Latin America: The Shrinking Middle

"I HAVE come to rule!" cried Bolivia's President Alfredo Ovando Candia last week after a 300-mile dash to his presidential palace in La Paz. While out of the capital opening a new railroad line in the provincial city of Santa Cruz, he got word that a right-wing military force led by his own army chief of staff had seized power, declaring that it would give Bolivians "the destiny they deserve." By the end of a wild week, both Ovando and the rival military men were out. In power, following a seriocomic sequence of coup and countercoup, was Latin America's latest left-wing military regime.

For General Ovando, who seized power a year ago in a coup against a conservative civilian regime, the outcome was a reminder that there is scarcely a more vulnerable spot to be in Latin American politics today than the middle of the road. In their search for effective answers to their political problems, Latin American countries are turning more and more to radical solutions, both of the left and of the right. The polarization of the continent has picked up speed since the mid-1960s, first with the emergence of ultraconservative military regimes in Brazil and Argentina and, in 1968, with Peru's takeover by a leftist junta. The men in command may be soldiers or civilians, but they are almost uniformly authoritarian. At present, twelve of Latin America's 25 nations and over 62% of its 270 million people are ruled by far-right or far-left regimes.

There is every indication that their numbers will increase rather than decline. No elections are in sight in Brazil or Argentina, and Peru's ruling junta suggests that it may take 30 years to accomplish the reforms it has in mind. Though Venezuela, Colombia and Costa Rica remain healthy, functioning democracies, Uruguay, the erstwhile "Switzerland of Latin America," is beset by a vicious brand of urban terrorism and worsening economic problems. In neighboring Chile, the Congress is preparing to vote into power the first freely elected Marxist government in world history (see cover story).

Thus Bolivia's leftward tilt revealed to the world the accelerating momentum of a major trend in Latin America. A year ago, when he launched his government of "revolutionary nationalism," Ovando cast himself as a general of the left. He courted the same loose coalition of students, workers, and young, socially oriented military officers that Bolivia's flamboyant General Rene Barrientos had used as a power base during his regime. Ovando brought left-wing intellectuals into his Cabinet, expropriated the holdings of American-owned Bolivian Gulf Oil Co., and gave Communist labor leaders free reign in the troubled, underproductive tin mines. But after a few months, conservative businessmen and military hard-liners helped edge Ovando back toward the center, alienating many of his former supporters. He dropped the leftists in his Cabinet and ordered into retirement General Juan Jose Torres, his army chief of staff and liaison man with his left-wing support in the army.

Ovando thereupon found himself in the center last week, and exposed on all sides. He and his rebellious right-wing army chief, General Rogelio Miranda, agreed to hold a "plebiscite" among younger officers to decide which man would be President. By an overwhelming vote of 317 to 40, the officers rejected both candidates. But when Ovando resigned "to avoid an armed clash," Miranda named a three-man junta, which promptly moved into the presidential palace and assumed power.

After meeting with Ovando, General Torres sped to a military base outside La Paz and quickly rallied leftist support. When leftist air force pilots flying vintage Mustang fighters strafed the presidential palace--taking care to fire only into the air--it was all over. Miranda fled to asylum in the Paraguayan embassy, and Torres rode triumphantly into La Paz as the new President. His regime was the 186th in Bolivia's 145-year history.

Dark Shadow. What is little realized is the extent to which Latin Americans themselves approve radical approaches, despite such egregious failures as Castro's Cuba. Juan Bosch, the old democratic foe of Dictator Rafael Trujillo, nowadays says loftily that he is no longer interested in elections in the Dominican Republic but will accept a "dictatorship with popular backing." Says Uruguayan Christian Democratic Leader Juan Pablo Terra: "Traditional parties are not prepared to face today's problems. They work as a voting cooperative that is strong enough to gain power but not strong enough to govern."

What alternatives are there? In the early 1960s, when Fidel Castro was beginning to cast a dark shadow over a continent still largely ruled by a feudal triad of the church, the oligarchy and the military, the Kennedy Administration put great stock in the ability of non-Communist parties of the "democratic left" to achieve rapid and radical political and social changes. Backed by U.S. Alliance for Progress aid, leaders like Venezuela's Romulo Betancourt, Chile's Eduardo Frei Montalva and Peru's Fernando Belaunde Terry scored notable successes in land reform, education and other areas. Opposition from Communists and conservatives alike, not to mention the hemisphere's inexorable 3% rate of population growth, guaranteed that too often their efforts would be too little and too late. But their programs are being copied closely by the nondemocratic self-styled "revolutionary" regimes in Peru and Bolivia.

Start Walking. Up to now, the "revolutionary" dictatorships of the left have been careful to avoid even the suggestion of kinship with the Communist world. "This is a nationalist, popular and Christian revolution," said Peru's President Juan Velasco Alvarado in a Lima speech marking the second anniversary of the military coup that toppled Belaunde. "We are trying to find for the problems of Peru solutions derived from Peruvian reality." There is evidence too that the Soviets are being wary about writing mortgages on some of the new political experiments. One story has it that last fall, when Bolivia's Ovando seized power, a delegation of leftists journeyed to Buenos Aires to solicit Soviet aid from a senior Russian diplomat. The reply, perhaps apocryphal but entirely plausible, was: "Anyone who wants us to take on responsibility for Bolivia is an enemy of the Soviet Union."

The prospects are that Soviet diplomats will be seeing more such delegations in the future, particularly if Marxist Candidate Salvador Allende takes over in Chile. "The road--as the poet said--is made by walking," a leftist guerrilla noted in Uruguay last week. Chile and Bolivia, the guerrilla added, "will increase the number of walkers. Sooner or later they will harvest success or failure, but inevitably they will find the way toward power and revolution, and that's what really matters." That may not be what Latin America needs but for the next few years it is likely to be what it gets.

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