Akadēmiskais centrs
In addition, half of my family is from Galicia - a region in northwest Spain which keeps its traditional culture and its own language- hence I have also developed strong ties with my ancestral European blood. In fact, I had the opportunity to live and study there for a master's degree at the University of Santiago de Compostela and nowadays I keep engaged to the university through different projects. Thus, in this sense, I guess I could say that I made my own pilgrimage, not to St. James´ tomb but in the search of my furthest origins. However, I think that that search started many years before and was one of the main reasons why I decided to study sociology when I got to the university.
I did my bachelor at the University of Buenos Aires, a surreally chaotic and wonderful institution. It is a world-class public university in which the studies are still completely free of charge and that has produced more Nobel Prize laureates than any other Spanish-speaking University in the world. But, paradoxically, its academic excellence is inversely proportional to its organizational efficiency. Sometimes, while I was studying there I felt like in the children's gamebooks series “Choose your own adventure”. Although, at the same time, I think that it was thanks to these conditions that I also had the opportunity to learn a lot of values that go beyond the classroom and during those years we were primarily taught to develop our own critical thinking. For all these reasons, I'm immensely grateful and satisfied with my education at UBA and that's why I chose to do my doctoral dissertation there.
In regard to the present time, since last September I attend to the University of Latvia to do a research stay for my PhD degree, thanks to a scholarship granted by the State Education Development Agency (or VIAA, according its Latvian acronym). The reasons why I chose the LU are diverse and assorted. I had been in Riga before, during 2010, for about 5 months. That was a very tough time for the country, and for me then it was like landing in a new, unknown planet. I barely had any information about Latvia, besides location and capital´s name and, of course, I didn´t expect that Latvians have any information about my country. However, what I found was really surprising. The people were extremely attentive and helpful with me and, in addition, I discovered a country with a vast and rich history and culture. For many reasons, I keep the memories of that time as a wonderful season in which I had the opportunity to meet new realities and worldviews. With that experience, somehow I found that, despite the distance and the differences between both lands, the concerns and the needs of the people I met in Latvia were just the same of those back at home. I realized that it was much more what we had in common that what distinguished us and in that moment I understood a phrase that I had heard to a professor at the university, many years before: the real homeland of a man is the era in which he lives.
After that experience, I went back home and carried on with my academic activities, but I always kept in mind the idea of returning to Latvia to dive deeper into the knowledge of its the society and to find answers to all the many questions that arose in my mind. In the meantime, in my work I usually found many similarities between Latin America and the Baltic States: many similar characteristics, trends, economic cycles, problems, etc.. So then I thought that sometimes it is easy to see things when you take some distance and focus them in a different way. That’s why I decided to come back to Riga: it was a different place, different people and a different background but the same issues than in my native land. And as I´ve always felt wanderlust and had an inquisitive spirit, I thought that a research stay was a wonderful opportunity to satisfy both at once.
Now my main activity in Riga is to conduct research for my PhD thesis. I´m studying the role of financial markets in the transition of the former centrally planned economies into market economies. For that, I chose Latvia as my case of study. In a few words, I argue that since its independence Latvia underwent a process of deep economic and social changes, and that financial markets played a key role in those transformations, not always in the best way. Thus I spend most of my time reading and writing about that, and sometimes interviewing people who lived that process. Besides that, I must hold some lectures and seminars at faculty of economics, mainly related to the Latin America´s economy and economic sociology. I really enjoy teaching at the university and I think it is a very enriching experience for me teaching in an international and multicultural environment. I face it as a challenge and as a very educational practice. In this sense I agree with a dear friend and colleague of mine who I deeply admire, who always states that the educator needs to be constantly educated.
Leaving aside the academic field and according to my experience living in this country, I think that Latvians, among many other characteristics, have two very remarkable qualities. The first of them is that they know how to enjoy simple things, especially when they are related to nature. Mushrooms picking in the forest with friends or family during the summer is a very Latvian activity and a great example of it: it costs almost nothing and it requires almost nothing but you can spend a wonderful and invaluable time with the people you appreciate. The second one is that Latvians are really supportive and caring people. My experience when I arrived in Riga was that many people offered to help me in several ways just for the sake of solidarity, which I think is the most human and exalted quality.
Summarizing, as it is easy to verify, I feel totally happy and satisfied with this chance to come to Latvia. I think this is a wonderful opportunity for me, not only in the academic field, but also and mainly, as a life experience. Latvia is still a country under construction, with a lot of issues to be addressed, being social integration maybe the most relevant. But at the same time, it is a marvelous country with many virtues and a huge potential to achieve a real and strong development for the benefit of its inhabitants.
Last but not least, I would like to take this opportunity to address a few words to my fellows, students and professors. I think that it is very important to stress that we always have to remember how privileged we are for having the opportunity to access to higher education. Unfortunately the vast majority of the world population does not have this possibility, leaving them unable to procure a better life. Most of us only have had the merit of being born in the right place at the right time. Thus, it should be our commitment to engage with the reality of those who were not so lucky and at the same time, to learn from them, in order to pursue a greater justice and equality. Since we have this opportunity, I think that we also have the responsibility to contribute from our modest position to build a better and more fair world. As the roman classical dramatist Terence stated: Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto (I am human; nothing human is alien to me).
