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 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.

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.

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.

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.