If a medal were to be struck in commemoration of Latin America's successful survival of the 20th century, la cava might bear a representation of democracy and el sello that of authoritarianism. These alternatives have characterized all attempts to arrive at political consensus for the past hundred years and more.

The current version of the region's perpetual dichotomous nature has been called (re)democratization. In South America it has replaced professional militarism, the most recent representation of authoritarianism, and threatens to affect traditional democratic practices in countries spared the military incursions of the 1964-1989 quarter-century. To the north, (re)democratization challenges both traditional authoritarianism and Marxism-Leninism.

(Re)democratization is a transitional process in which the polity shifts from one with minimal partisan and popular participation back to one based on (ever more maximized) pluralistic participation, usually characterized by meaningful elections, separation of state powers, constitutional order, rule of law, respect for human rights, and civilian regulation of armed force.

The 1994 New Year's celebration in Mexico started with a bang. A mere hour into the year, the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN or Zapatista National Liberation Army) assaulted and captured four cities in the Los Altos region of Chiapas, Mexico's southernmost state. The Ejército Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional shocked the Mexican people and most of the world. Although Mexican political and military leaders denied that they were caught off guard, they were, in fact, totally surprised by the magnitude of the attack.

As events unfolded, the reasons behind the seizure of San Cristóbal de las Casas, Las Margaritas, Altamirano, and Ocosingo became increasingly apparent. The Zapatistas called for a nationwide movement for “jobs, land, housing, food, health, independence, freedom, democracy, justice and peace.”

Despite the growing interest in the theme of corruption, one cannot yet speak of a body of research and analysis sufficient to the creation of inductive theory. This is not to say that there has not been interesting empirical and theoretical work done. However, most of this work has dealt with variations to the legal definition of corruption as being the illegal use of public office for private gain or, as V. O. Key, Jr. put it, the uninstitutionalized influence of wealth in a political system. The relationship between “power” and corruption has been a subject of analytical speculation since Plato posed, and Machiavelli revived, the “dirty hands” dilemma.

The central thesis of this paper is that the resources and conditions, both external and regional, for the continuation of traditional Caribbean subregionalized cooperation and integration processes no longer exist. Whereas in the past there existed a number of rationalizations and justifications for restricting and limiting the scope of regional initiatives, the scenario of the 1990s — regional, Hemispheric, and global — is one in which neither regional actors nor external hegemons can afford not to cooperate beyond the limitations of the past.

Moreover, the impetus for this change of direction is not only regional but sectoral: it includes civil society (business, labor, non-governmental organizations or NGOs) in a way never seen before.

The financial problems faced by Mexico since late December 1994 are the result of a balance of payments crisis which developed earlier during the year when a number of economic and political developments came together to disrupt its financing plans. A combination of events — an increase in US interest rates, political ferment and presidential elections in Mexico, plus capital flight from Mexico which was prompted, in turn, by lax monetary policy during the last weeks of the Salinas administration — all helped contribute to, and culminated in, a collapse of the peso at the end of 1994. As a result, the incoming administration of President Ernesto Zedillo found itself in the position of having to devalue the peso, a move that sparked severe economic repercussions, including a crisis of confidence that spread beyond Mexico to affect other emerging markets as well.

As the Miami Summit of Western Hemisphere heads of state concluded on 11 December 1994, excessive optimism — even euphoria — seemed to be everywhere in the air. For once, the United States and Latin America seemed to be in agreement on basic policy, rather than, as so often in the past, in each other's hair/face or at each other's throats. There was general agreement about the goals of democracy, free trade, and open markets; the vexatious Cuba issue had been skillfully shunted aside.

However, more than that, the Miami Summit appeared to augur a new era in US-Latin American relations based on consensus and a common agenda of human rights, democracy, transparency, the environment, government reform, social equity, and a free market environment.

In recent years, Chile has arrived at a significant consensus regarding a number of subjects central to the country's development; and, notwithstanding certain important differences between the Concertación government and its opposition, there is considerable agreement regarding certain basic aspects of economic growth which will doubtless continue to be maintained in the mid-to-long run.

