A profoundly immobile continent, where its inhabitants are trapped between sticky floors and ceilings with a perverse effect: it prevents the poor from climbing and the rich are saved from being poor. The Peruvian political scientist Alberto Vergara captures this theory of the damaged building in his latest editorial installment, Defrauded republics. Can Latin America escape its traffic jam? book that served as a starting point for one of the most popular events and that aroused the most expectations at the Hay Festival Arequipa 2023.
Added to Vergara’s academic outlook was the deep knowledge of the region of Jan Martínez Ahrens, director of EL PAÍS América, and also the mastery of the educational sector of the economist Jaime Saavedra, former Peruvian Minister of Education in two presidential terms. The table was moderated, with an extremely active participation in the discussion, by the journalist and linguist Patricia del Río, in the auditorium of the Bar Association of Arequipa, a city that vibrated for four days, with a hundred national and international guests.
The republican promise, says Vergara, is defrauded daily, regardless of the political colors of the government in power. The social outbreaks, the protest votes at the polls, and the unease revealed in the polls are the reflection of a great crisis of legitimacy where citizens see the possibility of taking charge of their lives frustrated. “People are aware of this absence of freedom. Neither your effort nor your talent allow you to save yourself from your design. Only 0.5% of those born in the poorest quintile will be able to move to the richest quintile. “Criminality is the mechanism of social advancement in contemporary Latin America,” explains Alberto Vergara.
Jan Martínez Ahrens, for his part, emphasized that political alternation has not guaranteed that the structural problems of Latinos will be resolved. “Governments change, elections are held, but citizens realize that problems are repeated. Alternation is a necessary condition, but insufficient. The citizen votes but has no influence once he has voted. That is the step that Latin America needs: a democratic effectiveness that it does not yet have,” he describes.
Education is a sensitive issue in much of the region, but especially in Peru, where only 50% of children who finish primary school understand what they read. In 2011, the percentage was worse: only 20%. Despite the reduction, the matter is still worrying. “Education allows us to be free. Without education you are going to do what you can, not what you want. We are in an extremely inequitable country, with teachers who do not have the minimum capabilities to give children fundamental skills such as reading comprehension. And without that competition they will not achieve others in their training process,” says Jaime Saavedra, who is a defender of a strong State that regulates the private sector.
The economist who led the educational reform in Peru, which has been trodden so many times in the halls of Congress, also referred to the hole that was produced during the pandemic by the government’s decision to close schools to supposedly avoid infections despite the fact that there was no evidence. “Latin America and South Asia had unacceptable school closures for two years. They are two years of adolescence or childhood in which school disappeared. It disappeared as an element of social cohesion,” adds the Minister of Education in the governments of Ollanta Humala and Pedro Pablo Kuczynski.
From his perspective, Jan Martínez Ahrens maintains that although there are constant policies that are repeated in the region, the ideals and interests are very different from one nation to another. The lack of a joint vision is, in their view, the crucial point. “In Europe there is a more powerful union of values than there is in Latin America despite the fact that several countries have different historical trajectories and speak different languages. The European Union embodies basic values of cooperation and solidarity. America is missing a goal. Something that creates traction and ensures that Latin American countries, which largely have common elements, can transcend their domestic problems. The United States could have done it, but the United States does not share values, it imposes them,” says the director of EL PAÍS América.
In the last part of the event, Alberto Vergara raised the alarm about Peruvian politics and its democratic deterioration. “If we are not aware of the process of dismantling that is happening in Peru of the mechanisms that allow civilized coexistence such as democracy and the rule of law, the more time passes to get involved, the more we will have to do. We cannot believe that democracy is an artifact that can survive outside the will of the citizens. An impoverished citizenry like ours. That is why commitment must be demanded from the elites,” he said.
The ninth edition of the Hay Festival in Arequipa registered 26,000 in-person attendees and 44,000 digital views to date. “Collective reflection on topics such as democracy, care of the ecosystem and new ways of living in cities through thought, literature and journalism, searching for new paradigms has been a very important part of this edition. It leaves us with a lot of material and energy to prepare for a tenth celebration,” Cristina Fuentes La Roche, international director of the Hay Festival, sums up optimistically.
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