Uruguay: Faced with a fight between young people, Salesians call to look at reality head-on

“We live in a society where violence has several faces,” they state as an introduction to the fourth section of their reflection, which exposes “shocking data” with an average of 22 complaints per day for some type of mistreatment and/or abuse of a child, girl or teenager. “We people who are in education daily receive stories, pains and stories that shake us and that drive us to continue working so that this does not happen and that no person in Uruguay suffers violence of any kind,” they say.

“At the center of our concern must always be young people: to be able, together, to put aside our pettiness, benefits and ‘opportunities’ and put at the center the reality of so many young people who suffer from inequality, abandonment , the lack of affection and containment. This is also part of our Uruguayan reality, which we call to be able to look ahead and work on it as a whole society.”

Finally, they express their intention, in coherence with the Salesian pedagogical tradition, to “invite a deep reflection on the importance of preventivity, and to avoid the response being centered on repression, which, although necessary in some situations, does not resolve the underlying problem and it ends up costing us dearly as a society in every sense.”