DEFINIZIONI DELLA GARANZIA
TEKNISKA SPECIFIKATIONER
B
themselves do not constitute political windows, but it is instead their interpretation and exploitation with greater or lesser skill by political actors that matters for policy change to happen. More precisely, there was a lack of a new type of political actor as proposed by Punctuated Equilibrium Model (section
public demonstration or lobbying efforts supporting the proposal were articulated. In this setting, the power relations were still so uneven that the anticipated negative reactions controlled the legislative agenda, keeping cannabis regulation outside the political window.
The problem was that in the Uruguayan case, during the 2000s, this WEIRD youth started to realise that within the political establishment, neither the left nor the right political parties, nor the existent
repertoire. In a conflictive regional context of neo-liberal expansion, Uruguayan political concerns restrained to democratic transition issues and the economic agenda. Thus, for example,
throughout this decade, as many as seven referendums related to these issues were campaigned by the political elite6.
In this particular context, to talk about human rights violations was still directly linked to the political
I U
-chapter 2), generational differences were accepted as long as they were not too obvious or too outrageous. Thus, the secularised new rights agenda comprising issues such as cannabis regulation, abortion regulation or gay marriage challenged a status quo wh
differences were considered to be worthy of occupying the public space, whereas the rest of the topics were always considered as something secondary and most of the time even private (Sempol, 2013, p.
32). As a cannabis activist expressed in my interviews:
At the beginning most of the political system had the same thought about drugs as the rest of Uruguayan society; as my father or grandmother. That [using cannabis] was something morally
wrong, that fighting for its
consume it and even less right to consider it a right N (id21), interview).
Within the frame of this generational conflict, cannabis prohibition was considered an important
authority to protect young people. A member of a drug treatment institution opined in the interview, for example: we cannot leave youth free to consume what they want, they are our responsibility after
all N A P
Nacional explained in my interview:
A accessible, it is going to be easier. With a law you
also give transmit messages to society. If you say cannabis is legal, you say it is ok. Then if you discuss about it with a young person, he is going to tell you, but how is this bad? If it is l (Legislative Power Partido Nacional member (id2), interview)
Here, cannabis legalisation is seen as a threat to generational authority, a way of subverting the family institution and the traditional values that ensure its stability and the hierarchies within it (Haidt, 2012).
As a member of the upper legislative chamber for the Partido Nacional claimed, opposing the reform Regarding cannabis] we need to talk as parents and not from a relativist culture (Jorge Larrañaga, 23/06/2013).
The analysis of the political programmes content (Frente Amplio, Partido Nacional and Partido Colorado) for the 2004 elections further confirms this stance. I could not find any reference to cannabis regulation or other victimless crimes reforms, such as abortion regulation or gay marriage in these documents. This initial blockage towards the older political establishment was further confirmed through interviews and participant observation. At this stage, the political climate was not receptive,
6 One referendum on partially repealing the law on public enterprises was celebrated in 1992. In August 1994, a new referendum was organised for splitting the vote for president, parliament and governors, set wages for councillors and the method of payment of pensions. Three months later, in November 1994, a double referendum was arranged, one on preventing cuts in pension payments, and one on the proportion of the state budget spent on education. In 1996 a referendum was held for an electoral reform and in 1999, there was a new double referendum, one on financial autonomy of the judiciary, and one on preventing directors of state-owned companies from becoming public servants.
hence, was not possible to translate the individual issue of cannabis use repression into social problems and then into public problems or matters of political controversy.
The exclusion of ´new rights´ topics such as cannabis, abortion or LGTBI rights by the political
-Thus, for example, in 2004 Ovejas Negras (Black Sheeps) currently the most important LGTBI advocacy group in Uruguay was created. Around 2005, the first three main Uruguayan organisations advocating for cannabis legalisation -P P Asociación de Estudios del Cannabis AECU [Cannabis Study Association] and Liberalisación del Cannabis [Cannabis Liberalisation] - were set up.
As we will see throughout this thesis, these three organisations became key political actors in the Uruguayan process.
Thus, Proderechos came as a spin-off, a rejuvenation of the Frente Amplio, aimed at updating the Proderechos was interested in disputing the left orthodox by including a generational perspective within an ever-increasing gerontocracy. As a case in point of the former, from democracies recuperation on, there has been a marked increasing trend in the age of Uruguayan presidents, regardless of their political affinity. The Uruguayan political elite is, by 2017, one of the oldest in the world (López, 18/11/2016). As a founder member of Proderechos explains:
T ones, because we felt as legitimate as
F A T T T ‘ T
view. When this fight for cannabis legalisation started it was highly unequal within the political
to the youth that through politics we could change certain things, even without owning economic power. Thus, borrowing from the new European social movements and the greens and all that stuff, we wondered what the mobilisation factor could be for the Uruguayan youth. And, basically, the only two battles that you could fight back at that time was abortion as a right and
(National Civil Society (id21), interview).
