Democracy in Latin America: Visions and Realities (New York: Bergin & Garvey, 1990), edited by Susanne Jonas and Nancy Stein, is a collection of essays on the state of politics primarily in Central America and the Caribbean. The essays do not paint a hopeful picture. Economic crises and political repression and instability mark most if not all of the nations studied in this book. At the same time, the authors try to find some hopeful signs in each situation. They seek evidence that democracy and freedom are possible, although at times it seems as if they are grasping at straws. Realistically, despite the authors' efforts to be hopeful, it would appear that the nations under study will not experience democratic rule or freedom any time in the foreseeable future.
In their Preface, the editors write that since the publication of their book of essays two years earlier, there have been
many new developments, yet remarkably little structural change, in the hemisphere. The contradictions of the "redemocratization" schemes have become clearer, as crises have worsened in "civilian" regimes compromised with (or run by) counterinsurgency armies (vii).
Nevertheless, the editors manage to find hope in a number of areas, especially "mass-based social movements" which "increasingly . . . defy control by even the most repressive state apparatus and begin to develop their own models for popular democracy" (vii).
However, in practical terms, these movements have actually had little effect in any of the nations studied in this book. Again, the authors and editors have chosen to cap their pessimistic analyses with the only hopeful signs they find, as weak as that hope might be.
The essays are all well-written, informative, varied in style but always clearly presented, and adequately documented, and the print is clear and easy to read, but these facts do not alter the fact that the reader feels he is being treated somewhat like a child. Th...