Constitutions won't bring social justice to Latin America

Colombia's 1991 constitution is seen by many as the threshold of an intense political process that has arrived at a set of revolutions in Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela and now, maybe, Peru. Furthermore, in the midst of a horrible conflict, Mexico is looking to a Colombian-style constitutional assembly to overcome the bloodshed its people have suffered. I believe such attitudes are misguided, and that it is in the interest of orthodox neocolonial powers to enforce the constitutional fable.

In the United States, society, state and constitution were born in a singular and indivisible event and as such, they're stuck to each other like flesh to the bone; the history of the US is the history of its constitution. Discourses on emancipation or recognition, such as the various civil rights movements, are produced as legal discourses that are settled by the "justices" of a supreme court. It is this exported model that has insured a tight post-colonial wedlock on the Latin-American legal tradition.
 
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