Latin America and Human Rights History

• The article discusses Latin America's historical commitment to human rights and the evolution of this commitment through intellectual moments.
• The four key periods are: the ethical response to the Spanish conquest, the rights ideology of liberal republican revolutions, the beginning of social and economic rights in the Mexican Constitution of 1917, and Latin American input to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
• The article argues for recognizing Latin America's distinct tradition in the global view of human rights.

Introduction

• Latin American countries contributed significantly to the birth of international human rights law.
• They advocated for the universality of human rights, gender equality, family-life centrality, and economic/social rights.
• The role of Latin America in human rights has faded since, with Cold War ideologies and decolonization overshadowing it.
• The focus moved toward Africa and race discrimination, with Western NGOs dominating rights discourse.
• A monolithic "Western" understanding of rights often obscures Latin American approaches.
• Latin America is often seen as an object, not a contributor, to human rights thinking, with its creativity mainly understood in "negative terms".
• The article aims to retrieve Latin American contributions to the Universal Declaration by revisiting its roots and region-specific characters.
• It explores why Latin American representatives valued human rights in 1948, the particularities of the region's rights tradition, and the distinctive voice it had.
• The article frames the inquiry with a brief overview of the role of Latin American delegates in drafting and adopting the Universal Declaration.
• It looks back on three historical moments that cast the Latin American human rights tradition: the ethical response to Spanish conquest, the triumph of liberal revolutionary ideas, and the Mexican Constitution of 1917.

Latin America and the Universal Declaration

• The participation of Latin America in the genesis of the Universal Declaration has mostly been recognized before.
• At the San Francisco conference of 1945, Latin American countries represented the largest regional group.
• Latin American delegations pushed to include human rights on the conference agenda.
• Unlike the US and the Soviet Union, Latin American delegations prioritized human rights inclusion.
• Their primary concern was racial discrimination.
• The Charter included references to human rights due to their campaign.
• It instructed the UN Economic and Social Council to form a commission for promoting human rights.
• The Latin Americans failed to include a declaration of rights in the Charter, but it laid the foundation for the Universal Declaration.
• In 1946, Panama suggested that the draft bill of rights it sought to insert into the Charter be adopted as a General Assembly resolution, but this was also defeated.
• The Human Rights Commission was instead formed with a mandate to prepare an international bill of rights.
• "Humphrey fashioned the first draft of the Universal Declaration on the basis of various models that the UN Secretariat had collected."
• These models based on the Cuban-sponsored proposal, the Chilean delegation first draft, and the earlier Panamanian draft.
• Among the provisions Humphrey drew from the Latin American models, those relating to economic and social rights stand out.
• The eight-member drafting committee had one Latin American representative, Hernán Santa Cruz of Chile.
• Santa Cruz was a spokesman for the Latin American nations.
• Throughout his involvement, he advocated the Declaration's social and economic rights.
• Latin American delegates became the "guardians" of the social and economic provisions of the draft declaration.
• René Cassin called for special recognition of the family, mothers and children.
• The final phase of the influence by Latin America came when the General Assembly's Committee considered the Human Rights Commission draft.
• The Third Committee had twenty delegates out of fifty-nine delegates from Latin America.
• The American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, adopted by the Organization of American States earlier, had an influential role to play on the Declaration.
• Amendments to the draft Declaration were largely based on the influence of the Bogotá Declaration.
• The representative of the Dominican Republic made special mention of the equal rights of men and women.
• The Declaration's right to an adequate standard of living references the needs of families.
• Mexico proposed adding an article based on its institution of amparo, the legal right to an effective remedy for violations of fundamental rights.
• Mexico included the words "without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion" in the Declaration's statement of the right to marry.
• Latin American delegates pressed for greater recognition of duties correlative to rights and offered the parity of the civil and rights.
• Multiple Latin American countries supported a prohibition of capital punishment, which ultimately failed.
• In 1948, a very strong and distinctive Latin American commitment to the idea of human rights took place.
• The region showcased dedication to international human rights, and resounded with a belief in the universality and equality of rights among races/sexes.
• Their understanding of rights emphasized the social dimensions of humanity from family to the social/economic structure.
• They sought to balance their language with language duties.
• The Latin American contribution kept the document from falling into either excessive individualism or collectivism.
• It was determined that neither a US nor a Soviet-style document could gain consensus from a diverse UN with a range of various different cultures.
• The Latin American rights tradition came from somewhere and had certain factors that accounted for its expression, most significantly the "tradition of Latin American socialism."
• Expressions of a Latin American rights tradition precede socialism by centuries.

