Human rights have become increasingly salient for nations, organizations, and individuals since the end of World War II (Lauren 2003). Discussions of human rights now are common in formal education, including in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). A variety of indicators suggest that countries in Latin America have integrated human rights into the curriculum more rapidly than countries in the Caribbean. In this study, the author addresses why human rights education emerges in the LAC region and why human rights education expands more rapidly in Latin America than in the Caribbean. The author briefly discusses the development of human rights education in LAC. He then compares three theoretical perspectives on this development: (1) world-polity theory; (2) policy borrowing; and (3) historical institutionalism. To test alternative and complementary explanations for the emergence and development of human rights education in LAC, he next analyzes quantitative panel data on national government adoption of human rights education from 1980 to 1990 and from 1990 to 2005. Using the three conceptual frames, his findings suggest two explanations for the expansion and variation of human rights education. First, human rights education emerges as a result of global changes in education, linkages to the human rights movement, and domestic human rights advocacy. Second, the curricular reform develops faster in Latin America than in the Caribbean due to regional historical legacies and sustained efforts to preserve historical memory of state terror. (Contains 6 tables.)