This chapter examines the ways in which the sovereign, monocultural, and monist state that was dominant in Latin America starting in the nineteenth century has mutated over the last thirty-six years. It begins by offering a description of the initially dominant model and then introduces the multicultural liberal and radical intercultural models that replaced it by politically and legally recognizing the cultural diversity that characterizes Latin American societies. The chapter then explores the discursive and practical challenges generated by illegal normative systems (such as those managed by guerilla or paramilitary groups, or criminal organizations), and by extralegal normative system (such as the regulation of private property in peripheral urban neighborhoods) which compete with the sovereignty of states and official law. The constitutional bloc, the Inter-American Human Rights System, and bilateral or multilateral treaties signed by Latin American states further pluralize legal creation and weaken the concept of absolute state sovereignty. This chapter characterizes these developments as instances of either weak or strong legal pluralism.

Chapter 6 addresses the absence of the state from the procedures described throughout the book with a forward-looking eye on the TLC and the present status of the human rights regime. On the TLC, this chapter advances the argument such coalitions are in no way to be seen as a mode of international lawmaking without governments, as states, in their status as the treaty body system’s ultimate arbiters, have ample opportunities to mold the system to their liking – by way of, for example, elections, ratifications, budget, willingness to participate in the procedures, and compliance with their obligations. Indeed the Treaty Body Reform 2020 initiative reflects their awareness of autonomy of the treaty bodies themselves. With it likely that states cannot enact this reformation while also maintaining presence in the human rights regime, it will be crucial to see how this conflict plays out in the future.