Bolster Democracy in Southern Hemisphere

The Latin American turn away from military dictatorships and toward democracy has been celebrated in the United States since the process began in the early 1980s. More recently, American pressure combined with that from Latin democracies helped keep countries such as Guatemala (in 1993) and Paraguay (this year) on the straight and narrow when autocracy and instability threatened.

But today, the United States and Latin America’s democracies are curiously disengaged as the Andean countries are drifting toward instability, violence or dictatorship.

Exhibit one is Venezuela. Former Lt. Col. Hugo Chavez, who was jailed for his coup attempt in 1992, won the presidency in December and control of the new constitutional assembly last Sunday. His distaste for Venezuelan-style democracy is not hard to explain: Corruption was endemic, and the country’s vast oil revenues circulated among its elites, with precious little trickling down into schools or hospitals for the masses. The problem is Chavez’s cure, which seems to be to centralize power into his own hands, weaken rivals like state governors or political parties and insert his trusted military associates into every ministry.

It won’t revive the economy and the question is what Chavez will do when it fails. His commitment to democratic procedures is suspect at best: He used them to gain power, but what will he do if he can’t get his way?

In Colombia, the “peace process” is not breaking down; it never really started. While President Andres Pastrana met once with the leader of the largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, and has declared significant areas of the country off-limits to the military to meet guerrilla preconditions for serious talks, no talks have begun. Instead, guerrilla violence continues apace, and the government has had to cancel planned meetings. Meanwhile, in those government-free zones, guerrillas and drug traffickers roam at will. While coca growing is down in Bolivia and Peru, it is climbing fast in Colombia.

Meanwhile, in Peru, if drug trafficking is declining, so is democracy. President Alberto Fujimori is constitutionally barred from a third term and, polls show, Peruvians want to keep it that way. But when three members of the Constitutional Tribunal ruled a third term illegal, he had his rubber-stamp congress remove them from office. Crusading journalists have been jailed or driven into exile.

Most recently, Fujimori withdrew Peru from the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Costa Rica, a part of the Organization of American States, where the court has the Constitutional Tribunal and journalist cases before it.

So democracy and stability are at risk in the Andes. In response, Latin governments have done what our government has done: look away. A serious peace effort in Colombia requires giving the guerrillas incentives to talk peace, and that means preparing for war as an alternative. But nowhere in the hemisphere, certainly not in Washington, is a government preparing the kind of military help the Colombian army will need if it is to force the guerrillas into talks, or defeat them. A serious, bipartisan effort to build a coalition that backs Colombian democracy in peace negotiations and, if need be, in a serious guerrilla war, requires administration leadership that is lacking.

The same is true with respect to Peru and Venezuela. The first man to applaud when Fujimori pulled out of the Inter-American Court was Chavez; he may wish to do the same thing himself if human rights abuses land him in trouble. Similarly, Chavez has spoken admiringly of Fujimori’s 1992 dissolution of congress, his “self-coup.” Chavez is listening as Fujimori’s departure from the court is met with silence or weak rhetoric. And he must be learning the lesson that human rights are just not as high on the regional agenda today as in the past.

The Latin Americans seem to be returning to the bad old days when one general never criticized the human rights record of another. Elected presidents have unaccountably adopted the same attitude. But short of a coup, what are the limits? Will we and the Latin American democracies make it clear to Chavez and Fujimori that limits exist, and that breaching them will carry real consequences? Will we use our voice and vote where it counts--in the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank--to resist erosion of political and property rights?

So far, the answer is no. Pessimists have been saying for two decades that Latin America’s turn to democracy is just another swing of the pendulum. Unless democracy and human rights in the Andes get more support, the pessimists may be proved right.