Building a Culture of Rights

...The word "investment" stresses that social spending serves to strengthen an economic factor-"human capital"-which, like all capital, must offer a return on investment...

...This experience of the indivisible nature of human rights, however, was truncated...

...The Revolution would have been little more than the reconstitution of oligarchic power had the slogan "No Re-election" not been accompanied by the added demand, "Land and Liberty...

...In addition, one can argue that these different "generations" of rights are in fact indivisibly linked to one another...

...2. See Martha C. Nussbaum and Amartya Sen, eds., The Quality of Life (London: Oxford University Press/The United Nations University, 1993...

...Marshall, Class, Citizenship and Social Class (New York: Doubleday, 1963...

...long and sustained one--of "democratic consolida- third persp tion...

...Accountability requires monitoring, which in turn requires a certain set of standards and indicators...

...To cut through this contradiction, we must establish a vision in which economic and social life are interlinked with the principle of human dignity...

...You can't eat democracy"-a phrase coined in the early 1950s by the Peruvian dictator Manuel Odria-aptly captures this idea...

...The authoritarian populisms of Getdlio Vargas in Brazil, Juan Per6n in Argentina, Gustavo Rojas Pinilla in Colombia and Juan Velasco in Peru all legitimated themselves along the lines of the disjuncture between democracy and welfare...

...In the second half of the century, demands for the right to land, anticipated a generation earlier by the Mexican Revolution, began to appear in agrarian reform legislation and generated social and cultural movements-indigenismo, for examplethroughout the continent...

...On the and others.' other side are those who propose the need to adopt a being," dis new agenda which would include an activist commit- restricted c ment to shaping the very process of transition--guar- being in a i be measure things an ii her life...

...Yet throughout Latin America since the end of the nineteenth century, social and political movements have won and defended certain specific economic and social rights...

...4 If the human rights movement has a principal strategic challenge, it is to cut the Gordian knot of this paradox...

...Thus, a program which at first glance appears just and reasonable in the context of extreme poverty and scarce resources, in reality springs from a distorted vision of the "social...

...A Spanish-language anthology of his work, published in English between 1985 and 1995, is Amartya Sen, Bienestar justicia y mercado (Barcelona: Paidos, 1997...

...But the "social" is more than a collection of individuals...

...Any other destination of social spending is placed in question...

...While in some instances, such as the 1989 Caracazo in Venezuela, people protested the rolling back of social and economic rights, in other cases resistance has been more muted...

...Its stellar moment was the period of the great revolutions of the eighteenth century: the U.S...

...National research and seminar procedings appear in various publications of the Institute...

...Yet the struggle for human rights must take place on multiple levels and terrains...

...It also prootion that rights are intimately linked to the ality of life," as developed by Amartya Sen 2 Sen critiques utilitarian models of "welltinguishing between welfare policies as constructions of well-being, versus well)roader sense, since quality of life can only ed by evaluating the quality and range of ndividual can do or become during his or is includes the freedom of action a person has to choose among options...

...As Javier Iguifiiz has suggested, the idea of a "culture of rights" promotes the construction of societies in which the intrinsic dignity of human beings is recognized, along with a notion of justice that tolerates neither impunity nor the extremes of inequality and exclusion in which most Latin Americans now live...

...Within this still-uncertain transition, human dichotomy rights movements long identified with the denunciation focus on tr of violations and the defense of victims of the dictator- those who ships have had to rethink their objectives, methods and rights agenda perspectives...

...In relation to civil and political rights, such standards and indicators have developed over time-the UN Declaration on Human Rights, the Covenant against Torture, and so on...

...Far from modernizing, the deregulating and deprotectionist wave has seriously undermined the opportunity for millions of men and women to reach a much hoped-for modernity...

...With that slogan, the Revolution ushered in a new understanding of universal rights...

...All this coincided with a new liberal ethical discourse and a new conventional wisdom-centered on individual survival-promoted from the center of the culture of globalization...

...It could be said that the "negative view" of security, restricted to protection in the face of external aggression, is being transformed into a more "positive" view of human security...

...17, ILSA (1996...

...5 This notion of a culture of rights has been taken up as a VOL XXXIV, No 1 JULY/AUGUST 200023 23 VOL XXXIV, No 1 JuLY/AUGUST 2000REPORT ON HUMAN RIGHTS key objective by the Latin American human rights community...

...it has demands and a dynamic of its own...

...8. This idea draws on the work of the noted economist Amartya Sen...

...Above all, an effective defense of human rights rests upon strong ethical and cultural foundations...

...7. From the beginning of modern philosophy the right to security was considered a human right...

...And worse, they create the illusion that social rights, in addition to unnecessarily taxing the economy, inherently lead to inefficiency and bureaucratic red tape...

...6. For the Peruvian case, see Sinesio L6pez, Ciudadanos reales e imaginarios (Lima: Instituto Diblogo y Propuesta, 1997...

...As a result, it is crucial to prioritize the reconstruction of rights and a culture of rights which demands, in the words of Peruvian economist Javier Iguifiiz, that we reverse our attitudes of "cynical pessimism and irresponsible complacence" by promoting "less fatalism and more indignation...

