II Countries and Regions, 11 Latin America: Constitutions in Trouble

Are Latin American constitutions in crisis? The answer, I shall suggest, is no, if we are thinking about situations of “constitutional breakdowns,” such as those that prevailed during the 1970s, when most Latin American countries were ruled by authoritarian governments, responsible for massive human rights violations. However, Latin American constitutionalism can be considered to be in trouble if we refer instead to the constitutional structure that gradually became dominant in the region after more than two hundred years of practice. The constitutional model that...