Anniversary Essay: Democracy Versus Democracy
Volk, Steven
In late April, 1965, some 20,000 U.S. marines stormed the beaches of Santo Domingo in a successful attempt to crush a nationalist rebellion. That invasion, in the context of a spreading...
...The left must demand and respect the full range of formal political rights promised long ago by the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, at the same time that it opens a space for those social and economic transformations which are essential in order to establish equality for all citizens...
...2 Nor would matters improve over the next generation...
...Some seek as little change as possible...
...Both the Chilean Socialist Party (Ndifiez branch) and the Venezuelan MAS, for example, have instituted primaries for the selection of party authorities along with procedures designed to give voice to minority sectors...
...World Bank figures continue uidator to confirm Latin America as a in the pi region with severe income inequali- bilizes, ties...
...3 "Promoting democracy" has always been invoked as a rationale for U.S...
...For the meaning of democracy to stabilize at anything more than a vacuous and self-congratulatory level, civil society must be a burr in the saddle of the state-any state...
...First, a small This is n portion of local elites are dramati- we all li cally favored by the neoliberal in which political economy...
...The concentration of wealth would b and power in Latin America's promote "democratizing" societies leads us engaged to two conclusions...
...Jorge Nef that the state in merica has been n a condition of rship,"' its central nged from one of encouragrelopment and providing ervices to overseeing the debt and implementing pired structural adjustThe "highly transnationalweak" state acts as a "liqof its own bankruptcy," and rocess depoliticizes, demoprivatizes, and insures that nocratic opening will be 2 decisions which affect the the vast majority of Latin a's citizens are made in :ton and Paris by unelected representative bodies, it e foolhardy for the state to a process of democratic nent and participation...
...My interpredemocracy, however, goes the more formalist definicivilian rule and political ion-though these are important procedural steps...
...The lists of "disappeared persons" are a reality, too, as is the fact that 50% of the adult members of this "democracy" can't read or write...
...4 Sixth or without a dictatorship, in most Latin American countries the people vote but don't elect, and the ceremonies of official political life are projected, like the deceitful shadows of a magic lantern, over the background of an atrociously anti- democratic social reality...
...Cited in The Wall Street Journal, October 28, 1994...
...influmaintain "stability" in the nd to protect the region as a or U.S...
...policy in the Americas, but he allowed the term to float over at least three possible meanings: democracy in its social context ("social justice"), democracy as a set of formal procedures (elections, "progress"), and democracy as the dominance of U.S...
...policymakers who stressed that "economic progress and social justice can best be achieved by free men working within a framework of democratic institutions...
...intervention in Latin America, sparked the formation of the North American Congress on Latin America...
...Chile-where the civilian state is still governed by Gen...
...Established in 1964, Brazil's authoritarian regime anticipated future trends, chronicling many deaths foretold throughout the Southern Cone...
...In Brazil, for example, the top any der 20% of the population in terms of limited...
...The realities of Guatemalan political life are quite different...
...The legitimate aspirations of the Dominican people and most of their leaders for progress, democracy and social justice are threatened, and so are the principles of the inter-American system...
...Their economic to affec success will likely translate into strained...
...the region...
...8 ccording to the newspapers, Guatemala has Been ruled in the 1970s by a series of democratically elected governments...
...He has been associated with NACLA, as volun- teer, staff member and chair of the board of directors, since 1969...
...Another is that one-quarter of the population earns 66.5% of the natinal income, while another quarter earns only 6.7...
...25, No...
...27, No...
...but instead of justice, we have obligatory amnesia...
...In terms of the development of civil society as a training ground of democratic rule, things look more optimistic in Latin America, where the transition from dictatorship to civilian rule has brought with it (and was brought about by) the swelling of civil society...
...hile U.S...
...The rhetoric of democracy-asrationale-for-intervention sharpened with the onset of the Cold War...
...policy were tauto- as a spe logically defined as democrats...
...This made it inordinately easy to disregard as "bourgeois freedoms" such principles as respect for rights, freedom of speech and press, the rule of law and the separation of powers...
...Christian Science Monitor, October 31, 1994...
...While the objective possibilities of reaching that goal are probably dimmer now than they have been for many decades, the possibilities of conceiving a reasonable road map to that future rarely have been better...
...Never has the distribution of bread and fish been so antidemocratic: there's enough for all, but few eat...
...Just five years into the democratic initiative known as the Alliance for Progress, Latin America was already up to its neck in military dictators...
