Andrés Ruiz Ojeda's research explores changes in how Latin American diplomats imagined human, social and economic rights between the 1950s and 1980s.
In the early days the discussions treated rights as part of a nation-building project. But by the 1980s everything had changed and the discussions envisaged a more individualised version of rights that was not socially transformative. It was a lawyer’s version of political transformation.
Andrés Ruiz Ojeda
What is the difference between how we think of human rights and economic and social rights? Several decades in the case of Mexico, according to research by Andrés Ruiz Ojeda [2023].
He is studying the changes in how Latin American diplomats imagined and spoke about human rights between the 1950s and 1980s, how they used them to navigate changing international orders and how these uses ultimately reflect a shift in rights thinking, from transformational visions about the state to individualistic narratives about welfare and protection.
He is specifically looking at discussions around Inter-American treaties on human rights, particularly economic and social rights, that is, the American Convention on Human Rights and its associated protocols. His dissertation examines the “behind the scenes” discussions of these documents through a series of meetings, from the 1950s to the 1980s, when human rights, including economic and social rights, finally “triumphed”.
“In the early days the discussions treated rights as part of a nation-building project,” says Andrés. “But by the 1980s everything had changed and the discussions envisaged a more individualised version of rights that was not socially transformative. It was a lawyer’s version of political transformation.”
That transformation is embedded in the language used by policymakers. In the 1950s drafts, he says, the language was much more explicit around redistribution and justice. By the 1980s the language was more technocratic and revolved around words such as protection and responsibility. For instance, in the 1950s versions there was a right to have a job. By the 1980s that was replaced with talk of a new individual responsibility to work. “You can see the transformation over the decades in the language and norms,” says Andrés.
He wants to use his knowledge to implement policy changes on the ground. Recently, he has had the opportunity to collaborate with the OECD’s Centre on Well-Being, Inclusion, Sustainability and Equal Opportunity, where he applied his research on norm-compliance to help develop a mainstreaming framework for equality and non-discrimination. He says: “This is the type of work I would love to do after finishing my PhD: grounding big academic debates and concepts in actionable, specific policy solutions.”
Childhood
Andrés was born in Mexico City. His parents are now retired, both studied Chemical Engineering. His mother was a teacher of Maths, Physics and Chemistry and his father was an engineer who worked in the central bank’s banknotes printing facility. Both think very analytically and methodically and raised Andrés and his younger brother to analyse the information they were presented with. Andrés’s brother is an economist.
Andrés went to the same school until he was 16. He loved to read and write and was a conscientious student. At 16 he won an academic Olympiad competition which led to a scholarship to high school. His new school was very focused on entrepreneurship and innovation, particularly in the private sector. It wasn’t the sphere that interested Andrés, but the school environment was very multicultural and he was encouraged to do an international exchange. He spent seven months in Brisbane, living with an Australian family and loved it. There he took courses in law and public administration and began to become more serious about social sciences and public policy.
Higher education
Andrés was accepted by the two main higher education institutions in Mexico that are dedicated to public policy and train future civil servants. He opted to attend the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas and began his studies in 2014 just after the centre had opened a new campus in Aguascalientes, a small town in central Mexico. After growing up in a bustling capital, provincial life was a culture shock for Andrés, but he soon got used to it and had a group of Mexico City friends around him.
He spent a semester at Columbia University in the US studying econometrics and statistics. There he attended a graduate seminar on economic imaginaries of the Latin American left given by the anthropologist Professor Claudio Lomnitz. That seminar had a lasting impact on Andrés and Professor Lomnitz became an important mentor for him and was one of the supervisors of his undergraduate thesis.
The seminar covered the imaginaries of Mexican constitutionalism in the early part of the 20th century, how radical the ideas it put forward on welfare were and how these have been absorbed into a more liberal discourse of rights over the last century. The Mexican Revolution of 1917, says Andrés, placed a big emphasis on collective claims and demands and those claims were “tamed into a legalised, more individualistic concept of rights”.
