Odious Debts in Latin America

CRISTIAN DIMITRIU

Conferencia; Merienda Lecture; 2011

Universidad de Kansas

In this presentation I applied the account of odious debts that I have been developing to the specific case of Latin America.What are odious debts? According to an old legal terminology, used by the first time by Russian scholar Nahum Sack, odious debts are debts that are not binding for the people, as they were incurred by a regime for a purpose that is not public (making the rulers richer, benefitting allies and friends, oppressing the population, etc.). The underlying moral question at the center of the definition of the doctrine is the following: if a despotic or corrupt leader uses loan money to repress his people, maintain himself in power, buy personal luxuries or commit any other illegitimate act, then why should citizens and their future generations bear the burden to repay what are basically the personal debts of their former captor? This is like saying that if someone borrows money in my name without my authorization, I should be liable for that debt. It is clearly unfair that I should be responsible for this debt. In Latin America, most of the governments did not satisfy this conditions, as it was very common that governments used the money for non-legitimate purposes.