The official policy, as laid down by the government, is that Chile's economy is now oriented toward achieving growth with social equity, and that the way to reach those goals is by strengthening the country's insertion into the international economy, since the world is now moving towards a globalization which no country can afford to ignore. Given this new reality, the Chilean economy is also moving to take part in this process in a strategy that has proved fairly successful in recent years.

The purpose of this article is to provide, for specialists as well as those who do not follow Panamanian politics, an account of the 1994 election and an assessment of its significance in terms of the consolidation of democracy in Panama. Panama held its first post-transition national election on 8 May 1994, in which not only presidential and legislative, but also local, offices were contested.

This analysis addresses both the electoral process and its product, i.e., which parties and candidates won. These two aspects are assessed separately because they (1) reflect different political dynamics and (2) have different implications for democratic consolidation. As a process, Panama's 1994 election reflected the substantial progress made toward institutionalizing an independent, nonpartisan Electoral Tribunal and building the public's confidence that their votes cast will determine who wins.

The end of the Cold War raises many questions about the role of Third World states in the emerging “New World Order.” During the “old” world order, however, Latin America played a crucial role in the US sphere of influence. This alone merits study of its recent foreign policy behavior, not only because the region is home to many of the newly industrializing states, but also because it will undoubtedly be an important player in regional and global politics into the 21st century (Brysk, 1992; Lowenthal, 1993). How will Latin Americans respond to a Hemisphere dominated by the United States? Will they resist or endorse the trend towards open markets and economies? This article investigates this question with regard to Ecuador, exploring whether Ecuador's foreign policymakers are in the process of shifting towards embrace of a US-dominated Hemisphere governed by free-market economic ideals or, rather, are developing policies in accordance with their own ideological predilections.

An emerging consensus holds that Cuba's communist regime is moving away from Fidel Castro's brand of orthodox Marxism-Leninism and toward — something else. Cuban officials now publicly profess their indifference to labels such as “socialism” and “communism,” referring, instead, to some vague “Cuban way” of social and economic organization. Even Castro himself claims that his hostility to multiparty politics stems less from an adherence to Marxism and owes more to the calls of José Martí, Cuba's national hero, for national unity of purpose and organization.

All of this may point to a growing belief in Havana that communism cannot long endure as a legitimizing factor for the regime and a corresponding attempt to locate a new source of legitimacy in the alleged uniqueness of Cuba's socialist system. The implication of such an attempt would be: (1) that the Cuban regime differs fundamentally from the collapsed Eurasian communist regimes, and (2) that its future is therefore likely to differ also — and fundamentally. In other words, it has a future.

In recent years, many Latin American countries (LACs) have embarked upon trade liberalization drives. This article reviews the radical changes in trade policy which this has entailed, together with the current and foreseeable results, and offers some policy recommendations regarding complementary measures.

The first sustained experience with trade liberalization in recent decades was in Chile, which launched a process in the 1970s that, by the end of that decade, had made its economy one of the most open in the world.

Venezuela's contemporary politics poses a problematic different from those predominating in the literature on democratization. Scholarly research in the last decade focused first on the crisis of authoritarian rule and the ensuing transition to civilian governments, with the reestablishment of electoral procedures, and, more recently, on the problems of the consolidation of a democratic regime, including alternation in power, universal acceptance of the rules of the game, and generation of a democratic political culture.

The challenges confronting Venezuela are not those of transition or consolidation but, rather, the decomposition — or deconsolidation — of an established democratic regime. In other Latin American countries in recent decades, longstanding models of statist development developed crises that led, in turn, to complex transformations in the economy and in society. One consequence of these changes was that authoritarian regimes began a transition to more democratic forms of governance.

One of the most dramatic political-economic changes over the last 15 years has been the shift in patterns of international finance. At the beginning of the 1980s, a select group of prosperous Third World nations had privileged access to an enormous volume of commercial bank credit. They could also attract fairly important levels of direct investment. For all practical purposes, finance was no longer a binding constraint on the development strategies of this group of countries. Although poorer developing nations could not rely on private credit or investment, many of them had access to substantial amounts of funds via bilateral donors and the multilateral institutions.

