Project for Global Democracy and Human Rights

South America

El mundo se llenó de sinembargos,
de infundados temores y dolor,
pero hay que reconocer que sobre el pan salobre
o junto a tal o cual iniquidad
los vegetales, cuando no fueron quemados,
siguieron floreciendo y repartiendo
y continuaron su trabajo verde
—“Los materiales,” Pablo Neruda (Chilean, 1904-1973), Nobel laureate for literature, 1971

Venezuela

Chávez is a symptom of polarization, not the cause

United States fails first test of new OAS Democracy Charter

Bolivia

When the free market alone isn’t enough

Argentina’s economic meltdown is symptom of social problems that plague most of Latin America and threaten proposed hemispheric free-trade zone

Brazil and Southern Cone leading the way in curbing the power of the military in Latin America

Chile’s timid centrists are arguably doing more to restrain the advance of Chilean democracy than the widely discredited army

Menem abandons quest for third term as civil society in Argentina and Chile demands real democracy

Valparaiso

To assist a stalled democratic transition

The Southern Cone’s military nightmares

  • Argentina web site: The Vanished Gallery, documenting the secret detention centers, the estimated 12,000 persons who were made to “disappear” and more than 8,000 others killed in “confrontations,” the military officers who were responsible, the abductors and torturers, the report of the National Commission on the Disappeared, and the mothers of Plaza de Mayo
  • Chile web site: Derechos Chile: Ayer y Hoy, documenting detention centers, killings, Operation Condor, and the other grim details of Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship, and efforts to bring the dictator to justice

Books

Colombia

The view from Latin America

Escalating U.S. intervention in Colombian civil war due to failure to face reality about so-called War on Drugs

In-depth explorations of the Colombian crisis

To shame a domestic elite that won’t talk to “communists,” Columbia’s president arranged meeting of New York Stock Exchange chief and guerrilla leader

How U.S. foreign policy can undermine human rights abroad

Peru

Fujimori’s electoral farce — another step in trend toward plebiscitarian dictatorship in Andean arc of crisis

Execution of captives, mutilation of corpses, refusal to allow autopsies, dehumanization of adversaries…

Just about the only thing Japanese about President Fujimori is his appearance and surname. In every other respect, he is a classic Latin American autocrat.

The crisis in Peru is not about terrorism; it’s about a social structure held over from the Spanish conquest

© 1996, 1999 Andrew Reding, Project Director and Senior Fellow, World Policy Institute

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