- Good morning and welcome.
My name is Father Matthew Carnes
and I'm an associate professor
here at Georgetown University
in our department of government.
I'm glad to welcome you this morning
to this latest installment
in our webinar series,
produced by the Center
for Latin American Studies
which I direct,
and our Latin American Leadership Program.
We've titled this series
The Americas: Building
the Future Together.
In our recent and coming weeks,
we're exploring the economic, political
and social dynamics and implications
of the moment in which we find
ourselves in our hemisphere.
As we know the COVID-19
crisis is affecting the world
in unprecedented ways,
is stretching thin the resources
of both the public and private sectors
and exposing long standing
tensions and growing edges
of political and economic models.
In Latin America in particular,
it's seen much of it's
harder and recent growth
and democratization called into question,
and the countries in the
region have responded
with wildly different policy
measures and social responses.
This webinar series seeks to
uncover trends and divergences
inside the region,
aiming to uncover opportunities
and best practices
that can foster inclusion,
growth and opportunity.
Today's installment focuses on the social
and cultural impacts of
the COVID-19 pandemic,
and our panel brings together leaders
in the fields of society
culture, literature
and political representation.
In order to examine the social fractures
that the pandemic has caused,
as well as the concurrent crises
in areas of racial justice
and gender and sexual
equality and democracy.
It emphasizes the challenges
that social movements
and indigenous groups have faced
in terms of health and economic stability
of social inclusion,
as well as the creative ways
that groups have responded
and organized themselves for
democratic participation,
popular mobilization
and artistic expression.
So without further ado,
let me turn our attention
to our panelists,
each of whom deserves
a much longer biography
than I can present here today.
Let me refer you to our website
for their full biographies.
So first with us today Anna Deeny Morales,
is a dramatist, translator
of poetry, a literary critic,
an adjunct professor here
at Georgetown University
in our Center for Latin American Studies.
Her recent works include
an opera in Zavala-Zavala,
an opera in v cuts
commissioned by the University
of North Carolina in 2020,
and La Paloma at the Wall
commissioned in the InSeries.
She's also a National
Endowment of the Arts fellow
for translation of Tala
by Nobel Laureate Gabriela Mistral,
and she's translated works
by Alejandra Pizarnik,
Nicanor Parra, Mercedes
Roffe and Raul Zurita,
and was a finalist for the
2020 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Her monograph Other Solitudes:
essays on consciousness and
poetry is forthcoming in 2022
and she received a PhD
from the University of
California, Berkeley.
Anna, welcome.
- Thank you.
- Next up, Paula Narvaez
is a Chilean psychologist and politician
from Universidad Andres Bello.
More than 20 years of
experience in public management
of policies and gender
and women's participation.
She holds a master's degree
in economics and regional management
from Universidad Austral in Chile,
and a master's degree in
Latin American Studies
from our very own Georgetown University.
She's worked in regional
programming offices
and as a presidential delegate
and Chief of Staff advisor
to former president, Michelle Bachelet,
subsequently, she served as
minister general secretary
of the government of
Chile in the second term
of the former President Bachelet,
and currently she's a regional advisor
in governance and women's
political participation
at UN Women for Latin
America in the Caribbean.
Welcome, Paula.
Next, Gimena Sanchez-Garzoli
is the director of the Andes
and a leading Columbia
human rights advocate
in the Washington Office
on Latin America, WOLA.
She's an expert on peace
and illegal armed groups,
internally displaced
persons and human rights
and ethnic minority rights.
Her work has shed light on the situation
of Colombia's more than seven million
internally displaced persons
as well as helped expose the links
between Columbia's government
and drug-funded paramilitaries.
Gimena, welcome.
And finally Vivaldo Santos
is an associate professor of Portuguese,
Brazilian literature and culture
in the department of
Spanish and Portuguese
here at Georgetown University.
He's also the director of
the Portuguese program.
He teaches Portuguese language,
Brazilian literature and culture
including topics as diverse as film,
soccer, Brazilian music
and Brazilian Amazon,
he's done research on
representation of the body
and the Brazilian avant garde,
on the intersection of
literature and economics,
especially on topics such
as money, greed, debt,
wealth and the stock market.
He's currently working on
the debate about luxury
during the enlightenment
and material culture
during the 17th and 18th centuries
in a looser Brazilian context.
He himself is also a poet
and a writer of children's literature,
Vivaldo, welcome.
- [Vivaldo] Thank you, Matt.
- And now let's turn to our panelists.
Thank you again for joining us today
to cover this very broad set of topics,
and first I'd like to ask
each of you to comment
on the reality of COVID-19, this pandemic,
in the spaces in which you operate
and the places and people
with whom you work,
how is it playing out?
How is it affected organizing
or cultural production?
How is it affecting the
individuals and actors they best?
Which groups and activities
have been most affected?
Maybe we'll start with Gimena,
you touch a broad set of topics,
human rights, migration,
rights of minorities
indigenous peoples,
how do you see the COVID-19 pandemic
playing out in that realm?
- Right, well, again, thank
you so much for inviting me
to this important panel.
The end of 2019 in Latin America,
we had tremendous social mobilization
throughout the entire region,
in Brazil, Colombia, Chile, all over.
