8 distances and contrasts among their possessors. Article 2 of the Pact of San José should be read carefully: the States must adopt the necessary measures to give effect to the rights and freedoms. The reference to “necessary” measures that “give effect” to the rights, refers to the consideration of particularities and compensations. 32. Obviously, we have not exhausted the examination of democracy, which is the foundation and the destiny of political participation, understood in light of the American Convention. The need to have means of participating in the conduct of public affairs is clear, in order to intervene in the guidance of the nation and in community decisions, and this is related to the active and passive right to vote, among other participatory instruments. Achieving this signifies a historical step from the time – which still exists, as we have seen in other cases decided by the InterAmerican Court in the current session and mentioned in this opinion – when the struggle for the right was related only to the physical survival, the patrimony and the settlement of the community. However, the progress on the path towards electoral presence – an advance contained, confronted by measures that foster inequality and discrimination – should not detain or dissuade access to comprehensive democracy, in which the access of individuals to the means that will encourage the development of their potential is promoted. 33. As can be observed, the contentious cases I have mentioned in this concurring opinion to the respective judgments examine issues that are common to the indigenous communities and to the rights of their members, even though they do so in relation to different facts and according to the specific circumstances of each case. These decisions are situated in one and the same historical reality and attempt to resolve the specific manifestations that this has resulted in today. Thus, they encourage the application of solutions guided by the same liberating and egalitarian objective that permits the exercise of the individual rights of those who are members – and have full rights to continue being members – of ethnic and indigenous communities that form part of the broader national communities. After all, the idea is to resolve, in the twenty-first century, the problems inherited from preceding centuries. The specific increasingly abundant and comprehensive case law of the Inter-American Court can contribute to this. Sergio García-Ramírez Judge Pablo Saavedra-Alessandri Secretary