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verely penalized, with lesser and at times insignificant voting per–
centages, the parties and leaders of both extremes who embody, from
different ideologies, a threat to freedom.
The lesson could not be more pertinent to our Southern lati–
tudes. Above all, those who should learn from it are our intellectuals
and all those in the habit of claiming, when they write or speak, that
they represent the people. In spite of hunger, in spite of economic in–
justice, in spite of the lack of work and of schools and hospitals, in
spite of misfortunes and the desperation that, for them, life is, our
nations have not lost their appetite for freedom, nor are they prepared
to follow those who, arguing that therein would lie the solution to
their problems, would take it from them. Despite the frustrations in
regard to material progress and social justice, or to the pace - so slow
as to be nearly imperceptible-of the improvement of living condi–
tions, that regimes of freedom have signified for them, our nations
cling to them and time and again choose and prefer them, however
fragile and ineffective they may prove to be, over dictatorial regimes.
What dictatorship in our midst could boast of relying on the popular
support once enjoyed by Mussolini or Hitler, and enjoyed today by
the Ayatollah? None. And the best proof of this is the brutal repres–
sion - the torture, censorship, and crime - to which our dictatorships
must resort to keep themselves in power despite the hostility of their
peoples. We ought to keep this fact clearly in mind, for in the midst
of the enormous difficulties our countries now face, in the context of
the economic crisis which is suffocating us and threatens to undo us
as nations, it offers hope: our peoples, in spite of everything, go on
believing that freedom is the best choice. They may be poor, unedu–
cated, frustrated, forsaken. But they know what they want: to be free.
They doubtless could not theorize on the subject. If, one by one, we
were to question those men and women who make up the common
citizenry of our America, the majority would perhaps give us some
vague and uncertain reasons for what, to use the Sartrean term, we
would call "their election.» This choice for freedom in many cases
reveals itself as a blind, instinctive craving from the depths of the
personality, rather than as a reasoned, conscious movement. It is a
matter of divination, of a mysterious will to achieve full and supreme
individuality, tearing oneself away from an undifferentiable collec–
tivity. Such is the sovereignty of being that can only be reached
through the experience of the highest responsibility: deciding on
one's own; choosing in one direction or another regarding the most
vital questions; being the true protagonist of one's destiny.
