CEPAL Review - Volume 1986, Issue 29, 1986

Of one thing we can be absolutely sure: the death of Dr. Prebisch will not mean that his ideas are forgotten or eclipsed They will not, of course, remain unscathed or permanently topical with the passage of time, but they will certainly constitute decisive testimony of the evolution of Latin America in the last half century. No-one reconstructing the region’s history will be able to ignore the constant flow of hypotheses and propositions that sprang from his endeavour to decipher the course of events and conceive solutions to our economic and social problems. For he belonged, without doubt, to those who set themselves the task of both interpreting and transforming the current world; his legacy spread out and took root in wide areas far beyond the academic or institutional spheres. Naturally, the enduring quality of his ideas will not imply absolution on the part of those who criticized them from right and left. Possibly the opposite will occur: their critical scrutiny will be heightened. But the truth is that this will be yet another testimony to their importance: to the fact that it is and will be very difficult to analyse this period without taking into consideration his main appraisals.

Mr. President, Mr. Executive Secretary, officers of the Session and participants in this Conference: Yesterday we listened to a memorable speech by the President of Mexico in which he referred in unequivocal terms to the need for a renovation of ECLAC’s thinking: a suggestion which is of course stimulating to those of us within ECLAC who are of the same mind.

The cycle of structural transformation and the intensive policies of modernization and social participation through education brought about a number of changes in social structures which worked to the benefit of the young generations.

The situation and prospects of young people have changed a great deal in Argentina in recent decades because economic growth has been meagre, political problems have become more acute and social mobility has decreased. Against this background, the author examines different factors in the reality of youth in Argentina, such as demographic evolution, regional inequalities, the special conditions of young women, the rote of the family in the socialization of young people, the positive and negative effects of educational expansion and participation in the world of work.

The author examines the situation of young people within the framework of the deep changes that have occurred in Brazil in recent decades. There are three aspects that interest her most. First, she addresses employment and, in this context, the evolution of employment and wages and the effect the crisis has on them. In this regard, the most outstanding observation is that the urban economically active population has become younger since the 1970s as a result of the increased rate of young people’s participation, contrary to conventional assumptions that modernization will have the opposite effect. Second, she examines education and stresses that educational levels in Brazil are lagging well behind the observed economic progress. In fact, the proportion of young people with no instruction or only a few years of schooling is very large, particularly in rural or relatively less-developed areas, such as the North-East. Finally, she deals with the family, which has been greatly affected by changes in other spheres of society, and with young people’s relations with their families, which has given rise to a complex interplay of solidarity and conflict.

The exhaustion of the modernization rood el, the acute crisis affecting the family and the shortcomings of political and educational institutions place Colombian young people in a state of isolation characterized, in the author’s view, by few opportunities of political participation, a future of unemployment or underemployment, poor-quality education which inspires no enthusiasm and guarantees neither employment or social mobility, and a society without a clear model of a future with a place in it for young people. Young people are also faced with a chaos of values generated not only by the very rapid succession of three social situations (rural society, modern society and model-less society) but also by the emergence of forms of organization connected with that succession, such as the black economy, the economic organization of drug-traffiking or dependence on drugs, corruption in the world of finance and administration, and the consumerist visions offered by the mass communication media.

Young people in Chile have seen a sharp increase in their participation and their chances of involvement in the social roles shaped during the postwar period of expansion. The rapid urbanization, the great expansion of education systems, the extension of the political rights of citizenship, and the growing absorption of skilled and unskilled manpower by the modern production and services sectors were some of the factors which mobilized young people and turned them into some of the most committed agents of development and modernization; since development and modernization were also the axes of consensus among almost all the social and political protagonists, youth became, almost inadvertently, one of the central agents in the system. One of the most graphic instances of this was the remarkable political and cultural influence exercised by the student movements towards the end of the 1960s.

Over the past 25 years Peru has undergone a substantia] change in its social structure which has stimulated the political radicalization of the working classes and of their young people in particular.

The crisis unleashed in 1981 has had a considerable effect on the work situation of young people and has exacerbated factors which had emerged before that time. The first discernible consequence is that young people are pushed towards the work market and this increases their participation rates. This widespread phenomenon is of great importance even in the case of women, who disregard traditional discriminatory obstacles and seek jobs. However, the supply of jobs has not met expectations, and there has been a sizeable rise in youth unemployment, in particular among first-time job seekers. The number of students also increases, because it is assumed that formal education remains an important asset in the search for work; similarly, there is an increase in the proportion of students trying to find work.

In addition to the works of a more specialized kind which ELAC’s Social Development Division has produced in connection with International Youth Year, there are others which examine the reality of youth from a global standpoint. One such is this article, in which the author, a distinguished Uruguayan intellectual who died recently, puts together some thoughts which reveal certain hidden facets of that reality. The sections presented here are only a few parts of a larger work and may be seen as a modest tribute to his memory.

The authors set themselves the difficult task of presenting some ideas to facilitate an understanding of the immense variety of typical forms of youth behaviour in Latin America in recent decades. Their first approach is to indicate two historical points characterized by a prevalence of different social models —comprehensive modernization and technocratic growth— within which different kinds of youth behaviour manifest themselves.

In this article the author depicts in general terms the main directions taken by youth social movements in the history of Latin America in this century. He begins by sketching in the student, military and political movements in and around the 1920s, when youth played a leading role, in university reform for example, together with some of the main doctrines, such as anti-oligarchism, Latin Americanism and the concepts of people and nation.

In the last years of the 1960s it was common practice for students of social conditions in Latin America to present university youth as one of the key agents in the processes of change. The story of its demands and the results of its actions since the Côrdoba movement form a very important element in the region’s socio-political history. However, the systematic study of the condition of the university student movement has not been brought up to date and its role in the processes of change in the region is one of the least known areas of social analysis. And this is why at the present time, given the dizzying transformation of socio-economic and political structures which the region has undergone, it maybe wondered to what extent such a capacity and potential exist.