The siege of democracy in Latin America is not new

As part of the work of the XXXIII Latin American Congress of Sociology ALAS Mexico 2022. The (Re) Construction of the Social in Times of Pandemics and Post-pandemics: Critical Contributions from Latin American and Caribbean Social Sciences, Benjamín Arditi, professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences and Social Studies of UNAM, stated: the siege of democracy in Latin America is not new; historically there have been coups and authoritarianism.

At the table The labyrinth of Latin American democracies exposed that today these sieges are shown in phenomena such as corruption, patronage and patrimonial states; or in the role of populism. If it existed, “it would not necessarily be incompatible with democracy.”

He questioned whether it makes sense or is worth continuing to use the word populism. “The research problem we did about it was always wrong”; When writing or researching about the subject, the question must be reformulated, changing “what is it?” to “does it exist?” That will allow us to move away from the caricature of the “good town vs bad elite”, of the division in two of the political space and of the primacy of the leader.

In turn, the sociologist and academic from the Complutense University of Madrid, Marcos Roitman, pointed out that democracy has to do with factors such as social justice, with good, fair and enforced laws.

The Chilean-Spanish essayist considered that it does not consist in equality without difference, but in the articulation of subjects in whose difference we all recognize ourselves. It is a common space of proposals, of liberation, of construction of the historical horizon; Democracy and dignity go together. That is why “it is articulated as a basically anti-capitalist element.”

Democracy is a language that is articulated, it is difference; there no one thinks the same, there is no single thought. It is, fundamentally, a plural practice of control and exercise of power, from its duty to be, and that in capitalism is unfeasible, he reiterated.

Albert Noguera, an academic from the University of Valencia, was of the opinion that presenting capitalism and democracy as two antagonistic poles with nothing in between is a reductionist view of both, and implies ignoring the concept of democratic and revolutionary transition.

The Uruguayan sociologist, Gerónimo de Sierra, highlighted that in Colombia, there is an acceleration of the progress of President Gustavo Petro’s proposal, promoted by the people in the street, by the masses fighting, by the youth, the women, the indigenous people.

But his victory is a phenomenon that “coagulated” the entire right against: civil, military, oligarchic, financial, agrarian, so different movements are at stake with a future that we do not know what it will be. “The presence of a progressive government in that country has enormous significance, and important expectations are opened up in the region.”

In our countries, processes of popular involvement have been achieved, of voting for democratizing advances, and that opens up a stimulating horizon, but it must be clear that these are transition formulas to “more or less social” capitalisms, he said.

Spirituality

Giving the conference “Ayahuasca Rituals and their reinterpretation as a form of modern spirituality”, Jean Paul Sarrazin, academic from the Department of Sociology of the University of Antioquia, assured that there is a growing and globalized interest in shamanism and spirituality.

Shamanism, he specified, is beginning to be considered as a form of alternative medicine and a set of valuable knowledge related to a certain spirituality, in that country and in different latitudes of the world.

The foregoing is part of one of the advances in his research that he has carried out for more than two decades in the urban centers of Bogotá, Colombia.

“The concept of spirituality is not typical of late modernity or of a particular religiosity, the uses and meanings that are currently given to it are characteristic of this modernity, related to contemporary processes of deinstitutionalization and individualization of the religious fact”, he defined during the meeting.

Social networks

Another of the activities that were carried out was the talk “Interpretation frameworks in pro-life youth in socio-digital networks. Theoretical and empirical approaches”, in which the UNAM doctoral student in Political and Social Sciences, Erick Adrián Paz González, stressed that currently pro-life discourses are present in religion and politics, and invade social networks by directing a message against abortion, sexual diversity or communism.

The also doctoral candidate in Sociology from the Autonomous University of Barcelona recalled: “When the COVID-19 pandemic hit at the beginning of 2020, there was a wave of young people through Twitter and Facebook who exploited dating with hashtags to send messages at specific times to position topics of interest as trends. By 2021, people are beginning to gather virtually to share virtual messages, but also physically.”

The researcher studies this phenomenon from digital sociology, moral sociology and discourse analysis to explore the construction of these frameworks, their contexts, subjects, processes, materialization and transformation, for which he reviews how young pro-life leaders show increased of your activity.

Value your contributions

In her presentation “Scientific policy and inequality in the context of the pandemic”, Miriam de la Cruz Reyes, an academic from the Autonomous University of the State of Morelos (UAEM), referred: the health emergency made it clear that the relationship with nature is a social problem, and that the hierarchies between the disciplines are evident, since the Social Sciences have taken time to consolidate, but their contributions must be valued.

He noted that when conducting a study of different disciplines during the pandemic, together with his colleagues from the UAEM, he found that many professionals were confident that this situation would not last long, and forced them to leave a bubble to feel panic and fear. “They were not prepared in any way, they improvised their workplace at home, which was stressful and felt like a waste of time.”

In general, scientific production was difficult, especially in areas not linked to the health sector, which saw their research capacity reduced by 40 percent and concentrated on theoretical issues, he stated when participating from the Mérida National School of Higher Studies, from UNAM.

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