...model in which campaigning and electoral contestation are for the rost part limited to the althy or those who can genlarge sums of money...
...2 (Spring 1994), p. 21...
...Nicaragua prickled under the long-time domination of the Somoza family...
...invasion was prefaced and followed by decades of authoritarian rule, with only a brief glimmer of democratic potential in between...
...1 3 iot the same as arguing that ve within a global economy Sthe ability of single actors t outcomes is highly conLatin America today faces ty that the basic terms not just of its broadly construed political economy but of the details of its state budgets and social trade-offs are often determined outside its borders...
...Civil society is more than just the articulation between "public" and "private" spheres in modern society, as some have suggested...
...Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Background Information Relating to the Dominican Republic (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1965), p. 53...
...It is such as economic crisis and interna- structure tional pressure, played a role as strengthe well...
...One reality is that democracy consists of rigged elections and the assassination of opponents...
...3. See David Slater, "Power and Social Movements in the Other Occident: Latin America in an International Context," Latin American Perspectives, Vol...
...As the independent leftist magazine Punto Final pointed out in a recent critique: One cannot speak to the people in two different languages...
...policy toward Latin America has always been rhetorically fixed around the concept of democracy, Washington's practices in the region often have made a mockery of democratic principles...
...This has led left and progressive candidates to contest elections at local and national levels -sometimes successfully, as in the election of Antonio Navarro Wolff of the M-19 movement to the Colombian Constituent Assembly or the election of progressive mayors in Caracas and Montevideo, and 10NAtlA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 10ANNIVERSARY ESSAY/ DEMOCRACY NACLA on Democracy, 1966-1996 If the Communist Party has become, in the words of one Chilean journalist, "as respectable as the Catholic Church," the Socialist Party is the Hamlet of Chilean politics, torn between its actual role as a parliamentary opposition and its theoretical insurrectionism...
...It is not correct to tell them, on the one hand, that universal sufferage will get them nowhere, that power can only be gained through armed confrofrontation...
...James in The Black Jacobins...
...The result was a human rights nightmare of unprecedented proportions throughout the region, as tens of thousands of civilians were tortured and murdered, and millions lost all political rights...
...January/February 1988, Vol...
...Just over 200 years ago, soldiers from France, Spain and Britain stormed the beaches of Hispaniola as Saint-Domingue erupted into the first successful antislave, anti-imperialist revolt of the modern era...
...Too frequently, especially through the 1960s and early 1970s, the left belittled formal democracy ments through which bourgeois power was consolidated...
...interests in the hemisphere (the "principles of the inter-American system...
...These events, which led to the establishment of the free state of Haiti, were chronicled in 1938 by C.L.R...
...The dictators were prodded out of power to a large extent by the efforts of mothers' organizations, rank-and-file unionists, human rights organizations, Christian "base" communities and neighborhood health organizers, of the March/April 1982 issue of NACLA Report on the though obviously other factors, racy...
...On one side is the 30-year dictatorship of Gen...
...18, No...
...While acknowledging that the Marxist Left can never come to power through electoral politics, the Socialists continue the pursuit of power through the ballot box...
...These displacements beyond t help us understand why the United tion of States will choose some moments to competit berate Latin American governments clearly ii for ignoring electoral processes (as Followin in the Reagan administration's sup- Keane, I port for a return to civilian rule in two-pron South America), other moments to popular abandon its defense of the formal power at aspects of democratic rule (as in the and wher Nixon administration's thundering silence on human rights abuses and the spread of dictaorship throughout Latin ericaa, and all moments to ze progressive attempts to e the social content of cy (as when the left quesether popular rule is comwith a regime of private ). last 30 years-indeed, for 130 years-the United as determined its policy Latin America based on a f its interests in the region, e interests, in turn, have Led which meaning of cy Washington has sought ote...
...marines were dispatched to occupy Haiti or Cuba or Nicaragua, it was done in erica and the name of bringing democracy to countries whose local inhabitants were unqualified to reach such ends by themselves...
...14, No...
...there is wide consensus that this is a positive development, there is considerable debate as to the actual meaning of democracy for the vast majority of Latin Americans...
...They identified as their enemies not only Marxist and progressive forces, but political parties in general, as well as the formal structures of democracy...
...First, once in power, "communists" (a term which implicated leftists of all hues and which was used interchangeably with "totalitarians") would never leave...