According to my interviews with Latin American civil society representatives, Proderechos has an exceptional character within cannabis activism because of avoiding being issue specific. In the portfolio of reforms, this group integrate issues as diverse as human rights violations during the last Uruguayan dictatorship, women rights (including abortion regulation), LGTBI rights, crime policy reform and mental health reform.
The other two groups AECU and Cannabis Liberalisation7-
organisation, centring their problem definition on cannabis exclusively. Both originated by uniting concerned cannabis users and growers from Montevideo, who were organising autonomously to defend their rights. As explained by my research participants, before cannabis regulation most of the cannabis consumed in the country was smuggled as compressed bricks, from Paraguay through Brazil.
In this context, organisations such as AECU emerge as a key political actor helping to create a cannabis growing culture in the country, widening the social base of the legalisation movement:
7 AECU P P [Grown your own plant] and the Liberalisation Movement L P [The Little Square].
I AECU] we are creating growers every day. People first come to us asking for weed, and then
we give them the first reality W
W
with each other growing techniques, We do indoor and outdoor growing workshops, we
give I
(National Civil Society representative (id22), interview).
The importance of cannabis growers associations for the conformation of a cannabis culture has already been documented in previous works (Romaní, 2005; Marín, 2008; Barriuso, 2011; Pere, 2015).
Through organisations as AECU, cannabis users learn values, attitudes and skills related to cannabis
growing, forging a membership G
the image of cannabis, as a mixture of empirical information and emotive appeals attached, usually promoting responsible consumption practices and harm reduction principles. They are also important to articulate a political demand among cannabis growers, brokering with a political establishment generally regarded as mistrustful:
Cannabis growers were always far away from the political establishment, from the suit and tie people that speak well, that come from abroad and whom many times do not even know what a cannabis plant looks like or how to grow it. There is a natural mistrust in this type of people (Journalist (id33), interview).
During the 2010s, as consumption expanded cannabis use normalised in the urban areas of the country, turning from a marginal reality to a relatively common habit among new generations. Thus, for example, lifetime prevalence of cannabis use quadrupled in Uruguay between 2001 and 2014, jumping from 5.3% to 23.3%. By 2016, more than half of population between 18 and 35 years old living in Montevideo have tried cannabis (Monitor Cannabis, 2016). After northern richer countries as Canada or United States, Uruguay holds one of the highest cannabis use rates in the continent.
Figure 7. Last year prevalence of cannabis by age groups, American continent
Source: (OEA, 2015)
As with cannabis use rates, the growth of public demonstrations around cannabis indicate a pattern of expansion of the legalisation movement set around 2010. A journalist specialised on the topic, for example, observed in my interview:
I I
disconnected from the agenda and from what the mass media was expecting, because drugs were not a topic, not at all. It was very hard to publish something about it, and if you wanted to do it, it was usually like you want to publish something about cannabis because you are There was this problem all the time. But also, really, there was no input to do it, because truly there was not any knowledge production around it, nothing was happening.
But with the Frente Amplio winning, [the new National Drugs Committee secretary] Romani starting to talk about it, little by little things started to change J interview).
As remarked on by the interviewee, after the opening of the political window with the Frente A
election of 2005, the state of affairs gradually started to change, and cannabis started to climb up the political agenda. The respondents identify a qualitative turn in the political process when, in 2007, the just created Proderechos, AECU and Cannabis Liberalisation joined in the Cannabis Liberation Movement as the main engine behind the Global Marijuana March, Uruguayan version an annual rally for cannabis legalisation held every May at different locations across the world since 1999. As reported by my research participants, the semi-spontaneous provocations organized in the previous year nicely reflect the exponential dynamic of the taboo breaking process: in May 2005 two months after the Frente Amplio ce- a loosely organised congregation to openly smoke cannabis exposed the degree of stigmatisation that could still be observed towards cannabis users. The few police officers around just watched, from a prudent distance, how around fifty people, many of them with their faces hidden, silently lit up joints together. In a tense atmosphere, no public manifesto or political speech was posed. For the following year, 2006, on top of this May smoking congregation, a new provocation was organised, this time in the central Independence Square. There, however, nervousness about the possible negative social reaction was still the prevalent feeling, as one of the activists present reflected:
People would not even dare to say hi to each other... By itself the activity was not very successful -not many people were there-, but it was useful because it was a chance for the organisations around cannabis legalisation that existed at the time to meet each other and to start to plan a bigger activity together (National civil society representative (id21), interview).
