Latinx lives matter – week 11

Posted by in Week 11

A new world order emerges from the atrocities of World War Two. One dominated by nation states, with inviolable sovereignty (ideas of “humanitarian intervention” will wait until the 90s, with the end of the Cold War), and decorated with a humanist ambition embodied by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the newly established United Nations in 1948.

Latin Americans would, however, not feel the protection of this declaration. Nation-states would wage violence against the people in their territories, untouchable in terms of the legalized legitimation of state violence. Military authoritarianism would topple civilian government after civilian government. Latin America continued to be the site of exported conflicts ––in the form of proxy conflicts between the capitalist and communist worlds, in the form of resource extraction, in the form of arms sales, all relying on the racist devaluation of Latinx lives––conflicts that weren’t ‘morally acceptable’ in white nations since the outrage over the spilling of white blood that was WWII. Despite the ubiquity of violence, and especially fear, Latin Americans survive, persevere, and flourish.