ABSTRACT
The Peruvian experience demonstrates many of the contradictions concerning what we term “democracy,” and clarifies the nature of popular sentiments regarding the interface of economic conditions and political rights. Haiti is another important example of the evolution of democracy without freedom in Latin America. Haiti again seemed under control. Street demonstrations subsided, lowlevel state terror quietly resumed, and a spirit of political fatalism began to engulf the land. The most populous Latin American nation and the one of greatest importance to the United States, Mexico has a distinctive political culture that enabled it to avoid military takeover in the postwar era. The government faced its greatest political crisis in 1968, in the capital. Its riot police overreacted to a simple fracas between high school students, inadvertently unleashing middle-class resentment of the lack of political rights. A deeper scientific analysis of political dynamics is needed in order to understand the dynamics of popular disinterest in politics.