All of that was basically
quieted down by the pandemic
and the restrictions that
were placed on peoples
in their different
countries to contain it.
The pandemic though has
had its negative sides
when it comes to social organizing,
and especially social leaders
and human rights defenders,
especially in Colombia whereby we've seen
an increase of killings
of those social leaders
during the pandemic
and specifically because
illegal armed groups
have taken advantage of the restrictions
to be able to get to people
they weren't to able to before.
And then secondly,
because the government has
not been able to activate
all of the prevention
mechanisms that it can.
So we've seen basically a restriction
in terms of physically for
defenders and for protests,
this has particularly affected
Afro-descendant indigenous
people and women
in the more rural areas of the country
that are also areas that are
dealing with the pandemic
asymmetrically, I would say,
because of the fact
that there are already
vulnerable populations
that have structurally dealt
with racism and were vulnerable
because they don't have access to medicine
and access to services
like other populations.
Governments have also
taken advantage of this
to pass through labor reforms
that are particularly damaging
for the informal worker economy
which is precisely the group of folks
that are in a situation
where they need to work
because they are daily survivors,
they're not people who
are able to work from home
in their computer.
So I think that the
pandemic has in many ways
put the kibosh on some
of that visual protest
that we were seeing
and so groups have been creative
and have come up with
all sorts of virtual ways
to express themselves and
continue their advocacy,
it's also galvanized self help efforts
on the part of indigenous and
Afro-Colombian communities
where they are basically
cutting themselves off
and doing their own restrictions,
their own monitoring,
and also marrying
some of their traditional
healing practices
in order to prevent the spread of COVID.
- Thank you.
You highlight so well there
the ways that this has both
exposed underlying challenges
spanning ethnic and racial differences,
inequality in the region
and particularly, again,
the plight of informal workers
and those that have been left
out in so many different ways,
and the ways that then they have organized
and undertaken new efforts
and galvanized maybe in ways
that then forced them to be more creative.
Among those groups you
mentioned women as well,
so why don't we turn to Paula next?
You work in UN Women,
you have a deep experience
with these issues
inside of Latin America,
could you speak about
how this is particularly
affecting women in the region?
- Well, thank you so much, Matthew,
and also thank you for
having me this important,
I'm great to be part of this panel.
In the same line that
Gimena has pointed out,
I think that we know from
major global and regional
political and socio-economic analysis
that the COVID-19 pandemic
will have serious
consequence on economies,
increasing levels of unemployment,
vulnerability in the poorest sectors,
in addition to stagnation of growth
that will affect the whole
of society worldwide.
In Latin America, this crisis
is having a devastating impact
being the most unequal
region in the world,
we have to have that in mind,
which was also shaken last year
by a series of social
protests of different nature
and in different countries
which, however, are the reflection
of the social and political discontent
that has been settling in the region
and it is impacting the model
of representative democracy.
Access to quality health,
education and employment services
was already limited for many people
so that is the background.
This prices related to this pandemic
could bring 15.9 million
more people in the region
into a situation of extreme poverty,
bringing the poverty level to
34% of its total population.
You can observe the figure from ECLAT
and from the recent Secretary General
of the United Nations report.
What we have been seeing in
this past month from UN Women,
UN Women general office for
Americas and the Caribbean,
is that women and girls
will be among the most
affected population,
especially those at risk
of belonging to marginalized groups.
So not all women are the same.
Considering this increase in poverty,
ECLAT indicates that we
could reach 100 million women
in a situation of poverty in the region.
The unemployment
resulting from this crisis
mainly and doubly affects women
who are more present in
informal jobs as Gimena said
including domestic workers
who lose their livelihood
almost immediately with this pandemic
without any network or possibility
of replacing the daily income in general
and highly feminized sectors
such as trade or tourism.
This is also a care crisis,
women continue to be the most
affected by unpaid care work
which is increasing to the
saturation of health systems
and the closure of schools.
Because of their status
as informal workers,
most women do not have access
to social protection programs
and support services
for social reproduction
thus also are insufficient.
Latin America before the pandemic,
women spent between 22
and 42 hours per week
in unpaid care work,
1.7 hours more than men.
In addition, restrictive movement measures
to contain the pandemic
increased the risk of violence
against women and girls,
especially domestic violence
due to increased stress at home.
Survivors of violence may
face additional obstacles
in fleeing violence situation
or in accessing protection orders,
or essential life saving services
due to factors such as movement
restrictions or quarantine.
Containment efforts often divert resources
from regular health service
and exacerbate the lack
of access to services
including pre and post natal
care and contraceptives.
Finally, all of the above
can have a major impact
on the exercise of
women's political rights
as both care responsibilities
and economical constraints
can be a barrier to the
participation of many women
in their country's electoral processes
either as candidates or voters.
The coronavirus has exposed
structural class, age,
racial and gender inequalities.
We are seeing a reformulation
of the relationship
between the role of the
state and the market,
and a reduced fiscal space.
This crisis is placing the
sustainability of life and care
at the center of the response,
but all this situation that concerns
and occupies us at the UN Women
as well as many other UN
agencies, estate, academic,
academia, public institutions,
civil society organizations among others,
is also an opportunity to rethink
our practices and policies
so that we can all emerge from this crisis
and it's recovery with
hope leaving no one behind.
