The young people have been the hope of societies since immemorial times but what is absolutely demonstrated is that our lack of prudency and our ignorance about what is impossible to achieve has constituted the force which made the world change throughout history. According to Victoria Dávila, if we want to know if politics are defined by generations, or generations by politics, we must make ourselves the oldest question of what came before, the chicken or the egg. But that irreverent force which inspired young people from all times to dream and to fight was the “capacity of indignation” in front of injustice. And that is currently the hope to consolidate democracy as a way of living for humans and socialism as a project to bring equality and social justice to humanity.
Almost 42 years ago, a protest poetry invaded Paris’ walls in order to recover the youth’s conscience. “The revolution is incredible because it is real” said one of the many graffities that appeared in May 1968. The most intense part of that experience consisted in that the young people were the protagonists of those events that started in Paris and then traveled to many cities around the world. It was the young people who gave up on everything for the peace in Vietnam and that weren’t afraid about confronting authoritarianism. It was the beginning of questioning the expired social systems of that period and the hippie movement was expanded to all the countries; the common point which characterized them consisted of young people who started to dream, demand their rights and fight for their causes. Margaret Thatcher, who never understood the socio-political and cultural moment, declared: “This is the result of denigrating the old values of discipline and moderation.” She and the world were too old to be compatible with young people charged with refreshing ideas.
Therefore, the question that comes to us is: What is our role in society? Young people’s role in society gets bigger and bigger with time but first of all we have to know that the conservative society conceptualizes us as unreliable people, and this stigmatization and prejudice has become so strong that a lot of young people think the same as the establishment. That is something that we have to avoid as a society in order to promote the participation of the young people. The Established Order wants to think for us, but we are not going to conform ourselves with that imposition. We are still touched in our deepest part that turns on rebelliousness, we still dream utopias, we still cry broken loves and we conserve the capacity of indignation. We are those who are fighting the most urgent battles of our time as the fight to preserve the environment and the care of animals. We, the young people with all our kinds of expressions, are permanently questioning the relations of power and making society think about their prejudices and fears.
Ecuador is a country of young people considering that 60% of the population is less than 28 years. Juan Montalvo, one of the greatest Ecuadorian writers said: “Unfortunate the nation where the young people are humble with the tyrant, where the young people don’t make the world tremble.” The Constituent Assembly approved the optional vote for teens between 16 an 17 years, and that is a great opportunity to show our own capacity and decision-making ability to built better days for our country. We can´t wait for other people to make the changes that we need and this is a good way to involve teenagers with Ecuador, our country. The teenagers in the Ecuadorian society are a diverse and dynamic group of people that express themselves in a lot of different ways. At this time, the young people are the most diverse group in the society, and some of their expressions are influenced by different factors such as music. We can have a lot of urban cultures that interact following gender postulates and principles that prevail in rock, punk, metal or hip-hop, for example. And those are ways of building democracy in the public space, demanding tolerance and understanding from society.
The Constitutional State of Rights and Justice born from the Montecristi Constitution implies the active participation of young people in the country’s democratic life and the inclusion of their issues and opinions in the agenda of public policies. Therefore the participation of young people in the public space is indispensable and the structures of power have to be opened to include this important sector of society as we are absolutely capable of giving valid solutions to the world and country’s problems. Ecuador has strengthened the spaces of participation for young people, our country has thinking and critical young people who have to be aware of their rights and obligations, and have to understand that there is not real freedom for citizens if they are not orientated to the public benefit and if they lack social responsibility.
Mario Benedetti, one of the most famous and progressive poets of Latin America, wrote: “What else can the young people do in this world of patience and disappointment? Just graffitis? Rock? Skepticism? Only not saying amen is left for them, as it is not letting anyone kill their love, recovering the speech and the utopia, being young without haste and with memory, placing themselves in a history that is theirs, not turning into premature seniors.” This is the mission of the young people in this complex moment of history.
