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(Credit: Wagner Meier / Getty Images)
Editor's Note:
Roberto Izurieta is Director of Latin American Projects at George Washington University.
He has worked in political campaigns in several Latin American countries and Spain, and was an advisor to Presidents Alejandro Toledo, of Peru;
Vicente Fox, from Mexico, and Álvaro Colom, from Guatemala.
The author is also a contributor to CNN en Español.
The opinions expressed here are solely his.
(CNN Spanish) -
“Happy 2023”, a good friend told me. "I don't think 2022 will be that bad," I replied, "I think it will be good from March on." So, as this is an opinion column, I can openly say that I think the new year will only start in March. So I don't think this column is out of date.
When this pandemic began, almost two years ago, between taking an appointment for the test and the result, more than a week passed. As Bill Gates laments, it was almost like receiving a note of condolences. There wasn't much else to do but wait. In those first months there were confinement orders in the house and going for a walk was prohibited because many thought that we would be infected at the first contact with the air. The mind could not be scattered, and good mental health is also another victim of this pandemic. Today we have vaccines, medicines, but above all much better information about what we can do and what we should not do.
2021 began with the violent acts of attempting to reverse the results of a democratic election - one of the worst scars in US history. After Joe Biden took office, things began to look up. There was a different air where we did not wake up attentive and surprised by what was said publicly the day before. Political news was no longer the order of the day for everyone. Vaccines began to be administered en masse and the economy began to activate strongly. Then came the delta variant, supply chain disruption, inflation, and now omicron. Last year started badly and ended badly.
Although difficult weeks are undoubtedly ahead, it feels more caution than fear and that is very good.
The fear comes from not knowing how to face a threat: now we know how and not only the Government knows it, but the majority of the citizens.
Without your proactive commitment, this would be much more serious.
Nor would we be here if we had all done what we should do: but the reality is that this ideal society has never existed, that is why we call it utopia.
Health, safety and family finances are always and everywhere the three main reasons for well-being (now also, although late, the environment).
The world tends to be more unstable and insecure, but we are left with the hope that each year we have survived new challenges.
The economic recovery is one of the best news that 2021 leaves us and we expect it to grow even more in 2022. I think, as the experts have said, that the note for 2022 will be that of an endemic and not a pandemic.
Jobs, the stock market, economic growth is very good news.
It remains to be seen if in 2022 we can control inflation;
because again, what matters most is the family finances.
This is the safest airline in the world by 2022
In politics (you could not miss writing about politics in a political column), this year there will be midterm elections in the US and presidential elections in Colombia. Beyond political preferences, I aspire that polarization, manipulation of public health and obscure management of public affairs are not rewarded. We want peace and we need management skills to move from improvisation to professionalization, also in politics, as Lara Brown tells us in her book "Amateur Hour: Presidential Character and The Question of Leadership."
In Ecuador there is a tradition of burning the old year on December 31 (now restricted precisely for public health reasons);
Well then, 2021 deserves to be burned, although with less desire than 2020 was. It deserves to be burned, as in that tradition, to make this testament to the year that it suffers and to be able to jump on its ashes to celebrate that a new year is beginning, that It will have its challenges, especially in these first two months, but let's still celebrate the new this year, which will most likely begin in March.
The will of 2021
Another year to burn,
Another year we would like to forget,
With or without a pandemic,
Thanks to vaccines we were sometimes able to hug.
2021 that is going,
and as is customary for almost two years,
you have to know how to honor the staff in white,
That, in this new wave of infected,
they cannot take a step back.
We Latinos of storms and hurricanes,
With an economy that fluctuates between inflation and unemployment,
hopefully our desire,
It is always to get out of this situation of despair first.
We were already hoping to be ready to decide,
a better judgment when choosing,
Fantoches and braggarts we no longer want in the future,
of this Latin America that only wants to survive,
the misery of some who do not allow us to progress.
I burn this testament of the year 2021,
but with less anger than I burned in 2020,
that was not so good,
not without first giving an oath,
that things at some point,
I thought that they were not going to be of such regret;
help me to appreciate better,
to my family, to my work and health.
Long live the vaccines and the vaccinated,
We owe it to those who didn't make it,
And what an omicron, it's just a hangover.
Hopefully but more cautious
I submit my wishes to a new school,
where I learned to look at everything with expectation,
because I already survived two years of pandemic,
and that 2022, let us live much longer.
New Year
