- Click to share on Facebook (Opens in a new window)
- Click to share on Twitter (Opens in a new window)
- Click here to share on LinkedIn (Opens in a new window)
- Click to email a friend (Opens in a new window)
Editor's Note: Roberto Rave is a political scientist with a specialization and postgraduate degree in international business and foreign trade from the Externado University of Colombia and Columbia University of New York. With studies in Management from the IESE University of Spain and an MBA candidate from the University of Miami. He is a columnist for the Colombian economic newspaper La República.
(CNN Spanish) - A couple of weeks ago I was near the Congress of the Republic of Colombia in Bogotá. While walking I noticed a march that passed a few meters. I went to her to observe in more detail without imagining what I found. A group of about 300 students throwing stones and sticks at the riot police, which did not have more than 50 uniforms. Some came forward to spit and shout harangues.
I retired restlessly and thoughtfully, these young people, probably all between the ages of 20 and 30, students from Colombian universities, dismissed authority and institutionality and felt they had the right to insult them and destroy public heritage. Maybe they would be right to protest; however, it was difficult to differentiate if his expression was a march that had become vandalism, or if the march was only an excuse to perform his acts of hatred and resentment.
The world in general and Latin America in particular seem to be in chaos. Intense protests abound from a considerable part of the population in several Latin American countries. Although the causes of each social protest have to do predominantly with specific circumstances and problems in each place and in each sector, they all share a common denominator: the dissatisfaction of the majority of citizens with the management of their respective governments. To a large extent, the trigger for this wave of general dissatisfaction is related to announcements of possible declines in state subsidies and other social assistance programs. To this is added a constant and understandable annoyance for the numerous cases of corruption in which high-level state officials and even former presidents of several countries are involved.
Corruption in Latin America is so opprobrious that it justifies the indignation and protests of the people. According to the Inter-American Development Bank, inefficiencies such as corruption in Latin American countries as a whole reach around 220 billion dollars a year, the equivalent of 4.4 percent of GDP in the region.
In this sense, institutions in Latin America have been losing prestige rapidly. A large majority of our collegiate bodies, congresses and assemblies are nothing more than transactional platforms where political favors are exchanged for private interests.
However, the so-called "social debt" is also a constant generator of frustration and popular dissatisfaction in the vast majority of Latin American countries. For example, it cannot be hidden that by now illiteracy reaches 32 million Latin Americans, according to Unesco data, and 39 million of our fellow citizens are hungry.
In the midst of these complex circumstances, an analysis is necessary not only philosophical or theoretical, but also practical and economic in relation to the obligations of the State with its citizens and regarding the model or structure that has generated greater well-being in the world. If Latin America wants to leave the vicious circle in which it finds itself, welfare policies such as subsidies must be abandoned, although difficult. Meritocracy must be the fuel that drives our progress.
Previous governments in countries such as Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Cuba and El Salvador have had as a premise a benefactor State, which aims to fill the gaps with economically unsustainable subsidies. The State must act as a guarantor that propitiates and guarantees maximum opportunities, since welfare policies are not sustainable in the long term and tend to break countries not only economically but also morally. How to explain to a whole generation that one must work and fight to get ahead? How to make young people understand today that not everything can be given for the simple matter that nothing is free? A society achieves development and prosperity to the extent that it has creative and entrepreneurial citizens who work and push their country on that path. Sitting down and waiting for a subsidy has not brought progress to any citizen nor has it enlarged any nation on earth.
Today's citizens have countless rights, advantages and opportunities that our ancestors did not have, but perhaps we have forgotten that we also have duties and that marches and demonstrations are not synonymous with vandalism: “Our democracy is self-destruct because it abuses its right to freedom and equality. Because it teaches its citizens to consider impertinence as a right, disrespect for laws as freedom, recklessness of words as equality and anarchy as happiness. ” Isocrates
Now, in this way, it is crucial to eliminate the gaps in terms of the opportunities presented in Latin America. However, there will be no real progress if we continue to focus on justifying ourselves in the State and believing that everything must be provided. Meritocracy and hard work must be the main public policy and the incentive that enlarges our region.
Our young people should value the difficulty and suspect the easy, find ways of demonstration outside the mediocrity of vandalism and transform our society through constructive leadership. They must mature. Become responsible adults and workers, who assume the consequences of their own decisions and who do not go to third parties, such as the State, to ask for protection from the cradle to the grave. Otherwise, we will be anchored in childish and complaining societies, which irresponsibly demand changing everything and now, like those denounced by the great contemporary philosopher Pascal Bruckner in his highly recommended essay "The Temptation of Innocence."
Post scriptum: “We wish badly. Instead of wanting a disturbing, complex and losing human relationship that stimulates our ability to fight and forces us to change, we want an idyll without shadows and without dangers, a nest of love and, therefore, ultimately, a return to the egg. Instead of wanting a society in which it is feasible and necessary to work hard to make our possibilities effective, we want a world of satisfaction, a monstrous cradle of passively received abundance. ” - Praise the difficulty, Estanislao Zuleta.