| Sumario: | Part of a special section on human rights in Latin America. In discussing the debate over the rethinking of human rights, the writer argues for a perspective that tries to move beyond the dichotomy between those who maintain the need to focus on traditional notions of human rights work and those who argue in favor of reorienting the human rights agenda toward issues of democratic institutionality and governability. He explains that his third perspective promotes the idea of a “culture of rights” as a means of linking traditional ideas of civil and political rights with social, economic, and cultural rights. In addition, he notes that it also promotes the notion that rights are intimately linked to the idea of “quality of life.” To develop the idea of a culture of rights in the Latin American context, he reviews the doctrine of human rights and outlines the historical processes though which the notion of rights were built and destroyed in the region.
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