Bartolomé de Las Casas, the Midwife of Modern Human Rights Talk

• The birth of the idea of human rights was in the encounter between 16th century.
• The idea of human rights can be embodied in Bartolomé de Las Casas.
• He first came to the Indies from Spain in 1502, at age 18.
• After continuing his studies and returning as a priest, he returned to the New World as a chaplain on the Spanish conquest of Cuba in 1509.
• As with other Spaniards, Las Casas lived off the toil of Indians, who were in a system where tracts of land and forced labor were rewarded in return for their instruction in the faith.
• At the time, the foremost critics of Spanish brutality in the Indies were the friars of the Order of Preachers, also known as Dominicans.
• Las Casas began a devotion to the cause of just and humane treatment of the Indians.
• Dominican habits of study and reflection gave way to active action as the "Protector of the Indians."
• Las Casas persuaded Charles V to promulgate the New Laws of 1542.
• After a troubled tenure as Bishop of Chiapas, questions about the legitimacy of Spain's rule gave way to a conflict between Las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda.
• Theses debates in Valladolid marked a climax of advocacy.
• In the Valladolid debates, Las Casas' advocacy may be seen as the outcry for justice of a continent.
• Las Casas succeeded in articulating a set of ideas that represents the first clear announcement of the modern language of human rights.
• He did not have as strong of philosophy and theology understandings as some of his peers, but his combination of speculation and experience gave him a unique platform.
• It was common to teach doctrines such as the priority of natural law over written law, the legitimacy of resistance to tyranny and unjust laws, and the existence of certain imprescriptable rights and guarantees due to every man by virtue of his humanity.
• The pragmatic interplay between law and philosophy that his work exemplified decisively influenced the development of subsequent natural rights theories.
• Las Casas' polemics on behalf of the Indians can be contained in:
• All the races of the world are men, and of all men and of each individual there is but one definition, and this is that they are rational. All have understanding and will and free choice, as all are made in the image and likeness of God.
• Even more concise is "They are our brothers, and Christ gave His life for them."
• The rights that he sought for the native peoples were due to them simply in virtue of their humanity, a humanity common to all of God's children.
• This had several consequences, but the primary was the equal treatment of all - vindicating the equal rights not only of Europeans but of indigenous peoples as well.
• His understanding of the Indians` humanity also meant that they were created with freedom.
• His treatise entitled On the Only Way of Attracting All Peoples to the True Religion is an appeal to indigenous people`s liberty.
• His understanding of freedom is beyond just reflecting the external conditions, as it is constitutive of human nature.
• Las Casas was against coercion: "they needed to be persuaded to accept truth, he argued, only by the peaceful methods of reason, love, and the living example of practiced virtue."
• He even defended some populations' practice of human sacrifice on the grounds that the indigenous peoples needed to be peacefully persuaded and that their traditions justify military intervention.
• Las Casas begins with an Aristotelian-Thomist understanding of the natural sociability of human persons, which provides a conception of freedom.
• He has a notion of rights that integrates the recognition of individual rights with social or collective ones.
• More attention was paid to questions of collective health-care and labor rights in his proposals for alternatives to the encomienda system.
• Appreciation of the customs and practices of the native culture was vital.
• Las Casas` effort to understand from within the behavior and native values was seen as understanding cultures rather than civilisations a la Aristotle.
• Such an observation may seem anachronistic, but is valid for a couple of reasons: do not overstate the rupture between primitive thinkers and those of the international law.
• If the basic premise of this article is correct, it suggests a distinctive Latin American tradition of human rights exists.
• The paradigmatic example of Las Casas has been a narrative even after his death of dignity/rights/freedom in Latin America, which other historical periods have used to claim ancestry from.

Revolution, Rights, Rousseau

• Bolívar himself, course, lies at the epicenter of the continental upheavals associated with the next historical "moment" to be explored: the birth of the first constitutional republics in Latin America.
• Most conventional histories tend to identify the intellectual and political roots of the continent's commitment to rights language with the importation of European Enlightenment ideologies.
• It's important to see how that transfer affected Latin America.
• Nariño translated the French Declaration and was rewarded with imprisonment, exile, and the confiscation of his property.
• A band of conspirators oust the then Captial General of Venezuela.
• The ideology which the FDL and North American creeds was received differed significantly from their original contexts.
• Despite rhetoric popular sovereignty, the revolution of Spanish States was that of the few.
• The Enlightenment was a uniform phenomenon.
• The FD in Latin America wasn`t understood with their anti-clerical undertones.