Are young adults not capable of defending their political beliefs? (by Noelia)

“I will fight for the country in which I want to live”, an Argentine 21 year-old politician called Inaki Gutierrez says. Isn’t he too young to be a politician? Shouldn’t he be studying? Those are some of the questions that arise whenever a young adult tries to become part of spheres that are supposed to be of the adults’ world. Some adults have some misconceptions about YA attitudes and behaviors. When it comes to politics, some mature people claim that youngsters are just too uninterested in everything and not capable of becoming political figures. However, in this essay I will show that Argentine young adults are indeed able to have a say in politics fighting for their beliefs and values.

Some of the misconceptions present in Argentine society about young people being involved in politics are that youth are just not able to have a clear political posture and hence are incapable of having a say in politics. Although Maria Larrondo is an adult now, this Argentine researcher and doctor in Social Sciences devoted much of her time studying politics and young adults. In an article titled young people and political participation. Beyond “Idealism”, Larrondo wrote the following:

Young people appear as "unsuspecting", "manipulative", but also as "apathetic" and "without interest in politics" or, on the contrary, they are "unruly". Although these are very contradictory ideas, they are permanently present in part of the public discourse on youth and their political practices. Not to mention the situation when the setting is high school; that is, when young adults are “the youngest of all”.

According to this extract, it can be clear that adults’ conception of young adults states youth should not have a say in politics due to their “unsuspecting” and “unruly” nature. In this sense, young adult political positions are immediately discredited without considering their political discourses. However, in an interview when she was 17, Ofelia Fernandez, a 22-year-old-left-wing politician considered the youngest politician in Argentina, responded to some criticism of this kind. By that time, she was the president of the Carlos Pellegrini School Student’s union. Ofelia and her union’s partners were claiming for a series of school reforms. In the interview, a journalist whom she was talking to accused her and her partners that the information by which they were claiming was inconsistent. Later on that day, the journalist called her “Little girl”. Immediately, Ofelia replied to those arguments and that personal appreciation by saying “Don’t tell me I am a little girl! Our claim was made following the information of the official webpage of the Education’s ministry”. As a result, Ofelia showed that her arguments were solid enough not to let this person invalidate her claim. Two years after that interview, Ofelia became an Argentinian legislator of the city of Buenos Aires, belonging to the left-wing political party ‘Frente de todos’. This political office that she got, is nothing but a clear demonstration of how far a young adult can reach in terms of politics.

Even though the already mentioned Iñaki has never occupied a political charge, he serves as an example of another misconception that adults have when it comes to YA being involved in politics. As already stated, juveniles are considered by adulthood as “uninterested in everything”, “apathetic”, and hence “uninterested in politics”. However, by observing Iñaki’s social networks, this adult’s panorama can be transparently opposite. Not only a clear understanding of political issues can be seen but also a clear right wing posture. On his social networks, Iñaki discussed and criticized the wrong management of the government in terms of quarantine times. He claimed that with the lockdown, individual freedoms2 were being affected seriously and that had to be changed. In an interview made by the Argentine journalist María Nöllmann in La Nación, Iñaki was asked when and why he had started to be interested in politics. He expressed the following:

I've been interested since I was 14, when I started watching Lanata program [Periodismo para todos] with my father. I liked that it exposed corruption. There, I started paying more attention to journalism, I began to investigate and I started to read a lot of news. By the age of 16, I already knew the names of all the ministers, which was not normal for my age.

Therefore, by analyzing this evidence, it can be restated that regardless of their age, young adults are able to have a say in politics as long as they are interested in it, such as Iñaki’s and Ofelia’s cases show.

After all these discussions, an interesting factor can be taken into account. This political interest that Iñaki as well as Ofelia possess, can be found no matter the political vision they embrace considering that these visions are completely opposite. That is to say, regardless of the political party young adults are allied to, youth do not prevent themselves from having a say in politics. A remarkable factor considering the “unruly” nature already mentioned with which some adults conceive YA.

Taking into consideration all this evidence, it can be claimed that adults' views about young adults getting involved in politics lack an understanding of young adults' realities. In Argentina, young political representatives such as Ofelia Fernandez and Iñaki Gutierrez, have shown that far from being ‘apathetic’, they spread their political visions with passion. Apart from showing that YA do have a say in politics, they have also shown that, regardless of the political party they belong to, they remain loyal to their political visions and every day fight for their claims to be heard.