Political metanarratives: The Latin American Constitutional Preambles

Abstract

The contents of the preambles of the political constitutions of the Latin American States are analyzed, in order to understand them, to classify them, and to expose them in a comparative way. From this, we can establish the relationship between those preambles and the current model of Rule of Law and their role as ideological items for producing both legal norms and the respective constitutional hermeneutics, specifically, in the control trials or constitutional defense. Then we describe this concept’s evolution, meaning, contents, functions, and purposes, by examining proclamations assumed as metanarratives that summarize cohesive political affirmations, from different nature (axiological, philosophical, mythical, historical and cultural), and pretend to legitimize a new sociopolitical project or an existing one. Those proclamations are taken from the Political Letters of the Latin American States, through a methodology of quantitative and qualitative analysis.