...it has driven others to an uncertainty that has encouraged speculative and parasitic behavior...

...In the human rights discourse there is a word which is reiterated, often as a not-yet-obtained ideal: "accountability...

...and French Revolutions, each accompanied by a universal declarations of rights...

...4. While the use of the term "neopopulism" is questionable, it refers to "a regime and a style of doing politics in which the relationship of the leader to the masses does not involve the mediation of autonomous institutions...

...Constructing this culture of rights is the multifaceted challenge that the Latin American human rights movement must face in the coming years...

...This way of understanding rights was later exploited by neoliberal reformers...

...In a variety of ways and at different historical moments, their arguments have been advanced in Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Chile and Mexico, countries whose systems of social rights mask the underlying prevalence of corporate guild traits and create particular privileges aimed at blocking progress and social mobility...

...The Latin American republics throughout this century have, for the most part, remained anchored to a liberal and individualistic vision of rights, all the while restricting them in practice...

...The Revolutionary Constitution of 1917 was the first in the world to recognize economic, social and cultural rights on the same level as the traditional civil and political rights...

...The first notion of human rights was formulated in the framework of the struggle against the European absolutisms on the basis of individualist conceptions of liberalism...

...This link between social rights and citizenship made its first appearance in the Mexican Revolution...

...It is important to remember that since these initial formulations, it has been clear that the most elemental citizen rights went together with the exercise of certain minimal economic rights...

...Converting that illusion into a diagnosis, neoliberal reformers throughout the region have implemented legal and constitutional reforms that systematically attacked existing systems for the protection of social and economic rights...

...So while it is common to present the history of human rights as one of a succession of "generations" of such rights-first the civil rights of the seventeenth century, then the political rights of the eighteenth century and later the economic and social rights of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries-the distinction is deceiving...

...A t first glance, it might seem that those struggling for the defense and promotion of human rights should prioritize the juridical and political arenas...

...To promote a culture of rights requires rethinking the relation between contemporary proposals and historical traditions...

...The emergence of repressive dictatorships-usually a reactionary effort to block the growing demands and mobilization of anti-oligarchic social and political movements-worked against the formulation of a political discourse based on a universal definition of human rights...

...See Aldo Panfichi and Cynthia Sanborn, "Democracia y neopopulismo en el Peru contemportneo," Mdrgenes, V 8, No...

...For obvious reasons, in the countries which have lived under openly dictatorial regimes, like Brazil or those in the Southern Cone and Central America, or sui generis repressive or authoritarian regimes like Mexico, Peru and Colombia, human rights activists have focused on the defense of civil and political rights...

...7 What this is all about, finally, is that rights must become universalized and institutionalized...

...This can be explained by the unraveling of the social fabric during the radical economic adjustment of the late 1980s and early 1990s, which opened the way to an individualist logic of survival...

...ment in most of the democratic transitions...

...Measuring the enforcement of rights by adding up social expenditures and the quantity of goods and services available in a determined area of social life-education, health or housing, for example-fails to capture the crucial question of the status of the dignity and autonomy of the citizenry...

...These particular privileges, it was argued, are barriers to modernization and brakes on increasing productivity...

...The word "targeted" stresses that the spending is limited to certain segments of the population: the very poorest...

...The right to free education was also won in these countries, expressed in the democratizing demands of the struggles over university reform as well as in the campaigns against illiteracy...

...In many countries of the region, we have advanced to the point where systematic reports are being produced in regard to the status of these rights...

...Building a Culture of Rights 1. Among other institutional settings, this debate has been promoted by and carried out under the auspices of the Instituto Latinoamericano de Servicios Legales Alternativos (ILSA) of Bogota, Colombia...

...And on a global scale, of course, we have the unenforceable rights enshrined in the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights...

...84 and 110...

...13/14 (November 1995), p. 45...

...Normally this is understood as an ability of individuals to demand that the state comply with some obligation, or respect a certain right...

...Th effectively the idea of anteeing and struggling for a much broader spectrum of rights...

...In the first decades of the century, for example, labor rights were won in the more developed countries of the region as well as in some less developed countries like Peru...

...That is the sense of the classical liberal linkage of property and citizenship...

...An extreme lack of protection provides no incentive for risk and innovation...

...9. Iguitiz, Desigualdadypobreza en elmundo, p. 112...

...And rights must consist not only of limits on state power, but also of a broad set of institutions that guarantee human existence-or "human security"-in the economic, nutritional, personal, communal, environmental and political spheres...

...It was through the fight for these rights to protection that servants on the haciendas, slaves on the plantations, semi-salaried workers and members of artisan guilds all discovered the importance of citizenship...

...At the beginning of the 1990s, in academic as well as political circles, it was agreed that Latin America, having closed a cycle of dictatorships and social revolutions, had entered a new period-perhaps a Right to Social Security...

...With this restriction of rights, the idea of citizenship became, for many, an unattainable fantasy...

...Locke, for example, mentions this right together with the right to freedom and to property...

...This accumulation of movements defending specific as opposed to universal rights gave a distinct form to the history of human rights in Latin America...

