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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
“The Measles from the Time of My Grandfather”: Amazonian Ethnocide Memories in Times of Covid-19
By Carlos Fausto | April 28, 2020
Professor of Anthropology at the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Two weeks ago, Kanari Kuikuro called me from Canarana, a small town in the Brazilian Amazon, where he now lives with his wife and many children. He is originally from the Xingu Indigenous Land, which lies up north and is one of the most culturally rich multiethnic constellation of South America. Kanari was apprehensive.
– Pamü (cousin), […]
Hay que masificar las pruebas contra un virus clasista
Por Marco A. Gandásegui, Profesor de Sociología de la Universidad de Panamá e investigador asociado del CELA. | April 27, 2020
El coronavirus ha alterado todos los parámetros sobre los cuales descansan los supuestos de la vida que conocemos. Especialmente en lo que se refiere al trabajo, al estudio o al ocio. Cada clase social tiene sus propias particularidades. Los dueños del país (uno por ciento de los panameños) siguen recibiendo informes sobre como suben y bajan sus inversiones. A la vez, presionan a los gobiernos para que aumenten sus subvenciones. Por otro lado, muchos empresarios, profesionales y afines […]
Care is not essential
By Iván Sandoval-Cervantes | April 24, 2020
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Although some news sources have highlighted the importance of differentiating between “physical distance” and “social distance”—emphasizing how “social distancing” might imply isolation, which is not good for mental wellbeing (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/physical-distancing-social-distancing-200330143325112.html)—while “physical distancing” still allows us to be “alone, together”. The argument is that even when you cannot take care of someone physically, you can still show that you care about someone remotely. It is, of course, perfectly understandable that experts recommend physical distancing in order to slow down the spread of […]
Abstract – Social Structure and Distributive Policies under the PT Governments: A Poverty-Reducing Variety of Neoliberalism
Social Structure and Distributive Policies under the PT Governments: A Poverty-Reducing Variety of Neoliberalism
By Pedro Mendes Loureiro | April 24, 2020
Brazil’s social structure and associated distributive policies during the PT governments did not depart from neoliberalism but rather implemented a poverty-reducing variant of it. Through minimum-wage hikes, conditional cash transfers, legislation driving financial innovation, and the subsidizing of privately provided for-profit services, state power was used to include individuals in ever-expanding formal circuits of commodity production and consumption. Deprivation in multiple dimensions was indeed reduced through these policies, but in the process […]