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In Latin America, democracy has special meanings. In Juan Perón's Argentina, democracy is a boss and his wife on a balcony plus "social justice" (wage rises, free cakes at Christmas, old-age benefits) for all who bow down to them. In some of the Andean countries, democracy tends to be government by a majority of the white minority. Under the Honduran formula, ex-Dictator "Bucho" Carías once explained, "Personal safety is as important as personal liberty." Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, last of the oldfashioned, "monster-type" dictators, calls his regime in the Dominican Republic "freedom and democracy in the Caribbean." Said a tough U.S. businessman, hardened by 20 years in Latin lands, "When a guy says 'democracy' down here, he means any government that's run the way he wants it run."
For some Latinos, of course, democracy has more significant meanings. The Uruguayans recently exchanged their President for a committee-style government, akin to the Swiss. Mexicans have given the Indian absolute political equality. Brazil, the land of 50 million whites and Negroes, carries day-by-day racial democracy to a point far beyond anything the U.S. can match.
Is It Workable? But Latin American countries are a long way from being democratic in the U.S. sense. Their history, geography, climate, religion, race are all different. As colonies of Spain and Portugal, they had none of the prior experience in self-government that the 13 North American colonies enjoyed. In such countries as Bolivia and Ecuador, backward, illiterate, aborigines who do not even speak Spanish far outnumber the whites. The entire area sags below the standards of health, education and economic development that political scientists consider essential for durable democracy. Even in relatively prosperous Cuba, per capita income is $300 compared to the U.S.'s $1,600; average life expectancy is almost 15 years less than in the U.S.; illiteracy is seven times as great.
Self-discipline in the exercise of political liberties is also needed to keep democracy stable. Latinos are individualists, insistent upon personal as distinct from political liberty. They are men of passion, men of honor. Lord Bryce, writing in 1912, noted in them "a temper which holds every question to be one of honor." Sometimes, in the flurry of upholding honor and individual rights, some of the quieter ground rules of social conduct have a tendency to get lost in the shuffle. A Cuban joke defines democracy as "having a good job and the right to drive on the wrong side of the street." The great world capital of Buenos Aires (pop. 3,000,371) has no traffic lights; the authorities tried the signals out some years ago, but had to remove them because drivers simply would not obey them.