Monthly Archives: May 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 began in earnest, life [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]