Abstract
Autore:
Mugnaini Marco
Titolo:
"I Nobel Peace Prizes latinoamericani"
From 1901 up to the present day, in terms of the history of international relations the Nobel Peace Prizes have expressed an original and complex interweave of utopianism and realism. Nevertheless, over time the Nobel Peace Prize has become “the most prestigious prize in the world”. A century after its first award, in 2001 the Centennial Symposium of the Nobel prizes was organised in Oslo; this was conceived as an opportunity to celebrate a century of Nobel prizes and to reflect upon the topics of war and peace at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Among those who played an active part in the Centennial Symposium of 2001 were three Latin American winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, namely: Adolfo Pérez Esquivel (awarded the prize in 1980), Rigoberta Menchú Tum (1992) and Oscar Arias Sánchez (1987). Although possibly less well-known today, another two Latin Americans had also been awarded this prestigious recognition in the course of the twentieth century: Carlos Saavedra Lamas (in 1936) and Alfonso García Robles (joint winner in 1982). This essay offers a synthetic reconstruction of the biographies of these five Nobel laureates, touching on the historic contexts in which they lived and worked and the reasons for the recognition attributed to them, seeking to trace the meaning this had for the Latin American countries and also perhaps within a broader perspective.