...Pinochet's 1980 Constitution-is perhaps the most notorious example...
...The setbacks for those who were attempting to lay the bases for socialism through electoral means in Chile suggests that the ballot alone cannot preserve the gains won by the people...
...7, No...
...But while r of the April 1974 issue of NACLA's Latin Am report...
...4. Quoted in Benjamin B. Ringer, "We the People" and Others: Duality and America's Treatment of its Racial Minorities (New York: Tavistock Publications, 1983), p. 952...
...But he also understood the pregnant promise of liberty and dignity contained in the Revolution's slogans...
...See James Petras and Steve Vieux, "The Transition to Authoritarian Electoral Regimes in Latin America," Latin American Perspectives, Vol...
...6NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS Steven Volk chairs the History Department at Oberlin College...
...James, a West-Indian Marxist and fierce critic of Stalinism, understood the limited nature of the democracy which the French Revolution might bestow on African slaves in a French sugar-producing colony in the Caribbean...
...6 "6 C ivil society," says Argentine sociologist Carlos Vilas, "stands at the center of today's debate on democracy and development in Latin America...
...JulylAugust 1984, Vol...
...Even as the soldiers hit the beaches in Santo Domingo, the men in khaki ruled Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Honduras and Paraguay, counting mainland countries only...
...That invasion, in the context of a spreading Indochinese war and a history of U.S...
...7 Broadly speaking, civil society is that civic space which lies outside the direct control of the state and the market...
...that the triad of rule during the authoritarian years (military, conservative politicians, business elite) has changed...
...So far, assassination has not proven necessary...
...9. Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens and John D. Stephens, Capitalist Development and Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 270...
...Thus, the United States was "forced" to take Puerto Rico under its wing following the SpanishAmerican War...
...interventions in Guatemala (1954), Guyana (1961), Brazil (1964), Dominican Republic (1965), Chile (1970-73), Nicaragua (1979-1990), Grenada (1983) and elsewhere, were justified on three grounds...
...We must understand the relationship between a liberal political system and a democratic society if we are to move beyond the predominant political culture of both populists and the classical left...
...7. Carols Vilas, "The Hour of Civil Society," NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol...
...6 NACIAREPORT ON THE AMERICASANNIVERSARY ESSAY/ DEMOCRACY Peru had just recently been cured of a case of military indisposition (to which it would soon again succumb...
...Unlike most previous twentieth-century military rulers, this new round of dictators openly voiced their frustration with democracy as an "ineffi- The cove cient" system, and the Empire R United States winked its agreement...
...The V V mere fact that they are held is deemed to be enough...
...Rather, civil society suggests a complex assortment of non-state organizations concerned with a vast array of issues and operating on myriad levels: from household life to trade unions, and from self-help movements and community associations to political parties...
...4 "T oday, the content, scope and strategy for democ- ratization is at the center of political debate in Argentina, and popular movements play new roles, according to differing conceptions of democracy...
...In short, Guatemala's political reality has been dominated for a century by a defiance of democratic norms, in social, political and economic terms...
...and, at the same time, to induce them to vote, to trust electoral results, in the efforts of the parliamentarians, in their speeches to Congress, in the legal initiatives or amendmendments which they propose...
...21, No...
...What is important, as a recent study by Dietrich Reuschmeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens and John D. Stephens suggests, is the class nexus between development and democSthe transformation of class s which permits the :ning of the working and lasses and the weakening anded upper class that is to the development of cy...
...14 As the left seeks to consolidate these democratic processes-within its own ranks and within society at large-it would do well to ponder the example of Haiti...
...Mexico remained snugly in the PRI's pocket...
...The marines left little doubt as to which interpretation won out...
...6. John Keane, Democracy and Civil Society (New York: Verso, 1988), p. 61...
...It also serves as a good lens through which to chart the course of democracy as discourse and practice in Latin America over the past 30 years...
...The past 30 years has seen Latin America oscillate between civilian and military rule but not yet move into an era of democratic rule...
...October 1973, Vol...
...2 (September/October 1993), p. 38...
...Leftist parties are also beginning to democratize their own internal processes...
...All of of affai these factors tend to increasii mitigate the ability of America civil society to participate global c actively or effectively in the argues political process and to affect Latin A decisions taken by the state...
...It must be the force which best exemplifies democratic practice within its own ranks, and within those political and social spaces where it has influence...
...Juan Bosch, the social democratic head of the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD), is at the thin center of this history...
