As a starting point, the text bring the idea that Latin America has been living, over the last two decades, a tension between two discourses, two world views and ways of building a society: on the one hand, the verification of dysfunctions which should be corrected, and on the other hand the claims and demands in the name of citizenship, of rights, and of their universalization. The hypothesis is that this tension - lessened, but not extinct - and its unfolding have strong relations with the conception, institution, management, and operationalization of social policies, in a trajectory that goes from the developmental point of view to the processes of focalization, and the rights to the moral government of poverty and its unfolding.
Social policies; Rights; Citizenship; Latin America; Moral