2020 will be a year of birth pains
2020 Febrero Nicaragua
Nicaragua is trying to break through the shell of its old political and social history to make way for a new one, but such a birth necessarily involves...
How did adults view April’s rebellious youth?
2019 Marzo Nicaragua
Five university youth organizations made up the heart and muscle of last April’s revolt. Their debut on the nation’s political stage took analysts by...
Thoughts and emotions behind the April insurrection
2018 Noviembre Nicaragua
The April 2018 uprising was not, as has been said about the fall of the Bastille, “a clap of thunder in a serene sky.” The political protests against...
“Together we’re a volcano... but we had forgotten it”
2018 Octubre Nicaragua
If someone had told me six months ago that young Nicaraguans would be leading a citizens’ insurrection against Daniel Ortega’s tyranny today, I would...
Seven priorities for achieving quality education
2017 Marzo Nicaragua
In 2006 a group of education professionals formulated a public proposal we called “Seven priorities of Nicaraguan education.” Our objective was to put...
“We must remove the tattoo from this country’s soul”
2014 Septiembre El Salvador
The social work done by religious workers who belong to Servicio Social Pasionista SSPAS, a nonprofit civil society peace organization of the Corporación...
My questions about July 19 on the 35th anniversary of the revolution
2014 Julio Nicaragua
A new July 19 celebration. A few days earlier I sought out some young men and women from the Sandinista Youth organization, many of whom are my age...
The ROOF Project: Not just a fad
2014 Marzo Nicaragua
There’s a lot of talk in Nicaragua about the demographic dividend. Knowledgeable pro- fessionals explain that “we’re reducing the birth rate and increasing...
Our country needs a truce, and not just with gangs
2013 Julio Honduras
Four years after the coup that overthrew President Mel Zalaya, Honduras has more red alerts than ever. While the government tries to deny that we are...
The revenge against the #IAm132 Movement
2013 Enero México
At the end of 2012 a book came out on the #IAm132 Movement with 97 testimonies, all of which expressed the hope that Mexico can change. As part of the...
Young people who want to transform the country
2012 Diciembre El Salvador
A national youth movement rooted in the grassroots sectors and able to spark the active participation of young people in the struggle to resolve their...
#IAm132: A symbol of outrage and resistance
2012 Octubre México
The propaganda coming out of Mexico’s 2012 presidential campaign presented Enrique Peña Nieto, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) candidate,...
Memories of a scholarship generation
2012 Junio Nicaragua
Many young people left Nicaragua in the eighties with grants to study in countries that were part of the Socialist Bloc. The majority of them went to...
The Family Code bill, as it stands, is interventionist, conservative and neoliberal
2012 Junio Nicaragua
I’m going to speak to you as a feminist, although I run the risk that some will think that means I hate men. We’re often told that feminism is the other...
The quality of public education is endangering the country’s future
2012 Marzo Nicaragua
I want to reflect on the public education the State is offering the majority of the population, financed with the public money contributed by Nicaraguan...
What education priorities should this or the next government have?
2011 Septiembre Nicaragua
I want to begin by acknowledging that despite the continuing precariousness of Nicaraguan public education and the fact that education can only be planned...
Memories of the betrayed generation
2011 Septiembre Nicaragua
An extensive group of Nicaraguan adults survived the ten-year civil war that pitted members of the Sandinista Popular Army (EPS), including guys just...
How do the youth of this generation feel, think and see themselves?
2011 Julio Nicaragua
The Research Center for Communication (CINCO), where I work, has developed a line of research on national actors we identify as most relevant to social...
Memories of a lost generation
2011 Julio Nicaragua
July marks the 32nd anniversary of the initiation of the Popular Sandinista Revolution, which inspired so many of our parents, committing them to a common...
Without structural changes there’ll be no sustainable reduction of rural poverty
2011 Mayo Nicaragua
Nicaragua proudly claims its identity as an agricultural country and boasts its exports of coffee, cheese and beans. But if we observe the public policies...
The Partial and Personal Chronicle Of a Cuban in Nicaragua
2010 Diciembre Nicaragua
When I got to the immigration desk at the Augusto César Sandino Airport, I glanced around while the official was checking my documents, stamping seals...
The Two Main Electoral Issues Must Be Education and Fiscal Reform
2010 Noviembre Nicaragua
The most recent analyses by international finance organizations and socioeconomic institutions that study Central America are now sounding an optimistic...
