Latin America

Latin American presidents Friday sharply criticized industrialized nations for ignoring their crushing economic problems and called for joint action to confront "the dragons of our decline" in the march for prosperity. "The era of waiting for saving help from the outside has ended," said Brazilian President Jose Sarney in the opening session of an eight-nation summit in this Pacific coastal resort.

Last spring, after discovering that Argentina's economic crisis had spurred the government to freeze all bank assets, Norma Albino doused her head in rubbing alcohol and set herself on fire. Albino, who survived, is just one dramatic example of the despair hammering Latin America. The U.S. government would be wise to consider her self-immolation a symbolic reminder: No matter how many global crises the U.S.

Fear of terrorism in Europe and the Mediterranean area is diverting U.S. and Canadian tour groups to safer playgrounds in Latin America, tourist agents and hotel managers here say. Dan Edson, marketing director of Rio's Intercontinental Hotel, said that in just two hours of a single day last week, "I was on the phone with tour directors in St. Louis, Dayton, Ohio, Toronto and Atlanta, all asking for space for groups that had been planning to go to Europe. They are asking for 20 to 200 rooms.

Business opportunities and tourism growth in Latin America have inspired a hotel building boom. More than 100 major projects, many of them associated with major U.S. chains such as Clarion, Holiday Inns and Radisson, are expected to open in the next two years. About half the new properties are in Mexico and Venezuela. Here are the 13 most expensive projects, which have a combined value of $487 million. Hotel/City Price (in Opening Country Rooms millions) date Conrad Resort & Casino/ 300 $75.

IT'S BEEN A LONG time since the days of back-alley abortions in the U.S. Perhaps that's why South Dakota Gov. Michael Rounds signed into law a ban against abortion in his state, with one narrow exception: protecting the life of the pregnant woman. Perhaps Rounds, who was only 19 when Roe vs. Wade was decided in 1973, doesn't remember what it was like to live in a country where women had no right to a safe, legal abortion.

Whoever reads "The Flip Side of Democracy" by Jorge G. Castaneda (Editorial Pages, May 3) will get the impression that in order to appear completely independent from their northern neighbor the nations of Latin America must oppose any and all causes promoted by the United States. The rejection of the Cuban case by most Latin American members at the U.N. Commission of Human Rights was an offense to all decent human beings. Despite Castaneda's suggestion that the human rights violations in Cuba have been concocted by the U.S. Department of State, the abuses perpetrated on the Cuban people by the Castro regime are well documented.

Players in Latin America with minor league contracts will be tested for drugs by Major League Baseball starting next year. "There was enough out there in terms of issues people had raised to us that the prudent thing to do from our perspective was to spend the money and find out if we have a problem," Rob Manfred, executive vice president for labor relations in the commissioner's office, said Wednesday.

When Mexico's Bolsa stock index soared nearly 5% on Monday in a seemingly euphoric reaction to the government's latest souped-up economic-recovery plan, some American investors may have wondered what the buyers knew that others didn't. Perhaps not much. By Tuesday's close, the Bolsa had given back nearly half of Monday's gain.

Burned ballots, beatings, murders and a nullified election are not only symptoms of power abuses under Panama Gen. Manuel A. Noriega, but a reflection of the sad truth that despite a flowering of democracy in Latin America, generals still have the final say. In the roughly dozen elections or referendums in Latin America this year, the military is a critical factor. In Panama, the military Establishment was fully revealed last week as a powerful, corrupt force. Today the people of Argentina go to the polls conscious of the military breathing down their necks.