South America: Economics and Politics - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 307

21. South America: Economics and Politics
All happy families resemble each other.
It is the unhappy families that are different.
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina , 1873-77
An unkind history haunts the twelve countries of South America. Each country in its own
way is an unfinished place, a place where democratic instability gives way to military rule
and stability, followed again by precarious democracy. Eleven countries were conquered and
colonized by Spain; the twelfth, Brazil, was dominated by Portugal. The eleven Spanish-
speaking countries fought for independence in the turmoil that followed Napoleon's inva-
sion of Spain in 1807. The struggles for independence continued until 1824, but it was not
until the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898 that Latin America was finally rid of
Spanish domination.
Brazil was different. It offered its Lisbon rulers refuge from Napoleon and slipped its
bonds to the mother country gradually and peacefully. But the democracy that followed the
last of its royal rulers (Emperor Dom Pedro II, who abdicated in 1889) has also been part of
South America's cycle of military rule and precarious democracy.
Democracy, as Winston Churchill famously said, is the worst form of govern-
ment—except for all the others. [273] Travelers to South America from western Europe and
North America view democracy as a governmental norm rather than as one of history's hap-
piest accidents. With selective memories, they forget what Europe was like before the end
of World War II. And they wonder why South America has been so long in coming to last-
ing democracy. A baker's half-dozen explanations come to hand. Each is plausible. All are
creditable. None works alone.