Diversity and nation building in the periphery: some thoughts from Argentina

Abstract

When it comes to comparing how tensions between equality and inequality may have affected legal systems in Europe and in Latin America, the first and most obvious impulse would be to think of it in terms of success and failure. As the initial call for the Law and Diversity workshop reminds us, the continental European legal system is “based on the principle of equality” and is now facing increasing demands “to take more account of individual and collective special situations”. How can this be done without obliterating its egalitarian, liberal core? The underlying assumption here is that, at least until now, the system has been more or less successful in dealing with the diversity of human situations. Latin America has also made “the principle of equality” the core of its legal system. However, by comparison, it would be easy to agree that it was far more difficult to uphold and maintain there. Liberalism seems to have grown in Europe from a local seed, well suited to a balanced and ethnically more homogeneous society. It is the offspring of a long process of historical development that led to modernity. In Latin America, it looks more like an exotic plant, growing fragile in an inhospitable terrain of extreme inequality, ethnic divides and hindering traditions.