A liberdade de expressão nas novas democracias sul-americanas: um olhar a partir dos direitos humanos

Abstract

How do Latin American democracies behave in front of freedom of expression? This article´s key question makes a legal reflection by observing the ontemporaneousness of facts and judgments, reports and formal statements from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The article privileges specific targets. The first one is to evaluate how the democracies of South America have treated freedom of expression, which parameters have been used in these debates, which singularities are present in the theoretical reflections as well as in the debates in the press and the administration of justice in Brazil and Venezuela. We will try to find the predominant theoretical forms, the acceptance of the foreign tradition, the existence of antagonisms and conflicts among visions of this competitive world, together with the paths treaded by the Brazilian reflection. Methodologically, this is a descriptive and analytical study that has been developed through bibliographical and documental research, with the analysis of judgments, reports and formal statements from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, mainly Special Reports, established in October 1997, which deals with the promotion of freedom of speech rights by giving technical assistance in individual cases through the Inter-American Protection on Human rights. The comparative method will help our study on the likenesses and dissimilarities between the juridical arrangements as a way of understanding better the two realities in their approximations and remoteness, together with the hermeneutics to make an explanatory analysis on the theme. Finally, to understand how this new generation of governors considered “populists” has elaborated politics that sometimes damages, sometimes elates freedom of expression.