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agreements. Finally, Part V scrutinized the characteristic proscriptions
against retroactivity and punitive damages.
All in all, this article has reflected upon certain institutions, as well as
ideas, that inhabit the civil-law universe. It has shown how they have survived
and developed in Latin America. In fact, this legal realm as a whole reveals
its true internationalized and modernized face as it goes through this story
of survival, development, and even transformation. It possesses no common
essence and shows itself as one simply by virtue of a family resemblance
among the systems belonging to it. Hence, each one of the latter shares with
the rest not a single element, but rather a number thereof, discontinuously
and incompletely: in other words, an overarching, variegated and somewhat
nebulous history and culture.
v