Democracy has been better to the Venezuelan Church than many of its leaders or militants thought possible as they witnessed its rebirth in the early days of 1958. Despite the hierarchy's role in stimulating and legitimating opposition to the Pérez Jiménez regime, and its effusive praise of democracy as a system (Conferencia Episcopal Venezolana, 1958), private fears were great. After all, the years of military rule had been good times for the Church—Catholic institutions (particularly in education) had prospered, and their leaders responded with broad support for the military regime until shortly before the end (Colmenares Diaz, 1961).

The Church's traditional attitude towards democracy had been a mix of suspicion of majoritarian principles of rule and specific rejection of what it saw as democracy's embodiment in Venezuela in Acción Democrática (Levine, 1973: 38-42, 62-93). This party's policies were seen as secularizing, socialistic, and anti-Catholic, and bitter memories of clashes with Acción Democrática governments in the late 1940s remained vivid.

The year of 1972 brought the marked aggravation of a series of political-economic conflicts in Brazil's relations with developing countries outside the Western Hemisphere, calling into serious question the continued viability of its efforts of several years to maintain good relations with both Portugal and the nonaligned states (particularly those of Africa). Following successful tours of Latin American countries in 1971, Foreign Minister Mário Gibson Barboza termed 1972 the “Year of Africa” and visited Zaire and eight countries of West Africa to advance Brazil's ambitions as a leader of the LDCs by offering technical assistance, development financing, and increased trade, cooperation in commodity agreements, and cultural exchange based on the African component of Brazilian culture. This tour was intended to promote the image of Brazil as a peacefully multiracial, rapidly developing tropical civilization eager to share with others the solutions to economic growth which it had found.

Although the United States entered the Cuban war against Spain in 1898 with a great burst of pro-Cuban enthusiasm, this friendliness suddenly soured into contempt. A revolution in public opinion during the summer of 1898 abruptly lowered the Cuban heroes to the status of villains in North American eyes, while the Spanish enemy came to be regarded as brave and honorable. A Michigan soldier expressed a characteristic view when he confessed that “while my opinion of the Spanish troops is in the ascendant, that of the Cuban troops is at the other end of the teeter.

In retrospect John F. Kennedy's foreign policy has become more and more controversial. Recent studies have stressed the dichotomy between Kennedy's idealistic rhetoric and the moves he made in carrying out an interventionist, counter-revolutionary foreign policy. He acted not only to check his two great socialist adversaries but also to stifle nationalistic revolutions in the underdeveloped world (Walton, 1972; Fitzsimmons, 1972). Under Kennedy, the United States launched a great offensive on real and imagined enemies. This offensive led to intervention in Laos, South Vietnam, Cuba, Guyana, and the Congo as well as to international confrontations over Berlin and missiles in Cuba. Idealistic-sounding programs like the Peace Corps and the Alliance for Progress were launched but they were coupled with counter-insurgency studies and the formation of the Green Berets. All had the same aims: to retrieve the deteriorating economic and worldwide political situation inherited from Eisenhower. Above all, although the United States might have to learn to live with the Soviet Union and China, she could not afford to lose the markets, raw materials, and investment opportunities in the underdeveloped world.