Intercambio No. 10

EROSION OF THE RIGHTS OF YOUNG PEOPLE, criminalization of social protest in Latin America

INTRODUCTION

The seriousness of the dispossession of the social and political rights of the world’s peoples that accompanies neoliberal capitalism’s deepening economic crisis, requires an analysis of current trends. It is important to examine the experiences of resistance and construction of alternatives by social movements in the face of an alarming ascent of authoritarian regimes of a neo-fascist nature, such as that led by Donald Trump in the United States. As we will see throughout the pages of this issue of Intercambio, one of the sectors that in the last decade has especially suffered the criminalization of its struggles and the imposition of politics of exclusion and discrimination is youth. Those that find themselves in the education sector – students – but also young teachers, workers – employed and unemployed – Afro-Americans, Indigenous, migrants.

The persecutions, disappearances, imprisonment, threats, exile, and assassinations are not the acts of past military dictatorships. Even today students, teachers and other social sectors face risks for the simple act of demanding their rights, an extended reality in the current situation in the Americas. This issue of Intercambio focuses on the erosion of the rights of youth and the criminalization of social protest in the Americas.

The reader will find a regional overview of the erosion and violation of the rights of youth.

Year 8, No. 10, August 2017.