Losing Ground

Democracy, as the U.S. understands it, took more defeats in South America last week. Chile voted a diehard nationalist ex-dictator back to power; in Ecuador the most effective democratic administration in 28 years gave way to another elected ex-dictator. It was a moment for the U.S. people in general, and the State Department in particular, to face a distasteful fact: with these changes, all the South American republics except Uruguay will be governed by dictators or ex-dictators. Some of the governments still profess to be well disposed toward the U.S. and its ideas of democracy. But it is painfully clear that those ideas are on the defensive --and losing ground.

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