There was a really funny pair of stories yesterday. The New York Times had one about how everyone in Chile is so happy and satisfied with the political system that nobody's paying much attention to the upcoming election. There is indeed apathy about the election, but that's a reflection of the breakdown of Chile's social structure. Then, through a reign of fascist terror, it was essentially depoliticized. The breakdown of social relations is pretty striking.
People work alone, and just try to fend for themselves.
The retreat into individualism and personal gain is the basis for the political apathy. Nathaniel Nash wrote the Times' Chile story. There was one place in Central America that did get some US media coverage before the Sandinista revolution, and that was Guatemala. In 1944, a revolution there overthrew a vicious tyrant, leading to the establishment of a democratic government that basically modeled itself on Roosevelt's New Deal. In the ten-year democratic interlude that followed, there were the beginnings of successful independent economic development.