This is the basis of the current “misunderstanding” between Washington and Lima. If the Peruvian people were as concerned about democracy as is President Kennedy, this country would right now be in the throes of a violent civil war. What happened in Lima on July 18 was more than enough to touch off armed conflict in many countries of the world, but democracy has never been a reality in Peru, and for that reason it goes largely unmourned; especially in Lima, which voted heavily for the return of an ex-dictator.

On July 24, the un-elected government of Peru issued a Decree-Law, assuming all executive and legislative powers, and the third largest country in South America passed officially into the hands of the military. The second largest, Argentina, had provided an easy-to-follow example some five months before. Next on the list, according to current speculation in Washington and other Hemisphere capitals, will be Venezuela -- and what might be precipitated by Brazil's congressional elections in October is anybody's guess.

It requires little guesswork, however, to see what this trend means for the Alliance for Progress, and also for the future of democracy in South America. The outlook is dreary at best, and as the pressure from Washington mounts the reaction will mount just as fast. Peru was a good example.

Even so, after all these months of tension, all this talk and campaigning, all the space devoted in newspapers to the Peruvian elections, a visitor to Lima arrives with a feeling that there is bound to be some evidence that the whole thing was a bust -- that it was all a put-up job, because the Armed Forces did exactly what they said they were going to do all along.

When the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA) won the recent elections, the military called it a “fraud,” took over the government, annulled what was undeniably the most honest and least fraudulent election in Peru's history, and installed a four-man junta that is a military dictatorship no matter which way you look at it.

Yet life goes on in Lima as if nothing had happened. The evening streets are full of pretty girls and slick-haired men in business suits, the opulent shops that flank the trolleys on Avenida Peirola are full of silver and alpaca and the soft rustle of money changing hands, and the all night cantinas still sound as if their frenzied pisco -swilling patrons had abandoned all hope of ever seeing another dawn.

This is Lima, democracy or no democracy, dictators or no dictators. The city is full of people, in fact, who say that what happened is precisely nothing at all. They point out that the people in power now are those who have always been in power and that those faces on the outside, looking in, are the same faces that have been there for as long as anyone in Peru can remember. It is foolish, they say, to talk about the Junta “seizing the reins,” because the Junta is nothing more than a dress-uniform version of the same power bloc that has held the reins for centuries.