He is seeking a fresh six-year mandate, but voting has been postponed because of inadequate safeguards against ballot tampering. In Ecuador, army officers who overthrew an elected government have installed the vice president as a democratic fig leaf. And war-torn Colombia's beleaguered president, Andres Pastrana, has proposed a referendum to dissolve Congress. Behind the fragility of democracy in this region are extreme inequality and stark ethnic divisions. In Western Europe or North America, it is easy to forget that democracy presupposes a compatible socioeconomic order.
Democracy is built on the principle that every citizen has an equal vote and equal rights.
But in societies sharply stratified by wealth, income and ethnicity, democratic forms are at such variance with reality that they tend to degenerate into fig leaves for authoritarian rule. Latin America has by far the greatest level of income inequality of any region in the world. Underlying that inequality are ethnic and social inequalities inherited from the period of Spanish rule. The Spaniards and their successors subjugated native populations, but often did not assimilate them. Many do not even speak Spanish.