...Indeed, there is little evi- The cover dence from Latin America Americas...
...To answer either to deliberately ignore r to imagine a future which more possibilities than the efer the latter...
...the context is of little importance...
...Trujillo, who built his base of support in the Dominican constabulary, remained in power with the direct and steady support of the United States until Washington, having decided he no longer served its interests, helped arrange his assassination...
...Yet even as foreign sources of income dried up for the IMF-ins majority of Latin Americans, those ments...
...Latin America did not fully emerge onto the dry ground of civilian rule until the early 1990s...
...Popular movements often argue this position and thus are frequently labeled "destabilizers...
...It must encourage the vigorous, and often autonomous, growth of civil society even as it demands a state which is accountable to its people...
...Broad sectors of society share the goal of institutionalizing democracy, but differ on how to do so...
...but it also shows us the desperation of the Latin American Right and the U.S...
...g political theorist John see democratization as a ged process whereby the classes can contest real the level of civil society, e the state through its institutions both encourages and protects this process and can be held accountable for its outcome...
...placed i Between 1980 and 1990, the "receive number of poor in Latin America role chai increased from 120 to 200 mil- ing dev lion-approximately 45% of the public s region's population...
...ly problematic is the fact ability to make economic s which could improve ns for the broad majoriough thus far neoliberal ve shown themselves to be eased with the curr irs-has moved ngly from Latin to a U.S...
...March/April 1992, Vol...
...While some ana- Latin An lysts have worried that such move- ity, have ments have fragmented the popular bution h classes, producing myriad localized demands without addressing the "overall problem itself,"8 the potential for a truly popular democratic movement can only be rooted in an active, widespread and often autonomous civil society...
...not that the body beneath may be ravaged by a wasting disease...
...21, No...
...The assumptions behind these arguments-that markets and democracy "naturally" reinforce each other and that the rising bourgeoisie is "inherently" a democratic class-do not, however, stand up to the empirical evidence...
...develop From local electoral victories of almost e' newly reformulated leftist parties, Over tl to rebellions like the one in economy Chiapas, civil society has increased weakene pressure on the state to establish middle c institutions which are accountable dards fo to popular desires...
...corporate and government policy makers...
...BNACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 8ANNIVERSARY ESSAY/ DEMOCRACY In terms of the "redemocratization" of Latin America, the outlook is distinctly mixed as regards these two issues...
...4 (Fall 1994), pp...
...JanuarylFebruary 1980, Vol...
...As one observer notes, the term is a "floating signifier" par excellence...
...21, No...
...1 Any program for a renewed left must propose to Enhance political democracy-not repudiate its "formal" legal nature (as is common practice among the left), but expand on it...
...As demonstrated by Lyndon Johnson's use of the term, the meaning of "democracy" is problematic not because it is outrightly rejected or even viewed with suspicion, but rather because everyone wants to attach to it their own meaning...
...Jorge Nef, "Demilitarization and Democratic Transition in Latin America," in Sandor Halebsky and Richard L. Harris, eds., Capital, Power and Inequality in Latin America (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995...
...I have not thought it wise," President McKinley argued, "to commit the entire government of the island to officers selected by the people, because I doubt whether in habits, training and experience they are such as to fit them to exercise at once so large a degree of self-government...
...In terms of democratic accountability, a large number of Latin American states skidded from dictatorship to civilian rule without fundamentally changing the authoritarian rules of the game which determine the state's boundaries...
...See Steve Ellner, "Introduction: The Changing Status of the Latin American Left in the Recent Past," in Barry Carr and Steve Ellner, eds., The Latin American Left: From the Fall of Allende to Perestroika (Boulder and London: Westview Press and Latin American Bureau, 1993), p. 16...
...policy toward Latin America...
...All that matters is that the patient puts on a presentable suit of clothes every four or five years...
...In Argentina and Peru, current civilian presidents manipulated constitutions and public sentiment to allow them to remain as presidents beyond their first term...
...Indeed, it is the "evacuation of civic spaces" which has led many observers to lament the degradation of democracy in the United States and other advanced capitalist countries...
...27, No...
...Nor was the political result of the Dominican showdown unusual...
...If it is to succeed in addressing the political, economic, cultural and even spiritual demands of the popular sectors in Latin America today, the left must be, like James' L'Ouverture, more Jacobin than the Jacobins...
...8. Vilas, "The Hour of Civil Society," p. 42...
