Claudio Véliz

There must be something about Latin America which invites generalization. It could be the common Iberian ancestry-although North America's British roots do not appear to have had the same effect-or the common religion, or simply the legitimate fact of relative ignorance about too many countries which have long remained outside the mainstream of international interest. Even when there is an awareness of diversity, it is often accompanied by impatience at this unhelpful "balkanization," a desire to conceptualize the unwieldy region into an homogeneous, manageable whole. This is a problem peculiar to Latin America; an important political change-say, in Greece-is unlikely to be accepted as a valid indicator of the direction of European affairs generally, let alone as a satisfactory solution for domestic problems in France or Finland. But when a major political change takes place in a Latin American country, the immediate temptation-which few resist-is to see it not only as a portent of things to come elsewhere in Latin America, but also as a possible answer to problems faced by other nations in the region.