Central Americans Hope Aid Is Just the Beginning

Central America is back on the celebrity circuit, at least for the moment.

Not since the region’s civil wars ended early this decade have so many dignitaries planned stops at these tiny countries. They’re bringing aid for victims of tropical storm Mitch, distributing used clothes and contributions for medicine and food donated by ordinary people.

What remained unclear--even doubtful--as Tipper Gore, the wife of Vice President Al Gore, arrived in Honduras on Tuesday is whether this immediate concern will translate into the long-term measures that the region’s leaders insist are necessary for recovery.

Central American presidents meeting Monday in San Salvador said they need better access to U.S. and European markets, an easing on deportations of illegal immigrants back to the region and forgiveness of at least part of the $14-billion foreign debt of the four countries that suffered most from Mitch: Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala.

“A great part of the aid we have received is to take care of the emergency: food, health and transportation to countrymen who have been harmed,” Honduran President Carlos Flores told reporters. “But another phase is coming that is crucial for us, a phase of rehabilitation. . . . Rebuilding is going to take many years.”

Hundreds of millions of dollars will be needed just to build bridges to reconnect places like La Ceiba with the rest of the world. Bridges across both major highways into town collapsed as Mitch stalled along this coast for days.

The World Bank, International Monetary Fund and other international financial organizations have offered loans to help pay for the rebuilding of roads and bridges, but that will add to the debts of nations already deep in the red.

Further, the countries hit hardest by Mitch--Honduras, where an estimated 6,000 people died, and Nicaragua, with a confirmed death toll of 2,170 that is expected to increase--are the most indebted. Nicaragua has $6.5 billion in foreign debt and Honduras $4 billion; each already spends about 30% of its national budget on debt payments.

“If we cannot pay for even the most basic [things] now, we are hardly able to pay on a debt that has been unpayable from the beginning,” Flores said.

The Central American proposals have received some support. Cuba, itself heavily in debt, announced Tuesday that it will forgive $50 million in loans made to Nicaragua when the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front was in power there in the 1980s.

The European Union reportedly is willing to talk about debt relief. France already has said it will forgive debt.

Still, the nod that the region needs is from the U.S., its biggest creditor and largest market. And that has not been forthcoming.