opinion

Pardon us
by Raúl Leis R. --- raulleisr@hotmail.com

A few days ago in a conversation with high school students, on behalf all adults, I asked for forgiveness for the legacy that is being left behind. I further told them that world tragedies, global warming, shortages of food and energy as well as inequality and poverty are challenges that are difficult to confront and that future and current generations should bring about hope and commitment to build paradigms such as the one proposed the Egyptian economist Samir Amin, in which the reconstruction of the world is imperative. A world that is better, just, multi-polar and democratic is the only alternative to the current crisis.

To accomplish this we must avoid placing the weight of this crisis on nations by weakening social policies, especially education and health; and lowering the value of export products while increasing imports. On the contrary, the situation should invite us to “a renaissance of popular democratic, self-centered national development that will restructure relations with the North, based on national control of monetary and financial markets as well as modern technologies;” as well as the recovery of the use of national resources. This should lead us to overcome globalization dominated by corporate oligarchies (the WTO) and of military control of the planet by some superpowers.

On the table there is also the topic of agriculture, which in a dignified scheme of development should mean strategic polices based on guaranteed access to land for all farmers and food security. The current tendency to accelerate privatization and to make the agricultural land into a commodity has as a result a massive rural exodus and migration that impacts urban areas that do not have the capacity to absorb this rural work force.

Regional integration is another necessary option in support of the growth of new areas of development which will strengthen unity and interaction among cities, nations and societies.

It is necessary to invigorate citizens' organization to overcome the fragmentation that results from informality, unemployment and underemployment. It unavoidably germinates the theory and practice of democracy that's not only electoral, but also associated with social progress, ethics and respect for popular sovereignty.

It is imperative to get rid of the “liberal virus based on the myth of the individual, which has already passed into history,” and its ways of life filled with alienation, political patronage, consumerism and environmental destruction. Young people of today: if we want it, we can do it, because another world is possible.