Intervention by Laura Rodriguez, during the meeting of the Humanist International with the Academy of Sciences of Moscow, April 1991 

If we talk about humanizing our society, humanizing politics, humanizing the Earth, we understand that it is about considering the human being as the central value, and when we talk about human beings we are talking about ALL human beings. Therefore, one of the guiding principles or values of our actions must be non-discrimination. 

The discrimination that exists today, the differentiation by human categories, and the inequality of rights, shows us that the current conception of the human being is based on other values. 

When people's rights vary according to the color of their skin, according to their sex, their age, the latitude in which they were born, according to the socio-economic condition of the environment that surrounded them; when rights depend on all these factors, depend on conditions that were never chosen, on natural conditions. 

Discrimination is the denial of the freedom of others, of their possibilities to choose, to transform, and to develop. Discrimination consists in the action of submerging the human being or groups of human beings in the world of nature. Nature, it is true, affects the human being, but it affects the human body and not the intentionality, which is what defines the human being. 

This paper will surely have no opponents. It would be difficult to argue that the value of discrimination could guide a humanist society, but it will be interesting to recognize the views that often filter into our political, social and intellectual work. 

Is it not true that when we think of indigenous people we imagine them closer to the earth, to plants, to a territory, as part of a geography? 

That when we refer to women we basically consider their procreative function. 

That when we talk about young people we do it thinking that they are a kind of incomplete beings, suffering from a disease that will pass with time? 

That when we refer to workers we visualize them in an industry, next to a machine, moving a lever, almost as one more piece of the production line? 

That when we think of “underdeveloped” people we accept their situation because we consider it as a natural process, which will develop over time? 

Let's go a little further. 

Nature did not endow us with a part of our body capable of holding liquids without the risk of spilling them, our hand is not enough. In the sand, humans discovered silicon, learned to work with glass and generated a prosthesis that allowed them to collect liquids at will and carry out their intentions and interests. This does not violate the sand, nor the silicon, nor the glass, nor the glass. Discrimination reduces human beings to the quality of prostheses, to mere instruments of other intentions. This is the essence of violence. 

The non-recognition of indigenous rights serves the interests of large landowners by extending their dominion over the land. 

The transfer of ethnic minorities to “more suitable places”, uprooting them and disarticulating their social network, is useful to the caste domination. 

The religious caste system, which relegates and marginalizes certain groups to certain jobs or places, is useful to those who want to maintain their power. 

The social class system is useful to an economic and political system that seeks to maintain the privileges of a few. 

The isolation of young people from the centers of power and decision-making is useful for the maintenance in power of previous generations, thus preventing the replacement and participation of new currents. 

Keeping women in the private sphere is useful for isolating them from everyday problems, which are not included as social problems, thus allowing men to dedicate themselves to the public sphere. 

Indigenous people, ethnic minorities, religious and social groups, young people, and women, are a kind of prosthesis, instruments that can be manipulated to maintain established power schemes. 

Attempts to resolve these situations are made on a daily basis. The various parliaments of the world often deal with special laws for special groups, as if trying to compensate for those attributes that nature did not give them. And this is also the essence of discrimination. 

Overcoming the different forms of discrimination requires a great cultural, social and personal change, a new daily attitude that is also a way of doing things. A way of doing politics, a way of social organization. 

Any humanist social process will not be more than a mere rhetorical discourse if it is not capable of incorporating the innovative and dynamic forces of today, such as women and young people who are not finding real spaces for participation.