Friends will Be Friends (by Susana Guaglianone)

“When you're through with life an all hope is lost, hold out

your hands cos right till the end friends will be friends”

(Freddy Mercury and Jhon Deacon)

On July 20, 1969 humanity achieved one of the greatest technological accomplisment when a man first stepped on the Moon. Everybody was peacefully interested in the three earthmen who travelled to the natural satellite.

Apollo 11 was the spaceship that transported the American astronauts Neil Amstrog, Michael Collins and Edwin Aldrins. They set off on July 16 in order to attempt this audacious mission.

As Amstrong put his feet down on the surface of the Moon, he declared his now famous line: “That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind”. The crew performed a variety of experiments on the lunar territory and collected soil samples to return to Earth. They needed to wear special space suits with a back mounted portable life support system to control the oxygen, the temperature and pressure inside the suit.

They hoisted the American flag and unveiled a plaque bearing President's Nixon signature and an engraving reading: “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon on July 1969 AD. We came in peace for all mankind.”

People all over the world watched the moonlanding on TV. Because of the reduced gravity, the astronauts could jump very high compared to Earth, and those images were very funny!

In Argentina all the inhabitants were concentrated on the heroic deed. Every spectator lived the experience as if they were the protagonists. There was a man among them, Dr Enrique Febbraro, teacher, dentist, philosopher and musician, from Lomas de Zamora.He wrote one thousand letters to one hundred countries after the event. He proposed July 20 as the date when the whole world had been friends of the three astronauts. Since then, 1969, the international Friend's day is celebrated in many countries, such as Spain and Brazil on July 20. Originally, this celebration was born in Argentina.

Colony of Asunción (by Martín Leardy)

To begin with the history of the Colony of Asunción we have to mention the discovery of the Rio de La Plata by Juan Díaz de Solís, which took place in 1515. It was not up to 1524 that Paraguay was discovered, when Alejo García, coming from Brazil, arrived. For eight years Alejo Garcia mustered men and began a trip to the interior of Paraguay. He marched west and discovered Iguazu Falls crossed the Rio Parana, and arrived at Asuncion, thirteen years before it was founded. Another important fact occurred in 1537, when the expedition of Gonzalo de Mendoza and Juan de Salazar, trying to find a route to the famous goldfields in Perú, resulted in the foundation of the fort Our Lady of Asunción.

Asunción began to stand as a commercial and administrative centre at the very beginning of this settlement. It had been given the character of “mother city,” because from Asunción commercial expeditions left and found numerous towns and cities in the region, such as Santa Fe and Buenos Aires. Little by little, The city became the centre from which La Plata section of South America was administered.

A very important landmark in Paraguay and in Asunción as well was the Jesuit Missions which spred the gospel among the natives. They began in 1604 and finished with the expulsion of the Jesuits from Asunción in 1767. There were many things that the Jesuits did in the “reducciones”. One of them was to pay attention to the different languages which existed among the aboriginal inhabitants and composed kinds of diccionaries to get a better understanding of those languages. Another thing was to settle natives down into colonies to achieve a better organization and to carry the Christian faith to the tribes. Each reduction was organized as a miniature republic with its own governors, who were elected among the aboriginal inhabitants themselves. The reducciones were built by the Guarani. The indigenous created the altars, sculptures, and much of the art that can be seen the churches and museums of Paraguay. Nowadays, we may observe the Jesuits´work, as regards knowledge, technology, art, social organization, politics and religion, in the ruins in some places in the southern part of Paraguay.

When the flourishing early days of Asunción passed, its began to be less and less important as a commercial centre, though remaining important as an administrative one. Buenos Aires became more relevant than Asunción as regard commercial matters.

To finish, we have to mention that Paraguay proclaimed its independence of Spain on May 14, 1811.

Conclusions to Forum 5: Do we live in a democracy?

Is ours a real democracy? This was the question around which our second forum this year was organised. The question, we must admit, had at a first sight an apparently obvious answer. However, as we were able to see through all our comments, obviousness is far from being the more consistent attribute of this topic. Just considering the main possible answers given during this debate could account for this. Although simplifying the nature of most of your comments, it is possible to identify three clear stances:

• Some people answered affirmatively to the question at the beginning, considering that there’s no doubt we live in a democracy.
• Some others, on the contrary, doubted whether ours is a real democracy, and carefully proposed that we live in a false democracy.
• Others, however, defended arguments from both previous stances, arriving at the conclusion that although we live in democracy, this is not a full one.

In reality, each different alternative appears equally valid and it would not be serious to say any of them is wrong. But we still have a difference; how can we account for it then? I think what makes these three options differ is perhaps the fact that each of them implies a different conception of what democracy is. For those adhering to the first option, democracy seems to be characterized by popular sovereignty, which implies that people is the source of any political power. For those who agree that we live in a democracy, the fact that we have the right to vote our representatives would be proof enough of our political power as citizens.

Those taking part for the second option, however, seem to interpret that democracy goes beyond the right to vote. For these people, democracy needs some preconditions without which open elections are no more than a form without content. Some common preconditions are equality of rights, equality of education, similar access to the media and to campaign funds for all political parties, direct participation in political decisions by means of popular consultations and, perhaps more importantly, actual limits and control over those chosen as representatives. Honestly, none of these preconditions has ever been effective in our country, which has not only limited the political options to the preponderance of a few changing and contradictory parties, but has also scared youth off from politics in the last decades. Then it looks quite natural for those who think participation, plurality and the discussion of ideas are essential to democracy, to doubt in calling this a real one.

Democracy Index (The Economist, 2007). More democratic nations in paler blue.

Finally, the third group could be read as a combination of the former two. They seem to look at democracy not as a definite political fact, but as a gradient, where a wide spectrum of forms that are still democratic in nature can take place. For these people, although we vote and have laws that orientate our nation in a democratic fashion, this is an incomplete democracy that can be improved with time and participation.

As I said before, all perceptions are valid. There’s no agreed definition of what democracy is. This should tell us something about the complexity of the term. But also about its malleability. In a way, we can make democracy look the way we want it. Because each nation creates its own image of what democracy is. Some countries tolerate corruption, some others not; some countries tolerate class differences, some others not; some tolerate poverty, and some not. Democracy means a different thing in each of these countries, just as it means different things among ourselves. Perhaps, better than asking about whether or not we live in a democracy, we should have asked what do we want our democracy to look like. Do you think we would have agreed?

In green, nations claiming themselves as democratic.