Children’s Rights: From Paper to Reality
2010 Marzo Nicaragua
Twenty years have passed since the United Nations General Assembly unanimously approved the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) on November 20,...
A Passenger’s Version of Latin America’s Future
2009 Noviembre América Latina
I had two passports in my hands and wasn’t sure which I should to give to the immigration official, who seemed more interested in the size of the airplane...
Are We Surfing the Internet Or Have We Run Aground?
2009 Junio Nicaragua
According to a World Economic Forum report recently released in Guatemala, Nicaragua came in last in Central America with respect to information and...
On the Track of Political Gangs: Has Mara 19 Been Born in Nicaragua?
2008 Diciembre Nicaragua
Martin Scorsese’s box office hit “Gangs of New York” shows a fierce confrontation between two gangs at the service of ethnic factions and political rivals....
Child Adoption: Another Form of Violence
2008 Noviembre Guatemala
The growth of violence in Guatemala increasingly horrifies people. On October 18 the Guatemalan Episcopal Conference released a statement that expresses...
To Read or Not to Read: That is the Question
2008 Agosto Nicaragua
According to Moroccan-French writer Daniel Pennac, readers are subject to 10 rights, the first of which is the right not to read. It appears that, consciously...
What’s up, Old Man? A Look at Young People’s Politics
2008 Julio América Latina
We’re sick of being compared to the generation of old militants who never stop pointing out that things were better in their times, and that they...
Youth Gangs and Religion: Links and Differences
2008 Mayo Nicaragua
Is there a relationship between youth gangs and religion? Between violence and religious experience? Between youth transgression of the established...
Our Education System Is Increasing Poverty and Inequality
2008 Mayo Nicaragua
In Nicaragua we’re all gradually beginning to agree on three ideas regarding education. The first already sounds like a cliché: education is a key factor...
The Gangs of Central America: Major Players and Scapegoats
2007 Diciembre Centroamérica
Although the last of the revolutionary conflicts that plagued Central America during the 1970s and 80s was formally brought to an end in 1996, violence...
A Train Ride Through Memory and History
2006 Octubre Nicaragua
In August 2005, Jan Kees de Rooy—a Dutch-born Nicaraguan national who always thinks big—called to tell me about a dream he was working on in the Institute...
Nicaraguan Youth Gangs: From Throwing Stones to Smoking Rocks
2006 Septiembre Nicaragua
The most distinguished mention of a 1970s youth gang member in Nicaragua is found in Ernesto Cardenal’s memoirs of the Sandinista revolution. Charrasca...
To Be Young and Poor: Turf, Violence, Fear, Silence
2006 Septiembre Guatemala
Ester is a Kakchiquel from one of the villages in Chimaltenango closest to the capital. She has eight children, most of them now teenagers. Two are...
Why No Maras in Nicaragua?
2006 Agosto Centroamérica
The United States Army, that self-styled police force of humanity, has already started to turn its ominous periscope toward youth gangs. In March 2005,...
Drugs and AIDS: Surely Now It’s Time for a National Alert
2006 Julio Nicaragua
In one of his writings, Leonardo Boff recalls the Greek myth of the rebirth of the eagle, similar to the phoenix of Egyptian culture. To achieve its...
What Culture Are We Legitimizing In Our Classrooms?
2006 Mayo América Latina
Of all the quality criteria for an educational curriculum for children at the initial or infant education level, or any other level for that matter,...
What’s Our Concept of Children and Classrooms?
2006 Abril América Latina
Education is always based on a curriculum: a consistent and coherent set of different factors and elements that we intentionalize and organize to foster...
Our Youth Has Inherited A National Failure
2006 Abril Nicaragua
Like the generations that preceded it, I belong to a generation that failed to build a just and dignified Nicaragua for everyone. Asked to talk about...
Honduras’ Prison Massacres Reflect a Social and Political Crisis
2006 Enero Honduras
Yet more prison violence broke out on the afternoon of January 5, 2006, this time at the Támara National Penitentiary, where thirteen prisoners were...
The Traido: A Key to Youth Gang Continuity
2005 Julio Nicaragua
The main character in Anthony Burgess’ novel A Clockwork Orange, 15-year-old Alex, is the leader of a small group of kids who terrorize the streets...
