Los desaparecidos. Sunday was the Day of the Disappeared - in memory of those who have "been disappeared" due to state terrorism, conflict or natural disasters.
In the whole of Latin America those two words conjure up the ghosts of dictatorships past where to give an opinion contrary to the political party line was to risk not only your death or "disappearance" but those of your entire whanau and friends.
It's hard to imagine in a place like New Zealand but, in some small ways, we take some of the same roads those Latin American countries took before it went so lethally pear-shaped. Rampant inequality and a mass at the bottom who'd decided they had nothing to lose. This combined with increasing inequality in the education sector and a rise in community-based political activism by and for youth that sought to educate on political rights and obligations.
If we look at the audience that was attracted to the message of Hone Harawira and Mr Dotcom, regardless of the ultimate outcome of their efforts, there are some similarities. Prior to the election last year I had never seen youth - especially not in Whangarei lift and rally to the extent they did leading up to the election.
They may not all have voted, but there was a sense of change in the air and the sight of the local intermediate heaving with young people all wearing political party T-shirts and chanting was frightening and enervating in equal measure.
On the one hand; proof positive young people are not apathetic - just uneducated in the political system and their place in it - and perhaps ignorant to the power of their numbers and the possibility of change. What was frightening is that power - long under-used, has a weakened muscle of discernment and it appeared to an outsider like me that it would be relatively easy for a malignant leader to make use of the enthusiasm.
The kind of leader that shuts down public conversation and advocates for a powerful and wealthy elite and the corporations they run. It's instructive to note the sea change that has happened in Argentina after the dirty war of the disappeared and the chaos of neo-liberalism run amok of Menem. Some of the most powerful integral changes that Cristina Kirchner has engendered is the establishment of a youth parliament and an integrated civic literacy education programme in schools.
It's not popular with everyone - seeing this as "leftist intervention" but the friends I have still living there talk of the engaged and active youth who are consciously contributing to policy on all spheres. This, in a country where I found it impossible to talk politics in any public space, because people were simply too afraid to own their own voices.
The legacy of brutal repression leaves psychic scars that can often last generations which a ruling elite are quick to manipulate to maintain dominance over an economic system where they have traditionally controlled media, paper mills and agriculture and have avoided paying tax.
Does a country need to live through brutal repression before youth value what is already theirs? I'd like to think not.