"Woke" has been commonly used in politics and cultural battles in the U.S., and now it seems to have reached Latin America with shades of leftist thought.
The last three generations have had more critical and open thinking when it comes to the injustices of the systems, beliefs and institutions that serve as the foundation of the world.
According to LP, these are people who face political, social and environmental crises. They denounce the silence of the past generations.
The term, born in America around the 1930s, is currently used to describe a person who is aware of and faces social injustices.
The term was originally called "stay woke," which means to stay awake, and was used by black communities in the U.S. It was a phrase to encourage anti-racist activism among African-Americans. With time, it simply became "woke" and fell out of use around the 1980s.
But it emerged again in 2014 when the activist group Black Lives Matter used it after Michael Brown's murder by cops. Then it gained ground, especially on Twitter, where people started using it as a meme. Then in 2017, the term was included in the Oxford Dictionary. It's defined as "being aware of social and political issues, especially racism."
Today, it is also associated with political movements like the radical left identity.
For some, woke means being aware of social injustices and questioning historically established norms for a paradigm shift. For others who are more conservative, the word can be used as an insult. In fact, woke police has become a term to describe people who slam the claims of conservative people with racist, homophobic and misogynistic cuts.
It is the latter that generated a political and cultural battle in America where people affiliated with the Republican Party use the word as an insult towards the opposition Democrats.
It is believed that the use of the term during Donald Trump's presidential campaign seems to be one of the reasons for the businessman becoming the President in 2017.
Trump spoke of "woke tyranny," and his speech launched him high in the polls. This means further polarization in a country that is already divided between left and right political thoughts. It is a country where more than half of the people associated with each political party see members of the other as enemies and not opponents.
Several Latin American countries for the first time in their history have left-wing presidents, and this is the entry stage of 'wokeism', as it is called in Latin America. The situation is a cause of concern, as it could have the same polarizing effects that it had in the U.S. It also threatens to become a tool that can be used by conservative political groups to defend their ideals.
Meanwhile, during the recent Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump again use the work in his speech, as per Yahoo! He said that they will demolish "woke tyranny and we will restore the American republic to all its radiant glory."
As for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is expected to run for the White House in 2025, he took aim at some fellow Republicans. He argued that they are acting like "potted plants" in the political and culture wars against the mainstream media and the Left, reported Fox News.
DeSantis recently spotlighted his numerous conservative policy achievements over the past four years in his war against "woke ideology."
He claimed that in Florida and across the U.S., "we have a non-woke majority that wants to see sanity restored."
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