Denis Merklen, is the second Latin American after the Chilean Jacques Chonchol, who holds the position of director of the Institute of Higher Studies of Latin America (IHEAL). Observer of the unstable situation in the region, he considers that there is a common denominator: the deep division. “There is a profound movement in societies that tells their rulers that there is something in the functioning of the State that cannot continue like this,” he analyzes.
The Institute of Higher Studies of Latin America is a recognized institution inside and outside France. Created 68 years ago, it is the main institute of its kind in all of Europe. “ANDhe Institute receives approximately 30% of its students from Latin American countries and there is very rich and fluid cooperation with all the universities of the subcontinent, and even from the United States with all the colleagues who work on Latin America”, notes the Uruguayan sociologist.
An institution that is in excellent health, all the more so since there is a renewed academic interest in France for the region.
With regard to the currents of thought that for some time have wanted to limit academic freedom in educational institutions, Merklen points out that this is not the case with IHEAL: “academic freedom is truly a very important value for us and above all that we have a link with the political life of Latin American societies and with French society as well”.
The so-called “Latin American progressivism” that recently led several representatives located to the left of the political field to the government is going through a crisis, marked by instability, but also by a lack of prospects. “AND“These have as a background a crisis of the democratic regimes that are seen, from the point of view of the populations, as increasingly impotent to solve the pressing problems that are presented to the different societies” thinks denis merklen.
“Democratic regimes need social cohesion from which Latin American societies have distanced themselves. And no matter how much we have elections, no matter how much we have elections and freedom of the press, we will not be able to have healthy democratic regimes on the continent as long as societies are deeply divided”, underlines the director of IHEAL.
A region that tries to project itself while continuing to deal with the ghosts of its recent history. Last December, the director of IHEAL signed a statement addressing the issue of the conviction of Mario Sandoval, the Argentine torturer convicted by an Argentine court for the kidnapping, torture and forced disappearance of a university student during the last military dictatorship in the country. South American.
Sandoval taught for several years at IHEAL. After clarifying that Sandoval “was never head of the Sorbonne or the Institute of Higher Studies in Latin America, something that he was in charge of claiming and presenting in many places in Latin America,” Denis Merklen points out that for those of us who lived through the dictatorship, or some of the dictatorships in Latin America, as is my case, by Argentina and by Uruguay, it is a bit painful.
It is also “a bit mysterious to think that a character of such a caliber, of which we are also beginning to know of a French performance. “CIt is now up to us to investigate what happened in France during all those years,” he concludes.
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A program coordinated by Florence Valdesdirected by Souheil Khedir, Jérémy Besset and Tiphanie Menta.
