History of Sexual Education in Latin America (Spanish)
A modern sex education, including the acceptance of sexual identity, orientation and specific attraction, create happy couples, both professionals, having only the sons that they are capable to educate and the prevention of teen pregnancy and Sexually Transmited Disease, is a possible goal. The initial concern for sexual education comes from the work of Dr. Suzane Aurelius, from the UN Population Fund with the support of the Swedish Authority for Development. For this purpose, two seminars were held in 1970 and 1972. Representatives from 20 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean were present to discuss Swedish experiences and our reality.
In 1974 two workshops were held, in Quito and in Trinidad and Tobago. There, the Sex Education Regional Committee for Latin America and the Caribbean (CRESALC) was created, with its base in Bogota, and Cecilia Cardinal de Martin was named Executive Secretary. Each of the countries of the region has followed a different pathway. The common feature has been the government’s opposition to progressive sex education initiatives at all levels of education with children, young people or the parents. In 1998 Mexico meets the IX FLASSES Congress and for the first time, an educator, Dr. Esther Corona, from Mexico, is elected president. She organized a board meeting in Sao Paulo to reflect about the FLASSES and its historical responsibility in Latin America, from which emerged a new regulation and a new responsibility for the countries of the region, specially in the field of ex education.
In May 2000, a meeting is held in Antigua, Guatemala, hosted by WAS and the OPS to approve a document for health professionals, entitled “Sexual Health Promotion, Recommendations for Action”, with a chapter on Comprehensive Sexuality Education that “more than the mere acquisition of knowledge and content, should guide critical thinking leading to the achievement of positive attitudes, encourage the process of recognition, identification and acceptance as sexual beings with a specific gender role, without prejudice, creating emotional and stable bonds, promoting free sexual behavior, responsible, conscientious and pleasant, shared with a partner, to have only the children they can raise, making them free, responsible and caring”. It is impossible to summarize and weigh the progress of each country, so I propose that in the next FLASSES Congress in Dominican Republic, next year, in a special room for Sex Education, official speakers from the different countries would present the reality in their respective countries, to discuss and construct an unanimous vision of the New Sex Education in Latin America.
