Carozza, From Conquest to Constitutions: Retrieving a Latin American Tradition of the Idea of Human Rights

Paolo Carozza, Notre Dame, has posted an article, From Conquest to Constitutions: Retrieving a Latin American Tradition of the Idea of Human Rights, which appeared in Human Rights Quarterly (2003). Here's the abstract:

This article explores the historical roots of the Latin American region's strong commitment to the idea of universal human rights, focusing on four key intellectual moments: the ethical response to the Spanish conquest; the rights ideology of the continent's liberal republican revolutions; the articulation of social and economic rights in the Mexican Constitution of 1917; and the Latin American contributions to the genesis of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Constructing a narrative from these examples, the article argues for the recognition of a distinct Latin American tradition within the global discourse of human rights.