Introduction

In the context of the Americas, this tendency not only marginalizes movements and human rights struggles that arose in the hemisphere as a result of the discovery, conquest, and colonization of Indigenous communities previously unknown to the Spanish conquerors. The Haitian Revolution inspired by the French Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man is another notable instance that still has not found the prominent place that it deserves in the collective cultural memory of the genealogy of human rights. The language of human rights is embraced to justify wars as the price to pay for the expansion of democracy, socioeconomic equality, and global human rights, while unsentimental interventionism revokes international and national laws, implements inhuman or humiliating practices, and determines who has no right to human rights and who has the right to have rights. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.