- Thank you so much.
What a really powerful overview,
especially building on Gimena's insights
about the way this reaches
deeply into society,
every aspect of our
economic and social lives,
in particular lives of women.
Thank you for highlighting that so well.
Anna, how do you see this
penetrating then cultural life,
cultural expression, artistic expression,
how do you see,
and maybe the artistic
community are reacting to this?
- So I wanna begin with
a very detailed example
of things we're working on.
So I'm on the board of the
InSeries, an organization,
a performance organization here in DC
that's about 40 years old,
and then I also collaborate
with the GALA Hispanic Theatre,
which is an anchor theatre here in DC
that's about 45 years old,
and I have a family
history with that theater
because my mom performed
with that theater in the 70s
when I was a child,
so I've watched this for a long time.
So on the board of the InSeries,
I chair a poetry competition
called the Gabriela Mistral
Youth Poetry Competition
that was founded by a
Chilean Alcayaga Huebner
11 years ago.
And so unexpectedly,
this competition always interested me
because it was first of
all dedicated to children,
and the children had the opportunity
to present their poetry
in any form they wanted to
in any language,
but particularly of the Hispanic world,
so Spanish, Portuguese and
any indigenous language
of the Americas.
Our big challenge this year
is connecting with them.
So one school shut down
and schools across the US
particularly serving these
vulnerable communities
that Gimena, Paula and you
have already pointed out,
so vulnerable populations
that are already exposed
to particular challenges
of unemployment, malnutrition, hunger,
just getting to school.
So these kids, their first challenge is
how are they gonna be fed each day
given that they're not going to school
if public schools are
giving them the opportunity
to eat each day?
And then in the meantime,
how are we gonna get the
poetry competition to them
so that they can talk
about what's going on?
Whereas in the past we've
had hundreds of entries,
this year we had a very few
entries relative to the past.
We did extend the competition to Baltimore
because we wanted to bring
those children into the fold
of this possibility,
it's actually the only
competition of its kind
that permits children
to express themselves
in so many languages,
and the poems that have
come in give us a barometer
of what these children
are feeling right now.
So what are they feeling?
They're scared.
They are concerned about parents
experiencing unemployment,
insecurity regarding food,
issues of their parents
not being able to manage the problems
that they themselves are facing
and their communities are facing,
feeling completely cut
off from their peers
and what may be support networks for them.
So that's given us, as I said,
a barometer of how children
in this particular region
of this particular Latinx group are doing
in the D.C. metro area and in Baltimore.
- [Matt] Thank you, Anna.
- So, I can give--
- Go ahead, you can go ahead, yes.
- Then so that's just outreach work
we do as an organization,
like just particular outreach work
that helps us develop younger audiences
and develop the voices of youth,
of Latinx youth across this region.
The challenges that theater
organizations are facing,
and this is across the US,
so let me give you an example of GALA
and I was just speaking to Abby Lopez,
he's one of the producers in
GALA for many, many years.
So basically, GALA is a
45 year old organization.
Their operating budget is about $2 million
versus their counterparts
whose operating budgets
are about $35 million.
So the challenges
of these cultural
performance organizations
in particular is surviving
and the importance of that survival
is that they represent
and are dedicated to these groups, right?
These groups that continue
to not be considered as basic
to a US fabric, right?
They continue, even
though Latino populations
have been here for several centuries,
they continue to be marginalized
and not considered part of the US fabric.
So the importance of the
survival of these organizations
is tied to the importance of
the ability of these groups
to represent themselves into the future
to see possibilities of representation,
a recognition of their
stories, and their hopes,
and their dreams.
So that is what is at risk across the US.
So, again, organizations
that were already vulnerable
are experiencing even more pressure.
What is striking for me
is how organizations,
and this is the case for even
theaters in Latin America,
what is striking for me
is that despite the financial challenges,
these individuals are still dedicated
to continuing that
connection with their publics
as best they can through the internet.
And what's tough is that if
you don't have the internet,
that's not possible.
So that's falling through the cracks.
So the question in the future will be
is how to resuture these relationships,
how to bring these
people back into the fold
who had fallen out during this period.
- Thank you so much.
And you highlight there
both the very basic level of survival,
how do we make sure that
people have enough to eat
and for children that may be an issue
if you don't have your
school provide lunch,
then you're hungry.
But then there's this other
aspect too of expression
and so powerful the things
they're writing about,
and in the ways we see
our artistic organizations
grappling with those very same issues,
how do we survive,
and how do we get this
important expression out there
for people to hear voices
that might not otherwise be heard?
Vivaldo, you work on representation
and I know you have among
your many, many interests,
a big Instagram account too
where you follow a lot of expressions,
contemporary expressions.
I wonder how your work
either in representation
or in some of these things
you've seen recently
might help us better understand
the pandemic at this particular moment.
- Thank you, Matt.
I hope I can address that
particular question at the end
'cause I think I focus a little
bit on Brazil in general.
I think to some extent,
I probably would echo
some of the talks already
but I think you give a general view
of what's going on in
Brazil with the government
but also particularly the culture.
