first acts after becoming president in June last year was to order that all institutional funds, including those of the army’s social security agency, be deposited in the Central Bank. When the army refused, he backed down. Much of the president’s prestige now rides on the prosecution of an army colonel and seven lower-ranking officers and soldiers charged with the Jesuits’ murders. But with crucial evidence having vanished, the case is bogged down.

Presidents Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo of Guatemala and Rafael L. Callejas of Honduras are too dependent on the armed forces to confront them openly. Having alienated most of his civilian supporters and survived two coup attempts, Cerezo leans on a moderate army faction. Callejas needed the army in August to end a costly 42-day banana workers strike. In his inaugural address seven months earlier, the Honduran leader had embraced the ideal of a Central America without offensive weapons. But since his first budget battle with the army brass, he speaks less of deflating the armed forces and more of diverting them to productive work--growing their own food, protecting the forests, fighting cocaine traffickers.

Some U.S. officials would like armies to wage a drug war throughout the region. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration already works closely with Guatemala’s army intelligence agency while Green Berets train narcotics policemen in Costa Rica.

The idea is controversial. Human rights activists in Costa Rica claim that military tutelage is turning that pacifist nation’s 7,700-member police force into a “camouflaged army.” After a police “immediate action unit” killed a 12-year-old boy in a May drug raid, Costa Rican authorities dissolved it and closed its training base. “As we move into the drug war in Central America,” warns one U.S. official, “we must be careful not to nurture anti-democratic elements in the military who want to use drug trafficking like they used communism to justify doing as they please.”

Looking back on the Cold War, Central American leaders worry less about being overthrown by the military. Still, they admit, the tiger doesn’t make governing much easier.

“There’s no doubt the armed forces have the physical capacity to stage a coup, but not the political capacity,” President Callejas said in an interview. “Any coup in the region would totally ostracize that (military) government, isolate it from the democratic world. . . . But it’s not easy for an armed forces that have been living on the geopolitical conflict to adapt to a peacetime role. There is no short-term or quick solution.”

Times staff writers Kenneth Freed in San Salvador and Don Shannon in Washington and Times researcher Colum Lynch in Guatemala contributed to this story.

Central America’s Military Might 1. Costa Rica Armed forces: Army was abolished in 1948. Paramilitary police forces have 7,700 members. Security budget: $32.8 million (1988). 2. El Salvador Armed forces: 56,100 (includes 12,600 paramilitary policemen and 12,500 civil denfense troops). Defense budget: $208 million (1986). Armed opposition: Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, 6,000 to 7,000 guerrillas. 3. Guatemala Armed forces: 42,000 (does not include 12,800 paramilitary policemen and 600,000 militia members nomially under civilian control). Defense budget: $106 million (1987). Armed opposition: Guatemala National Revolutionary Union, 1,000 to 1,500 guerillas. 4. Honduras Armed forces: 23,200 (including 4,500 paramilitary policemen). Defense budget: $75 million (1988). 5. Nicaragua Armed forces: 40,000 (1990 Nicaraguan government figure). Defense budget: $85 million (1990 Nicaraguan government figure). 6. Panama Armed forces: 12,000 (1990 Panamanian government figure). Defense budget: $68 million (1990) Sources: U.S. State, Defense Departments; International Institute for Strategic Studies