...There are signs that people trained outside the Dominican Republic are seeking to gain control," said President Lyndon Johnson, following the traditional Monroe Doctrine discourse of U.S...
...The left, moreover, increasingly sees the burgeoning of civil society as a positive democra"Freedom of Expression...
...policy towards Latin America...
...To answer "no" is st that the basis on which ton's interests are deterill never change, and I am g to make such a pesassessment...
...political success to the extent that the reali Latin America emulates a U.S...
...4 When U.S...
...ndamental question here is U.S...
...policymakers will ne a deepened and more democracy in Latin as being in the interests of d States...
...it must, rather, develop as a "training ground" of democratic rule, as a continual pressure on the state, and as a means of counteracting the power of capital and challenging the hegemony of its cultural understandings...
...Most sectors of the left now view the state's formal democratic content as an important conquest which must be consolidated and advanced...
...5 IIl ust like the Mexican buildings that collapsed in JIthe earthquake, Latin American democracy has been robbed of its foundations...
...The organized works," according the study, d as a key actor in the nent of full democracy everywhere" 9 he past decade, the political of Latin America has d both the working and the :lasses...
...Not a particularly shining moment for U.S...
...at the top enjoyed a veritable cloud- ized and burst...
...5 Second, the determine United States supported democrat democracy by buoying its to prom friends and allies in Latin interests America since those who constant: advanced U.S...
...But military repression of middle c political parties and trade unions- of the 1 the two main carriers of progressive crucial politics since the beginning of the democra, century-created a space for the ing clas expansion of civil society, and this "appeare space has not been abandoned...
...unwilling and the formal content of democ- simistic racy is often further displaced when "yes" is Washington defines the interests of history oc established governments in the contains region as inconsistent with its own, past...
...For it is clear that this massive brutality is their only response to the mass politicization and mobilization that occurred during the past three years...
...1 W ashington has made a fetish of elections...
...I pr particularly if they raise anti-impe- tation of rialist issues...
...His hero, the monumental Toussaint L'Ouverture, gains stature not by denouncing Enlightenment promises as so much bourgeois fluff, but by demanding that those promises be realized for all peoples and at once...
...1 income receives 68% of total When income...
...The left, as a result, has found it all too easy to criticize not only imperialism, but the formal aspects of democracy rooted in an equal-rights philosophy...
...3 Vol XXX, No 4 JAN/FEB 1997 11 11 Vol XXX, No 4 JAN/FEB 1997ANNIVERSARY ESSAY/ DEMOCRACY sometimes unsuccessfully, as in the presidential defeats of Luis Inacio "Lula" da Silva in Brazil (by only 4%), Cuauht6moc Cdrdenas in Mexico, and Juan Bosch in the Dominican Republic (the last two of whom lost in probably fraudulent vote counts...
...a to preserve stability in the region, vehicle f since democracy in the United resource States depended on stability in Latin The fu America...
...Basic living stanr a great many people in erica, probably the majordeclined as income distrias become more skewed Vol XXX, No 4 JAN/FEB 1997 9 Vol XXX, No 4 JAN/FEB 1997 9ANNIVERSARY ESSAY/ DEMOCRACY Civil society cannot replace the state, but must pressure the state to develop institutions that are accountable to the people...
...we erate It must be the "training Secon ground" of democratic unable t political rule, a means of counter- ratic pul are both acting the power of a n d of the ed capital and its t h e Equall locus of that the hegemonic economic decision cultural decision conditio making has ties-th understand- favored neolib- elites ha eral perspectives in quite ph ings...
...control within the inter-American system was threatened...
...Many scholars speak of this new period in Latin America as one of "redemocratization...
...Some of these are important to democracy to the extent that they represent a "disposition" of engagement and commitment to a project larger than oneself...
...whether In short, democratic discourse ever defi often goes through a double dis- complex placement in the context of U.S.- America Latin American relations: concern the Unite with the social content of democratic to sugge...
...Civil society cannot replace the state, but must pressure the state to develop institutions of power that are accountable to the people...
...July/August 1987, Vol...
...By and large, these have remained remarkably to preserve Latin America cial sphere of U.S...
...But Washington rejected such aid...
...The U.S...
...these are not states which, by and large, are accountable to their citizens...
...The fact that its presidents wear uniforms and that military titles precede their names is coincidental...
...1I T he brutality of the Chilean coup shocks us...
...ence...
...34-45...
