The symposium proposes to bring together research analyzing the transformations of democracy and human rights in Latin America in the face of the advance of new forms of authoritarianism and contemporary political disputes. It seeks to discuss the impacts of digital technologies on the public sphere, the spread of disinformation (fake news), the strategic use of the justice system (lawfare), the integrity of electoral processes, social inequalities, and the challenges to the effective realization of justice. Papers investigating the role of affects and polarization in politics, the tensions between difference, pluralism and sovereignty, as well as the relationships among geopolitics, coloniality and human rights in the Latin American context, will also be received. The symposium seeks to foster interdisciplinary approaches that contribute to a critical understanding of the threats and possibilities for strengthening democracy in the region, considering both common challenges and the historical, political, social and cultural particularities of its different countries.
Special attention will be paid to research addressing the legacies of dictatorships, state violence, and serious human rights violations that occurred in Latin America, analyzing memory, truth, justice, reparation, accountability and transitional justice, as well as the persistent effects of these processes on contemporary democracies. Papers investigating memory in its ethical, political and legal dimensions will be especially welcome, understanding it as a constitutive element of identities, public narratives, and collective responsibility with respect to the past, in dialogue with debates on forgetting, testimony, recognition and reconciliation.
The symposium engages with research on traditional communities and other historically vulnerabilized groups, considering their struggles for recognition, justice, memory, and the guarantee of rights. It also opens spaces for reflections oriented toward human rights education, understanding education as a fundamental dimension for civic formation, the strengthening of democratic culture, the promotion of justice, respect for differences, and the defense of human dignity, in both formal and non-formal educational contexts.
By fostering dialogue among different theoretical, methodological and empirical perspectives, the symposium seeks to contribute to a critical understanding of the challenges facing Latin American democracies in the twenty-first century, strengthening comparative and interdisciplinary research on memory, democracy, human rights, justice, and political accountability.
