The absence of reasonable

Abstract

sometimes we wonder why it is so difficult to sell the idea of freedom in Latin America.

Some, like Hayek, (1) tell us that it is largely reducible to the widespread confusion of political terminology that makes us identify individual freedom with political freedom in a sovereign national state. Juan Bautista Alberdi (2) and Rigoberto Juárez-Paz (3) argue that, because of the colonial experience, we have equated national independence in our Hispanic America with democratic rights and these, in turn, with freedom to dry.

Others, such as Rosen, (4) add that we lack a stable constitutional tradition that ensures the safeguarding of individual rights against the state.

There are those who seek to go to the genetic root of our apparent inability to appreciate the importance of conducting ourselves freely and tell us, like H. G. Wells, that we have always constituted communities of obedience, previously conditioned, by an authoritarian Catholic Church, to be heteronons in our moral life and, consequently, easy prey to any warlord in our social life.