Tightrope Acts in Latin America : Generals on sidelines but not out of the show

A message President Bush is hearing often during his tour of South America is that the new civilian governments there need debt relief to prosper and maintain political stability. Just before reaching Argentina, Bush got an unplanned--and unpleasant--reminder of how close to the surface political turmoil can be in Latin America.

For the fourth time in four years, unhappy military officers used force to bully the civilian government. It turned out to be less a serious attempt at a coup than an effort to bring President Carlos Saul Menem down a peg by embarrassing him on the eve of Bush’s arrival. It was an utter failure, but also--with 21 dead--bloodier than the three previous incidents.

One hopes Menem’s firm response, and the fact that most of the military stayed loyal and quickly carried out its orders to repress the rebellion, is a sign that the recent restiveness of Argentina’s military has been calmed.

Like his predecessor, Raul Alfonsin, Menem has had to walk a tightrope in dealing with generals and admirals. Argentina’s military leaders have interfered with civilian governments off and on since the 1940s, often with impunity. Alfonsin tried to change that by putting the leaders of the junta he was elected to replace on trial and in prison.

But the military still refuses to acknowledge that punishment as a precedent. It is pressuring Menem to pardon and free former junta leaders. He must not give in on that, because it’s an important precedent, and not just for Argentina.

Chile, the country on Bush’s itinerary today, is only now starting to go through the painful debate on how to deal with its former military rulers. Recently elected President Patricio Aylwin is being urged by Chilean human-rights groups to investigate the many disappearances and jailings of political figures that occurred in the aftermath of the 1973 coup that overthrew Salvador Allende. His military advisers are, just as certainly, telling him that’s not such a good idea.

For one thing, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who led the coup, is still around as military commander and telling anyone who will listen that he’s glad he overthrew Allende and, given the same circumstances, would do it again.

Whether to revisit the Pinochet era will be the toughest issue Aylwin faces in the next few years. What he decides will be based largely on the internal dynamics of Chilean politics. Outside nations, including the United States, can only offer encouragement on occasion. That’s what Bush did when he met Menem Wednesday. It was an important gesture.

Getting Latin America out of its decade-long recession will be hard enough without civilian leaders having to worry about when the generals might decide to try to take over again.

It may take a generation before Argentine and Chilean officers accept the primacy of civilian authority as fact rather than as an inconvenience. Until then, everything the United States can do to support civilian leaders like Menem and Aylwin, no matter how symbolic, is useful.