The objective of this article is to offer a brief commentary, within a theoretical and conceptual framework, on the drug traffic (which could equally apply, for that matter, to any issue of worldwide import, such as the environment or human rights) that could serve as a point of reference in the relationship between the countries of Latin America (like Colombia) or the Third World and those of the industrialized North, such as the United States.

This article will argue that, in dealing with global issues, like that of the narcotraffic, it is necessary to take into account two components with close links to one another. The first of these arises from the fact that global issues require global politics to deal with them.

One of the principal criticisms of the neoliberal direction that guides most economic policymaking in Latin America today is that the structural adjustments now being imposed will increase the level of social inequity and decrease the already low standard of living of poor citizens. The Comisión Económica para América Latina (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean) studied the changes that took place across the region during the 1980s and found that the distribution of wealth became increasingly inequitable while the level of poverty increased, to which Argentina was no exception (CEPAL, 1991b and 1991c). In the latter case, where President Carlos Menem has spearheaded a radical restructuring of his country's economy, the rise of poverty was a prominent domestic issue in the early 1990s, yet there was little electoral response to this issue, nor did political pressure succeed in changing the course of Menem's policies.

During the early 1990s, many Latin American countries enjoyed exceptionally strong economic growth, which has been credited with making possible substantial reductions in their rates of poverty. However, the collapse of capital flows to Latin America that began in 1995 portends a decline in the region's economic growth. If these countries now register growth rates that are only modestly positive (on the order of 1-3%), the question then arises as to whether this progress in overcoming poverty is bound to stall.

Despite new rhetoric to the contrary, Latin Americans have relied on growth almost exclusively as the way to overcome poverty. The distribution of income has changed very little over the past decade and, where change did occur, in many cases it has been for the worse.

In many Latin American countries during the 1980s, domestic elites joined with international development institutions to advocate structural adjustment policies as the solution to the region's “lost decade.” Proponents of such policies sought economic rejuvenation based on export-led growth (ELG) strategies. The new ELG programs were to replace importsubstituting industrialization (ISI) schemes and complement traditional primary commodity exports with new agricultural and industrial exports (nontraditionals). It was hoped that these Latin American nations would replicate the spectacular growth patterns of the East Asian “dragons” by exploiting comparative advantages to build nontraditional export industries.

Whereas ELG strategies have proven to be sustainable over the long-term in East Asia, research on the evolution of such policies in Latin America is only beginning. The problem of sustainability bedevils all ELG programs, particularly in those countries which relied on external actors to design the new policies and fund supporting institutions.

This paper analyzes the achievements and failures of the new democratic governments in Argentina (1983-), Uruguay (1985-), Brazil (1985-), and Chile (1990-). My comparisons focus on four fundamental issues: economic performance, the ability of governments to address the pressing problems of poverty and inequality, the quality of democratic practice, and the degree to which these governments and the democratic regimes have won popular support and legitimacy. Focusing on these questions is not to deny the significance of others, nor to suggest that citizens of these countries would see these four as the most pressing. The focus here will be on government; civil society will not be discussed in any detail.

This article develops four principal arguments. First, it argues that the performance of democracy has varied considerably in the four countries under discussion. Democracy in Chile, at least in its early phases, has been a success both politically and economically.

During 1995, the 50th anniversary year of the United Nations (UN), news of the failure of its peacekeeping missions in Bosnia, Somalia, and Rwanda dominated the media and political rhetoric. In El Salvador, however, a UN mission with a legitimate claim to success was able to close its doors on 30 April 1995. How is this remarkable achievement to be explained? And, what are the lessons — positive and negative — that can be learned from the 45 months during which the United Nations Observer Mission in El Salvador (Misión de Obseruadores de las Naciones Unidas en El Salvador or ONUSAL) oversaw a transition from war to peace and verified a lengthy set of peace accords?

The success of ONUSAL was anything but assured when it began in July 1991, some six months before there was even a cease-fire.