Democracy's weakest pillar: justice at the top is catching on in Latin America--Washington should be backing it up. (Trade Talk).

In Latin America, justice is too often a luxury expendable when economic times turn bad. Even as economies reel, however, several nations are challenging official impunity--a historic change for the better.

In June, Mexico's President Vicente Fox signed a freedom of information law releasing nearly 80 million secret government files kept on citizens from 1948 to 1985. The following month, Luis Echeverria became the first former president to be questioned under oath about his past actions. The probe is looking at his role in the bloody repression that accompanied student demonstrations in Mexico City in the late 1960s.

In Peru, the state is investigating two decades of conflict between government troops and a rebel insurgency that claimed 30,000 lives. Peru's Supreme Court has ordered 15 commandos and three others--including notorious spymaster Vladimiro Montesinos--to stand trial for executing leftist rebels following a 1997 hostage rescue from the Japanese embassy in Lima. Montesinos already faces nine years in prison on charges ranging from arms smuggling to homicide.

The list goes on. In July, former Argentine military dictator Leopoldo Galtieri was arrested for torture and the execution of 18 leftists during that nation's so-called dirty war. Nicaraguans are pressuring lawmakers to strip former President Arnoldo Aleman of immunity as head of the legislature so he can be tried for allegedly stealing more than US$95 million in state funds.

In Chile, a judge in August sentenced four retired generals to 18 months to life for the 1982 murder of trade union leader Tucapel Jimenez, during the regime of former dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet. It was the first time a Chilean court has implicated senior army officers directly in Pinochet-era crimes. Truth commissions are underway in Mexico, Panama and Peru to investigate past deaths and disappearances of political opponents.

Nevertheless, a culture of impunity reigns. Latin American leaders steal their constituents blind, violate human rights, then live out their lives in untouchable opulence. Latin America has the highest number of human rights activists under threat of death or summary executions, experts report. Police still make arbitrary arrests, torture and kill. Judges can he bought.

Pinochet is a recluse who resides in luxurious homes in Santiago and several coastal towns. Fujimori lives in Tokyo protected as a Japanese citizen, even though he is wanted on homicides and disappearances linked to the military. Former Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner, who harbored Nazis and persecuted thousands for almost 35 years, has a mansion in Brazil where he reportedly passes his days watching cartoons and popular kid-show host Xuxa.

In January, an Argentine court rejected the most recent request to extradite Alfredo Astiz, a former naval officer, to Sweden for the 1977 killing of a 15-yearold Swedish girl. Astiz, who is wanted by several countries for crimes against their citizens, is perhaps the most hated villain of Argentina's dirty war and a living symbol of impunity.

Judicial and police reform is badly needed. But, most importantly, the Bush administration must speak out. Take Guatemala where, unfortunately, those responsible for past human rights abuses continue in power. Death squads are back in business, attacking human rights activists and political dissidents. Former Guatemalan military dictator Efrain Rios Montt is president of the Congress and could become the next president. Rios Montt led the nation during some of the worst massacres of Guatemala's 36-year war between government troops and leftist guerrillas, leaving some 200,000 dead, mostly at the hands of the armed forces.

Washington should call them on the carpet--now. Like poverty, impunity feeds instability, which slows democracy, development and trade. Freedom of information laws, truth commissions and trials of former officials are not about vengeance. They offer justice, the rule of law and deter future abuses.

Mexico's Fox says a new era of greater transparency is here. "We are burying impunity and the abuse of power," he says.

Amen to that. Note to President George Bush and his people in the region: Let's make it stick.