By Carolina Vásquez Araya on August 2, 2021
photo: Bill Hackwell
“Actions are loves and not good reasons”, as popular saying goes that fits us perfectly. If there is something that unites Latin American peoples, it is a past full of frustrations, social struggle, violence, repression and abuse. Also, of course, an enormous dose of hope that arises before and after each change in their governments and each social outburst provoked by their betrayals. The thread of history in all the countries of our continent presents similar coincidences, in a coming and going that prevents them from advancing steadily towards development. The colonial heritage has indelibly marked the destiny of our peoples by establishing the division by social, economic, ethnic and gender classes, as a brilliant and sordid strategy aimed at preserving the mechanisms of control with an iron fist. This has given rise to forms of life and thought imprinted in their culture as absolute truths and, even worse, as values worthy of observance. Among these supposed values, many of them originating from pulpits, are those aimed at subordinating women to patriarchal authority; at convincing the poorest strata of the superiority of the richest; at subjecting children and youth to adult authority, without any right to assume their own aspirations; and, at believing without hesitation in an absurd human right to destroy nature in order to accumulate wealth for the benefit of a few.
When the peoples decide to take control of their destiny and stop the abuses of power committed, without any obstacle, from the centers of power, then other actors intervene whose influence, from powerful countries and media giants, transform the discourse and manipulate the concepts, opening the way for repression and fear. This chicanery, so often repeated and so often successful, extinguishes the flame of rebellion and, victims more, victims less, throws increasingly powerless and impoverished peoples into silence and resignation. This recurrent scenario also represents an obstacle of enormous magnitude to make citizens a conscious and committed protagonist of their future.
Fed up with so much abuse, lacking for the most part the elements of judgment and, in some countries, the legal framework to exercise their right to participate freely in the election of ethical and competent authorities, the citizenry is confronted, time and again, with a powerful machinery managed from the shadows by small circles of power that prevent them from advancing. Hence, they only turn to the consolation of an elusive hope: the hope for a better future; the hope for a change in which they dare not participate; the hope that something miraculous will happen and the corrupt will stop in prison; the hope that the sky will open and lightning will fall on their heads… that hope… But, as the saying goes: “Deeds are loves and not good reasons”, those hopes need actions and those actions, without the will and the popular participation, will never become a reality. The Latin American peoples have lost a lot of space due to their progressive divorce with the exercise of politics. Disappointed, time and again, they have distanced themselves from something as essential to democracy as party organization, the only resource to guarantee their influence in the decisions that concern them. That is precisely why the power groups have cleverly dismantled them, well aware that in order to reign, it is necessary to divide. Democracy depends on citizen organization.
Source: www.carolinavasquezaraya.com, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English