During the Duarte administration, most Salvadoran foreign policy efforts were focused on Central America and the potential resolution of political conflict that manifested itself in the form of antigovernment insurgencies in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala. Although Costa Rica and Honduras had not experienced insurgencies, their governments were concerned with potential political spillover from neighboring states. By the early 1980s, most observers agreed that, given the historical, familial, geographic, and economic interrelationship of the Central American states, a regional solution to this crisis was the most logical and efficacious approach. Early efforts toward this end in the United Nations (UN) and the Organization of American States (OAS), as well as tentative mediating efforts by the governments of Mexico and Venezuela, failed to make any substantive progress toward the institution of a regional negotiating process. It was not until 1983 and the establishment of the Contadora Group that serious negotiating efforts began among the five Central American states.

Data as of November 1988