...For others, democratizing the political system requires much more than simply restoring pre-dictatorship mechanisms of representative democracy...
...t But the United States has An critici always pursued its own examine self-interests in the democra, tions wh region, defining patible back property: "autho- For thc whatever best ritarian" the last leaders in or- States h ensured der to prevent toward I those "totalitarians" pursuit o from coming to and thes interests...
...Rafael Leonidas Trujillo (1930-1961...
...Thus, virtually any form of anticommunism was considered a "democratic" option, and Washington regularly intervened to Vol XXX, No 4 JAN/FEB 1997 7ANNIVERSARY ESSAY/ DEMOCRACY "Promoting democracy" has always been invoked as a rationale for U.S...
...In their view, asking for more thoroughgoing reform could destabilize the country's fragile democracy...
...2. The charter of the Alliance for Progress and other official documents are reprinted in the United States Department of State Bulletin (September, 1961...
...5. See Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, "Dictatorships and Double Standards," Commentary (November 1979), pp...
...An attempt to reform some of the most egregious antidemocratic stipulations of that Constitution, such as Pinochet's right to hand-pick eight senators, went down to defeat in April, 1996, a victim of those appointed senators...
...The strengthening of democracy requires, of course, institutional reforms that give civil society a greater say in state decisions...
...estern political discourse has long held that democracy is the characteristic political form of capitalism, and that the unrestrained operation of the markets for capital and labor constitutes the material base of democracy...
...Only justice could have provided the solid underpinnings...
...Others are fundamental in that they directly apply pressure to the state-to reform it, contest its actions, or change it drastically...
...These are not states which seem particularly attentive to the concerns of the poor or vulnerable...
...investment and/or extraction...
...Bosch was elected president in December, 1962 with 60% of the vote, but the Dominican military and police ousted him less than a year later...
...and ontext...
...22, No...
...3, No...
...Nor can civil society be absorbed into the state...
...In Chile, after all, it was the political system of electoral competition itself which had cracked open the door through which the left had entered the political process-proof positive of the dangers of democracy...
...Eduardo Galeano, Nov/Dec 1993, Vol...
...a 1. "Statement by President Johnson, April 30, 1965," U.S...
...to Finally, the United States intervened region...
...James showed that L'Ouverture was more of a Jacobin than the Jacobins, more of a democrat than the French bourgeoisie...
...rule is displaced by a concern for its Washing formal aspects (i.e., elections as the mined w be-all and end-all of democracy...
...In the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, this discourse of promoting democracy worldwide was advanced within the framework of social Darwinism...
...tic and progressive impulse, and while the left's relationship with these new movements is hardly consolidated, most progressive forces have abandoned the verticalism characteristic of vanguard politics-whether of a Leninist or a foquista orientation...
...power...
...A decade later, the waters of dictatorship had completely submerged the continent...
...at the same time, other forms of organization must take place among the people, to prepare for the inevitable attack by the Right...
...When forces loyal to Bosch rallied to retake Santo Domingo in April, 1965, there was at least some expectation that the United States would support the return to power of his constitutional government...
...Johnson situated the procurement of democracy as a principal objective of U.S...
...What we call universal democracy has little or nothing to do with democracy, in the same way that socialism in the Soviet bloc had little or nothing to do with socialism...
...80% of humanity pays the bill for the extravagance of the chosen few...
...policy toward Latin America, and Washington commonly has claimed that altruism-not self-interest--drove its policy decisions...
...On the other side is the long rule of Joaqufn Balaguer (1966-1978, 1986-1996), who remained in power with the direct and steady support of the United States until his blatant corruption, age and infirmities made him a costly ally...
...Democracy" as an aspiration for free elections, progress and social justice was denied because "democracy" as the maintenance of U.S...
...1, civil society will be o perform the fundamental tasks required of a democblic if the popular classes impoverished and cut out educational process...
...The United States intervened not to pursue its own advantage in the international arena, but to help "backward" neighbors, countries incapable of helping themselves...
...March 1969, Vol...
...Within this framework, the spread of military rule in South America and the protracted wars in Central America during the 1970s and early 1980s had a dramatic impact on leftist thinking throughout Latin America...
...5-20...
...the bottom 20% gets only lives of 2%.10 The 24 wealthiest Mexicans Americ in 1994 together had more wealth Washing (assets) than the poorest 25 mil- and noi lion...
Vol. 30 • January 1997 • No. 4
