Search

This paper reviews the five General Conferences of the Latin American Episcopate held over the course of half a century, from the first one, held in Rio, until the most recent one in Aparecida. To facilitate the understanding of these Conferences, the theological context of each is recalled and some of the main points of their "Conclusions" are indicated. These Episcopal Assemblies prove that there is a specifically Latin American pastoral theology. Nonetheless, if before one had to prevent Eurocentric exaggerations, it is currently necessary that one avoid excessive Latin Americanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to study the use of the “«hot news» Present Perfect" in the Spanish digital press as it appears in 39 articles of several online newspapers. Stress is laid on the combination of Simple Past and Present Perfect forms in these texts, their productivity and performance. The results are also compared with the same occurrences in the American Spanish online press. We conclude that the hot news Perfect is a special type of Present Perfect which functions as a stylistic resource in the Spanish digital press, but is non-existent in the American one. It does not correspond exactly to the “recent past" Present Perfect, with which it is often linked, for its main function is not to narrate recent facts but to focus on current events, leaving the events in the Past Simple form in the background. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the Caribbean Islands were conquered, there began a time of contact between the Spanish language and consolidated native languages, which would result in the linguistic settlement in the American continent. This paper focuses on the analysis of a selection of works dating between 1518 and 1559, and which have been selected on the basis of the following variables: the author's level of experience in the Indies and the use of communicative strategies in each document. This study is centred on analyzing quantitatively the words included in the chronicles, the tendencies observed, and their interpretation. The resulting textual types show a direct relationship with both the addition of indigenous neologisms and the authors' field of knowledge, through which they filter their personal experience and add the new words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Constitutionalism is not a Latin American creation, but rather a European and American import. Its implantation throughout these region has been particularly difficult, as shown by the fact that in two centuries of independence, they produced over 200 constitutional texts. This paper gives an analysis of some historical causes of this constitutional instability in Latin America. It also shows how constitutionalism has brought about a number of significant results In the region nonetheless, despite the divorce which often exists between the real and the apparent constitution, and the general lack of confidence in Constitutions. A particular importance is ascribed to Constitutional Litigation Law, whose institutions are in force and are respected in countries where the social legitimacy of Constitutions is rather slight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the objective of this research paper is to reflect on the impact that the appearance and development of International Human Rights Law has had on the functioning of different national law systems, specifically in Latin America, and to identify some of the interesting and demanding challenges, both theoretical and practical, that this phenomenon poses to the world of law. In the analysis of these transformations, some of the questions addressed are: the juridical grounding of the former; the complex task of how to harmonize, both political and legally, the national and international instances; some practical and operative problems that have appeared with the rise of the international courts that specialise in these issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]