T Movimiento por la Liberación del Cannabis C L M
the following months to officially organise the first Global Marijuana March, Uruguayan version (GMM-Uy from now on). It came as a surprise, even to its organisers, that the GMM-Uy would attract such large crowds amongst the Uruguayan youth, transforming it into one of the biggest public happenings in the country. As some of the organisers described in their interviews:
We were very surprised by how many people reacted. Seven thousand people is a great deal in Uruguay; it is one out of a hundred young people of the entire country; it is one out of fifty of the youth of Montevideo city N representative (id17), interview).
[The 2007 GMM-Uy] was something impressive for the social legitimacy of cannabis legalisation, not towards the political system yet, but towards the youth; until then, there were
organisations, intellectuals but there was not a movement. The GMM-Uy allowed the regular young folks to join, to feel part of it N
Thus, as noted before, the cannabis legalisation movement started to flourish organically and highly disarticulated as a demand, gaining political leverage with the generational pace of its increasing use rates. The May GMM-Uy gained rapid popularity and legitimacy as the flagship activity representing the demand of cannabis activists, establ M
and more people. Analysis of the GMM-Uy manifestos is used to reflect on how, year after year, the legal situation of cannabis users and cultivation for personal consumption remained the core political concern. For example, in 2008, in the parade manifesto, the organisers claimed:
We do value that Uruguayan society has been making some steps further. Repression is gradually diminishing and most people already have an open attitude. There is more respect towards cannabis users than before; prejudices are falling. The outrage towards anyone who innocently has a plant in her own house is less frequent, though still occurring. We demand freedom for the people that are currently still imprisoned because of growing their own plants
T U
hypocrisy. It would be nice to out of the and say I smoke, so (Cannabis Liberalisation Movement - 2008 GMM manifesto, 03/05/2008).
A U
society juxtaposed users who grow cannabis for personal use against those guilty of making
a business out of it. F
LGBTI figure of speech of self-disclosure of a behaviour formerly defined by mainstream society as deviant. The year after, in May 2009, the GMM-U , was centred on
Legal personal cultivation: freedom to plant A I
Cannabis leaf flags and giant joint costumes surrounded me. Here, some concrete traces of the integrative agenda emerged as well. At the demonstration, I watched a rainbow flag from the LGTBI movement crossing the park, accompanied by plenty of orange hand signs asking for Legal
abortion - Uruguay that
time. Similarly, in a clear sign of solidarity across movements, the 2009 gay pride parade celebrated
M cannabis personal cultivation
depenalisation C “ D D y Parade manifesto, 25/09/2009).
“
way by nature, and in fact in most cases it is not. As contrasted in my interviews with Latin American activists:
In A the social movement is not united, there is not any articulated strategy among them. Cannabis is not visualised as part of a wider reform movement but it is centred on cannabis
personal cultivation I id41), interview).
In Mexico, there is not any unifying reform proposal. The drug policy debate is overcrowded but it is also paralysed because nobody articulates with each other, so there is no way of reaching collective decisions I society representative (id46), interview).
In Brazil, the base of the social movement is cannabis activism. We are attempting to articulate with other demands, as feminism, sexual diversity, black people, youth, but we still lack a
bridging organisation among them and within the political system I representative (id43, interview).
Furthermore, in Uruguay also, this way of defining the problem of illegal cannabis as part of a wider agenda was not free of controversy, yet it was deliberately sponsored by a sector of the social movement. An Uruguayan political scientist reflected about this in a discussion about the topic:
What I like about the new rights activism is that it has been pedagogical. I still remember some years ago, that I was listening to the manifesto speech at a Diversity [Gay Pride] Parade. This manifesto included a reclaiming of cannabis cultivation for personal use legalisation and a boy next to me started to complain: why putting these two things together? Why include cannabis legalisation in a LGTBI demonstration? Yet, by now, this question would sound strange: the
P
(id39), personal communication).
In c I U
was rejected across the political establishment leading to the conformation of a new type of political actor: the cannabis activist. I characterised cannabis activism as a political start up with a rising share the increasing cannabis users and supporters of the secularised agenda.
Thus, I have argued that for the Uruguayan case specifically, cannabis policy change was framed by
such as abortion and LGBT rights, with liberty as a key binding moral foundation. In the next section, I will analyse the process of incorporation of these new rights into the political agenda, as the replacement of old political generations with new generations started to disrupt the political
quo.