The Foreign Service Journal, January 2004

diate U.S. concern. In many ways, the region, at least in terms of U.S. attention, has become once again an Atlantis, a lost continent.” Democracy Emerges That description may be excessive but it is true that threats to the United States from nations to the south are minimal, particularly when compared to the “other hemisphere” to which Powell devotes the great bulk of his time. Terrorism in the hemisphere is generally limited to acts by illegal armed groups in Colombia and, most importantly, there are no known unconventional weapons anywhere in the region. (Argentina and Brazil flirt- ed with acquiring nuclear weapons a generation ago but eventually dropped the idea.) Nearly all Latin American and Caribbean nations earn good grades for keeping the peace and shunning arms races. They also are doing better at avoid- ing the scourge of dictatorship. Thirty-four nations of the region are now bound together by the Inter- American Democratic Charter, a region-wide commitment to promote and defend democracy in the hemi- sphere. In fact, the 9/11 suicide bombers struck on the very morning Powell was in Peru for a ceremony to ratify that document. The bombings forced him to cut short his visit. Between 1979 and 1990, all Latin American military leaders stepped aside, allowing elected civilians to take power, though the armed forces have retained a significant — and detrimen- tal — political role in some countries, notably Guatemala. Except for unconstitutional changes of government in Haiti (1991) and Suriname (1980), democratic pro- cesses have been respected through- out the region since a 1976 military coup in Argentina. As Powell repeat- edly notes, 34 of the hemisphere’s 35 nations hold competitive elections on a regular basis. (Cuba is the excep- tion, of course.) Consider- ing Latin America’s grim history of military dictatorships, this is no small achievement. Falling Short on Development The big disappointment for Washington, not to mention the region itself, is that Latin America’s democra- tic development generally has not been accompanied by gains in the social sphere. Precise figures are hard to come by but there are said to be 160 million Latin Americans and citizens of Caribbean nations who live in extreme poverty — nearly a third of the region’s half-billion residents. In fact, the area is actually less prosperous than it was a decade ago, according to Stephen Johnson, who examined the region’s socio-economic conditions in an October study for the Heritage Foundation. This has produced a political fall- out, as Powell noted in his Sept. 9 speech, when he alluded to the “lin- gering dissatisfaction” with what the democratic evolution in Latin America has wrought. “Men and women have sacrificed and they want to see results in their pocketbooks, in their pay packets, in their polling places, but above all, in their homes by their ability to put food on the table, to bring a roof over the head of their families, to see their chil- dren grow up to have a better future than they do, to see more opportunity in their lives,” Powell said. “But too often they still suffer from weak governments and ineffective institutions. In too many places, rule of law and property rights are honored mainly in the breach. Children are not being educated for jobs in a global- izing world or being educated for citi- zenship in a democracy. ... In too many countries in our hemisphere, health care systems are failing. Corruption still saps the marrow of democracy. Economic stagnation and even deep recession retard development.” Latin America’s inability to develop strong institutions to deal with its prob- lems is becoming increasingly worri- some. The depth of the dilemma was eloquently underscored by Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian novelist who is widely admired as one of the hemisphere’s most astute thinkers. In Latin America, he said in a speech in Spain, “there is a total lack of confidence, on the part of the immense majority of the people, in institutions, and that is one of the rea- sons why our institutions fail. “Institutions cannot flourish in a country if the people don’t believe in them, if people ... see in them not a guarantee of security or of justice, but precisely the opposite.” He then outlined his own experi- ence as a former resident of England to provide a concrete example. In England, he said, “something curious happened to me. I didn’t feel nervous when I passed a police officer. In Peru, I had always felt, when in the presence of a policeman, a certain ner- vousness, as if that policeman in some sense represented a potential danger to me. ... In Peru, as in most of Latin America, people have good reason to feel alarmed when they come across someone in uniform, because there is a good chance that the uniform will be used, not to defend their safety, but to shake them down.” Frustrated by dysfunctional institu- tions, Latin American voters some- times look to presidential candidates 54 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 4 Compared with its grim past, this is a rare period of hope for Central America.