BOLSTER DEMOCRACY IN SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE

Latin America: Washington, Nations In Region Must Shore Up Venezuela,
Colombia And Peru.

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
InterAmerican 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 InterAmerican 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 count sin the International
Monetary Fund, World Bank and InterAmerican 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.