INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN LAWMAKING IN LATIN AMERICA: BETWEEN THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY, HUMANITY, AND EXTREME VIOLENCE (original) (raw)
Related papers
Between civilisation and barbarism: Creole interventions in international law
Third World Quarterly, 2006
This article argues that Latin American regionalism in international law is a direct consequence of a 'creole legal consciousness' meaning a shared basic assumption about the origins of law in the region (as coming from Europe through Roman law and Spanish law) as well as a belief in the uniqueness of an American (as in the continent) interpretation and development of that law. Those who participate of such a consciousness assume themselves as being part of the metropolitan centre (as descendants of Europeans), while at the same time challenging the centre with notions of their own regional uniqueness (as natives of America). Creole consciousness about international law was an instrument of nation and region building during the 19th century. This led to a discussion of the actual existence of a regional international law '[Latin] American international law' (derecho internacional Americano) in the first half of the 20th century. The article concludes with a look at how a regional perspective was also inherent in the construction of a human rights regime in the second half of the twentieth century.
Cambridge University Press
The American and Latin American independence movements emerged from distinctive settings and produced divergent results, but they were animated by similar ideas. Patriotic political theorists throughout the Americas offered analogous critiques of imperial rule in the years leading up to their rebellions, designed comparable constitutions immediately after independence had been won, and expressed common ambitions for their new nations’ future relations with one another and the rest of the world. This book adopts a hemispheric perspective on the revolutions that liberated the United States and Spanish America, offering a unified interpretation of their most important political ideas. It argues that the many points of agreement it describes amongst revolutionary political theorists in different parts of the Americas can be attributed to the problems they encountered in common as Creoles, that is, as the descendants of European settlers born in the Americas. The book illustrates and supports this interpretation by comparing the political thought of three important Creole revolutionaries: Alexander Hamilton of the United States, Simón Bolívar of Venezuela, and Lucas Alamán of Mexico. By showing that the ideas of the American independence movements were more similar than has usually been acknowledged, the book challenges established accounts not only of American and Latin American political thought, but also of the Americas’ comparative political and economic development, and the history of inter-American relations.
The Spanish Scholastics of the sixteenth century are generally known as the precursors of Hugo Grotius in the application of natural law and the law of nations (ius gentium) to the political relations of early modern states. Their writings on the American Indians have been read as especially significant for the formation of the humanist-colonialist legacy of (European) international law. I have no quarrel with these views. This essay will, however, claim that the principal legacy of the Salamanca scholars lay in their development of a vocabulary of private rights (of dominium) that enabled the universal ordering of international relations by recourse to private property, contract, and exchange. This vocabulary provided an efficient articulation for Europe's 'informal empire' over the rest of the world and is still operative as the legal foundation of global relations of power.