Promises Will Be Hard to Keep : Latin America: The return of electoral democracy in Brazil and Chile is welcome but should not be overrated; it won’t solve the region’s real problems.

Elections have become a relatively commonplace matter in Latin America: After the authoritarian trend of the 1970s, the ‘80s saw the emergence of formally representative democracies in most Latin American nations. Two lagged behind: Chile and Brazil. The last presidential elections in Chile were held in 1970; the most recent direct election of a Brazilian president took place in 1960.

So this month’s elections in both countries were milestones, even if they didn’t really mark the end of an era in either nation: The authoritarian period in Brazil concluded more than 10 years ago; in Chile it has not yet really ended. Yet Patricio Aylwin’s victory in Chile and Fernando Collor de Mello’s election in Brazil involve similarities that run deeper than their coincidence in time and symbolism. The return to electoral democracy in countries that lived through so-called economic miracles in the ‘70s (Brazil) and ‘80s (Chile) reopens the debate in Latin America about the compatibility of economic growth, social development and democratic institutions.

In both nations, enormous social lags have emerged over the last 10 years. In Brazil, the minimum wage is $40 a month, and half of the country’s workers make less than twice that figure. Nearly one-quarter of the country’s people are illiterate, and 65 of every 1,000 children born every year die before their first birthday. The effects of the economic boom of the ‘60s and ‘70s were quickly erased by 10 years of on-again, off-again economic growth, virtual hyper-inflation (currently running at 50% per month) and servicing the Third World’s largest foreign debt ($120 billion).

Chile, after the economic prostration of the ‘70s and the first few years of this decade, has experienced sustained economic growth for the past three years. Thanks to that growth is per-capita income has now approximately recovered the level it had achieved in 1970. Chile’s foreign debt, while shrinking thanks to debt-equity swaps, is still Latin America’s largest on a per-capita basis. The minimum wage of about $50 per month is all that a considerable number of salaried workers make in Chile. According to U.N. statistics, 60% of the population lives below the national poverty line.

None of these social disasters are exclusive to Chile and Brazil, nor do they represent new phenomena. The novelty lies in the fact that as of earlier this month in these two nations, and throughout the continent in recent years, the erosion of the hemisphere’s authoritarian political system has changed the context of social involution. With the exception of Mexico, Cuba and Haiti, Latin governments now have to deal with the political and specifically electoral expressions of social pressures. Collor and Aylwin were obliged to commit themselves to deal with the social crisis--the Brazilian by his rival on the left, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva; the Chilean by his own coalition. Both candidates were forced to make promises one doubts they will be able to keep, and to raise expectations that probably cannot be met. But without the promises and the ensuing expectations, they would not have been elected, nor can they or their backers remain in power for long. The only way out of the dilemma is, of course, through sustained, fast-paced economic growth.

The problem with growth in Latin America is that it requires substantial resources from abroad. But instead of being capital-importing economies, foreign debt has turned virtually all of them into net capital exporters. And this sorry state of affairs is bound to be aggravated by the recent events in Eastern Europe.

It is reasonable to expect that a substantial portion of the private and public resources available for international economic assistance, concessional lending or investment in low-wage economies will be channeled to Eastern Europe. There is not a great deal of money to go around in the first place, but what little financing for development or recovery is available will inevitably be directed to wherever political expediency dictates. That means to nations in Eastern Europe, and perhaps eventually the Soviet Union, whose standards of living, with all their deficiencies, are infinitely higher than those of Latin America.

Holding elections in countries with accumulated social backwardness and an entire decade of stagnation, in the absence of money from abroad, is a risky venture. The return to representative democracy must be welcomed but should not overrated: It will not solve the continent’s problems, although these cannot be solved in its absence. What the Brazilians are increasingly calling their country’s “social apartheid”--characteristic today of virtually every nation in Latin America, starting with Mexico--will require more than elections to be undone.