So we all know that about
2 million people in Brazil
have been affected by the COVID-19,
70,000 people have died,
and business are start open
without really going through a lockdown
so that's some of the challenge
for the Brazilian people.
Some issues that are very important
to Brazil is very similar
to certain extent to the US
in terms of disinformation,
they deny of the existence of the virus
mostly by the current
president, Bolsonaro,
and the members of his government
and recently he has been
diagnosed with the virus
but we all believe
that he has been already
diagnosed like two month ago
but he's pushing for the
chloroquine use as a medicine.
So these issues,
and as you know, I think
there are many issues,
especially in the big
cities and urban centers
like Sao Paulo, for example,
Rio, you have like more
than 100,000 cases,
more than 10,000 deaths in Rio.
In Sao Paulo and Manaus, for example,
it's like a big issue.
In Manaus particularly
because Manaus being the
north region of Brazil
in the Amazon forest,
we have the indigenous population
that it's a very
vulnerable group of people.
They have being exposed
and they have five
times more vulnerability
in terms of being affected by a disease.
This is how we can go back
to 500 years of colonization
and the contact between
Europeans and the natives
with European disease.
So this is an issue that has been brought
by the Pan American Health Organization,
it's very delicate
and the Brazilian government,
they're trying to deny it,
but there is a lot of focus on that too.
Also, there is the another
thing in the region
is because Manaus for example,
Manaus is on donor because the rivers
there is a lot of tourists
I mean, the distance are very different
because communication's by river,
transportation's by river.
So if you think about the
problem in the cities,
if you go to the Amazon regions
like the distance are much longer,
it's much harder to have a
hospital as a health center
for the indigenous population
and other people in the region.
In terms of the economy,
and I think it's very
similar to other countries,
is 12.3% of unemployment so far
and that is a lot of high
and new hiring policy,
changes in the labor legislation,
especially yesterday,
I think there is a push
for rehiring with a lower minimum wage,
or pushing for hourly wage
instead of monthly wage.
So there is a lot of economic
issues behind this policies
that to somehow it's a reflect
of the neoliberal policy implemented,
or that they want to be implemented
by the Brazilian government these days.
When you think about problems also
I mentioned Amazon
but if you think about the Favelas
or the slums in Rio and Sao Paulo,
those are population
that are really at risk
in terms of density of population,
and there is a lot of misinformation also
because we don't know exactly the numbers.
People say that it's more
than for like 30 times higher
than the official numbers
so we won't know until I don't know when.
In terms of culture,
there are many challenges, I think,
culture in Brazil has always been,
especially for the last 10 years
during the government
of the Workers Party,
culture has been always blamed
or served as escape gate
lately by the right wing of the government
in terms of in Brazil as you know,
Brazilian culture depend on the state.
We have the Huene law in Brazil
that gives companies
and business tax breaks
so they can promote the culture,
but since the impeachment
of Dilma Rousseff,
or before that,
people had been criticizing the state
for helping or investing culture.
They think this is a waste of money,
that cultures should be taken
care of by the private sector
with the tax incentives that exist,
but there is a lot of misuse of the money.
But also we think about culture in Brazil,
we know that in terms of
economics, very important,
like culture is like 2.2% of the economy
in terms of the GDP,
it employs like 5 million people
and we are thinking about employers
not just in the formal but
also in the informal sector.
We think we know a lot of people that work
in cultural industry,
many people they have part
time jobs or they're informal
so all these people have been affected
by the Korean pandemic.
So just recently there is a
push, that's a positive thing,
that was pushed by the Workers Party
and the PCdoB, the Communist Party,
they pushed for like an
incentive by the government
so the government has
give the cultural sector
about 30 billions rise
that's to help the artists sector
in terms of providing
them with a minimum of,
I think 600 per rise per month
for a period of three months.
So that's a good thing,
but is not just the
government just approved it
but I think there was a lot of fight,
like just here like the Democrats
fought to give to the
state, the government,
to force the government to
provide with economic support
to the communities.
So that being said there's
like different initiatives
as Anna also mentioned,
there is a lot of online musicians being,
they already existed
but these days they be more creative
and I think somehow they're
getting some incentive,
financial incentive to
promote to the public.
Like--
- Thank you.
- [Vivaldo] You all.
- Yeah, that might be a nice place
to sort of transition a little bit.
I'm very struck by both
the grounding you gave us
in the Brazilian experience
and Brazil sometimes can
seem to be a microcosm
for the rest of the region,
I mean, it's just so massive
with so many different currents
and I especially appreciated
that you highlighted at the end
the way that culture and social movements
can be engines of change
and engines of growth
and sometimes seen as a bit
subversive in that, right?
Because they're doing it
sometimes with government support,
but sometimes over against the government
and makes me think a little bit too
when we had our economic
webinar a few weeks ago,
the public private tension sometimes
about how do different actors
contribute to this overall social good?
And so for today,
I'd love if in our next
round we thought a little bit
about how social and cultural movements,
and especially cultural expression,
are engines for change,
engines for sometimes a
bit of subversive change
or challenging long-term,
long standing inequalities
and maybe the ways they're
starting to push us
in new, hopefully positive, directions,
is there a way
that we might actually
come out of the pandemic
socially stronger than we went in,
or socially more aware at least
and able to see social change?
