-José García Noval | OPEN DOORS-
One day after the general elections in July, when I obtained the results indicating that an unexpected candidate had escaped from the squad, Dr. Bernardo Arévalo, still timidly and among other reflections, I communicated to a group with whom we shared different types of ideas , that the result seemed to me that, as a social phenomenon, it was more important than the events of 2015 (without underestimating their importance). A few weeks later I thought the statement was correct. Such an affirmation, however obvious it may be (or however debatable it may be), opens a space for political dialogue, and notably, for psychosocial dialogue, in which I propose questions veiled as affirmations to the experts on these issues.
The figure of a crack as an opportunity in a society like ours, I raise it before a conviction that I have been towing in my mind for many years; and it is that the inhabitants of this country live in a depressing state of anomie. As the concept of anomie, invented by Émile Durkheim, and the discussion continued by talented sociologists, is quite controversial in its content and even in its existence, I will translate my idea in a simpler way. In Guatemala we live in a state of absence, or of validity and compliance, of norms to regulate social and community behavior (anomia), of which a psychological, social and moral state is part, generated during the last phase of the internal armed conflict, due to a monstrous violence against the population. This extreme situation unleashed a phenomenon of self-alienation (or subjective alienation) in which its forms are determined by social conditions and which leads people “to become disinterested in the functioning of what determines that life and, above all, in the sphere politics…” (Shaff). We can also resort to understanding what happens in our society, perhaps forming part of the same phenomenon, what in psychology is called learned inhibition.
To explain it in another way, synthesized in short sentences: the atrocities caused by the status quo in this country caused what in other texts has been called moral asthenia (by Durkheim himself), escape into passivity (Greg Grandin), citizen torpor, etc. In other words, it is about explaining how an individual, or a population, can fall into a ditch of inaction on important issues of their life, because they have internalized the terror that is metabolized into fear, disappointment and asthenia, or rationalized justification.
Observing the phenomenon of citizen apathy as a result of the serious historical event of extreme violence turns out to be fundamental, but in my opinion it is insufficient. Citizen apathy has its great determinant in that repressive history, but it is not alien to others of significant caliber. After the Peace Accords, it was expected that State policies, and with the lessons learned from the war, would be directed towards solving the urgent deficiencies in society. However, in general, the proposals were oriented towards accepting the winds of neoliberal policies as the ideal of a new society and, with it, the graceful favors for oligarchic privileges. Although not totally apart from that tortuous path, the background and conditions led to another type of degradation: the colossal and cynical corruption that plagues society, although the direct links with the historical formation of the horde of unscrupulous politicians are not necessarily always clearly perceived. and its financiers of diverse origin.
The triumph of the unforeseen candidate, but above all the powerful boom that followed, is unprecedented, with a fundamentally horizontal extension, especially among the youth and in other previously forgotten sectors that are now emerging with personality.
The foregoing is significant and very powerful, and the hypotheses put forward by serious analysts are, in my opinion, correct. The most common is that of being fed up (something more than tiredness) of predatory cynicism and unpunished by a gang of thieves, who cannot be benefited by assigning only that qualifier for being very biased. The magnitude of the theft of State resources, plus the magnitude of the perks to sectors that guarantee their permanence for interpenetration of interests, have an added sequel of poverty and misery of the population; but this indication is still very limited, since no one with a normal neuron count will be able to escape the fact that they cause a significant number of deaths in people of different ages (and not only children).
From this context of ideas it can be deduced that the awakening of the collective conscience is the fundamental process of liberation from the oppressive state in which we live. Because oppression is the absence of freedom of expression, but it’s not just that. Oppression is the hunger of those who work until exhaustion without spaces for their full human fulfillment, oppression is malnutrition with its consequences, like the centuries-old ones and until very recently recognized in a low voice in Guatemala, such as the case of mental deficiency in malnourished children. , but known for many decades by health professionals and pediatricians (recalling the article Malnutrition and Mental Development in Rural Guatemala by Robert Klein et al. of 1977). But there are also other consequences such as the physical, psychological and social consequences that affect the middle class, derived from an inefficient public administration, in professional decline and highly vicious. Along these lines, we must ask ourselves, what effect does it have on middle-class children to get on the school bus at 5 in the morning? What effect does it have on parents to get up at four in the morning to be able to carry out their daily tasks? What effect does the torture of trafficking have on your emotional state and your intra-family relationship? What impact does the progressive lack of water have? And not to continue with the endless list, what has been the role of the State in this monumental deterioration? The etcetera will be enormous and varied.
In this context, society needs to solve a complex problem, understand what is happening (the big facts), its connections and its principles; from that, wake up the sleeping giant, the decision to react. This is what I currently identify as a step towards breaking a lethargy that has a historical explanation, a collective attitude that we hope will maintain a firm, very responsible step and aside from the fevers derived from that chronic pandemic called ideological saturation. In other words, make an effort to foster dialogues that bring us closer to the political ethics of responsibility. But that is another topic that must be thought about and discussed calmly.
Jose Garcia Noval
USAC graduate doctor. Internal Medicine Hospital San Juan de Dios and hospitals in France. Master of Tropical Medicine, Liverpool. Professor and researcher at the Faculty of Medical Sciences of the USAC, currently retired. Scientific articles in national and international journals and two books: To understand violence: false routes and truncated paths (University Press, USAC) and After the lost sense of medicine (Avancso).
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