Yet these precedents also encouraged governments to insist that their former leaders accused of despotism or thievery be returned for trial, and made other countries reluctant to keep rewarding these disgraced leaders with a comfortable life.

“Slowly and unevenly, but indubitably, the region’s judiciaries have become more professional,” said Cynthia McClintock, a Latin America specialist at George Washington University in Washington.

The change in atmosphere is hitting Latin America with particular force, because the right of political asylum for former heads of state in the region was once viewed as sacred — a kind of institutional understanding that underlay the cycle of coups and countercoups, dictatorships and rebellions, periods of repression or totalitarianism interrupted by episodes of democracy.

In practice, it often played out like this: a caudillo, or strongman, amassed such power or abused opponents to such an extent that he was threatened with rebellion or overthrown. At that point, he made his escape abroad by airplane or boat, or by limousine onto the grounds of a friendly embassy whose government, by law or tradition, was prone to accept its new guest automatically.

More often than not, it seemed, the United States intervened, either quietly or publicly. Its officials would broker a deal that would deliver the ousted ruler with a minimum of upheaval to his country of exile, all in the interest of averting an even worse political crisis and of creating a semblance of economic and social stability. Some countries, like Panama, even specialized in welcoming the autocrats into their midst.

That explains why Raoul Cedras of Haiti and Jorge Serrano Elias of Guatemala, both of whom have successfully fended off extradition requests so far, find themselves living comfortably in Panama. So does Abdalá Bucaram of Ecuador, who has been sought at home on corruption charges.

As in the past, extradition sometimes hews closely to United States interests, even in a region where democratic government is now more prevalent than dictatorship. Panama, for example, is now captivated by the struggle that its former president, Manuel Noriega, is waging to avoid extradition to France from the United States, an option American officials prefer to returning him to his home country.