Addressing Human Rights requires that we consider both reality and imagination. What forces are shaping the world in which we live? What space is available for change? What role is played, and can be played by individuals? At a meeting of relatively young leaders of this hemisphere, organized by the Inter-American Development Bank at the end of the Twentieth Century, Gabriel Garcia Marquez was asked what we might expect from the Twenty-First Century as we emerge from the Twentieth Century, which distinguished itself with two world wars and with genocide. Gabriel Garcia Marquez responded by saying that we should not expect anything from the Twenty-First Century. He explained that everything relevant was the result of imagination, from the Ninth Symphony to heart transplants; they were in the heads of their inventors before taking place in reality.
