In 1970, Dr. Salvador Allende, presidential candidate of the Unidad Popular coalition, won a plurality — but not a majority — of votes from the Chilean electorate. Consequently, and in accord with Chilean electoral laws and constitution, the Chilean Congress was called upon to vote for the president, and it selected Dr. Allende as the country's new president. Soon thereafter a wave of opposition to his administration developed among business and middle-class sectors: Rightist political movements and parties, entrepreneurial associations, some white-collar unions, as well as groups representing both commercial interests and those of small business. Eventually this opposition determined that “the government of Allende was incompatible with the survival of freedom and private enterprise in Chile, (and) that the only way to avoid their extinction was to overthrow the government” (Cauce, 1984).

On March 15,1987, Brazil celebrated the second anniversary of the Nova República, the popular term for the new civilian government headed by José Sarney. While commemoration of the return to more open, competitive politics after 21 years of authoritarian rule is certainly cause for justifiable national pride, a worsening economic crisis combined with escalating domestic social and political conflict leave many Brazilians deeply worried about the future of their incipient democracy.

By conventional standards, Brazil has joined the ranks of fullfledged political democracies. Nevertheless, a more stringent view would hold that Brazil has really only entered into a new, more complex phase of political transition in which genuine democracy has yet to become firmly established. The new civilian government must now address fundamental issues of social justice and more balanced, equitable economic growth than was realized under authoritarian rule.

Few Countries In The World, and certainly none in this hemisphere, could lay more claims to the title “original heroic land” than Haiti. If, indeed, such things mattered in this world, Haitians could rightfully note that, at a time when the dominant secular and religious ideologies defined the African as subhuman and thus “naturally enslavable,” Haitians challenged and defeated the supreme advocates of those doctrines, and their heroism became the stimulus for other liberation attempts.

Not much after independence in 1804, Haitians opened their ports and hearts to all those battling slavery and oppression. Many benefitted from this daring act. Defeated and abandoned by many around him, Simón Bolívar turned to Haiti and they, not once, but twice, acted to help, true to their vows. Quite correctly did Bolívar write Petión that the liberation of America was only one of the debts owed Haiti.

In mid-1985, the US Embassy in Caracas stated that “Venezuela appears to have successfully coped with its financial crisis” (US Embassy, 1985). In January 1986, the Wall Street Journal announced that

Since the beginning of the 1980s, a number of South American nations have undergone the transition from military to civilian/electoral forms of government. From any viewpoint, the magnitude of this transition has been impressive. By early 1987, several countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, and Uruguay) had successfully weathered the change, leaving only Chile and Paraguay under dictatorships, while Colombia and Venezuela had been able to maintain civilian rule throughout the period. Nevertheless, such a changeover has not been easy in any of the nations where it has taken place. The reasons for both the transition and the problems incurred have been idiosyncratic in each instance.

Since 1980 the maoist party known as Sendero Luminoso, the “Shining Path,” has been waging a guerrilla campaign against the civilian government of Peru. To the surprise of most observers, this group not only has survived but has expanded its scope of operations, kept the military on the defensive, and attracted a small but significant national following.

This limited success is puzzling because of the movement's small size, its lack of arms and its extreme radicalism, in a country with a diverse and substantial Left. Sendero Luminoso, calling itself the Communist Party of Peru, holds to an orthodox Maoist philosophy.