ABSTRACT
The word détente evokes opposite responses in liberal circles of the United States and Western Europe on the one hand, and in the military or semimilitary systems of the Southern Triangle of Latin America on the other. For the United States and for many in Europe, détente refers to a kind of hope: the possibility of constructing a positive and durable relationship between the democracies and totalitarian states, between capitalism and communism, that perhaps could evolve toward a final convergence of both systems into something resembling universal social democracy.
