As Congress debates the Central American Free Trade Agreement, it must decide not merely whether to advance America's economic interests, but also whether to reaffirm our decades-long commitment to Central American democracy.

As Congress debates the Central American Free Trade Agreement, it must decide not merely whether to advance America's economic interests, but also whether to reaffirm our decades-long commitment to Central American democracy. CAFTA would liberalize trade between the U.S. and Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic, bringing greater wealth to all involved. Significantly, this would strengthen the Central American middle class at a time when Daniel Ortega remains a powerful force in Nicaragua and, throughout Latin America, the anti-democratic, anti-American message of Hugo Chavez gains ever-wider currency. An alliance of powerful lobbies and preening moralists threatens to derail the pact. It includes the AFL-CIO's John Sweeney, who never met a trade deal he didn't hate; the sugar industry, which fears the staggering 1.4 percent rise in sugar imports that CAFTA would allow; and the Left's usual sentimentalists, who denounce trade agreements with any nation where labor and environmental standards differ from those found in Ann Arbor, Mich. (This type stubbornly fails to understand that trade and foreign investment are among the surest ways to raise such standards.) To reject CAFTA would be to forgo an important economic opportunity and to strengthen the hand of would-be despots. Congress should turn its back on the protectionists.