A paragraph from Chomsky's Hopes and Prospects (2010) book explaining how UDHR, New Deal, and FDR legislation came from Latin American Jurists.
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From
Noam Chomsky's
Hopes and Prospects a book based on speeches in Chile in 2006 that became essays updated for 2010:
In the past, Latin America has often led the world in progress toward social justice and human rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 is a landmark in the progress of civilization. Though it is far from being implemented or even formally accepted, its influence should not be ignored. Nor should we ignore the fact that much of its inspiration was right here in Chile. The declaration crucially incorporates social, economic, and cultural rights, assigning them the same status as civil and political rights. That achievement is substantially based on Latin American initiatives. The Chilean delegate Hernán Santa Cruz stressed that “if political liberalism does not ensure the economic, social, and cultural rights of its citizens, then it cannot achieve an enduring progress.… Democracy—political as well as social and economic—comprises, in my mind, an inseparable whole,” he wrote. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal also drew from the Latin American tradition of liberal jurisprudence and rebellion against imposed authority. Historian Greg Grandin writes that some of FDR’s initiatives were literally “plagiarized” from Latin American jurists. Today, popular struggles in Latin America show real promise of serving as an inspiration to others worldwide, in a common quest for globalization in a form that should be the aspiration of decent people everywhere.
Chomsky's source:
Greg Grandin,
Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007).
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