Socialism in Latin America, the opportunity for the challenges.

Socialism in Latin America, the opportunity for the challenges.
* by Daniel Manouchehri Lobos, vicepresident of International Union of socialist Youth (IUSY)

“They may subdue us, but the social processes do not stop”. Salvador Allende Gossens.

The people prefer each day to the democratic left than to the conservative forces (party). We are winning them in the urns, but most importantly, we are defeating them in the field of ideas.


Proofs of that the thing has been done well, are the tremendous popular supports obtained in the elections of recent years by Vazquez in Uruguay, Lula in Brazil, Torrijos in Panama, Ortega in Nicaragua, Morales in Bolivia, Garcia in Peru and Bachelet in Chile.


We are winning to the right party in the idea’s area. The people, and specially the young people, believe most everyday in the ideas of freedom, equality and fraternity (someday considered heretics) that have inspired generations of socialist democratics. Today the Latin Americans share and make our principles and ideas part of themselves.

The right parties has been forced to incorporate into their vocabulary words like distribution of the revenue, democracy, freedom, sustainable development, parity, justice and equality of opportunities. In Latin America, the people that is able to defend the ideas, that a few years ago, were the flags of fight of the conservatism as censorship, the repression, the violations to the human rights and the injustices are taken as crazy people. The value of the democracy and what it carries is part of the DNA of a generation of millions of young people that grew up without guns, without curfews, without dictators, and with the deeper conviction that another world is possible.

But this doesn’t make any sense without social transformations. The people are convinced that these social transformations are necessary. Now, is just left make them.

It is urgent to change into Latin America the unfair social security systems, for another according to the new times, which allow the state to deliver a real security for whom today facing unforeseen as an illness or unemployment, see how theirs life collapse.

It is commanding to be capable to give equality in education, being sure to give the preschool education for all the children, school and highschools with excellent level, and university and colleges that assure coverage and quality for all those young with talent. Everything should be given under the principles of a secular, public and free education in our countries.
It is urgent to make in our countries social pacts between workers, government and business-mans to provide security and dignity for those who works, and by this way, get happy workers that generate growth in their countries.

In the political context, we need solid and big parties, which allow building big national majorities for the change. It is necessary to deliver more power to the participation of the citizenship and simultaneously to realize reform to our old States, to modernize the public system, and by this way, fight against the corruption that threatens the democratic stability. But the discussion about the modernization of States does not happen only through the bureaucracy’s structures. Reagan, ex-president of the USA said that: “the State is part of the problem, and not of the solution”. To say it today is madness. We need strong, big and financed States.

For all these reforms, it is important to start now speaking about reform of the tax structures in our continent. We cannot pretend to have social rights like a Scandinavian country with taxes like of a country sub-Saharan Africa.

The challenge of the progressive forces is about if we are capable to make that the gentleman who sells newspapers on the corner, our grandparents or our classmates in the university, would see like their lives can change through the democratic socialism. In the year 2007, the poor people in Latin America were reaching 194 millions, which 71 million were indigent. People claim solutions here and now. Extreme poverty and underdevelopment on our continent cannot wait more.

We are going for the right way; it is prove for what our governments made in social issues. Little by little, we are winning the battle against the dark side of the force, but only battles. The war will be won as soon as we could live in a land truly egalitarian, libertarian and fraternal. For that we need to be much more intelligent, to be bolder and more courageous.

The challenge is huge. The dispute is enormous. The tasks seems to be many and urgency to make them higher. Allende 35 years ago, said from La Moneda in flames “The history is our, and it is make by the people” In the centenary of Allende, the socialist youth of America and the world must be able to be architects and workers of this great challenge. This generation of young socialists has a historic responsibility to be the catalyst for these reforms and carrying the dreams of millions. That is what we are calling for to all the hundreds of millions of Latinos young.

It is said that history had finished with the fall of the Berlin Wall. In Latin America it is just the beginning.