"Gang of 5" Betrays Latin American Tradition

The presidents of the Americas will meet in Cartagena, Colombia on April 14-15. Never has there been so much need for cooperation in hemispheric relations, yet never have the divisions been so gaping. Those fissures divide one set of countries that espouse democracy and human rights and another that are dismantling those very values.

Nowhere is this clearer than the siege against human rights. A coalition of governments that are part of ALBA (“dawn” in Spanish; the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America), the brainchild of Hugo Chávez supported by President Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Evo Morales, Daniel Ortega, and the Castro regime, voted against the U.N. General Assembly resolution to condemn the atrocities visited upon the people of Syria by the murderous government of Bashar Al-Assad. Only seven other countries voted against the resolution, while 138 voted for it.

The human rights rejectionists have even added to the lexicon of international affairs — “humanitarian imperialism,” the belief that via mandate from the U.N.Security Council, the international community should not have assisted Libyans to free themselves from the tender embrace of Moammar Gadhafi.

In addition, the gang of five is also trying to emasculate one of the bulwarks of human rights and democratic accountability — the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). They do so because they are vulnerable to criticism by the world community and their own people about human rights violations, to include attacks against the press and neutralizing the judicial systems.

And their defense is the refuge that tyrants have used. It’s called cultural relativism — the notion that they should not be judged by standards that apply to other nations, that the standards of Latin America are different and morally superior to those held by powerful countries. Correa is the most loquacious exponent. He argues that the IACHR should be weakened because it is an ethnocentric and neo-colonialist institution of the United States.

This statesman in 2010 told an audience at the University of Illinois (from which he holds a doctorate in economics): “If we make a mistake in Latin America, we throw stones at the U.S. Embassy,” criticizing the old Latin American inclination to shift blame for failure to outsiders.

The U.N. vote and the attack on human rights commission is a reversal of epic proportions. Latin American statesmen have been leaders in defending human rights. In this regard, the Latin American bloc of 20 nations, the largest one in the United Nations at the time, was very influential in the development of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Their ideas drew from their historical experience and other sources on human rights. One was the deep influence of the 16th century Dominican missionary and champion of the Indians, Bartolomé de las Casas. In addition, papal encyclicals on human dignity such as Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno , had enormous impact on Latin American human rights philosophy. The evidence coming out in May 1945 about the Holocaust in the concentration camps shocked consciences.

The principles and provisions that inspired the Universal Declaration were based on the creative diplomatic work of a remarkable cohort of statesmen and intellectuals, notably from Cuba, Panama, Ecuador, Chile, Mexico, and Uruguay. They included scholar diplomat Jorge Carrera Andrade of Ecuador and other luminaries. Indeed, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights bears almost verbatim many ideas about human rights and social justice that first emerged in the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, adopted at Bogotá in 1948.

As the presidents gather at Cartagena, they must commit to strengthening the splendid foundation erected long ago and continue to advance the unique Latin American contribution to international peace and human dignity.

Gabriel Marcella is adjunct professor at the Army War College. He has written extensively on Latin American issues.