EL PAÍS offers the América Futura section openly for its daily and global informative contribution on sustainable development.
If you want to support our journalism, subscribe
here
.
Latin America is facing an "unprecedented storm" due to the intertwined crises it has experienced in recent years: the recovery from the pandemic is compounded by the effects of the war in Ukraine and those of climate change, a situation that, according to Sergio Díaz Granados, the president of CAF-Inter-American Development Bank, has aggravated the region's problems "such as low productivity, inequality or institutional weakness."
And, as if that were not enough, to this cocktail must be added the "progressive growth of a social crack" due to political polarization, social tensions, the consequences of the economic crisis and, in some cases, violence.
"The crack is everywhere and transcends fields and generations," Diaz Granados warned this Monday at the presentation ceremony of the event 'Many Voices, one region: Latin America and the Caribbean working on the 2030 agenda for sustainable development', organized by the multilateral that he leads and in the framework of the 77th General Assembly of the United Nations in New York.
Despite the gloomy prospects, optimism and the search for solutions have prevailed in the forum that is being held this Monday and Tuesday in the American city and in which politicians, high-level officials and members of civil society participate.
"Dialogue and the formulation of initiatives are the keys to closing this gap," CAF's president outlined at the start of the conference that seeks to promote a regional collective voice.
“In Latin America we have the potential, the talent, the ideas and the capacity for innovation”, he said in an idea that has been repeated in each of the four events on this first day.
"Latin America does not have a single voice and is not making itself felt in the world at this time when it should be making itself felt," said the former president of Colombia and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Juan Manuel Santos, in the "Dialogues for Peace" event, where two other Latin Americans distinguished with that recognition have also participated, the Argentine Adolfo Pérez Esquivel (1980) and the Guatemalan Rigoberta Menchú (1992).
For Santos, Latin America can come out of these crises stronger, but for that it needs dialogue and a unified voice.
In his opinion, one of the most serious problems in the region is polarization, which "prevents democracies from solving people's problems."
In front of her, the former Colombian president defends the importance of dialogue.
“What we Latin American and Caribbean people need is to sit down and talk about our challenges, our challenges and how we can solve the problems that we face and that have been accentuated, among other things, by the pandemic.”
Fernández: "We must work together again and demand an end to the blockades"
The president of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, has advocated in another of the forums for Latin American countries to unite again above ideologies after a stage in which organizations such as Unasur or Mercosur have dissolved or divided due to polarization.
“Now is a time of reunion.
As president pro tempore of CELAC [Community of Latin American and Caribbean States], I assure you that, above any division, there is a firm decision of Latin America and the Caribbean to join forces to face the future”, he stated in the talk with which the tenth anniversary of CAF as a permanent observer of the UN General Assembly has been celebrated.
Alberto Fernández this Monday at a CAF event in New York.
"We must work together again and demand an end to the blockades," Fernández added, in line with the position he defended last June before President Joe Biden at the Summit of the Americas held in Los Angeles, in which he criticized the exclusion of countries not ideologically related to the United States such as Cuba or Venezuela.
The Argentine president has also defended Latin America as a "region of peace" with the necessary resources to face the challenges.
“We are a source of food and a source of energy in a world that demands them to continue developing.
The secret is to see how we work together so that all of Latin America can grow and develop in equal conditions”, he said.
"We have to get involved in the solutions because missiles fly in the north, but hunger passes in the south."
Finally, Fernández pointed out an additional challenge: integration with the Caribbean nations and the need to support them in the face of "the tragedy" of climate change.
"The Caribbean, which has not been the cause of this crisis, is the one that suffers the most," he assured when mentioning the recent passage of Hurricane Fiona through Puerto Rico.
The search for a balance with nature and comprehensive development, taking diversity into account, was another point in common in all the discussions at the event.
"The peace that I support is dialogue, harmony, the search for well-being or the common good," said the Guatemalan Rigoberta Menchú in the conversation of the Latin American Nobel Peace Prize winners.
The Mayan Quiche human rights defender has recognized that Latin America believes that the solution to the region's problems lies in the inclusion of all voices.
“Comprehensive development goes through women, children, the community, leaders, social leaders, who day by day make life and education for life possible.
They are really dedicated not to survive, but to live fully with what they have and where they are, ”she has pointed out.
"For this reason, I highly value the system of ancestral cultures, of indigenous justice because it is the participation of different degrees of communities to resolve."
In this sense, Menchú has highlighted the role of midwives who in her country were in the front line of covid care in places in Guatemala where there was no other type of medical care.
“The work that people do in the communities is impressive,” she has said.
And he has advocated optimism to think about development: "The human being is greater than any obstacle."
Finally, the Argentine Adolfo Pérez Esquivel has made a defense of participatory democracy in which "peoples have legal, legal and institutional tools to be able to defend their rights" and for building coexistence in diversity and respecting the environment.
"The great wealth of mother earth, of nature, is society, not monocultures, not single thought," he pointed out.
And he has asked to reimagine the relationship between human beings and nature to end the dynamics of pollution and deforestation.
“One thing is development and another is exploitation.
This has to be changed,” she has said.
“We have to change the relationship of the human being with mother earth.
We are not the owners.
We are the sons and daughters.
Mother Earth always gives us answers.
We have to preserve it from the damage that human beings do.”