2/3 New Activism & Exile
In the second session of the "Latin America is Moving" online conference on the 4th of March, 2021, Latin America is Moving Collective welcomed various presentations dealing with questions of transnational activism, violence during fieldwork, intersectionality, decoloniality through art, radical pedagogy in intercultural universities and the role of social media in social movements.
The keynote by Ana Cecilia Dinerstein gave an introduction to the critical questions social movements ask in the decisive historical conjuncture we are living in, and the possibility of alternatives. Hope was a thread that was then followed through in the rest of the presentations given by Andrew Redden, Anna Grimaldi, Joselyne Contreras Cerda & Maria/Rosario Montero, Claire Moll Namas, Elyne Doornbos and Patrick Kane.
The session was divided into two sections and the audience had again a chance to participate in answering the presenters’ questions in breakout rooms.
The session on New Activism and Exile was chaired by Pablo Bradbury.
Bio: Pablo is an historian focusing on the Cold War period and left-wing political cultures. His research interests include the Christian Left in Argentina and Exile, International Solidarity and Transnational movements in Cold War Latin America, as well as working in a more practical sense with the Latin American diaspora at the Indoamerican Refugee and Migrant Organisation.
Keynote by Ana Cecilia Dinerstein: The Art of Organizing Hope
BIO: Ana Cecilia Dinerstein (PhD Sociology Warwick University) is a critical theorist, political sociologist and scholar-activist. Her research interests are work, social movements, critical sociology and theory, Bloch’s philosophy, open Marxism, feminism, decolonial horizons and contemporary forms of utopia. She has created a new transdisciplinary research field: ‘the Global Politics of Hope’, the focus of which is the contradictory processes of transformation led by social, labour, indigenous, urban and rural movements mainly in the Global South but not exclusively. Her notion of The art of organising hope, that is the collective resistance and organising processes that give form to alternative realities, horizons and practices, has inspired artists, NGOs and radical pedagogues’ projects in Europe and Latin America. Her publications include The Politics of Autonomy in Latin America: The Art of Organising Hope, Social Sciences for An Other Politics: Women Theorising without Parachutes and Open Marxism against a closing world.
Keywords: Hope, Ernst Bloch, struggle, autonomy, possibility of alternatives
https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/newsletters:03:index
Death Squads, Silence and Activism-Based Research in El Salvador (Music for Hope)
Abstract: In 2016, I began a historical study of Music for Hope, a charity that teaches Music to children and youths in El Salvador in an educative programme designed to create a non-violent counter-culture in rural communities in the Bajo Lempa, El Salvador. The project had been set up in 1996-7 by a musicologist and activist from the UK but had long-since been run by young musicians on the ground with the assistance of volunteers here in the UK and also Cataluyna. I’d been involved in the project as a volunteer since 2013 and as a historian I offered to collect and record the history of the project and continue documenting it for a further five years. The idea was to document it through the life-histories of the four music teachers, and a student who’d grown up in the project as well as two administrators, and together we worked on the project design. In July 2016, I began recording interviews and filming. Just a couple of months afterwards, the community I’d been living and working in was attacked by a death squad, and 5 young people were murdered. These were the first killings that had taken place in that community since it had been founded by returned refugees in 1991. Subsequently, rumours of a death-list circulated and more than 25 youths fled into exile for fear that they would be next. Two of those warned were the Music for Hope participants. The student fled north (de mojado) to the United States and claimed asylum there—his case is still in process. One of the administrators was also warned he was being ‘investigated’ and fled here to the UK where a drawn-out asylum battle was eventually successful. This paper will consider some of the implications of ethnographic research under such circumstances and will reflect on the boundaries between research and everyday life when tragedies such as this take place.
The question posed by Andrew to the audience was: Should there be a limit to researchers’ involvement in the lives of those who participate in their research, especially when individuals are faced with trauma and danger? If so, where should those limits lie? Where does research end and real life begin (or vice-versa)?
