Fire in your veins...
There were five thousand of us. Young people from Uruguay, Argentina,
Brazil, Chile and Paraguay. We had assembled in Colonia (Uruguay) to bring into life the first South Cone Meeting for Human Rights and
Against Repression. A five-day youth camp. With all kinds of people.
With piercing moments, and light moments. Everything was permitted.
that subversiveness must be shared.
The meeting denounced the lack of space for young people in societies dominated by savage capitalism, and "adult" interests. Colonia was a place we had build ourselves. A place for moulding our distinct experiences. A few days (only) of "liberated territory."
Including debates and proposals for our political, social and economic problems, and for standing up against the neo-liberal offensive. The youth of the Cono Sur (South Cone) of Latin America are beginning to make ourselves heard Alejandra Ferrari Montevideo THE CAMP SLOGAN WAS "WHEN YOUR VEINS are on fire, history changes" (Cuando las venas arden cambia la historia). For five days, five thousand young people camped together, and shared their debates, recitals, theatre presentations, exhibitions, and concerts. Five days of cohabitation of a variety of currents of thinking, and a range of forms of resistance to neo-liberalism. For the campsite owner we were "the dregs of the city." For one right-wing newspaper, we were "violent elements." But the striking thing about violence was its absence from the camp. No police. No vigilantes.
Preparation for this unprecedented meeting started in October 1995, through the Youth Co-ordination for Human Rights and Against Repression, which unites about 50 neighbourhood, cultural, human rights and youth groups, alternative radio stations, a women's group, and groups on repression, racism, and transvestites' rights.
Every evening saw cultural activities to meet all tastes: video, theatre, sculpture, poetry. And every night there was a recital in the central forum of the camp.
The infrastructure of our little village included a shop, with basic necessities at cost price, a bar, showers, bathtubs, a drinkingwater truck, firewood, lights, and first aid. As well as everything needed to run the various workshops. Some groups also organised communal cooking, to feed the poorest participants.
A special alternative FM station, Radio
Cortapalo, broadcast information about the meeting, with an "open microphone" where any participant could come and say whatever they wanted. The only limits were a ban on censorship and intolerance.
The workshops were the real political axis of the meeting. These small, open air meetings lasted from two to six hours (depending on the time available, the light of the moon, and the level of animation of the participants). Over 1,100 people participated actively in these workshops. Themes included personal security in the city, art, social ecology, racism, police and institutional repression, work and unempl oyment, sport and recreation, education, self-expression, legalising abortion, drugs, squatting and land occupation, marginalised social sectors, transvestites, mass media, nonviolent direct action, human rights in Chile, political prisoners in Argentina, and, last but not least, Chiapas. Beginning to change history...
Colonia was the meeting place for the diversity of the late 20th century. It demonstrated the need to unite, to exchange experiences, and the need for plurality. It showed
Liberated from the hypocritical tyranny of the dominant ideology, and the institutions individual and the which repress the collective.
media, dis-
Some mass information specialists, overnight political scientists, described Colonia as "the new fruit of the old militants." Others called us "tribes in the mist."
Gustavo Leal, a former MLN-
Tupamaros militant, now a wise old sociologist, defined the meetings as "a movement without roots in society." A movement so heterogeneous, he assured readers of the weekly newspaper Brecha (12 April), that it could never construct an alternative.
None of these experts went beyond the superficial appearance of the event. None tried to understand the deep mutations which are affecting young people in Uruguay and across Latin America.
We are witness to new forms of self-expression. To new discussions, and to a multi-
International Viewpoint 17
SullicieTIte 1I0600 tude of new demands and expec tations. Many of these were formerly taboo among militants of social and political movements. We see new ways of organising ourselves. Young Latin Americans in the late 1990s carry within them the weight of authoritarian governments, and the confusion of the decomposition of the political, ideological and strategic paradigms of the radical current in society. We saw the Berlin wall fall. And now we seek an identity of our own, which will allow us to unite in our diversity, and which will give us an image of point of the new counter-culture, a new movement of protest, of denunciation of the hegemonic bourgeois project.
cos alter, This
A new condemnation of the consumer society. This was an In Colonia, a reactive utopia encountered a place where it could manifest itself, express itself and organise itself, at least at an embryonic level. The. key is in the synthesis of our heterogeneity, in a collective, free and conscious process, refusing fragmentation and individualism, and refusing to reject fraternity and solidarity. Colonia introduced elements of doubt into a number of brains made rigid by old schemas. Colonia is not the end. The resistance continues. And the continuity will legitimise our day-to-day struggle. Young people have become a "subject, rather than just an "object" for the system.
One week after the Colonia meeting, Uruguay's government announced that youth was a policy priority. Meanwhile, the repressive state apparatus has invested $US 2 million to increase its patrols in the streets of Montevideo, in the name of the struggle comes from the government's counterreform of social security and the education system. The classic double discourse.
The only effective way to fight back is to organise the resistance. To shout out, with more, new voices, that we reject the neoliberal imperatives. Colonia demonstrates that history is not over. Far from it. History has just begun to change again. * The author can be contacted via the PST (Uruguay Section of the Fourth International) at fax (598 2) 481062. Full details about participation in next year's event will be published in International Viewpoint. Participants: Argentina: FORA, Desde Abajo, MAS, MST, PTS, CORREPI, Frente Grande, HIJOS, EATIP, Asentamiento Agustin Ramirez. Brazil: Movimiento Sim Terra, Geledes. Chile: Comite 119, Colectivo Oveja Negra from Bolivar University, Estudiantes Tradando de Hacer Algo, Motor Rebelde Estudiantil, and the Chancleteando women's group. Paraguay: Radio Trinidad FM. Greetings: PRT (Mexico) and youth organisations of the Fourth International: RSB (Germany), JGS/JW (Belgium), SAP (Denmark), Rebel (Zaragoza, Spanish state), JCR-RED (France), Liberation ourselves.
Most young people do not consider that any existing politicians represent them. Nor do they identify with those organisations
Rebellion 1996 which proclaim themselves to be the popular vanguard.
13th European Youth Camp, Amarante, Portugal, 20-27 July
Experimenting with time, we can open new doors, revealing new paths which lead against the grain in this society, which ex-
The Portuguese Revolutionary Socialist Party (PSR) will host cludes so many and incorporates so few. This an International Socialist Youth Camp in Amarante, from is what we started to do in Colonia. Together.
In a pluralistic framework which makes
This is the 13th annual camp prepared in common by the space both for the youth sectors of the political and social avant-garde, and for those
European youth organisations of the Fourth sectors which express themselves mainly
International. Over 1,000 participants are through the alternative musical, art and media cultures, or who live their sexual identity as a rebellion.
Organised young women were part of the
Colonia event from the very beginning. The
Teindira group (young women from the Uruguayan section of the Fourth International co-ordinated the workshop on legalisation of abortion. Other visible sectors included the racial minorities, marginalised social groups, lesbians, gay men, transvestites, students, the unemployed, the "rough" segment of football supporters, squatters, land occupiers, and artists. In short, all those who are usually treated as "second class citizens," in the rural and the urban environment.
In Colonia we began to absorb the concerns of the marginalised. This is the starting
18 International Viewpoint against juvenile delinquency. The money
20-27 July this summer.
expected.
Themes include
• Fortress Europe
• Ecology
• Why be a young feminist?
• Mass media
• Chiapas
• Kurdistan
If you want to participate, hurry up!
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