Democracy in Latin America

HACIA Democracy

Harvard student organization HACIA Democracy has the ability to go out to the world and touch the youth of our continent. I was a freshman in high school in Panama when I first heard about HACIA Democracy. Participating in HACIA Democracy was to be a life changing experience; six years later I am still witnessing how the experience positively changed me, my fellow college students, hundreds of high school students throughout the Americas, and most importantly, democracy?s future.

HACIA Democracy, an acronym for Harvard Association Cultivating Inter-American Democracy, forms a convenient pun since ?hacia? in Spanish means ?towards.? This describes our objective of building a path towards democracy in a region where much remains to be done to consolidate and strengthen democracy. HACIA Democracy organizes a yearly government simulation conference modeled after the Organization of American States (OAS). Conference delegates, all high school students, represent a country in the OAS committees, a political party in a National Congress, or take the positions of judges and lawyers in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Before debating in committee sessions, student delegates are expected to carefully research and prepare a specific position. At the end of the conference, all committees will have come up with one resolution for each debate topic.

I participated in HACIA Democracy 1998 (in Panama City, Panama) and again the following year in San José, Costa Rica. As a member of an OAS committee, the Inter-American Council for Integral Development, I participated in discussions about education, global warming, and foreign direct investment. For five intense days, I was challenged by my peers, my Harvard co-chairs, and by the seriousness of the subjects we were discussing. By the end of the conference, I had learned to use consensus building and compromise to arrive to tangible solutions to a few of the problems of our hemisphere. I had also made great friendships with students from other countries that survive to this day, and I had discovered that I wanted to make public service my vocational goal.

Three years later, and as the incumbent President of HACIA Democracy, those days in Costa Rica seem very far away indeed. I now understand that the success of the conference lies in the organization here at Harvard, which works in a similar way to our conferences abroad. By working together, we learn key elements essential to the democratic process such as multi-lateral negotiations, consensus building, and cooperation despite conflicting interests.

The HACIA Democracy community is a small but lively network of 22 students who work together for a full year organizing the conference and various events on the Harvard campus to create awareness about Latin American affairs among other students. The seven-member Executive Board is mainly responsible for organizing the conference and other events, while staff members co-chair committees during the conference. Staff members are required to do extensive research to write a 15-page bulletin sent to committee members to inform them on the conference debate themes.
HACIA Democracy exposes its members to firsthand learning about leadership, democratic institutions, Latin American businesses, and the importance of human resources through the process of developing contacts in the conference country and outreach here at Harvard.

To further our own education about democracy before we start to teach others, former HACIA Democracy president Francisco Flores established the Harvard Democratic Forum, which brings prominent leaders and public figures to discuss hemispheric affairs with HACIA Democracy staff and other interested Harvard students. The year-old Democratic Forum has generated discussion between Harvard students and Latin American politicians such as former Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo and former Peruvian president Valentín Paniagua.

The host country for next year?s conference?our ninth?will be Guatemala, and we are already working with Harvard professors to develop contacts there. One recent and significant change in HACIA Democracy has been expanding conference participation to public high school students through scholarships. We are emphasizing developing contacts and fundraising to ensure more involvement of public high school students in the upcoming conference.

This past year, I worked closely with the Nicaraguan Ministry of Education to organize the selection, preparation, lodging, and transportation of 25 public high school students, all of which we were able to fund thanks to the hard work of our Business Director. Despite the fact that the public school students only had one day of preparation, compared to the couple of months the other 200 students had received in their private school curriculum, they were active, eloquent, and involved. The youngest girl, 13-year-old Gladys, illustrates the transformation of these students as the conference progressed. Gladys was very shy at first, probably intimidated by the age and knowledge of the other students, but she was soon actively participating, cooperating with ideas for resolutions, at times even leading her fellow delegates in discussion. Public school student participation has made the conference finally live up to its ideal of having a real democratic representation.

Maria Luisa Romero '04 a Government concentrator, is president of HACIA Democracy. She hopes to earn a certificate in Latin American Studies from DRCLAS. For further information on HACIA Democracy, contact her at or visit
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