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In the Wake of Neoliberalism

Stanford University Press

Contents

Foreword Mark Goodale...................................................................ixAcknowledgments..........................................................................xiiiList of Abbreviations....................................................................xvIntroduction: Defining Rights............................................................11 Land of Equality and Assassins: Rights in the National Imaginary.......................292 Spaces of Corruption and the Edifice of Impunity.......................................573 Streets, Plazas, and Palaces: Asserting Justice and Work as Rights.....................914 The Right to Collective Well-being.....................................................1255 Conclusion: Rethinking Citizenship and Human Rights....................................165Notes....................................................................................181Bibliography.............................................................................195Index....................................................................................213

Chapter One

Rights in the National Imaginary

The Idea of Rights

How have rights been imagined in Argentina throughout its history? This chapter focuses on the tension between individual and collective rights that has permeated the social field, exploring how the dominant political philosophy has tended to vacillate between one formulation and the other. This tension is crucial to contemporary debates, yet it is not a new phenomenon. Rather, individual and collective rights and the different meanings attributed to these terms have historically been essential features in the way the nation has been imagined and experienced by its members, and this history influences and is drawn upon by those who engage in these debates.

The idea of a national imaginary as fundamental to the formation and development of the modern nation-state was proposed by Benedict Anderson in his book Imagined Communities. In it he traces how the modern nation came to be understood as an "imagined political community ... both inherently limited and sovereign" through the use of new mechanized technologies by institutions of power, including printing, counting (of populations), and mapping (1991:6). A number of scholars have criticized Anderson's treatment of the formation of the nation as too centered on the literary (i.e., elite, male) class, and for ignoring that these ideas existed within a field of power relations that extended beyond these privileged enclaves (see Guha 1985; Skurski 1996). In addition, and fundamentally, the pattern of development of the (European) nation-state is not a formula that can necessarily be applied in very different contexts across the world. Even if the form of the nation-state has been influential globally, the trajectory of its development in each place must be understood within the context of specific local conditions. While not contending that a national imaginary was necessarily compelling for all groups across Argentine society, nor that its development precisely coincided with Continental patterns, I draw on Anderson's insights in considering the foundations of the philosophy of rights that took root in Argentina. Specific formulations of a national imaginary in Argentina have operated in conjunction with competing political philosophies in influencing public policy in practice, notably in relationship to ideas of rights. The formation of a creole identity as part and parcel of colonial subjectivity encouraged incipient understandings of the nation and, importantly, of the rights of its citizens.

Ideas of rights in Argentina have been inextricably bound to the political and ideological currents that have affected the formation and historical development of the nation from its inception. The idea of rights that took hold among liberals in the River Plate following independence closely mimicked that circulating throughout Western Europe. This was a particular idea of responsibilities and obligations developed in relation and reaction to monarchical society, growing out of and forming an integral part of Enlightenment ideals. Lynn Hunt has shown how changing conceptions of the self and the body toward the end of the eighteenth century led to the sense of these rights as being "self-evident," and to their codification in formative political treatises and documents at that time (2007). The United States Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen in 1789 clearly and explicitly delineated an idea of rights that was to mark an irreversible shift in the formalization of rights and the responsibilities and limits of the state. Essential to this conception of rights was their location in the figure of the individual. The individualist nature of rights marked a revolutionary difference from the monarchical social system that preceded it, where the sovereign held rights over the people as a whole.

European liberalist ideas greatly influenced the perspective of Argentine founding fathers like Bernadino Rivadavia, whose fascination with non-Iberian European culture was to profoundly inform his social, economic, and cultural policies in ways that continue to have repercussions today. Rivadavia's "doctrinaire democratic idealism" sought to remake Argentina in the model of Enlightenment-era Europe, free from the influence of local oligarchs and ecclesiastic authority. While encumbered by virulent elitism, the Rivadavians nonetheless sought to encourage a brand of equality among men through peace, prosperity, and (European) high culture, with this final element to be achieved through the creation of numerous cultural institutions. The liberal fascination also served to further entrench the country in its colonial position as an export-based economy. The signing of the Anglo-Argentine Treaty of Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation under Rivadavia essentially gave Great Britain unrestricted access to the nation's markets, "devastat[ing] local manufacturing ... and limit[ing] the country's economic future to one of provider of agricultural goods and raw materials to an industrial power" (Shumway 1991:99).

Liberalist economic policies affected the emerging nation in other ways as well. Property rights were in many respects the foundation of the post-monarchical society. The original meaning of being endowed with rights in the River Plate was, to a certain degree, founded on shifting the notion of property from being a privilege to a right. The inherent individual nature of private property embedded in liberal conceptions of rights was born out of rebellion against the monarch's abusive authority over its control and regulation. However, the protection of private property and its contractual basis required a stable and legitimized state capable of preserving legal order. This need illustrates the tension within liberalism between public representation and private property, where the government must serve as a legitimate representative of the interests of the people while upholding and enforcing private contractual property law. Thus, in Argentina as in other American countries, the formation and formalization of the nation was inextricably bound to creating and maintaining a balance...