And why don't we begin with Gimena again,
if you'd like to maybe start there,
where do you see creative
change happening?
What are your signs of
hope in this, maybe,
as you look at the region?
- Sure.
So another thing that
happened during this pandemic
was the assassination
on TV of George Floyd,
and that's also been influencing
factor in the region,
especially in Colombia and in Brazil.
Latin America has always had
a very strange idea of racism
and it depends which country
you are talking about specifically,
some countries basically
it's been an all out denial,
another has been sort of this idea
of accepting all the different cultures
as basically being one
and in a sense negating
those cultural identities.
And so this is not a new problem,
this is a long standing problem,
but one thing that I've seen
amongst the Afro-Colombian
and indigenous groups
and also some of the Afro-Brazilian groups
is taking advantage of that
conversation that was started
with all the media interest in
what was happening in the US
to bring up those long standing issues,
and they've been very creative about it.
So, for example,
despite the fact that
people are under quarantine,
there has been a protest
of indigenous and Afro-Columbian
peoples from the Pacific
all the way up to Bogota,
and the way that they've
done it creatively
is by including people in
their protests virtually.
So they're virtually walking
in the streets with the camera
and talking to people that way.
There been several virtual protests,
there have also been the traditional
banging of pots especially
against Bolsonaro
for his lack of effective
response on COVID,
but also in other countries.
And so I think one interesting thing
that we hope will come
out of this pandemic
is that the fact that everybody's at home
and everybody's been seeing
what's been going on,
that is going to lead to more
debates about these issues,
more open conversations
about what has been the
structural and historical racism
and discrimination in these countries,
why are Afro and indigenous
peoples in the rural areas
in the situation they're in
that they're so vulnerable
to a crisis like the one
that we're facing today?
So it's important also to mention
that for Afro-descendant
indigenous communities
that we work with,
culture is interspersed with protests.
It's negative in the sense
that the collective gathering
in music, dance and other
forms of expressions
are really sort of psychosocial
support for everyone there
and a way for people communicating.
So the being closed in
has been very difficult
in terms of psychological
impacts, and very isolating,
but also that we're seeing
that within that protest and expression,
it includes the arts, it includes
music, it includes dance,
and so hopefully when things open up more,
we will see a different way of relating
amongst those populations
and also a bigger, more open debate
about the structural racism in the region.
- Thank you.
And I appreciate the way
you pivot us to race,
which is such a fundamental issue,
one that, as you mentioned,
is long standing in the region
but it has been galvanized
in particular right now
during the pandemic, almost surprisingly.
So you had broad social
movements in the streets
prior to the pandemic around
general economic issues,
and then this really highlight
or we gave it a focus
on race in a particular way,
and that's something that is generating
lots of new expression
and really, I think, forcing
us throughout the region
to confront issues of race
that, as you say, too long
been denied or papered over,
hugely important.
Paula, how are you seeing this play out
both for women, and I
know you're also Chilean,
and Chile, of course,
being one of the places
of greatest social protest
immediately prior to a pandemic
and continuing protests going onward,
yeah, how are you seeing this play out?
- Okay, well, I think
that I can share with you
some perspective from a
public policy point of view,
I think I can share with you four ideas
from this perspective.
So I think first,
they're differentiated impact
of the pandemic on women
and the situation of vulnerability
for different sectors of the population
have been brought into focus
and thus also into discussion,
and I think that is a
very important point.
Today's public debate makes
it possible to revalue
and propose the expansion of rights
for those who perform care work,
pointed out how they impact
on the different areas
of labor and on women's
public and political life.
There is a debate about unpaid care work
and the need to create
public systems to protect it.
In addition, there is a need
to professionalize paperwork,
guarantee better conditions for workers
and integrate them into
the discussion table
while strengthening public health systems.
In this context, the identification
in different countries
that these essential tasks
are and have been carried out
by, for example, migrant women,
also points out the urgency
of the recognition of rights.
Secondly, the accelerated visualization
of different aspects of life,
of family and social
interaction, work, education,
and instances of public
and political participation
implies the possibility
for broader, plural and
democratic participation
and exchange among network
of women and activists
in different areas and
from different countries,
that's very important issue now.
The challenge is to address
the region's digital gap
which especially affects women,
and to generate tools for the eradication
of violence against women,
and specifically cyber violence.
The potential of these tools,
which we have all learned
very, very quickly
in the face of the pandemic,
can be increased by
democratizing access for
and indigenous women,
persons with disabilities,
communities without connectivity
and sectors that are not yet educationally
or digitally literate.
Sadly, the COVID-19 also
highlighted the management of women
in the executive branches of
different countries and cities,
as well as the value of
the community leadership
of women who across the region
attend the needs of food, care, violence
among other issues.
Women are in the front line
of response to the crises
and even though they aren't represented
at decision making tables,
they have shown what they are
incorporate and do so
with a management approach
based on human rights,
gender and intersectionality.
They can provide responses
that better contain the
pandemic situation phases
and recovery.
