As United Nations legal advisers put the finishing touches to the Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, Colombia was embroiled in a barbaric slaughter that claimed 300,000 lives in five years, during a period of political unrest simply known as La Violencia.
Fifty years on, human rights activists worldwide are celebrating the detention and possible trial of one of the region's most cynical state killers of recent times, General Pinochet.
The casual observer could be forgiven for assuming that justice had triumphed across Latin America but nothing could be further from the truth. Chile's centre-left coalition government is lobbying furiously for Pinochet's release, mindful that democratic rule is conditioned by Pinochet's 1980 constitution, which grants the army the role of State guardian with the right to intervene if things get too unruly.
Meanwhile in Colombia the slaughter continues, destined to last as long as poverty persists and the exercise of democratic rights is rewarded with imprisonment, torture and death.
The main issue at the heart of the human rights debate in Latin America is the struggle for social justice by the excluded majority against the abuses of a wealthy minority determined to prevent social change by any means necessary.
Every country has had its springtime of hope, a brief window of opportunity when workers, students, farmers, intellectuals and others came together to demand an equal share in the wealth of their nation.
In Mexico, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in 1968, demanding an end to one-party rule. The ruling party measured the odds, cracked teeth first in minor skirmishes, before opting for all-out massacre. Small wonder then that the next generation of activists emerged from the jungle in 1994, armed not only with guns but with the lessons of history too.
In recent times president Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1990-91) interrupted Haiti's 150-year nightmare, elected with a landslide vote on the platform of hauling poor from absolute misery to absolute poverty. Months later Aristide was ousted in a brutal coup, his mandate an insult to the five per cent who control the nation's wealth.
In Nicaragua the Sandinistas set the region on fire with the prospect of a humane revolution (1979-90), respecting individual freedom while striving for collective social advances. This was unacceptable to the United States, which ultimately destroyed the experiment.
The only exception to the rule is Cuba, where Castro's revolution has maintained crucial health, education and food indicators but at a high price in terms of individual life choices.
The Cuban revolution continues to pose difficult questions for human rights activists: which comes first, the right to eat or the right to freedom of association?
In Latin America, human rights generally refers to the right to a life lived with dignity and the minimum material conditions to achieve that goal. Fifty years of state repression and the impunity of rights violators has crushed hope and resulted in the imposition of an economic model called neo-liberalism which favours foreign investment and eliminates the rights of workers.
In Chile, Argentina and Brazil, the neo-liberal economic model has sapped the strength of social solidarity, transforming a culture in which solidarity and community were highly valued, to one based exclusively on competitive individualism.
Nowadays a fellow worker is a rival and people surrounding you on the street are enemies, while home, TV and shopping centres have become the only safe spaces in a hostile world.
It comes as no surprise to learn that in Argentina the plan for the systematic elimination of opponents was drawn up inside the offices of the Minister of Social Welfare, Martinez de Hoz, years before the military formally seized power.
The application of an unpopular and unjust economic system requires the constant suppression of human rights and sufficient international indifference to annul negative reaction abroad.
Despite the grim picture however there have been substantial advances in the growth of human rights organisations that highlight injustices and repression.
In Mexico alone, dozens of human rights groups have helped build a network of information and solidarity, forcing the government to think twice about applying the methods of 1968 to the indigenous communities in rebellion in Chiapas.
Elsewhere, various truth commissions, the work of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and countless other groups have helped shine a light on rights abusers, but the problems remain structural, requiring more than inquiries and reports.
The global imperative to maximise business profits and minimise the costs in wages and welfare is an iron-cast guarantee that while an occasional Pinochet may suffer the indignity of a five-star arrest abroad, the big picture remains unchanged.
The most appropriate symbol of what is to come in the next 50 years in Latin America may well be in Punta Carretas, Uruguay.
A vast shiny shopping centre, filled with the trinkets of the global marketplace has been erected over the site of a former torture centre, where the lives of activists striving for a more sane political system were brutally cut short.