ABSTRACT
Introduction Latin America’s real GDP grew at a fairly rapid annual rate of 5.2% from 1950 to 1980. This growth was interrupted by a foreign debt crisis, however. It began in Mexico in the early 1980s and then spread throughout the region. Economic growth thus slowed to a sluggish 1.4 annual percentage rate during the 1980s. The slower growth and resulting greater unemployment helped bring about a change in political regimes. Authoritarian regimes were replaced with democracies. The decade of the 1980s began with 12 democracies out of 26 countries in Latin America. By the end of the decade, all but five countries were democratic. Today only Cuba is not.2
