- YOUNG PEOPLE IMPROVING DEMOCRACY

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.

ADOLESCENCE IN THE ECUADORIAN SOCIETY

By Miguel Molina Díaz

Ecuador is a youth country considering that 60% of the population is under 28 years. The adolescents in the Ecuadorian society are a diverse group of people that express themselves in a lot of different ways. Depending on the social status, education opportunities, familiar formation and the location where they live, teenagers’ personality and characters can vary a lot. The social status can determine the way of thinking of a teen, for example we can find young people that are only interested in consuming and others that want to preserve the ecosystem. Education is an important factor because in our country a lot of children and teens don´t have access to this basic right as a consequence of poverty, so many of them mature early, being exposed to risky behaviors that include the use of drugs among many other dangers. Every factor is related to each other. If we talk about familiar formation we can assume that not all the families in Ecuador are functional, which means that a lot of teenagers grow in atmospheres that include violence, the use of alcohol and the lack of a father figure. Some adolescents grow without their parents because of migration. According to statistics, the location is a factor that has a great influence in the situation of a teenager because the reality of rural zones and urban zones are not the same.

Of course, the above mentioned factors are not necessarily definitive, but they give us an idea of how teenagers develop in society. At this time, the young people are the most diverse group in the society, and some of their expressions are influenced by factors as music. In Quito alone, we can have a lot of urban cultures that interact following gender postulates and principles that prevail in rock, punk or metal. In the last years a group of teenagers denominated EMOS appeared, whose name relates to the word emotion. They wear a very original fashion using shadow colors and a strange hair style. This group of people thinks that the way in which they can give sense to their lives is through suffering and pain, for that reason they have a big opposition in the society. There is another group called skin-heads that are a group of young people influenced by Nazis ideas and believe in the social cleansing, so they use violence and abuse to show the supremacy of their race. These two groups are part of a minority but the majority of the adolescents in Ecuador are good people who dream as any person.

In my opinion the role of teenagers in society gets bigger and bigger with time because we assume bigger responsibilities in a society that each day is more difficult to us in a lot of aspects. We are in the middle of a lot of danger as the AIDS infection, and we are the only ones that can take care about our own lives. The Constitutional Assembly approved the optional vote for teens between 16 an 17 years, and that is for me an 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. Something important to mention is that the conservative Ecuadorian society conceptualizes the teens as unreliable people, and this stigmatization and prejudice became so strong that a lot of adolescents think the same as the establishment. That is something that we have to avoid as a society in order to promote the participation of adolescents.

miguelmolinad@gmail.com