L
he best way to block Mexico’s development is by eroding its childhood, because it is the number one strategic resource for any country. Early poverty is the worst form of conviction. It means a reduction of possibilities to grow physically and mentally: it cuts off the future. Thus, the society that condemns its childhood, condemns itself.
In an informal conversation with 14-year-old children, when asked what they would like to be when they grow up and why, they give such disturbing answers as: “I want to go to the United States to earn a lot of dollars and send them to my mom…”; “I would like to sell drugs because you also earn a lot of money and you don’t have to leave the country…”; “I will be a politician, because there is a lot of money to be made, it is not as dangerous as drugs and you do not have to leave the country either…”
Those are some options that many poor children often think about for their future. While, to be a soccer champion scorer
either teacher to teach
either doctor to cure
either scientist to invent vaccines
, are frequent purposes among adolescents of the middle class. Among minors from economically powerful classes, the spectrum of options can be broadened, ranging from being a banker, an astronaut, a video game designer or a painter, to the idealists who want to save the planet.
Underdevelopment is not the stage prior to development, but the consequence of the development of others. Therefore, the defense of Mexico’s sovereignty has to do above all with stopping producing –via childhood poverty– cheap labor for the United States and drug producers and traffickers for rich countries. According to Ensanut, seven out of 10 adolescents suffer depression
. Mexican children are mostly made up of survivors of poverty and abandonment by the State: they were 30 years of neoliberalism that took little care of infants, and there are already four of the 4T that neither see them nor think about them nor dreams of them.
Authentic National Sovereignty passes through a well-nourished, well-loved childhood that receives a formative education rather than an instructive one. The protection of children is, without a doubt, the priority issue of National Security. We need our leaders to overcome simplistic visions of progress and the future.
