Beyond the Ballot: How Argentina’s Youth Are Rewiring Politics

By Uriel Grillo, Political Science Student, University of Buenos Aires

The depoliticization of young people is a recurrent question in academia nowadays, associated mainly with the erosion of western, liberal democracies. However, it is relevant to bring to the debate the new forms of this century’s youth political action and challenge the idea that democracy’s problems stem from the lack of young people’s interest in politics.

Discussing this is important for us, members of the Cross-Regional Democracy Collective (CRDC), due to the generally accepted idea that democracy should be re-considered from a global south perspective in order to solve its apparently unsolvable problems.

Young people are a big part of the solution: not only are we - I am just 23 years old - the future of our countries, we are its present. Especially in Argentina, where citizens can vote when they turn 16 years old. Talking about a depoliticized youth whose only form of political participation is voting creates an adult-centric democracy, where young people are only seen as mere citizens, not political agents or subjects.

A recent research by El Observatorio Pulsar, University of Buenos Aires, shows that despite a limited interest in politics, democracy is regarded as highly important. Moreover, 63% of the respondents believe that voting should be mandated by law, even though 72% agree that it is insufficient to determine the country´s future. The research concludes with an interesting insight: youth in Argentina doesn't reject politics, young people are re-wiring their relationship with politics outside classic partisan affiliation without declining to be part of the electoral ritual, going beyond that.

This last piece of information is vital to the understanding of youth in Argentina. Pablo Vommaro, in a book titled Juventudes y políticas en Argentina y en América Latina takes us back to different eras of youth political participation since the return of democracy in 1983. What's interesting about this is how young people seem to alternate between political participation through political parties and other forms of participation away from them. For example, in the post-dictatorship years until around 1989 Franja Morada, JUP, MAS and UPAU were university student organizations, each affiliated to a national political party. However, in the 1990s up to 2003 (the date is somewhat arbitrary) Argentina experienced a representation crisis that imploded in 2001. During these years young people didn't magically become apolitical persons. New forms of political organization came to be, ones tied to communities rather than national representation systems. Cultural spaces where rock and cumbia were listened to and protest painting, reading and performances were shown, also the piquetero movement (social and political movement of unemployed and underpaid workers) that started in the inner provinces of the country, and lastly - just to be concise - a student movement that fought for public education. All these are examples of how all over Argentina despite the crisis with vertical state centric representation - as it is in liberal democracy - many new formal political organizations emerged. These created strong locally tied communities that sought autonomy and horizontal dynamics to discuss political affairs.

In this blog I argue that we are currently experiencing something similar. Personally I am part of the underground rock community, and politics is often brought up during shows. Also in cultural spaces, youth are imagining, discussing and talking about politics. However, youth is not a homogeneous block, there isn't one and only youth, there are different ones, and they are constantly re-imagining themselves. It is relevant to bring up the young far right male Javier Milei voters. There is no argument about how these are political agents that are now part of a partisan movement, however, before Milei, these young men were politically active - and activated - through social media. Young men organized without vertical hierarchies, creating and spreading their own symbology; through X, Instagram and Tik Tok a virtual community emerged. Especially during de Covid-19 lockdown.

There is a space for theoretical discussion about the healthiness of creating a community in the metaverse where the algorithm is king. Nonetheless it would be a big mistake to ignore the fact that youth are innovating on how to organize themselves in political spaces.

In conclusion, regardless of where youth is located on the political spectrum in Argentina, there is a politicized youth; although scientifically speaking it would be wrong to generalize, I believe the same is true across Latin America. What we are witnessing is a politicization of private spaces as traditional public places become empty. Our democracies are facing a difficult task, not only they need to institutionalize far right movements and deal with the widespread lack of confidence in how to organize modern societies. They also need to make politicized youth feel heard without destroying this new communal, locally placed - except for social media ones - and horizontal forms of political organization.

In CRDC our goal is to improve our democracies, reimagining them from a global south perspective without forgetting that, we the young people, are not only voters, but also political agents capable of creating networks and symbols that affect institutions.