Philanthropic Endeavors or the Exploitation of an Ideal? The Human Rights Policy of the Organization of American States in Latin America (1970-1991) (review)

A revised graduate thesis, this volume's purpose is to explain "the historical dimension of the OAS human rights policy" (p. 39). It is divided into an Introduction, three lengthy chapters and an equally long Conclusion. The briefer Introduction provides a useful review of previous research and a statement of the author's extensive research in Washington, D.C. (the OAS Columbus Memorial Library, the Library of Congress, the National Security Archive), in Costa Rica (the libraries of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights), in El Salvador (the Institute of Human Rights at the Central American University), in Chile (the National Library and the archives of the foreign ministry and the Vicaría de la Solidaridad), and in Argentina (the National Library and the archives of the foreign ministry and the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo). The documents obtained from these sources were supplemented by interviews with former members and lawyers of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, with OAS officials, with government officials in the above countries, and with representatives of human rights organizations. This is an impressive list of sources, one that goes significantly beyond the work of earlier scholars.

Chapter 2 focuses on the institutional evolution of the inter-American system's efforts to promote and protect human rights, beginning with the 1948 Charter of the Organization of American States, the 1959 creation of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the ten-year effort (1969-1978) to create and adopt the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights, the 1979 creation of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, plus a briefer discussion of the additional protocols and issue-specific conventions that have been added over the years such as the Inter-American Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture (1985) and the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women (1994). The author guides his readers through this maze with considerable care, providing no fewer than 514 footnotes.

Chapter 3 focuses on the human rights violations that accompanied the dictatorships of the 1970s. It, too, is copiously annotated; there are 608 footnotes. Focusing on Chile's Pinochet government, this chapter first outlines the OAS attempts to address the 1973 coup and its aftermath. A major section explains the 1976 election of Jimmy Carter and his administration's human rights policy, switching the focus from Chile to the principal target of the Carter era, the Argentine military government that seized power in March 1976. Much information is provided about the way President Carter injected human rights concerns into the bilateral (U.S.-Argentine) relationship, but the focus remains upon the OAS and how it supported the emerging consensus on the need for a collective condemnation of persistent and gross human rights violations. Unfortunately, the author concludes, the OAS and the Inter-American Commission's efforts were too little and too late.

Chapter 4 focuses on the civil wars in Central America during the 1980s, where the situation was dramatically different, particularly in El Salvador, the chapter's primary focus, where an active insurgency threatened to overwhelm the U.S.-backed military regime that had exercised power since 1931. In the 1970s, the Carter administration had properly dismissed the possibility of communist takeovers in Chile and Argentina, but now in the 1980s the Reagan administration was deeply concerned about what it considered a Cuban-Soviet thrust into Central America, and reacted accordingly. In this context, the author strongly criticizes the weak response of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

The Conclusion (Chapter 5) presents a mixed picture: "[T]he Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, aside from some failures, advanced a philanthropic concept. In contrast, the larger OAS had merely a few moments in...