Opinion Sur Joven

Although the first specimens of our species were born in Africa, this is the poorest and most neglected region in the world. Along with Latin America, it is the richest continent in terms of natural resources, and they’ve enabled Europe’s growth and development for centuries. However, most of their populations are immersed in poverty, another imaginary line, though it is much more real than the equator. Poverty is measured by cold numbers, but is suffered by the skin, the body, the bones. Poverty is humanity’s largest scourge, but it’s forgotten every day, manipulated in political speeches and, despite all this, never resolved. Meanwhile, on the other side of the equator, a ghost no one knows but everyone loves is falling down: Wall Street. “Wall” what? Wall Street, financial crisis, stock markets falling… Everyone’s talking about this. No one’s talking about what’s important.

When I was little, I would participate in Model UNs at school, simulations of the United Nations where hundreds of young students would take on roles as world leaders. A quite usual strategy in representatives’ speeches to attract the attention of the “international community” was to recite a tragic count: “One, two, three… a child has just died in Africa”. Those who were almost asleep would open their eyes and start paying attention; but, a few seconds later, everything would go back to normal. More speeches, more words… The same as in reality.

But, luckily, apart from being incredibly rich in nature and landscapes, now the southern hemisphere (as well as the northern one) is also more aware of this inequality and totally opposed to it. These people reject a system that never stops to think for a minute about its ecological sustainability and, let alone, about its “human cost”.

We are all different, but we are all the same

Sonia, who’s from Guatemala, represents the national network of Mayan youth organizations and knows very well what “being from the south” means. Her ancestors, the original inhabitants of Central America, suffered persecutions and exterminations by the Spanish conquerors. But that wasn’t the end for their bad luck: today, at the beginning of the 21st century, the Mayan communities are still affected by inequality and their rights aren’t respected. But Sonia’s optimism, as well as her people’s, can be immediately noticed; her colorful clothes let it be known.

When I ask her about the organization of her community, I’m surprised at their deep respect for their elders. They have an institution called “cofradía”: it’s a council formed by old men and women, who are mediators between the community and the national government. They organize the main celebrations and mostly give advice the community. She tells me their language is very important to them. Their culture is transmitted through their language, and that’s why an acknowledgement of their children’s right to receive bilingual education in 1996 was such a major breakthrough for them.

I’m also surprised when she tells me about their notion of the environment: “We have been taught to respect everything around us. Cutting down a tree means not only to cut it; a tree has life, gives us its fruits, gives us a shadow. Everything around us is important”. You could say it’s obvious, but there wouldn’t be so many problems in the world today if the pioneers of progress had understood (and if they understood today!) such an honest truth.

Sonia tells me about some of their main problems in Guatemala: “Poverty, high unemployment levels leading young people to get involved in gangs, crime… Them main victims are women and children”, she emphasizes. She works at an organization encouraging participation, especially among the women in her community. So I ask her how youth participation is going. The answer is evident and strongly meaningful: “Poverty makes it really difficult for us to participate; many times our children can’t access to basic education. The young people who are busy thinking what they’re going to eat tomorrow can’t even think about participating”.

I also had the chance to talk to Luis, from Ecuador, who organizes workshops to train young people for work. Through games and activities, they learn crafts that let young people enter the labor market; otherwise, they’d continue to be excluded from it. He’s happy about the achievements of the president of his country, Rafael Correa.

I shared my room with Lina, a cheerful Colombian who dances so much that seems to leave marks on the floor. She works at a municipal youth council (Consejo Municipal de la Juventud) at Envigado, Medellín. She presented a program that aims at creating awareness about citizenship among young people by screening Latin American movies on the streets. I was also lucky to meet Claudio, from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, a Workers’ Party (PT) activist who trains young people from shanty towns in Rio through journalism workshops for them to create their own newspaper.

I also met wonderful people from Africa, who made me admire even more that neglected corner of the Earth. They were Manuela and Massangano, from the Angola youth council. Their expressions turn sad as soon as they hear the word “war”. Their history has been hard, too hard. Angola went through a terrible civil war for 27 years, since 1975, when they gained independence from Portugal. Today they’re proud of the fact that their country was able to put an end to violence. They believe in their own development, in the strength of their people to move on. They tell me about the hard work they carried during the last elections: they walked door to door in the main cities, talking to people and bringing awareness to young people on the importance of voting. The result was very positive: “After 16 years without elections, a significant portion of the population voted”, they tell me full of proud.

I had the chance to exchange some ideas with Sona and Manuel, from the national youth council in Guinea-Bissau, a small country on the west coast of Africa. Manuel tells me about his vast experience in international cooperation. About international organizations, he says: “They impose their plans, their technicians know nothing about the reality of our country and they threaten us to withdraw their aid if we don’t do exactly what they tell us to do”, he says without concealing his anger.

The phrase “a war is never won, everybody loses” couldn’t be more meaningful when said by Salama (18). He spent more than half his life in a camp for Western Sahara refugees, located at the western end of the Sahara Desert. He tells us about the terrible situation of a pacific population that “has been forced to live outside its own lands for more than thirty years”. The land is almost entirely taken by Morocco, although the Moroccan sovereignty over those lands hasn’t been acknowledged by the United Nations.

These are only some of the people and the stories I got to know at the South-South Cooperation workshop I attended representing Argentina’s federal youth platform. After a week, I confirmed my initial hypothesis: the south of the planet shares a lot more than its geographic location. It’s a history of conquest and colonization, a past of underdevelopment that’s far from being accidental. The south also shares a deeply unfair and unequal present, where HIV/AIDS, poverty, hunger and the lack of education are common denominators.

These two continents have many differences as well: different development levels and different problems, different languages and cultures and different ethnicities.

Lost and found

One of our great losses, one of our many losses here at the south, has been losing ourselves: losing the opportunity to know the diversity and the richness of our own regions. We, Latin Americans, don’t know each other; old stupid rivalries continue to separate us even today. Africans are also far from being united and suffer strong internal conflicts. Not to mention that the two continents still don’t know each other. In globalization times, we all eat at McDonald’s, but how much do we know about Africa? We’re all glad Obama won the elections in the US, but do we know anything about the serious political situation in Zimbabwe? The reasons for these differences are almost obvious, and trying to explain them here is pointless.

But there is a point in starting to think the south. We must stop wearing our “Yankee- or French-colored glasses”. [1] We must start thinking about ourselves from our inner selves; we must know the realities of the countries in our subcontinent and those of the neglected Africa.

International cooperation can’t be seen as philanthropy, as a club of rich countries giving away a bit of their money for “charity” with the south. We must understand we can’t obtain development from an outside source.

Today everyone’s talking about “new ways of cooperation”. The south can cooperate with the south. Maybe not with large financial resources, but with technical resources obtained from our similar experiences and problems. We, people, particularly can and should cooperate with each other: these are the so-called “human resources”. In this sense, new technologies give us a chance we’ve never had in history.

We can breathe new air here at the south: stronger social organization, further popular participation, more politics. Let’s hope these southern winds blow strongly and reach a world that needs changes and hope more than ever.