MADRID- Two elections will shortly take place in Latin America that could, it is being said, make a trend or break a trend.

This, of course, depends on what you think the trend is. If you believe that the trend is towards a firming of democracy then a truly open contest in the election scheduled in Mexico for July 2nd, which would be an historic first, together with the defeat of the autocratic quasi democrat, Alberto Fujimori, in Peru on May 28th would confirm your opinion. But if you believe that the trend has been on the ebb for some time with the attempted coups in Bolivia and Paraguay and the rise of elected autocrats in Venezuela and Peru, then a re-elected Fujimori and the victory of the governing party in Mexico will confirm your pessimistic leanings.

The truth perhaps is somewhere in between. The post-Caudillo democratic movement, which started life partly under the influence of U.S. president Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s, is far from out of breath. But on the other hand there are signs of a weakening of resolve. Hence the desire, if not for Caudillos, then for democratically elected strong men who dispense with the parties, the legislatures and the courts and “get things done”.

The principle sabotaging element has not been, as in much of past Latin American history, the ambition of army officers. By and large, they voluntarily keep themselves in their barracks, aware of how complicated is the question of business confidence in an age of open markets. Nor has it been the leftist guerrillas. Most of them have either made their peace with a negotiated settlement, leading to parliamentary participation, as in Central America. Or they were defeated, as with the Maoist Shining Path in Peru. Only in Colombia do they survive as a serious force and there they are less an instrument for fighting for social change and more of a group bent on self-aggrandizement through their tight connections with the drug traffickers.

It has been, in short, the inability of the economic reformers to realize their rhetoric and deliver the goods that has been the problem. During the late 1980s and the 1990s most Latin American countries implemented the so-called “Washington Consensus”, the orthodox, free-market, economic policies of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. This meant dropping protectionist tariffs, privatizing state-owned companies and , above all else, squeezing out inflation. “Almost overnight Latin America joined the world economy” says Peter Hakim, the president of Inter-American Dialogue.

Yet, for all the rigour, the results have been disappointing. Economic growth has been half what it was in the 1960s and 70s. Only three countries, Chile, Argentina and Peru, have grown reasonably fast and Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay and Venezuela actually lost ground.

Everywhere inequalities of income, already the most severe of any region in the world, worsened. The cities have become more violent and the murder rate in some countries has as much as quadrupled. Educational levels have slipped even further behind Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

There are, however, beacons of light. Chile, despite the turbulence of the Pinochet affair, burns the brightest. Indeed General Augusto Pinochet’s great achievement was to put economic reform in the hands of rigorous Chicago School economists who instituted Washington Consensus-type reforms before they were popular. Not only has Chile grown at a handsome 6% a year over the last decade, it has done much more to reduce poverty that any other country. With the recent election, 27 years after Pinochet overthrew a Socialist government, of a Socialist president, Ricardo Lagos , who has promised both to continue the economic reforms and to allow the courts to pursue the prosecution of Pinochet, the country has attained a maturity that is the envy of the rest of the continent.

Hard on its heels is a re-invigorated Argentina which has made impressive economic and political advances since democratic rule was restored in 1983. Under Carlos Menem a penchant for economic reform took everyone by surprise. Yet for all his unexpected virtues he tolerated excessive corruption and cared little about the plight of Argentina’s growing numbers of poor. Under the newly elected, relatively austere, president Fernando de la Rua both these attitudes are undergoing a profound change.

Brazil is the wild card. Its growth rate during the 1990s was unspectacular- and this was the country that for the first part of the century, along with Taiwan, was the fastest growing country in the world. Yet it has made massive progress under President Fernando Cardoso in squeezing out inflation. If Cardoso can convince an unruly Congress to reduce state employment and reform an out-of-control pension system for public employees, then Brazil would not only face the possibility of resuming its dazzling growth rate, it could start doing something about its educational system, its poor and its landless. Democracy has a vital quality in Brazil. Debate is of a high order but congressional politics is too beholden to narrow minded local and regional interests.

At the other end of the spectrum are Colombia and Venezuela. To say they are in a quagmire is to be too kind. Colombia, which used to boast a healthy economy, is now mired in recession with massive criminal and political violence almost throttling day to day life. At some point democracy itself will be threatened, as it has been in neighboring Venezuela where, after years of misrule, it has elected a populist autocrat as leader, Hugo Chavez, who has lost no time in marginalising both Congress and the courts.

Still, Latin American politics and economics cannot be said to be- Colombia perhaps excepted- as turbulent and idiosyncratic, as in the past. There is a sense of government being disciplined both by the market and the voter. This is not the time to write obituaries for Latin American democracy. If there is enough going wrong to worry the pessimists, there is enough going right to bolster the optimists. The presidential elections in Peru and Mexico, whichever way they go, won’t really change that.