Deane R. Hinton, a career US diplomat who was rebuffed by the Reagan administration over his accusations of human rights abuses by Salvadoran security forces and right-wing “death squads,’’ died Tuesday at his home in San Juan, Costa Rica. He was 94.
The cause was kidney failure, his son-in-law Eric Chenoweth said.
Mr. Hinton, a plain-spoken economist, served as US ambassador to El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Panama, as well as Zaire and Pakistan, under four Republican presidents beginning in 1974.
He was also an assistant secretary of state for business and economic affairs in the Carter administration and helped negotiate wheat sales to the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
El Salvador was not considered a coveted posting — the US Embassy was a fortress — when Mr. Hinton was recruited by Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. in 1981 to be president Ronald Reagan’s envoy there.
Leftist Salvadoran guerrillas, emboldened by the Marxist Sandinistas’ success in neighboring Nicaragua, had been trying to overthrow the country’s ruling junta. But Mr. Hinton was determined. He encapsulated his mission this way: “Save the economy, stop the violence, have the elections, and ride into the sunset.’’
But after an election campaign in which fending off far-right candidates was at least as demanding as subduing leftist insurgents, Mr. Hinton gave a more modest goal: “We were not going to let it become a Marxist totalitarian state.’’
In a speech in El Salvador in October 1982, he also delivered an ultimatum, saying El Salvador must make progress “in advancing human rights and in controlling the abuses of some elements of the security forces,’’ or it would lose US military and economic aid.
He denounced El Salvador’s legal system and far right, which he blamed for thousands of murders.
The speech had been cleared by the State Department but not, apparently, by the White House. Presidential aides were quoted as saying afterward that “the decibel level had risen higher than our policy has allowed in the past.’’ The administration was particularly uncomfortable with Mr. Hinton’s use of the term “death squads.’’ He was told to refrain from any further public criticism of rights abuses.
In his official reports, Mr. Hinton accused Salvadoran soldiers of being responsible for unexplained killings, including that of Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980, in which right-wing leader Roberto d’Aubuisson was said to be complicit. Reagan nevertheless certified that the Salvadoran government had made significant progress in reducing human rights violations and that it therefore qualified for US aid.
In her 1983 book “Salvador,’’ Joan Didion wrote that during a lunch with Mr. Hinton, “it occurred to me that we were talking exclusively about the appearance of things, about how the situation might be made to look better, about trying to get the Salvadoran government to ‘appear’ to do what the American government needed done in order to make it ‘appear’ that the American aid was justified.’’
In June 1983, Mr. Hinton said he was exhausted and resigned.
At the same time, Reagan replaced Thomas O. Enders as assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs. Enders was believed to have been open to a negotiated settlement of the Salvadoran civil war, while the administration preferred a military victory.
White House aides were quoted at the time as saying that Mr. Hinton and Enders were being replaced in favor of a team more responsive to Reagan’s policies.
A peace treaty signed in 1992 ended the war in El Salvador, and the guerrillas morphed into a political party.
Deane Roesch Hinton was born in 1923, in Missoula, Mont., to Colonel Joe Hinton, who served in both World Wars, and the former Doris Roesch. He attended Elgin Academy, a prep school in Illinois, and served in World War II as a second lieutenant in the Army Signal Corps in Italy.
He completed his bachelor’s degree at the University of Chicago, did graduate work in economics, and attended the National War College, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and Harvard University.
He was married three times, to the former Angela Peyraud, Miren de Aretxabala, and Patricia Lopez.
He leaves Lopez and 12 children.
Mr. Hinton joined the Foreign Service in 1946 and served in Syria, Kenya, France, Belgium, and Guatemala. He was designated a career ambassador, retired in 1994, and wrote a memoir, “Economics and Diplomacy: A Life in the Foreign Service’’ (2015).
Besides his stint in El Salvador, he served in Zaire under presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford; in Pakistan under Reagan; in Costa Rica under Reagan and president George H.W. Bush; and in Panama under Bush.
As an ambassador, Mr. Hinton, a cigar-smoking poker player, gave advice bluntly but insisted that he avoided meddling in the affairs of foreign governments.
This made it all the more surprising when he was deported from Zaire in 1975 because of what was supposedly an American plot to murder President Mobutu Sese Seko. Mr. Hinton offered a rebuttal.
“Total nonsense,’’ he said. “My defense always was that if I’d have been out to get him, he’d have been dead.’’
