THE AMERICAS: That Stalled Feeling

THE AMERICAS That Stalled Feeling

In a single week of explosive violence, three Latin American nations clamped on martial law or states of siege (see map).

¶ Nicaraguan rebels launched an airborne revolt against a heritage of dictatorship.

¶ A trifling incident set off a flash fire of deadly rioting in Ecuador.

¶ A show of bravado by Paraguayan students brought that country back under jackboot dictatorship.

Behind the violence, in each case, lay deep feelings of thwarted expectation. Partly the hope is for freedom, a hope frustrated by dictatorships and fumbling governments. Partly the hope is for justice : law that really works. Mostly the hope is for a better life. Since World War II, 26 million rural Latin Americans have left the countryside for cities that shimmer with promise of jobs. food, clothes, houses, education. They arrive to find unemployment, housing shortages. jammed schools. Each disillusionment chafes doubly as a Communist propaganda drumfire pounds on it. And the new prosperity of Europe, the new and well publicized political freedom in Africa, added to existing prosperity and freedom in the U.S.. serve to make Latin America seem relatively stalled.

In Cuba, thwarted expectations of poilitical liberty helped Fidel Castro to topple Dictator Fulgencio Batista. Yet last week, some Cubans were already beginning to suspect that their aspirations toward freedom, law and a better life may not come true.