{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.026845637583892617, 'fraction_numerical': 0.015659955257270694, 'mean_word_length': 5.255244755244755, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Cross-Currents in Latin America

Since 2000, democratization trends across the twenty sovereign countries that make up Latin America have been mixed. Democracy has eroded in three Andean countries (Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia) plus Nicaragua. Honduras experienced a coup and democratic breakdown in 2009. Democracy remains feeble in other countries including Guatemala, Haiti, and Paraguay—but it has long been weak in those countries, so the current weakness cannot be called erosion. Argentina’s President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (in office since 2007) has occasionally exhibited the illiberalism seen in the hegemonic populisms that rule Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua, but she has met with relatively stiff resistance not only from the courts and civil society, but also from critics within her own party. On the brighter side, democracy has become more solid over time in Brazil, which has the region’s biggest economy and largest population (about two-hundred million). Democracy remains robust in Chile, Costa Rica, and Uruguay, which have long been beacons for the region. In Mexico, the region’s second-largest country, the shift to democracy achieved in 2000 remains intact despite many shortcomings and rising criminal violence. Peruvian democracy is in its best shape ever; a breakdown is highly unlikely. Despite many limitations, democracy in Colombia survived a large spike in violence that began in the 1980s and lasted through the early 2000s. Cuba remains the only openly authoritarian regime in Latin America, in stunning contrast to the situation before the “third wave” of democratization began in the 1970s. So one cannot say that democracy is broadly eroding in Latin America. But there is reason for concern that democratic advances have not