Hijacking Human Rights in Latin America

In 2009, a Buenos Aires civic association awarded a prize named after American civil rights activist Rosa Parks to Argentinian Senator Liliana Negre de Alonso. The prize was given “por la Defensoría de la Vida Humana,” but the recipient’s resumé hardly resembles that of a typical human rights advocate. Negre de Alonso has a history of opposing laws and policies that favor sexual and reproductive choice. In 2006, for instance, she fought against a bill that sought to provide all Argentinians access to free vasectomies or tubal ligations. Among other things, she argued that it would promote HIV transmission by lessening the need for condoms. She has long opposed abortion, and last year, she waged a highly emotional campaign against Argentina’s landmark same-sex marriage law.  

Negre de Alonso, a member of the highly conservative Opus Dei movement, which defines itself as the “personal prelature of the Catholic Church”, was exhibit Number One in a recent talk by anthropologist Lynn Morgan at the University of Miami. Morgan, the Mary E. Woolley Professor of Anthropology at...