Even though it should not be in the news,
the fact that it is
implies that the belief
that assume that women
could not take charge
of public service has
been broken down entirely,
so that's very good news.
This must invite us to
redouble our efforts
to build, not only a mechanism
for productive democracies,
but also generate tools
that truly make substantive
equality possible
based on intersectionality.
Finally, this crisis
has called into question
the role of the state,
not only in terms of its
public health system,
but also in terms of the possibilities
of responding with social,
economic and political policies
in their entirety
and from citizenship
that demands listening,
dialogue, participation and effective,
rapid and comprehensive policies.
In this scenario, debates
such as universal income,
debt restructuring in
Latin American countries,
among other measures
promoted by example by ECLAT
and other organizations,
call into question the
sustainability of lives
and the responsibility of
the state in this regard.
This new role of public
leadership also present challenge
that must be addressed
to ensure that the response is inclusive,
and strength democratic systems.
Once again, the need to incorporate women
into decision making spaces
go with the need to generate
participative practices
that include civil society
organization, experts, academics,
and scientists among others
to design inclusive policies.
The strengthening of institution
and citizen oversight
is a priority in the face
of the responsibility
to eradicate corruption
and strength transparency.
Here again, especially in Latin
America and the Caribbean,
these responses must consider
the differentiated impact on women
and address humans trafficking,
sextortion practices and
anti-corruption policies
that enable the proper
and the responsible use
of public resources.
Undoubtedly, this can contribute
to the strengthening of democracy
which is an urgent need in the region
as another part of the world as well.
And another side, the
growing of the use of ICTs
in public administration
has been accelerated by the pandemic
which constitute the
transformation opportunity
never seen before.
This digitalization however it demands
that the state consider the gaps
and guarantee responses
by digital mechanisms
in the opportunity to
extend its practices.
Finally, the growing conflict
caused by the crisis unemployment
and post-pandemic poverty
challenge states to provide
democratic responses
that respect human rights.
Faced with the postponement of elections
in six countries in the region,
Bolivia, Chile, Mexico,
Paraguay, Uruguay and Dominican Republic
withheld its elections few days ago,
the need to take measures that
consider the impact on women
such as inclusion and conduct of campaigns
that do not affect the
right of rural indigenous,
more remote and or displaced groups.
And just a last thing,
I think that the invitation is to dialogue
and think about this great
opportunity that we can have
to do the things differently in the end,
and the new realities will be those
that we can develop together.
Thank you.
- Thank you so much, thank you,
and especially that last point
about connectivity is so important
and the ways that we build
dialogue in new ways.
And both the technology
facilitates that in some ways
and prevents it in others
because we know access to
technology is not universal,
in fact, it's quite complicated
especially for a number
of marginalized groups,
rural groups.
So this is one of the great challenges,
something each of you has
already highlighted a bit.
But I wonder if actually, before I forget,
to all our observers,
we'd be happy to take some questions
if you wanna to use the Q&A function
and we're collecting those questions
so feel free to type
them into the Q&A box,
and I'm being fed those
and can then give them to our participants
in just a few moments.
But I wanna turn next to Anna Deeny
and say, Anna, how are you
seeing creative responses
and maybe some of that is
about building dialogue
or building this kind of
connection among peoples,
getting voices out there
that maybe haven't been
heard or new ideas?
Where are you seeing signs
of hope or opportunity?
- I mean, to get back to some
of the topics Gimena and Paula
and Vivaldo were pointing out before,
just for example Black Lives Matter
in the Latinx performance
of infrastructures
students like theaters,
performance spaces,
publishing houses, boards,
the deep difference that we see now
is that there's a
distinction between saying
I am an ally and I'm
doing something about this
at a structural level.
So, Black Lives Matter has
incited a sense of reckoning
that is long overdue,
and the sense that organizations
are gonna be held publicly
responsible for this reckoning
and internet actually allows that, right?
As much as sometimes we're concerned about
the proliferation of voices,
it also has this capacity
to hold people responsible.
So back to one of the points Vivaldo
was bringing up in Brazil
where are we allocating funds?
The US has a pretty
robust sense of allocating
private and public funds to the arts,
but historically Latinx
and black organizations
are historically underfunded
vis a vis their counterparts.
So I think that that is a
very important opportunity
that's coming up as far as
this crisis is concerned.
Shifting to the Southern Cone,
Chile right now has their
national prize in literature
which is pending,
so the list of finalists have come out
and recently one of the
universities there held a Zoom event
in which about 25 of the women finalists
were asked to read some of the
poetry they were working on,
so first of all, I got
to watch that from here,
people were on the call
from all over Europe,
all over Latin America
and the United States.
It permitted us again to
have a sense of a barometer
of what people are experiencing.
So some of the issues that
these women brought up
were for example, Veronica
Zondek who's a writer
who's in her 70s.
So she experienced the
Chilean dictatorship
and this is a concern I've
seen not only Zondek's work
but in other writers
and it's that the strategies
of governmental restriction
are similar to the,
so in other words the way you
limit the spread of the virus
is the same way you limit
the spread of ideas,
the same way you limit the
proliferation of concepts
that have the ability to go
against the government, right?
