Entre la diferenciación y los individuos: Derechos fundamentales y las redes de la infamia

In modern societies, the internal relationship between politics and law constitutes the cardinal factor by which fundamental rights are institutionalized. Since functional differentiation provides a framework in which individuals can implement those rights and the legal-political coupling legitimizes and sanctions them, fundamental rights are deemed to be co-original with functional differentiation. This article addresses the difficulties in realizing those rights in Latin America as a consequence of the networks of stratification and reciprocity. Such networks become entrenched and disrupt formal procedures, thereby limiting the universalization of those rights and introducing the particular interests of the network itself. It is argued in this paper that this is an important source of inequality in Latin American modernity.