Description
This paper provides a historically-grounded analysis of the connection between shared values and universalism in justifying state claims for decision-making and agenda-setting capacities within International Human Rights Law. I address the ways in which (neo)colonial relations are reframed into notions of shared values and instrumentalised as geopolitical power in the pursuit of allegedly universal aims.
Specifically, I look at Spain’s construction of the myth of Hispanismo—an alleged cultural unity amongst Spain and Spanish-speaking Latin American states resulting from a common language. Through a discourse-historical approach, I address its emergence in Spain as a racialised, nostalgic reminiscence of empire. Being framed instead as a shared value, and therefore as an ostensibly apolitical, mutually beneficial cultural connection, Hispanismo obscures neocolonial socioeconomic relations, being instrumentalised by Spain as a means to justify its involvement in Latin America for the alleged defence of human rights.
Simultaneously, I analyse the possibilities for emancipatory, bottom-up coalitions that may emerge from alternative understandings of shared values and universalism. Disrupting dominant historical narratives, I consider Indigenous resistances in Latin America to the Creole elites’ use of Hispanismo, as well as Latin American involvement in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War.
