The year 1959 began marked by the Cuban revolution. Washington felt the blow and in 1961 John Kennedy launched the Alliance for Progress as an alternative to compete with tropical communism, which proclaimed armed struggle as the “midwife of history”, as Don Carlos had proclaimed. In both ways, social change was the objective, and its necessity was beyond doubt. The acceptance of the need for social transformation dominated over the years that followed.

The 21st century has given birth to another panorama in Latin America. It is one in which change in our societies has not only fallen off the agenda but is not even a matter of attention and debate. The progress of all has been replaced by the progress of each one, dressed up in an “entrepreneurialism” that is proposed to us as a path of personal achievement at any cost —crudely, this means taking whoever is needed and without scruples— or openly proposed as leaving the country, heading north, in order to find environments more conducive to the aspirations of each one, which are no longer perceived as those of others.

That is where we are. The substitution of common objectives for individual or family objectives has been driven by several factors. The first is the failure of the attempts at social transformation initiated decades ago. The guerrillas were bloodily crushed and left no heirs, not even traces or memories. Those who came to government with reformist programs soon abandoned them. The various forms of “popular promotion”, generally financed by international cooperation sources, were limited to supporting some social groups for periods that ended when the money ran out; in the best of cases, the achievements of these efforts were similar to those of the assistance programs provided by wealthy and pious ladies. Nor have they left any mark.

The second factor has been the neoliberal preaching —which we should call neoconservative— that has instilled a sort of new gospel: your future depends only on you; do not wait to progress with others, try on your own and the rest will follow.

The narrowing or closing of the channels of social ascent for the majority and the attractiveness of the “individual salvation” proposal have redefined the panorama. Pessimism about the future of the country has cornered any optimism in the corner of what everyone can achieve. Surveys show these trends. And personal exchanges illustrate what is “the new thing” in the region today.

The framework of the narcos

Let us agree that there are more elements that were new a few decades ago and are now normalized. Probably the most important is drug trafficking, which surprised us when its first news was centered in Colombia. But then, not always attracting much attention, the phenomenon spread to raw material producing countries such as Peru and Bolivia, and then to transit countries — all of Central America and Mexico, but also Brazil, Argentina, and Chile — to degrade their societies and corrode their states through corruption.

In an earlier phase, drug traffickers paid for the necessary services with dollars from the markets in which they placed the drugs: first the United States and then Europe. But international persecution complicated the transfer of greenbacks, so that the current stage has been reached, in which these local services are paid for with drugs. To make the payments effective, those who work with the large international trafficking networks have activated an internal drug consumption market that mainly affects young people. As we know, drugs are given away at school gates to create consumers. The issue of addiction has become a public health problem.

For the “entrepreneurs in this sector”, drug trafficking has created a wide range of occupations that offer instant success. The lowest rungs of the ladder are “mules” — also called “burriers” — who traffickers sacrifice when necessary, ratting them out to “duty officers” who in return let real shipments pass through. The unfortunates end up as prison fodder and the justice system will hand down “exemplary sentences” for them. Meanwhile, in the higher echelons, careers are made and are involved in scandals. In reality, they do not scandalize but provoke envy, even if some of their characters end the party in a “settling of scores”.

While these processes develop and spread to the point of creating “liberated zones” —not because of armed struggle but because of the impunity of crime— inequality is no longer on the agenda of political parties, the increase in taxes —at least up to the level paid in Northern countries— is considered “expropriatory” by neoconservatives and the state apparatus is increasingly weak and corrupt; reduced to a minimum, it neglects public education and health care.

Where is the way out?

Many years ago, in the midst of one of Argentina’s cyclical crises, I asked this question to a cab driver in Buenos Aires. “In Ezeiza”, he answered without joking, referring to the main airport of the Argentine capital. At that time, it was a good witty remark; today, leaving one’s country is for many “the way out”. Most of them do not care what they will do. They assume that from any occupation they will have better opportunities than in their country, where almost all roads seem to be closed.

Leaving the country is the growing option adopted, especially by the youngest. In the case of Peru — which even in the Latin American context appears, perhaps like Guatemala, as a patient with a reserved prognosis, for which there is no known treatment — emigrants have quadrupled after the pandemic. There are no reliable statistics to back up what we know from a thousand stories; as has been the case with Salvadorans for a long time, every Peruvian seems to have one or more relatives or friends abroad.

Latin American countries that until recently seemed to have settled ways of life and relatively strong states are now sliding down a precarious slope. Chile surprised us a few years ago with a social upheaval, which so far has not yielded any positive outcomes. Ecuador has just stunned us with the emergence of actors involved in the drug trade, who had previously stayed behind the scenes but are now claiming major roles. In most of Latin America, it is a time of “every man for himself.” This process is currently fueled by the hopelessness stemming from the magnitude of problems for which no one can devise viable solutions.

_{*Translated by Janaína Ruviaro da Silva from the original in Spanish.}