Andrés had been planning to do a statistics-based thesis, but that seminar changed his mind and he became interested in how norms around rights are shaped. He sought to develop his interest in ideas and constitutional law by approaching Law Professor Alejandro Madrazo Lajous, who ended up supervising his undergraduate thesis. “Alejandro taught me to think about constitutional law and human rights as powerful governance tools, rather than abstract ideals,” says Andrés.
Whilst being supervised by Professor Madrazo Lajous, Andrés got a research assistant position with Dr Catalina Pérez Correa, and she introduced him to academic research. With her, he worked on penitentiary reform – through research on both prisoners and their guards – and explored the arguments for the legalisation of cannabis. In the process he learned how research can be mobilised to have “real-life” impact. His and others’ work on cannabis legalisation, for instance, sparked the beginning of proposals for legal reform. “It gave a glimpse of change which was encouraging,” says Andrés.
Lobbying
After graduating, he realised he needed some real-life experience. He took a job as a lobbyist working for a range of corporate and emerging companies. Although he had very supportive bosses and loved the job, working mainly with the Mexican Senate on issues of interest to the companies, he was aware he was not generally representing the public interest, for instance, on taxes and regulation. Some companies he worked with, however, were thinking of longer-term issues such as the transition to cleaner forms of energy, and the sustainability of Mexico’s fiscal system.
Cambridge
He also felt he was good at his job, bringing a strong analytical focus to the role. Andrés stayed for just over two years before deciding he needed a career change as he became more and more interested in foreign policy. So he applied for an MPhil in Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge and began his course in October 2021.
His dissertation built on his undergraduate work on rights, including in relation to Mexico’s ratification of the American Convention on Human Rights in 1981, and Mexico’s signing of an additional protocol concerning economic and social rights. He was interested in how this came at a time when Mexico was also implementing neoliberal welfare reforms.
Through research in the archives and speaking to diplomats involved in the ratification of the treaty, under the guidance of his supervisor Dr Carsten-Andreas Schulz, Andrés found that the signing of the treaties was both a policy commitment based on ideals, but also a pragmatic exercise as Mexico sought to enhance its liberal credentials on the road to NAFTA, peacemaking in Central America and other trade agreements, for instance, with Europe. “It was both a sweet and sour moment. Mexico finally recognised human rights, but not necessarily for idealistic reasons,” says Andrés. “It was much more pragmatic.”
He returned to Mexico in time for the presidential election process and worked as a policy adviser and campaigner for the then foreign affairs minister in the ruling Morena party. The minister stood as a candidate for leader of the party, but ultimately lost the race in 2023. Andrés found he loved the fast pace of political campaigning, learning about and working on multiple regional and policy issues and travelling whilst doing so. But he needed time to reflect outside of the political whirlwind. He had already applied by this time to do his PhD which he began in October 2023.
PhD studies
When he began his PhD, Andrés thought it would be fairly straightforward as he had already been exploring the same topic for previous dissertations and knew the American Convention on Human Rights well. His aim was to look at the relationship between international human rights law and Latin American countries’ foreign policy priorities. But when he started exploring in the archives he found he had to rethink many of his assumptions, forcing him to revise his project. He found that the work done on the Convention in the 1980s built on a previous draft in the 1950s and that it had changed in interesting ways. In the 1950s, diplomats were using social rights as a tool for state construction, building on earlier developments and traditions around Latin American international law.
The first chapters of his PhD deal with how rights are viewed and how they ought to be implemented, with a focus on how the normative understandings of human rights changed between the 1950s and 1980s. “We need a different way of thinking about rights and to creatively use international treaties to build a fairer world,” he says.
When he has finished his studies, Andrés would like to return to a policy adviser role. “I have loved doing my PhD and having the time to think, but what I have learned is that I need to apply my knowledge,” he says.
He adds that Dr Schulz has encouraged him “to become a more complete scholar: still interested in Latin American ideas about social rights, but capable of grounding my interests in sharper analytical frameworks”.
Andrés says he has also benefited greatly from being a Gates Cambridge Scholar and from the multicultural and supportive environment of the scholarship. “There is such a willingness on the part of Gates Cambridge Scholars to do good and yet scholars are typically very grounded,” he says. “In my experience, politics is very much about self-interest. That is certainly not the case at Gates Cambridge, where politics is about our duties towards others.”
