The purpose of this article is to review the process of the constitution and concretization of the social protection system in Latin America and in it locate the specific social protection measures adopted by the Brazilian government to meet the needs of the elderly population. It selected as its historic marker for the analysis of the Latin American reality, the 1st Intergovernmental Conference about Aging in Latin America and the Caribbean, conducted by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLA), in November 2003, in Santiago, Chile, which presented a synthesis of the social protection measures that countries on the continent had that were aimed at the elderly population. For the Brazilian experience, the legal prerogatives related to the rights of the elderly and to Social Security implemented in the 1990s were selected. The concepts about social protection and aging are addressed, seen as a right and conquest of human civilization in the 21st century.
Social protection; Aging; Rights