THE ANDES IN TUMULT, SHAKEN BY POLITICAL TREMORS

Guerrillas and the cocaine trade batter Colombia. A strongman rides
roughshod over a discredited Congress and courts in Venezuela. Ecuador
reels from an economic crisis and a coup. Bolivia has just emerged from a
state of siege. And Peru awaits an election between an autocrat accused of
trying to steal the presidency and a political firebrand.

Suddenly it seems as if all the Andes are in tumult. Recent events have
exposed fractures in each society, some old and some new, and one Wall
Street firm has gone so far as to warn its clients that the region is
becoming "the Balkans of Latin America."

But if it does appear that institutions in these countries are breaking
down, many of the conflicts that divide the societies today are different
from those in the past. Turmoil is no stranger to the region, which has had
more than its share of dictators, guerrilla movements and economic crises.
But the current discontent is being generated less by conflict over the
type of government countries should have than the quality.

Democracy has been ascendant in the region for a decade, but the longing
for more representative and responsive governance is greater now among the
region's 100 million people than ever before, experts say. That aspiration
increasingly bumps up against governments that have been unable to provide
an equitable sharing of power and wealth.

"The one thing these countries have in common," said Michael Shifter of the
Washington-based research group Inter-American Dialogue, "is deterioration
and decay in the quality and performance of institutions, in their
inability to produce the results that people demand and will respect."

While cautioning against "the trap of talking about an Andean virus," he
said, "There is something going on that is not supposed to happen."

These problems are most visible in Peru and Venezuela. After years of
ineffectual governance, both countries -- first Peru with Alberto K.
Fujimori in 1990 and then Venezuela with Hugo Chavez in 1998 -- elected
political outsiders who promised sweeping democratic changes.

But in each case the line between overhauling the institutions of democracy
and usurping them altogether became quickly blurred by men who have shown
authoritarian tendencies. The challenge now -- particularly with each
country facing elections in coming weeks -- is to reassert where that
border is. That may mean voting the men out of power and vigorously
protesting any attempt at fraud.

But the situation in Ecuador, where the government has been headed toward a
total collapse, may be even more acute. It has had five presidents from
various parties over the last four years and not one has been able to
deliver the political and economic stability that citizens crave. Now, as a
desperation measure, the government has adopted the dollar as Ecuador's
currency.

In January, President Jamil Mahuad was overthrown in an uprising jointly
organized by disgruntled colonels and Indian leaders, who for generations
have felt excluded from the political and economic life of their country
but have had little opportunity to change their circumstances.

The military coup was the first to succeed in Latin America in more than a
decade. Though it ended with the army installing a civilian leader -- the
country's vice president, Gustavo Noboa -- the action sent a strong signal
through the region that soldiers may yet be tempted to short-circuit
democratic governments they consider corrupt or ineffective.

Beyond Ecuador, in all five Andean countries, long-simmering feelings of
political and economic exclusion have begun to boil over in populations
that are at the same time susceptible to charismatic political figures who
offer a bold new path, one that sometimes tempts citizens with undemocratic
measures.

"The institutional vacuum is the real problem," said Eduardo Gamarra,
director of the Latin American and Caribbean Center at Florida
International University in Miami. "The lack of leadership, the inability
of parties to throw up new candidates, and the absence of formal linkages
to the population is really striking and very, very worrying."

Each country has sought its own kind of savior. When Peruvians first looked
to Mr. Fujimori a decade ago, he was elected in a break from the
traditional political parties, which had failed to control debilitating
terrorism and hyperinflation.

Now Peruvians are considering Alejandro Toledo, a business school professor
who is offering a surprisingly strong challenge to Mr. Fujimori, forcing a
runoff election that must take place by June. Mr. Toledo has promised to
resuscitate democratic institutions, like the Congress and judiciary,
smothered under Mr. Fujimori's heavy hand.

In Bolivia, Gen. Hugo Banzer, who was the country's dictator in the 1970's,
was voted into power in 1997 pledging to fight corruption, eradicate coca
production and modernize the state. His return clearly demonstrated how
democratic aspirations still mingle with the lingering desire for a firm hand.

Much the same can be said of President Chavez in Venezuela, a cashiered
army colonel who last year assumed the very office he tried to gain in a
coup seven years earlier. While he now promises a "peaceful social
revolution," a number of signs suggest that he intends to concentrate power
in his own hands.

While Mr. Chavez's attacks on Venezuela's Constitution, Congress and courts
have resonated overwhelmingly with Venezuelans, his attempts to forge an
all-powerful presidency have not. Instead, they are generating growing
suspicion of an equally grave threat to the country's democracy and have
led to the unexpected emergence of a rival in the presidential vote set for
May 28, from a fellow coup plotter, Francisco Arias Cardenas.

Now Colombia's president, Andres Pastrana, seems to be trying to take
advantage of the same discontent. Faced with twin plagues of Marxist
guerrillas and drug trafficking, he is proposing a referendum to dissolve
the Congress, seen by most Colombians as corrupt and inefficient, and
replace it with what he pitches as a more responsive body.

But Mr. Pastrana, whose own popularity has been slipping, may be too late
to capitalize on such sentiment. The apparent front-runner in the
presidential election, now two years off, is Noemi Sanin, leader of a
non-party movement called Colombia Yes, who is sounding many of the themes
that have proved so appealing elsewhere.

"In Colombia the state is not operating," Ms. Sanin, a former foreign
minister, told the newsmagazine Semana. "We do not want to participate in
the sterile fights and embraces between which the traditional parties
alternate while they carve up bureaucratic spoils and the national budget."

The situation in each country points to a regional crisis that is first and
foremost political, where the urgent need for more effective government
converges with the desire that those governments be democratic.

The most striking recent example was in Peru. "What I saw was a rejection
of the imposition of a regime that said, 'We'll do what we want,' " Enrique
Zileri Gibson, editor of Caretas, Peru's leading magazine, said of the
protesters who took to the streets after Mr. Fujimori was accused of trying
to steal a presidential election two weeks ago and chanted, "Democracy yes,
authoritarianism no!"

But the region's severe economic and social problems cannot be ignored. The
smaller Andean countries are so hard-pressed that Bolivia's attempt to levy
a 20 percent increase in water rates this month provoked a response so
violent that Mr. Banzer dusted off his old autocratic tools and declared a
state of siege.

High unemployment rates have worsened and expanded the already huge
informal sector of these economies.

"This is the largest growth sector of society, but no one is speaking for
them," Dr. Gamarra said. "The problem is that because they are so tenuously
tied to the system, with no unemployment insurance, health care or social
security, they will vote for whoever promises a wonderful reform."

To a large extent, that excluded economic class coincides with the Indian
and mestizo, or mixed race, population, and those people of indigenous
descent are becoming more dissatisfied and assertive, especially as they
move from village to city.

The coup in Ecuador was the clearest indication of this discontent. Another
is the rise of Mr. Toledo and even, to some extent, Mr. Chavez. Both have
strongly Indian features and a mestizo appeal.

The rise of this new type of leader is striking in a region where
politicians have traditionally tended to be upper class, lighter skinned
and of purer Spanish descent, and where many questions born in colonialism
and surrounding ethnic identity, language and culture have remained
unresolved for 500 years.