The Struggle for Democracy and Human Rights in Latin America: Toward a New Conceptualization

Abstract

In 1945 the Inter-American Conference on the "Problems of War and Peace," meeting at Chapultepec, Mexico, adopted a resolution calling for the international protection of human rights. At the Bogota Conference in 1948, in addition to adopting the Charter of the Organization of American States, the Latin American nations also adopted the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, a document based largely on the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which the Latin American states are also signatories. The number of books and articles on Latin America describing the "struggle for democracy" there runs into the legions, and, in much foreign policy discussion, the issues of the protection of human rights and US relations with authoritarian regimes have received a great deal of attention. The chapter deals with the question of whether democracy and human rights are everywhere the same and universal.