Latin America's Deafening Silence.(International Edition; POINT OF VIEW)

With few exceptions, Latin America prefers to look the other way when human rights are violated.

To the myriad foreign challenges Barack Obama will have to confront upon taking office we may have to add a complex conundrum next door in Latin America. On three fronts that have posed serious problems for the United States before, there is a growing and worrisome democratic challenge in the hemisphere--and no one knows quite how to handle it.

The first problem is Nicaragua, where the Sandinista Front rigged and stole municipal elections in such an egregious fashion Nov. 9 that even the old PRI antics in Mexico pale by comparison. In the country's larger cities, like Managua, the capital, as well as Leon, Granada and Masaya, ex-Sandinista opponents and supporters alike were harassed, intimidated and erased from electoral rolls. Their ballots were discarded, and they were subsequently forcibly banned from demonstrating against the stolen vote. Most analysts agree that the opposition at least won in Managua, though it may not have done so elsewhere. Yet virtually no one in Latin America said a word. When the Organization of American States' secretary-general, Jose Miguel Insulza, cautiously expressed concern about the situation, he was violently rebuked by President Daniel Ortega's spokesperson and diplomats, as well as by Hugo Chavez's minions in Venezuela. The rest of the region remained silent, even though its nations signed, on Sept. 11, 2001, an Inter-American Democratic Charter drafted to avoid such corrupt election practices.

In Venezuela, the recent gubernatorial and municipal ballots also raise concerns. Unlike previous elections, there was no significant tampering--with the exception of the state of Barinas, where the opposition is claiming Chavez's brother, Adan, was fraudulently declared the winner. But there are other reasons for concern. The opposition achieved important victories and Chavez accepted his defeats more or less graciously, also unlike on other occasions. Yet he did so after he had threatened to send in his "tanks" if the opposition won. He also banned a number of leaders from running, including 37-year-old Leopoldo Lopez, the most popular anti-Chavez politician in the country, and vowed to throw several other rival candidates in jail if they campaigned against him.

Chavez transformed the election into a referendum on his own presidency, and each time he has encountered electoral or political difficulties in keeping himself in power and constructing his "21st-century socialism" in Venezuela, he has returned swinging. This time, he has already insinuated ...