BIO: Andrew Redden is a Lecturer in Latin American History at the University of Liverpool and also a trustee and committed member of the UK support team for Music for Hope, a UK-Catalonia funded charity teaches music to children and young people in rural El Salvador. This musical training given by Salvadoran musicians, all from the communities in which the project works, aims to give these young people life-skills and teach self-discipline, but also to give them a safe, neutral space in which they can grow and form long-lasting friendships away from the gang-violence that so devastates the country and particularly the lives of its young people.
Andrew’s academic career began by focussing on the religious history of Spanish America during the colonial period, and particularly, people’s interactions with gods, spirits, angels and demons. Since 2013 until the onset of the covid pandemic, he has been travelling regularly to El Salvador as part of his work with Music for Hope where he records the work being done by the musicians and young people of the communities. He has also given workshops in story-telling and song-writing (as well as helping with music tuition on occasion). Since 2016, he has been working on a formal academic research project to document the history of Music for Hope. The intention (primarily) was to allow him to spend more time with the project but also to create a documentary history of the project working closely with the teachers, participants and their families.
Brazilian Exiles and Academia: France and Italy from 1970
Abstract: Between 1970 and 1971, groups of left-wing militants from Brazil were exiled to various parts of the world. The Brazilians’ release from political imprisonment was secured as part of negotiations to protect the lives of the US, German, and Swiss ambassadors, as well as a Japanese consul, who had been kidnapped by urban guerilla groups. Although the planes that transported them into exile landed in Chile, Mexico, and Algeria, several would reunite in countries of Western Europe.
While groups like Amnesty International, and, indeed, several Western European state officials, rejected these individuals on the basis of the violent means through which they had arrived, intellectual and academic circles offered a unique space for solidarity, intellectual debate, and resistance. In this presentation, I focus on the relationships formed between Brazilians and Western Europeans in Switzerland, France, and Italy from 1970. On the one hand, these relationships allowed Brazilians to establish a new identity as victims of human rights violations, as opposed to the violent terrorists the Brazilian regime would have them portrayed. On the other, new spaces and networks allowed for exiles’ contribution to an emergent human rights movement. Through media, academia, campaigns, and tribunals, Brazilians and their experience provided for the foundations of what we now call ‘Transnational’ or ‘Third Generation’ human rights, as well as solidarity for Latin America more broadly.
Question to the audience made by Anna:
What Latin Americans, as members of the Global South, are contributing to Global Human Rights more broadly, spanning to today?
BIO: Dr Anna Isabella Grimaldi is currently teaching International Development at King's College London. She graduated with a joint International Relations PhD from King's and the University of São Paulo in late 2019 and is presently editing her thesis for publication. More widely, her work contributes to understanding the construction of human rights discourses and practices by actors of the Global South.
The De-democratization of power:
Digital influence & water privatization in El Salvador
ABSTRACT:
In this presentation, I will address the limitations, as posed by the digital era, of the current popular struggle against the privatization of water in El Salvador. The social movement, primarily made up of “historic” organizations stemming from the Civil War years (1980-1992), continues to use their tried and tested activism tactics: popular education, marches, press conferences, and solidarity appeals. However, with the election of President Nayib Bukele in February of 2019, it became clear that much of the power and influence in the country was no longer on the streets but rather in the digital sphere, namely Twitter. Because the majority of Salvadorans that make up the social movement are economically poor campesinos who are unable to pay for access (cell phone data) to Twitter, Bukele’s presidency, which has been mostly conducted on the social media platform, has caused a sort of de-democratization of power in the country. How can the old guard overcome this newly introduced hurdle, and what might they be able to learn from other activist movements within their country? Ethnographically, I will show how youth organizers in a small town in La Libertad, El Salvador are finding creative ways to repurpose the digital platforms (Facebook) that they do have access to in order to demand representation for themselves in local government. Not drawing any conclusions myself, I will end by offering the following questions to the audience:
Is it the responsibility of the researcher to help bridge this generational divide, and if so, what is the best approach?
BIO: Claire Moll Namas is a 3rd year PhD researcher at the University of Cambridge. Her doctoral research focuses on the nature of the complex trust relationships between an organization of the Salvadoran social movement and their Evangelical participants in rural La Libertad, El Salvador.
