Description
In this richly detailed history, Felix Jiménez Botta traces West German mobilization against human rights abuses in Latin America in the late twentieth century. Initially in the ascendant was a market-critical vision adopted by a loose, left-leaning coalition fighting against right-wing regimes seeking to destroy incipient welfare states and implant market fundamentalism. However, during the later 1970s–80s a market-friendly interpretation gained ground, emphasising negative civil and political rights at the expense of positive economic and social rights. Within these debates, the vocabulary of human rights was a malleable political language that served as a multidirectional point of reference for various actors from civil society, politics, and the churches. By analysing these opposing views of human rights, Jiménez Botta questions the revisionist interpretation of post-1970s human rights as an inherently conservative political and intellectual project. Instead, the triumph of market-friendly human rights in West Germany was contested, contingent and ultimately unfinished.
Table of Contents
List of figures; Acknowledgements; Note on the text; Introduction; 1. Antifascism: the Chile solidarity movement in West Germany and the politics of emergency, 1973– 1976; 2. The politics of emergency in action: West Germany and the Latin American refugee crisis, 1973–1977; 3. Christian democratic solidarity: West German conservatives and the Chilean military regime, 1973–1980; 4. Quiet diplomacy: Argentina, Chile, and West Germany's technocratic response to grassroots human rights advocacy, 1975–1979; 5 . Politics of revolution: Nicaragua, El Salvador, and the rise of market-critical human rights in West Germany, 1977–1986; 6. Market-Friendly human rights: the neoconservative offensive on Central America, 1979–1986; 7. The politics of market-friendly democratization: West Germany and the end of military rule in the Southern Cone, 1980–1990; Epilogue; Bibliography; Index.
