The Struggle for Human Rights in Latin America (review)

The Struggle for Human Rights in Latin America, by Edward L. Cleary (Westport, Ct.: Praeger, 1997), 181 pp.

In this volume, Ed Cleary seeks to provide an overview of the development of the human rights movement in Latin America. Rather than pursuing a comprehensive approach to the region, this fairly small volume looks in depth at only a handful of countries: Chile, Mexico, Brazil, and Peru. Cleary also includes chapters on the development of human rights movements among transnational networks and within the US foreign policy establishment. In each of the eight chapters, he loosely follows a theoretical framework borrowed from the literature on social movements to analyze the development of human rights through three phases: (1) the rise of opportunities as well as constraints; (2) resource mobilization, including the mounting of challenges to governments; and (3) transnational influences, including church organizations, NGOs, multilateral organizations and other governments. ¹ Despite the attempt to apply social movement theory, Cleary's approach to the subject is best described as eclectic, descriptive and anecdotal rather than rigorously theoretical or comparative.

Chapter One ("Beginning of the Human Rights Era: Military Repression") begins the volume with a description of the coup that overthrew Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973 and which began the eighteen year dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. From Cleary's standpoint, this event marks the beginning of the human rights movement in Latin America. ² The human rights movement in Chile was initiated by church leaders in response to the abuses of the government. The role of church organizations is a major theme of Cleary's book. Throughout the volume, Cleary gives considerable credit to churches in the development of human rights movement. He notes, "churches formed the 'early risers'" in the human rights movement in Chile and elsewhere. ³

In the case of Chile, the Vicariate of Santiago was instrumental in providing a lifeline to many Chileans and foreigners who became targets of Pinochet's repressive apparatus. Cleary then shows how other organizations eventually sprang to life in successive waves to aid the victims and their families, such as the Association of Family Members of the Disappeared and then the Chilean Commission for Human Rights, comprised of lawyers and professionals. Toward the end of the Pinochet regime, primarily in response to the economic recession of the mid-1980s, women and indigenous groups organized to pressure the government. This chapter clearly shows the reemergence of civil society in successively more inclusive layers, culminating in the 1988 popular referendum that ousted Pinochet from power in 1989 and returned the country to democratic rule.

In Chapter Two ("Human Rights Organizing Spreads: Mexico and the Theoretical Frame") Cleary highlights a number of events that provided the opportunity for the development of a human rights movement in Mexico: the debt crisis of the early 1980s, the 1985 earthquake in Mexico City, the political liberalization process of the late 1980s and early 1990s and of course the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas that commenced in 1994. As in Chile, Cleary once again emphasizes the importance of the church in the emergence of human rights organizing. ⁴ He notes that five of the strongest human rights organizations are tied to the Catholic church in Mexico. Cleary dates the beginning of Mexico's human rights movement in 1984 with the founding of three organizations: Centro Vitoria, UNAM's Academica Mexicana de Derechos Humanos, and EUREKA, an organization founded by mothers of student leaders who were abducted by Mexican security forces. Most of Cleary's attention in this chapter is devoted to describing the activities of the church organization, Centro Vitoria.

Chapter Three ("Human Rights After the Military: Settling Accounts and Facing Issues") brings the reader back to Chile, where Cleary takes up the question of how post-authoritarian Chile grappled with the legacies of human rights abuses under the Pinochet regime. There is also a short section on Brazil as well as passing references to other countries in order to...