The Successor
From an early age my life has been marked by rupture. When I was five, my father, José Antequera Antequera, was assassinated. My parents were young activists in the Unión Patriótica (UP) party of Colombia. Formed by some of the leaders of the Colombian Communist party, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and political … Read more
The Explorer
As a young elementary school student in Istanbul, back in the 1970s, I lived in a non-virtual, non-Web and non-social-media world. I don’t remember seeing a computer until Stanley Kubrick’s movie 2001. I thought computers talked like HAL 9000 (“I’m sorry, Tarkan. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”) until I saw the then-hip Commodore 64K … Read more
The Networkers
Sometimes we feel a twinge of envy when we hear our parents’ romantic stories about protesting the Vietnam War or fighting for social justice and civil rights, but those stories usually end by comparing their idealism with our generation’s supposed individualism, self-absorption and apathy. That’s not only unfair but untrue. We are neither less energetic … Read more
The Meritocrat
Our generation’s unprecedented access to information and knowledge gives us a perspective on Latin American reality that generations before us were not privileged to have. But it also gives us special responsibility. We can no longer ignore the sad common denominator of all our countries: inequality. That does not just mean inequality in the distribution … Read more
The Outside Majority
Editors Note Haiti is a young country. Our population has more than doubled in the three decades between 1962 and 2004 to 10 million. Sixty-five percent of Haitians are under 25, and 40 percent are younger than 15 years old. Only 10 percent are over 40. Young people clearly represent our country’s richest source of … Read more
The Politically Disenchanted
In 1983 a new era of political participation and popular expectations began in Argentina. The “Alfonsín Spring”—a reference to Raúl Alfonsín, the first democratically-elected president after the transition from military rule—was for many Argentines a belle epoch of political and social activity and enthusiasm. It seemed a rebirth, an age of hope in which we … Read more
The Coalition Builders
We are political opponents, each of us from parties with a long history of hostility in Argentina. But we have come to realize that the struggle between the Partido Justicialista (PJ) and the Unión Cívica Radical (UCR), like past struggles between radicals and conservatives or Peronistas and Anti-Peronistas, has hindered our country’s ability to draft … Read more
The Green Activist
We are the first truly global generation. Not only are we linked together by the transformation of communications technology and the globalization of the economy, today we’re also bound by a growing consciousness about the threat to our environment posed by climate change. We now realize that we are approaching the limits of the biosphere. … Read more
The Restitution Seeker
My mother taught me to recite poetry at the age of three to help me deal with the racism she knew I would face in school. She migrated to Lima at the age of 15 from Puquiosanto, a town located on a delta where the Matagente River meets the ocean and forms an unruly lagoon. … Read more
The Crusading Reporter
I don’t know what it’s like to live in a country at peace. When I was born in the 1980s, the conflict that now plagues Colombia had been going on for more than three decades. Ever since I can remember, peace has been used to express the dreams, proposals and desires of a generation that … Read more
The Municipal Reformers
In a sunny afternoon last November, we went up into Barrio Unión de Petare, in the municipality of Sucre in Caracas, to inaugurate a community clinic and to celebrate Carlos Ocariz´s first year as mayor of Sucre. Walking confidently through the narrow streets to the sound of drums and trumpets pounding out a samba was … Read more
The Debaters
“I bet there where people walking around in the Bible complaining about kids today,” gripes Roger Sterling, an advertising executive in the popular U.S. TV series, “Mad Men.” It was a rare moment of truth-telling from one of the show’s most pompous, chauvinistic characters. Young people in the United States are indeed often spoiled, disengaged … Read more
The Returned Exile
When I was 12, I escaped the horrors of war in my country, Nicaragua, by illegally emigrating to the United States. I was not alone. Between 1981 and 1990 more than 1 million Central Americans sought political refuge in the United States from the civil wars and violence that plagued Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala. … Read more
The Rookie
I never planned on being a Member of Parliament (MP). If you told me two years ago that I would be sitting in Canada’s House of Commons, I would have laughed myself silly. I have always been interested in working toward social, economic and environmental justice. I was doing this work in a community legal … Read more
The New Institutionalists
When we first met, we knew we would end up working together. We had much in common, coming from peripheral regions in our countries—San Luis, Argentina (Matías), and Rancagua, Chile (Eduardo)—and from modest backgrounds, but with the opporunity to live and study in different countries. Most important, as fellow master’s students at Sciences Po University … Read more