The Code of Children and Adolescents: Comments on a Misunderstood Law
2005 Mayo Nicaragua
The Office of Special Attorney for Children and Adolescents, which forms part of the Human Rights Defense Attorney’s Office, was created in 2000. In...
An Urban Gang Moves from Social to Economic Violence
2004 Noviembre Nicaragua
In 1996-97, I lived in a poor neighborhood, or barrio, in eastern Managua to study the life and activities of its youth gang, which I even became part...
Down and Dirty in Latin America
2004 Octubre América Latina
There is a set of modern beliefs, images, symbols and metaphors that relate to life, identity, otherness and the place of cleanliness and whiteness in...
Globalization and Development Seen from Below
2004 Marzo Nicaragua
Nicaragua cambia—Nicaragua’s changing—was President Arnoldo Alemán’s slogan during his five-year administration (January 1997-January 2002), and...
Youth Gang Members and Tattoos: Stigma, Identity and Art
2003 Septiembre Nicaragua
Now more than ever, our appearance, our “look,” signals what kind of person we are. Young Nicaraguans labeled as “hippies” use their wardrobe as a form...
Nicaragua’s Future: Hooking Children on Books
2003 Julio Nicaragua
Libros para Niños is a nongovernmental organization that promotes reading with a very specific objective: we want children and the adults in...
She Said, He Said: A Survey on Sex and Gender
2003 Junio Nicaragua
To say that young men and young women think and act differently is so obvious that it is a cliché. To what point and in what way is this cliché crystallized...
Nicaragua’s Youth Today: Fresas, Revolutionaries, Revelers, Hippies
2002 Agosto Nicaragua
That bipolarity of the eighties, linked to the great ideologies that triggered dichotomous, Manichean confrontations, are gone, replaced with fragmented...
The Identity and Culture of Central American Youth Gangs
2002 Julio Centroamérica
A very specific kind of youth gang has been slowly spreading like a shadow over the marginalized barrios of big Latin American cities since the...
The "Sun-Child": Everyone’s Responsibility
2002 Julio Internacional
An oft-heard lament in western societies is that today’s young people are individualistic and violent, that they lack any deep convictions or motivations...
Youth Gangs: A Cultural Prison
2000 Junio Nicaragua
I loved myself as traitor, thief, stick-up man, informer, detestable, destructive, despicable, coward. With axe blows and shouts I severed the bonds...
Youth Gang Members: The Hand that Rocks the Mortar Launcher
2000 Marzo Nicaragua
Tom said, "Now we’ll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer’s Gang. Anybody that wants to join has to take an oath, and write his name...
University Resists Neoliberal Violence
2000 Enero México
The civic rebellion against the World Trade Organization in Seattle at the end of 1999 and the civic uprising of the indigenous people of Ecuador in...
Youth Gangs: Armed Rebels Without A Cause
1999 Mayo Nicaragua
Historians, sociologists, anthropologists and other social scientists frequently point out that violence has been omnipresent in Nicaragua since the...
The Student Struggle Bursts onto the Stage
1999 Mayo México
The vigorous student movement of Spring 1999 is one example among many of the new social movements that are developing in a country trying to adapt to...
When Children Organize And Want to Work
1998 Mayo América Latina
When the child and adolescent workers of the Christian Workers' Movement (MANTHOC) was born in Peru in 1976, it was the first such movement in Latin...
An Anthropologist in a Managua Gang
1997 Agosto Nicaragua
In Central America, violence and insecurity mount with each passing day, and Nicaragua is no exception. One feature of this is the bands of teenagers...
What Do Working Children Want?
1996 Febrero Nicaragua
Since 1994, a group of educators and sociologists, with the active participa tion of working children, has been studying the way these girls and boys...
What Laws Protect The War Wounded?
1996 Enero Nicaragua
What is left of the war in Nicaragua? The mantra heard daily is that the war is behind us, that we've gotten over it, that we need to get over it...but...
Street Children--Mortgaging the Future
1993 Noviembre Nicaragua
At every traffic light, in the markets and shopping centers, wherever people gather together for religious processions, fairs, political demonstrations,...
Poll of Youth in Managua: Strong Believers, Diverging Directions
1989 Marzo Nicaragua
How religious are Managua’s young people? Have revolutionary changes, tensions within the Catholic Church or conflict between sectors of the Catholic...