Pubdate: Sun, 23 Apr 2000
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2000 The New York Times Company
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Author: Larry Rohter with Clifford Krauss
Bookmark: MAP's link to items about South America:
http://www.mapinc.org/latin.htm

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. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake