Quick Take on the corona virus pandameic from Dr. Alexandre Kalache
May 21, 2020 Quick Take Video - Dr. Alexandre Kalache - Corona Pandemic - 040320 VIEW VIDEO https://youtu.be/8jENsQa9bY8 Posted by LAP Outreach Coordinator at 9:28 AM
Employers’ Organizations and Quarantine Policies in Ibero-America: A Brief Reflection on the Chilean and Spanish Case
May 20, 2020 | By Alejandro Osorio Rauld and José Reig Cuañes The Covid-19 pandemic has tested the strength, logistics, and leadership of states around the world. In order to face the health emergency, the governments have had to implement several degrees of confinement and “social distancing” that, lately, have saved millions of lives, albeit at a very high cost in terms of economic activity The debate on the appropriate harmony between health protection and economic safeguard allows us to analyze an interesting aspect of political systems: the relationship between business elites and State power. Most of the policies that the pandemic has faced have been legitimized by the intervention of validated actors such as experts, technicians, advisers and also politicians of different persuasions. Their advice has contributed to protect citizens from what in biopolitical terms we could call a “letting die”, which was the dominant choice at first in several of the countries with leaders fit in with the commonly named “conservative populism” (USA, Brazil, UK). However, other social groups attempt to influence State decisions: this is the case of business elites and their organizations, acting as “pressure groups” that mobilize powerful resources in favor of their interests. Indeed, although the [...]
COVID-Related Strikes Hit Washington’s Apple Sheds
May 20, 2020 | Demands for safer working conditions and extra hourly hazard pay during the pandemic are powering a strike wave in the Yakima Valley. By David Bacon, Originally published by Capital & Main This week the COVID-related strike in Washington state’s Yakima Valley quadrupled in size, as workers walked out at three more apple packinghouses. More than a hundred stopped work on May 7 at Allan Brothers Fruit, a large apple growing, packing and shipping company in Naches, in Central Washington. On May 12 they were joined by 200 more workers, who walked off the job at the Jack Frost Fruit Co. in Yakima, and at the Matson Fruit Co. in Selah. The next day another 100 workers walked out at the Monson Fruit packing shed, also in Selah. At the center of the stoppages are two main demands for those who decide to continue working during the pandemic: safer working conditions and an extra $2 an hour in hazard pay. Apple sheds line the industrial streets of Yakima Valley’s small towns. Inside these huge concrete buildings, hundreds of people labor shoulder-to-shoulder, sorting and packing fruit. If someone gets sick, it can potentially spread through the workers on the lines, and [...]
Will a Failed Plot in Venezuela Strengthen Maduro?
May 19, 2020 | by Steve Ellner Originally published in Latin America Advisor of the Inter-American Dialogue Every aspect of the recent attempt to topple the Maduro government points to Juan Guaidó's lack of leadership capacity. The incident cuts into his support among both the radical opposition that supports the use of force and the majority of Venezuelans, who, according to polls, favor concrete proposals to solve pressing immediate problems over regime-change strategies. In the first place, Guaidó's signature on the contract with the Florida-based Silvercorp USA disregards the history of operations of this sort in which planners go to length to ensure the credibility of a Plan B consisting of denial of involvement in case of failure. In the second place, Guaidó s commitment of 213 million dollars to Silvercorp raises questions about the origins of such a large sum of money. In the third place, even those favoring a military solution are criticizing the use of foreign mercenaries. In the fourth place, the plan envisioned one of two scenarios, one naive and the other questionable on ethical grounds. The choice of Macuto, with a strong navy presence nearby, for landing implied that the Venezuelan armed forces would spontaneously [...]
Austeridad Republicana and Contradictions in Mexico’s Response to COVID-19
May 18, 2020 | By Andrew R. Smolski, Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at North Carolina State University and member of the Latin American Perspectives editorial collective. — May 18, 2020 On May 3rd, 2020, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) published “Algunas lecciones de la pandemia COVID-19”. In this brief document, the President of Mexico makes clear that neoliberal policies, such as privatization and austerity for public universities, have led to a crisis in public health exacerbated by the pandemic. AMLO has consistently pointed to four decades of neoliberalization as creating many of the ills Mexico confronts, from a majority of the population employed in the informal sector to almost a majority of the country living in poverty. And he is not wrong. For instance, in public health neoliberalization has had a major negative impact. Since the late 1990s, Mexican public health institutions, like the Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS), have seen market reforms that reduced the amount and quality of care. This is the case, even while healthcare expenditures increased in Mexico since 2000. So, you have reductions in care with increasing costs and poorer outcomes. In 2006, a year before the drug war [...]
The Preventable Death of an ICE Detainee Amid a Pandemic Speaks to a Crisis of Civilization
By Alfonso Gonzales Toribio, Associate Professor and Director of Latin American Studies at the University of California Riverside. – May 17, 2020 The death of 57-year-old Salvadoran national and ICE detainee Carlos Ernesto Escobar Mejía was preventable and tragic. As a diabetic with an amputated foot, he was especially at risk of being infected with COVID-19 and was on a list to be potentially released from the Otay Mesa Detention Center near San Diego—with at least 140 confirmed cases, it is the epicenter of COVID-19 infections among ICE detainees. His untimely death underscores the humanitarian crisis before the migration control apparatus, and points to a deeper crisis of civilization. Will we be a society governed by constitutional and human rights, compassion, and fairness, or by a cruel desire to punish those deemed unworthy of living? Escobar Mejía was tragically the first to die, but he won’t be the last unless migrants are released quickly from detention centers. As of May 9, ICE has tested just 1,804 detainees nationwide for COVID-19, 965 of whom have been positive. A group of scientists with a forthcoming article in the Journal of Urban Health estimates that under the best circumstances, over 70% of ICE’s 27,908 detainees will become infected [...]
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: COVID 19 Blog
May 16, 2020 Latin American Perspectives would like to invite its readers, editors, and authors to submit short reflections and or photographs to our blog about how communities in Latin America and Latinx communities in the US are confronting the COVID-19 crisis. Blog posts should run between 200 to 1000 words and can be in English, Spanish or Portuguese.Please send your submissions to lap.outreach@gmail.com, subject line “COVID-19 Blog”While social distancing and quarantine protocols are necessary to stem the spread of the virus, we are witnessing ways in which these measures can also reinforce economic and social inequalities and hurt working-class families across the Americas. LAP has a rich history of questioning the empty promises of social mobility and progress that often go hand-in-hand with neoliberalism, neo-colonialism, imperialism, and globalization, and we feel the need to be on alert as military forces take on more predominant roles and as governments threaten to institutionalize draconian austerity measures.The COVID-19 virus exposes the weaknesses of the capitalist market to provide health care, food security, safety and education to millions of Latinx in a crisis. It also puts women in dangerous situations when asked to remain at home with potential abusers. Colombia has [...]
Three things you should know about Anita
By Monserrat Sepúlveda, Santiago, Chile | May 6th, 2020 This coronavirus pandemic seems to be showing all of us just how vulnerable people are. Here at home in Chile, I think about one person in particular: Anita. She works as a housekeeper and there is so much about her I wish you knew. We could have a 6-hour zoom chat just to talk about her extraordinary life and it wouldn’t be enough. But there are three things ,in particular, you should definitely know about Anita. The first thing is that Anita will continue talking to you even if you are gone from the room. I’ve tested it many times. Some weeks ago, Anita was talking to me about the price of sugar in her neighborhood store. I left the room for at least fifteen minutes and when I came back, lo and behold, she was still talking as if I had never left. The second thing you should know is that she’s 75 years old so if she tells you she wants to watch her novela, you better run and buy her a TV. Mind you, she won’t like it if it’s a flat modern TV, no sire. You will need to [...]
Trump’s disregard for immigrant life amid the pandemic bring us closer to a collapse of civilization
By Alfonso Gonzales Toribio | May 5, 2020 Director of the Latin American Studies Program and Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside The battle over Trump’s immigration policies in the middle of the pandemic is reaching a boiling point. At the core of all of his polices is a desire to accumulate wealth at all costs and a blatant disregard for human life that endangers a basic sense of right and wrong needed for a civilized world to function. The President is forcing tens of thousands of meatpacking workers, many of them immigrants whom he ordered immigration raids on last August, back to the factory lines despite massive plant closures and at least 20 deaths and as many as 5,000 infections of meat workers nationwide according to the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. This was the logic used by, Carl J. Nichols, a Federal District Judge, appointed by Trump, to reject a request made by the National Lawyers Guild, the American Immigration Lawyers Association and the Immigration Justice Campaign on behalf of detained clients asking for a suspension of all immigration court proceedings, including those involving children, during the pandemic. Advocates filled the suit citing due process and public health [...]