ABSTRACT
A final component of Guatemalan reality in the era of crisis—in fact, an integral part of the cycles of internal crisis and recomposition#8212;has been the restructuring of Guatemala's relationship to the United States. The context for the US-Guatemala relationship was fundamentally altered by events in the Central American region as a whole beginning in 1979: the Nicaraguan Revolution and the outbreak of open civil war in El Salvador. By 1982, the Guatemalan military government was beginning to take action of its own to regain its standing in the international community and a measure of internal legitimacy. This recomposition of the counterinsurency state, whose internal dimensions have been discussed above, also had repercussions for foreign policy. A quasi-independent foreign policy of regional neutrality was seen as internally stabilizing, as part of the "recomposition" process implicit in the 1982 counterinsurgency plan. It gave the Guatemalan state legitimacy, as well as increased autonomy and room for maneuver internally.
