Latin America...red warning!!!

Street violence is considered today's most threating scourge in Latin America, due to lack of continuity in public safety policies. Some says the primary sources underlying in the region's spike of violence are: Drug smuggling operations, youth unemployment and political factors.

Various countries in the region have dealt with insurgent leftist groups since the sixties, and drug cartels explosion in the eigthties, along with their iconic drug lords, epitomizing the essence of the traditional strongman; evolving throughout the years into a sophisticated machinery of death and destruction.

As a result of the death toll and civil unrest left by those groups, the institutions suffered by becoming an element of “democratic” decoration rather than an effective tool to protect their citizens. Just until recent years, inititiaves in disarmament have produced some kind of relief to communities affected by violence and dispair.

Disarmament laws have been approved in different countries in the region, with mixed reviews and unproven final results yet. Brazil in the forefront of the movement has promoted a fierce PR campaign with shocking images of the army assaulting the “favelas” or poor neighborhoods, watched around the world.

However, unproven because of numbers not high enough to convince the most skeptical analyst. In Argentina the ministry of justice, through its website published 12,000 arms to be voluntarily recovered, and in Brazil after 6 years of disarmament the figure goes up to 500,000 based on the non-profit Viva Rio.

In Venezuela, the opposition presidential pre-candidate Pablo Pérez, mentioned 12 million of illegal arms to be regained. At a 100,000 arms per campaign like in Brazil, it would take 120 of those to reach the goal plus an approximate 720 million to 1.8 billion US$ in recovery incentives only, using the same price tag by argentines in their voluntarily crackdown.

Official aligned journalist Edwin L'Bachi from Aporrea.org on sept. 03, 2011, mentioned the following “...one of the more dire actions in a revolutionary process is disarming the people...”. Raising questions on, How compromised a government would be with a policy ideologicaly opposite to itself? 

Many other decisions will need to be taken in order to help the disarmament having a real effect on reducing violence and crime.

Education Inequalities (Part II)

In the wake of college tuition raises across the world, many people wonder who would pay those enormous figures to put in school a bunch of brats? The answer does not come as a surprise when well off middle easterns, asians and latinamericans make the bulk of those who pays full tuition at world class institutions.

Despite a world financial crisis, the influx of international students at universities across Europe and North America have increased exponentially. Solid economic growth in the emergent markets with a new middle class with deep pockets and aspirations to compete globally, keep  some faces smiling.

Live after graduation for the talented and privileged alumni from universities such as: Oxford, Harvard, Cambridge, among others; are far different from the graduates of colleges in the third world. With salary caps and competitive disadvantages, becoming a terrifying reality for the less “gifted”.

Get worse, in Latinamerica not every high school graduate has the opportunity to be admitted at a public university, some of them centuries old and with a fairly decent faculty. Decades of demographic pressure and stagnant budgets for universitiy expansion, have put a limit in providing public tertiary education to the youth.

For the business savy entrepreneurs the opportunity seems too tempting to let it pass by, hundreds of private universities have opened throughout the region, in order to satisfy the demand created by inefficient goverments, lower grades and a saturated public system.

As a result of having an improvised vision of formal education, the quality gets compromised, the professionals graduated from most private universities founded within the last twenty years, most likely would lack of the sufficient skills to break away from the improvisation cycle.

How about who does not have any means to pay for education? Unfortunately, they would have to attend some recently created tertiary institutions, where virtual classes are not necesarily cutting edge concept but a cost cutting product. Recent student riots in Chile has questioned states subsidies for private eductation, while tuitions still high.