The vote to impeach Brazilian resident 'ernando Collor de Mello or corruption charges opens up a period of acute danger for the ruling class in that country.
In the 1990 elections Collor, an unknown businessman who had been 'invented' in a huge advertising and TV campaign, just managed to shake off the challenge of the leader of the Workers Party (PT), Ignacio de Silva - universally known as 'Lula'.
Mass leader
Lula, mass leader of the early 1980s workers upsurge in the Sao Paolo industrial region, came a very close second, getting millions of votes. The PT is the most radical mass party in Latin America, with 600,000 members; it dominates the CUT trade union federation, and has supporters ranging from radical Christians to influential Trotskyist currents.
A new presidential election would undoubtedly see another big PT campaign. The bourgeoisie, aided by the imperialists, will do everything possible to keep Lula out. For the first time in years there is open discussion about the IMF-imposed aus possibility of a military comeback; the army took power in Brazil in a 1964 coup and maintained its grip for twenty years.
'Democratisation' In the past decade a much-vaunted 'democratisation' process has swept the Latin America. The military regimes which took power in the 1960s and '70s have faded from the scene. Argentina, Uruguay, Chile and Brazil now have civilian governments. In El Salvador negotiations between the left-wing FMLN fighters and the Christiani regime have led to thestart of a shakyand uncertain 'democratisation' process.
But the attempted coup in Venezuela, the military overthrow of Aristide in Haiti and the army-backed 'auto-coup' by president Fujimoro in Peru have raised again the danger of a military comeback. But most of all the danger lies in the catastrophic economic and social situation affecting the continent.
Powerless
The new 'democratic' governments are powerless to resolve the situation, which arises mainly from the debt crisis and terity programmes. Chile is a typical example.
Here the generals who overthrew the Allende government in September 1973 imposed a savage de. flationary and pri gansae, advised by vatisation the 'Chicago boys' -US economists under the spell of Milton Friedman.
This did indeed 'stabilise' the economy and reduce runaway inflation. The main monument to this process was the creation of a sizeable middle class, with instant access to all the consumer toys of advanced westerd countries.
But for the workers, the price has been unemployment and mass poverty.
Numerous theories about the role of the military have been devised. But the reality is that the spate of military coups - Bolivia in 1971, Chile and Uruguay in 1973, Argentina in 1976 - had their roots in the inability of normal democratic politics to constrain the struggle of the workers.
There is no great hidden secret here; military dictatorship, like fascism, is a last resort for a ruling class threatened with the In Latin America itself it would shake-off the demoralising effects of the overthrow of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the stalemate in El Salvador.