So what was interesting
and painful to hear there
is first of all, a
remembrance of the trauma,
it's triggering a traumatic reaction
from people who have that
memory, that historical memory.
Second of all, it reflects individuals
who still do not completely
trust their government
and its purpose in these restrictions.
And third, it reflects individuals
who don't trust the
government into the future,
in the sense that if the government
has this ability now to restrict movement
and the spread of a virus,
in the future there also
still exists this ability
to restrict the development
of cultural ideas.
Deeny, you asked this question
of what is the importance of culture?
And the importance is that when you want
to control a population,
the first thing you do is
you control their ability
to tell a story.
The first thing you do
is control their ability to tell a joke,
because they're always those on the inside
and the outside of a joke.
So cultural forms and that connection,
stories, poetry, jokes,
having a glass of wine together or coffee,
or whatever it is, a cafesito,
that is the ground zero of a fabric,
of connections in a society.
And so you will always
see across societies
that for example in enslaved populations,
what's the number one thing you wanna do?
Don't allow them to bond with one another
either through familial
stories, stories passed on,
jokes in a community, community stories,
cultural forms of dance,
of theater, whatever it is,
so that is the importance
of culture in a community
and when you take that away
what you have is a deep sense of solitude
which is actually dangerous
because that takes away
people's sense of hope
and their attachment to the past
and their movement into the future.
So I think what's striking is that across,
let me give you an
example of El Teatro Colon
which is an important theater
in Buenos Aires in Argentina.
Despite the fact that
they had been shut down,
they basically asked their patrons
if they could hold the subscription funds.
So even though the patrons
would no longer be able
to go to the theater for that
season because they're closed,
they asked for the patrons that
they could hold those funds.
So, instead of just holding those funds,
what the theater did
was they decided to
provide free lessons online
for people between the ages of 14 and 24,
and so that's where I have
found like the innovation
and the hope
in the sense that the number one goal
is to maintain the lines
of communication open,
to not allow people to feel alone
because that's the true tragedy, right?
To feel that you're alone,
to feel that there's no hope,
to feel that your voice isn't heard,
that your community is broken
and that's what we in the cultural field
have to guard against,
it's salvaging the human spirit
in what is truly a catastrophe.
- Yeah, and one of the cruelest
and most challenging
aspects of the pandemic
is the need to sometimes isolate, right?
And so the ways you can
build these creative bridges
and the example of the
Teatro Colon wonderful
in that regard, right?
So we can't congregate but we can connect
and we can do lessons,
and we can actually learn
this idiom, if you will,
this language, this way of expression,
and still stay connected
that's the moral--
- And many organizations,
I mean, I gave you a theater example,
the example also exists
in publishing houses
who are providing free works online,
something they had never
done before because, anyway.
- Yes, I wanna make sure
we also get a chance
for Vivaldo to chime in,
it's been such robust conversation,
I wanna make sure we
have a chance for Vivaldo
to also jump in and weigh
in a little bit on this
in terms of science of
hope that you're seeing,
and ways that you're
seeing expression play out
whether in Brazil
or in your broader
exploration to the region.
- Thank you, Matt.
I've tried to make it short
so people have time for question.
Just two things.
One is related to the D.C.,
for example the Black
Lives Matter movement
and it's interesting,
I follow street art and
it's amazing to see how
when they start the
demonstration, the looting,
Aldi stores, the men of
the building in D.C.,
they boarded this store
and so what happened in the city,
a lot of artists they start
painting on those boards.
It's amazing, they just a whole narratives
about the Black Lives Matter
Movement in D.C., for example.
Also in terms of their own D.C. city,
also with the DC 51,
there was a movement to
make D.C. the 51st state
so that is a lot of
commissioned art and murals
going on here in the Washington
DC area, it's fascinating,
not just Black Lives Matter,
but the black women's lives matter.
There is a lot of going on there.
Going back to Brazil,
I think echoing a little bit
of I think it's what has
been said already in here.
Going back to the three billion incentive
by the Brazilian government
I think one issue,
not issue but I think one
policy that has become
and will become very important
for Latin America and Brazil, for example,
we have already boast of a media
but there is a push for
the need and urgency
of the creation of a program
minimum income to everyone
because given the situation like now,
so this is gonna be a challenge
and also it's gonna be very important
for all the government,
including the US as we've seen.
So, going back to technology
and education inequality,
that's another issue that we hope
and the issue is gonna
come up with the inequality
between public schools and private school.
So I'll stop here
because I think I'm gonna echo
some of what my colleagues have said,
but I'm open for questions after.
- Wonderful, thank you.
Now we've had some questions come in
but I actually feel like
our time is limited enough
that I think we're going to just proceed
to our final round here, if you will.
And it's mainly to ask you
Georgetown is a university,
we have undergraduate
and graduate programs,
thank goodness international students
make up a significant portion
of our student community
and they will be very
prominently represented
on our campus this year
in spite of the government ruling
and now rescinded, thank goodness.
I wonder if you were speaking
to one of our students
and was saying to them
in light of the pandemic,
here's the one thing I'd
encourage you to study,
or the one thing I encourage
you to think about,
what would you say to students today
at a place like Georgetown
that might be thinking
about serving in the region
in the future?
