6
Law on Human Rights is currently very solid, to which the jurisprudence of this InterAmerican Court has contributed in a decisive manner. As stated in my Concurring
Vote in the case of the “Street Children” (reparations, 2001), - and as the present
case of Servellón García et al. once again reveals, “The human being, even in the most adverse conditions, emerges as subject of
the International Law of Human Rights, endowed with full international juridicalprocedural capacity.” (para. 1)
20.
In his classic Los Misérables (1862), Victor Hugo weighs in with a witty spirit:
"L'avenir arrivera-t-il? Il semble qu'on peut presque se faire cette question
quand on voit tant d'ombre terrible. Sombre face-à-face des égoïstes et des misérables.
Chez les égoïstes, les préjugés, les ténèbres de l'éducation riche, l'appétit croissant par
l'enivrement, un étourdissement de prosperité qui assourdit, la crainte de souffrir qui,
dans quelques-uns, va jusqu'à l'aversion des souffrants, une satisfaction implacable, le
moi si enflé qu'il ferme l'âme; - chez les misérables, la convoitise, l'envie, la haine de
voir les autres jouir, les profondes secousses de la bête humaine vers les
assouvissements, les coeurs pleins de brume, la tristesse, le besoin, la fatalité,
l'ignorance impure et simple. Faut-il continuer de lever les yeux vers le ciel? (...)." 7
21.
The penetrating words of Victor Hugo acquire great topicality. The disparities
that flagellate national societies (and are currently more serious in the erroneously
“globalized” world of our days), reveal one of its most marked characteristics: the
sad repressive nature of said societies. In the name of public security the most
vulnerable, alienated, and excluded, the “undesirable”, Victor Hugo’s misérables, are
killed with impunity. Additionally, our repressive societies of today – not only in Latin
America but in all continents (I have visited them all, and I know what I am talking
about), - do not have a memory, they are condemned to live in a brief and
despairing present, without encouraging perspectives, without a future.
22.
On the graves of each of the children and youngsters killed in the cas
d'espèce the verses with which Victor Hugo concludes his work Les Misérables could
perfectly be transcribed – until the wind and rain wash them away, that is after the
“collective memory”,-:
"Il dort. Quoique le sort fût pour lui bien étrange,
Il vivait. Il mourut quand il n'eut plus son ange;
La chose simplement d'elle-même arriva,
Comme la nuit se fait lorsque le jour s'en va." 8
It was precisely to the chiaroscuro of life that I made reference to, within the InterAmerican Court half a decade ago, in my Concurring Opinion in the aforementioned
case of the “Street Children”, when I referred to the trilogy formed by victimization,
human suffering, and the rehabilitations of the victims, - to be considered as from
the integrality of the personalities of the victims (paras. 3 and 19):
“ (…) The tension of the clear-dark, of the advances intermingled with setbacks,
is proper of the human condition, and it constitutes, in fact, one of the most precious
legacies of the thinking of the ancient Greeks (always so contemporary) to the evolution
of the human thinking itself, which has penetrated human conscience throughout the
centuries. The Platonic allegory of the cave, for example, reveals, with all lucidity and its
.
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (1862) (préface de Ch. Baudelaire), volume III, Paris, Libr. Gén.
Française, 1972, p. 30.
7
.
8
Ibid., volume III, p. 536.