Abstract
The simultaneous transnational emergence, from the 1960s and through the 1970s and 1980s, of left‐wing political movements that envisioned the possibility of achieving social justice through revolutionary change encountered an unprecedently violent response that came to be known as the “dirty wars.” The idea of human rights had many possible beginnings, but coalesced in the 1948 “Universal Declaration” that different sovereign international actors concocted in response to the humanitarian disasters of WWII. Human rights aim to condemn and overcome the conditions that make possible the rendering of the other inhuman. The novel portrays the atmosphere of intimidation and danger faced by grassroots human rights activists in Latin America, particularly women and Indigenous peoples in Central America and Mexico. Gender and sexuality rights have always faced opposition based on definitions of a sacred, immutable natural order of bodies and societies from which certain identities and behaviors deviate.
