A controversial year: reassessing the Carter Administration’s human rights policy towards El Salvador in 1977

While many scholarly works have addressed the Carter administration’s human rights policy towards El Salvador, a vast majority adopt an episodic rather than systematic approach to analysing the policy. Because it is usually addressed as part of broader research efforts, many aspects of the human rights policy are unexplored, underexamined, or poorly understood.

This article places the policy at the centre of analysis and, using recently declassified US documents, traces its development throughout 1977, which was a controversial year.

The controversy stems from at least three areas. First, Ignacio Lozano, the US ambassador to El Salvador at the start of Carter’s tenure, argued before Congress that he was unsupported by Washington on a major human rights case. Second, scholars have argued that Frank Devine, Lozano’s replacement as ambassador, had a negative influence on the human rights policy, with some suggesting a speech he gave likely sent signals to the Salvadoran security forces that the US would tacitly approve repression. Third, some scholars have argued that the administration let up human rights pressure late in the year.

This article challenges the more critical interpretation of Carter’s human rights policy.

It illustrates that human rights considerations were significant driving factors of US foreign policy decision-making and that human rights occupied a more important place in US foreign policy towards El Salvador than previously acknowledged.