...While these activists have made explicit reference to certain social and economic rights negated by elites, like the rights to land or the right to strike, it was understood that the struggle for the defense and promotion of these rights was the domain of particular social groups, such as peasant organizations, trade unions and political parties...

...These foundations have been eroded by years of repressive government and neoliberal social and economic policies...

...While there exists a broad consensus in Latin America as to the preeminence of communitarian over individualist traditions, as well as of social over political citizenship, human rights strategies often reproduce patterns inspired by traditions that arose elsewhere...

...In this period, the idea emerged that the poor were entitled to a certain degree of social protection from the state...

...Translated from the Spanish by NACLA...

...In recent decades, most notably in UN documents, the concept of security has been broadened to include the aspects mentioned...

...5. Javier Iguifiz, Desigualdadypobreza en el mundo (Lima: Centro de Estudios Peruanos, 1999), pp...

...For broad sectors of Latin Americans, rights are not only tenuous but "particular," the property of some but not all, achievements that must be jealously guarded by specific groups...

...VoL XXXIV, No 1 JuLY/AUGUsT 2000 19REPORT ON HUMAN RIGHTS context requires a reconsideration of the doctrine of human rights and a brief review of the historical processes through which the notion of rights were built-and destroyed-in Latin America...

...In Latin America's nineteenth-century pseudo-liberal, aristocratic republics, economic and social rights-precarious and restricted to be surearrived before political rights...

...Certain rights have not only been restricted but eliminated altogether...

...See, for example, El Otro Derecho, No...

...The debate over this rethinking, though ity and goi never systematic, has gradually been growing.' promotes th On one side are those who insist on remaining loyal linking trad to the recent history of the human rights movement, with social, prioritizing the denunciation of human rights violations motes the n and the impunity which has unfortunately been an ele- idea of "qu...

...In this context, the authoritarian dictatorships, drawing on old corporate and paternalist traditions, presented themselves as alternatives to a rights-based democracy, not simply for reasons of order but also in relation to many social demands of their populations...

...It assumes that society is simply a collection of individuals left to fend for themselves, who feel obligated to assume "social" responsibility only in exceptional cases...

...These policies have replaced the notion of universality with that of "targeted investment...

...As we have argued, the basic intuitions of modem ethics-equality, liberty, rights-have been con- Freedom of Cultural Lif structed in Latin America on the terrain of social demands and struggles...

...It kills creative potential, causing people to take refuge in the atavistic as their only security...

...9 In this way, a culture of rights perspective confronts authoritarian conceptions of the state and society, as well as perspectives that reduce society to the market and interpersonal relations to contracts meant only to guarantee private benefit...

...Developing a "culture of rights" in the Latin American Voi XXXIV, No 1 JULY/AUGUST 200019 Eduardo Clceres is a sociologist and directs the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights program of the Asociaci6n Pro-Derechos Humanos (APRODEH), a nonprofit organization dedicated to human rights defense and promotion based in Lima, Peru...

...Instead, this third perspective ie idea of a "culture of rights" as a way of Litional notions of civil and political rights economic and cultural rights...

...3 History has frequently inverted this scheme-in Latin America, as we have seen, and in some European countries like Germany, many social rights appeared before political rights...

...We also find a deficit in the awareness of rights-and especially in the understanding of rights as interrelated and universal...

...From a perspective that gives priority to a subjective dimension of rights, one cannot equate the enforcement of rights with a collection of legal entitlements-important as these areplaced at the disposal of citizens...

...It is not strange, then, that today we speak of neopopulism to refer to governments like those of Carlos Salinas in Mexico, Carlos Menem in Argentina and Alberto Fujimori in Peru-governments which have paradoxically been touted as the cutting edge of modernizing, neoliberal reform...

...In this article I will argue for a ective--one that tries to move beyond the between those who maintain the need to iditional notions of human rights work and argue in favor of reorienting the human da toward issues of democratic institutionalrernability...

...In Peru, for example, the right to housing, previously recognized in the 1979 Constitution, does not appear in the 1993 version...

...As social rights have been chipped away, they have been replaced by clientelistic structures, such as social investment funds created to "alleviate poverty" with funding from the World Bank and other multilateral sources...

...The absence of social rights has affected all strata of the population...

...It has placed some on the brink of extermination...

...8 From a rights perspective, there is a need to radically critique many of the social policies which have expanded throughout the e. continent recently as instruments to legitimize pseudo-democracies like Peru...

...Oscillating between restricted versions of individualist liberalism and authoritarian populism, in most Latin American countries we continue to find a significant deficit in the protection of rights...

...For a critique of the idea of "generations of rights" see Asbjorn Eide, Catarina Krause and Allan Rosas, eds., Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995...

...It also challenges views that reduce society to the market and interpersonal relations to mere contracts for private profit...

...When it comes to social, economic and cultural rights, the work-though it has a long history-is still in progress...

...6 Thus, the usual approach to the theme of rights assumes a liberal and individualist vision whose cultural legitimacy is limited in most Latin American societies...

...3. The fundamental text is T.H...

...Monitoring social rights might seem coterminous with monitoring social policy, but this is not the case...