So I'll just turn it to each of you
for just one brief comment if I could
maybe I'll start again Gimena.
- Sorry, I couldn't find
the button (laughs).
Yeah, so I'm very glad
that they rescinded that,
that was horrible.
I think an example of what was
done today is a good example,
breaking outside of your narrow paradigm,
or is the anthropology, is it
human rights, is it culture,
because we all need to think creatively
and we really need to
think outside of the box.
But in general, on Latin America
I would say this is the time
to really start looking
at those deep roots
of racism and history
and what people have been taught,
what people haven't been taught,
and what needs to really become a debate
in all of these societies.
- What a wonderful answer
and one that I will use
often with our students,
always remind them of the
importance of the program we offer
is it's interdisciplinary
so it really gets them
to break out of silos
and always remind them to the importance
of understanding the historical deep roots
because often there's a temptation
to have fun with whatever
the latest thing is
and the privilege of being
a student for a couple years
is to really ground yourself
in those deeper traditions,
whether they're literary traditions,
whether they're historical narratives,
uncovering narratives that
haven't been read before
so crucial to that.
Thank you, what a wonderful
way of framing that.
Paula, what would you say to a student?
- It's very challenging question, I think,
because all of us have a personal
and subjective experience
but I think that we have to be sure
that we can do the difference
and we have to assume
that in a very deep way,
how can I do the things
differently to change the world?
Because you have a lot
of resources around you,
you have this great opportunity
to be in this great university
with this great teachers
and think the world,
and also go out to that world
and make things happen differently.
Because now more than ever,
we have to use that well known idea
of the crisis is an opportunity,
all of us listen that
that idea very often.
So we need to know how we
have to do now that different,
is absolutely essential,
fundamental, critical,
we can't continue doing the same things
and we have for that to be
absolutely, I think, humble.
At the same time when we
have to identify with others,
we have to feel that
the suffering of others
is also impacting my own life.
So, and for that I think that
our university as Georgetown
with the principles and
values that you're chairing
in your classes,
we have to spread that spirit
also outside the university.
And also the last sentence
is use the history
to understand also the
present and the future.
- Marvelously said.
- I think that's very, very
critical thing and the
university gives that,
you can learn from the history
to face the future as well.
- Yes, now that's so important
and I especially appreciate
the way you name the
ability to change the world,
the world that we receive
is not the world we
have to forever live in,
we can actually be
agents of change in that
and in a world that can often
be quite cynical or skeptical,
those are important
words, thank you so much.
Anna, what would you say to a student?
- I completely agree with what
Gimena and Paula are saying,
a deep sense of hope,
we have to have hope,
you have to say we're
gonna solve these problems
because there's no choice not to.
A deep sense of humility and
I would add tenderness to that
in the sense that we need to listen
to those who are least listened
to and least represented,
and that's very hard
because it means we have
to be quiet for some time
and think about how other models,
and there's so many models,
economic models, cultural models,
familial models in Latin America
and we need to allow them to inform us
and learn how to dialogue with them.
Yeah, and look at structural roots
and have a lot of empathy as
Paula said, a lot of empathy.
The least is as important
to us as as ourselves
so we really need to look at that.
- Thank you, and I love
especially those words tenderness,
listening, empathy, such
important core values
and ways of approaching things.
Vivaldo, what would you say to a student?
- Well, just echoing everybody.
I think despite the crisis
and its effect on the world,
I truly believe that there
are many opportunities
arising to transform it and
to make it a better place,
and Georgetown has the Georgetown
social justice principle
can serve as we as well
faculty and student
to transform the society,
and many inequalities issues
that have been talking about history
have been exposed and shook,
we all know that about it,
but I think the pandemic
is teaching us a lot.
It's still not resolved and we
need to address those issues
to make a better world.
Just a final thought.
I think, just a final
mention about Brazil,
I think one figure that's
gonna be very important
not just for students,
but I think is going
back to Paulo Freire's
"Pedagogy of the Oppressed"
as a fundamental to help
teachers and professors
to look at education in
a more humanistic way
in which students are seen as diverse,
but also as a subject within
our own way of learning
and with a particular background.
I think the challenge is gonna
be not just for the student
but also for faculty and teachers
how to look at a student
as a diversity subject,
and considering their backgrounds
and how to make that different
from the way we all have been
teaching and learning traditionally.
- I love that actually.
It's a great time place to close,
and then many of us as professors
are thinking about how do
we adopt new technologies,
but what we need to think
about behind the technologies
are the students
and you're reminding us
of how diverse students
are really crucial to
who we'll be engaging,
how we can hear them,
and especially that, how we can
listen to them as Anna said,
and really learn from them,
become active co-creators with them,
rather than merely
dispensers of knowledge.
That's certainly what we aim to do.
I think it's part of
what this conversation
has contributed to today.
So, Anna, Gimena, Vivaldo, Paula,
thank you so much for joining us,
thank you for this really
robust conversation,
thank you, everyone online
who's been joining us
for the last little while.
I hope you've enjoyed this conversation.
Keep your eyes out.
There are plenty more things
coming from Georgetown
in the coming months.
We look forward to
engaging with you often.
So thank you and have a wonderful day.
Thank you, all.
