Central America: Last Exit to Costa Rica

As U.S. exercises begin, Honduras dumps a general

New tremors rattled the volcanic landscape of Central America last week, but they owed nothing to the region's earthquake-prone geology. The stresses came as the Reagan Administration further extended its armed diplomacy in the isthmus. On Capitol Hill, the Administration's attention remained firmly fixed on securing $61.75 million in emergency military aid for El Salvador. Last week the Senate approved the aid by a 76-to-19 vote. But for the moment a sizable portion of Washington's energies seemed to have shifted from the military and political battleground of El Salvador to neighboring Honduras. Not only had that nation assumed a major role in U.S. strategy, it had also just undergone an extraordinary hierarchical shakeup.

In the capital of Tegucigalpa, windows shook as A-37 attack aircraft of the Honduran air force swooped over the coffee-colored National Assembly building to celebrate the leadership change. Inside the legislature, deputies broke into nervous laughter at the noise as they voted 78 to 0 to install Air Force General Walter López Reyes, 43, as the new commander of the armed forces. The next day a tight phalanx of 17 colonels and lieutenant colonels from the 35-member superior council of the armed forces watched approvingly during López's brief swearing-in. The junior officers were the key actors responsible for the sudden ouster of López's ambitious predecessor, Defense Minister Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, 46, who was also the country's biggest booster of the U.S. military presence in Honduras.

After his installation, López made a special point of describing Alvarez's removal as a "highly patriotic act, which raises the standing of the constitutional government" headed by Civilian President Roberto Suazo Córdova, 57. Much the same line was taken by the U.S. Meanwhile, some 800 U.S. Army engineers were maneuvering heavy earth-moving equipment off the docks of Puerto Cortes and into the rugged countryside. Their task: to prepare two Honduran army airstrips on the borders with El Salvador and Nicaragua for use in upcoming combat assault exercises. The maneuvers, known as Granadero I, are the latest in a series of large-scale U.S.-Honduran exercises that began in February 1983; as many as 5,000 U.S. troops may be involved over the span of three months.

The early arrivals for Granadero I swelled an already considerable U.S. military Establishment in the country, numbering some 1,750 men and women. Many of those already on the ground will be involved in the operation, but at least 300 members of the 224th Military Intelligence Battalion, based at the Honduran airfield of Palmerola, are actively engaged in the war effort in neighboring El Salvador. The mission of the 224th: to fly reconnaissance missions over El Salvador, collecting military intelligence on the 10,000 guerrillas of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (F.M.L.N.) for relay to the Salvadoran army.