Flower throwers at the frontlines:
social movement dynamics and shrinking civic spaces in Nicaragua
ABSTRACT: Coherence, collective identity formation, and group solidarity are crucial for the consolidation of a social movement – they are the glue that binds the various actors together. However, matters of solidarity and identity are not unproblematic; discursively interconnecting a range of issues into a holistic frame to foster unity may actually overlook the structural origins of protest for different groups – that what makes them different. Rather than transforming these localised sentiments, converging social movements in pursuit of a Nicaraguan ‘Gran Coalición’ may therewith unintentionally reinforce them. Since April 2018, Nicaragua has been the stage of a nationwide civil uprising that evolved from ecological and economic demands into a call for the resignation of the Ortega-Murillo regime, which has stripped Nicaraguans of their political rights and civil liberties. This warrants a deeper understanding of how social movements may be able to circumvent, reclaim and/or reopen civic spaces in order to advance their alternative visions to a more just, democratic and sustainable society. As the urban, agrarian and indigenous movements originate from variegated yet intersectional struggles, the potentials for convergence have much to do with issue specificness and inclusivity.
However, the umbrella movement at the national level has been much more vocal when it comes to expressing solidarity with the campesino struggle than with the indigenous and afro-descendant struggle. This latter group has been historically overlooked in Nicaragua, and has the longest standing conflict with the Ortega-Murillo government in defense of their ancestral homelands and natural resources. Without explicitly and repeatedly addressing the uniqueness of their struggle, the umbrella movement risks not succeeding in forging new spaces for these social movements that are emancipatory rather than exclusionary in practice.
Question to the audience: How do you think movements can best enact intersectionality to navigate the fine line between unity and diversity?
BIO: Elyne Doornbos is a third-year PhD candidate at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (ICTA-UAB). After having researched Nicaragua’s No Al Canal movement for her Research Master’s thesis at the University of Amsterdam, her current research focuses on the dynamics and implications of the convergences between the student, campesino, and indigenous & afro-descendant movements in Nicaragua following the 2018 civil uprising and the closure of civic spaces. Alongside her Phd, Elyne is actively involved with the Dutch climate movement and helped build a local coalition for the conduct of intersectional activism.
Radical pedagogy in the struggle for social justice:
a case study from southwest Colombia
ABSTRACT: In the context of armed conflict and repression in southwest Colombia, how have civil society organisations and social movements sought to build unity and collaboration in their struggles for human rights and buen vivir? And how do social movements harness learning processes in order to facilitate the emergence of new generations of activists and social movement leaders? What have the activists organising in such a context learned through their struggles, and how might it be relevant for processes seeking social transformation elsewhere?
Colombia is one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be an activist: according to the NGO Indepaz, 250 social leaders or activists were assassinated during 2019, including human rights defenders, community and neighbourhood leaders, trade unionists, environment activists, indigenous and afro-Colombian leaders - the majority by right-wing paramilitary groups. Despite extremely high levels of political violence and repression over recent decades, the country’s vibrant , diverse social movements and civic sectors have not only sustained themselves and their struggles, but have also produced sustained periods of mobilisation around a wide range of issues throughout this period, nowhere more than in the southwest of Colombia.
The Universidad Intercultural de los Pueblos (Intercultural University of the Peoples) is a social movement led popular education initiative which seeks to build unity, collaboration and capacity within and between social movements in southwest Colombia, with a particular focus on youth and the development of new leadership capacities. This pedagogical strategy stretches back two decades, and has evolved over time in relation to the ever-changing conjunctures and requirements of social movements and trade unions in a region where they have been systematically targeted by the state and its paramilitary allies.
As part of a broader ESRC-funded project exploring social movement learning processes across 4 countries, this co-produced Colombia case study involved the protagonists of the intercultural university in developing and implementing the research process using the systematisation of experiences methodology. This talk will discuss some of the research’s central findings, as well as touch on the solidarity-based ethical orientation and framework of the project.
The questions posed by Patrick to the audience were:
How might we build meaningful solidarity with pedagogical processes such as the Intercultural University of the Peoples?
What role can/should academics in Western countries like the UK play with regards to struggles for social change?