Lilia Monzo and Peter McLaren

We are heading into an era where unbridled greed, racism, sexism, and other forms of hate are, once again, unabashedly proclaimed to the world without remorse. This turn from the once negative association with racism and attempts to avoid being labeled racist has became increasingly evident in the U.S. since 2014, when, astoundingly, a string of White police killings of unarmed Black men went unpunished or unprosecuted (Monzó & McLaren, 2014). In some of these cases the police officers evidenced a complete lack of compassion for the men in their final seconds of life. National coverage of these events made clear to would be haters and predators that racism was still very prevalent and deep rooted in U.S. society.  The White supremacist and misogynist venom that U.S. republican hopeful, Donald Trump, is selling in his 2016 presidential campaign has not been seen since the presidency of Ronald Reagan labeled millions of America’s unemployed as potential welfare cheats and created the idea that welfare fraud was a nationwide epidemic. The welfare queen—a lazy Black and Brown female living off honest (White) taxpayers’ money—was seeded in the soil of America’s structural unconscious (Litchman, 1982).

Nos estamos adentrando en una era en la que la avaricia desenfrenada, el racismo, el sexismo y otras formas de odio vuelven, una vez más, a ser proclamadas descaradamente y sin remordimientos. Este giro desde lo que en su día se asociara negativamente con el racismo y los intentos de evitar ser etiquetado como racista se ha hecho cada vez más evidente en EE. UU. a partir de 2014, cuando sorprendentemente no hubo castigo ni sanción a una serie de asesinatos de hombres de raza negra desarmados a manos de policías de raza blanca (Monzó y McLaren, 2014). En algunos de estos casos, los agentes de policía mostraron una auténtica falta de compasión por dichos hombres en los últimos instantes de sus vidas. La cobertura nacional de estos hechos dejó claro a potenciales detractores y predadores que el racismo aún prevalecía y estaba profundamente arraigado en la sociedad de EE. UU. La supremacía de la raza blanca y el veneno misógino que el esperanzado republicano estadounidense Donald Trump está vendiendo en su campaña presidencial de 2016 no se veía desde que la presidencia de Ronald Reagan calificara a millones de desempleados estadounidenses como potenciales estafadores del estado de bienestar y creara la idea de que el fraude al estado de bienestar era una epidemia nacional. La idea de la reina del bienestar, una perezosa mujer de raza negra que vive a costa del dinero de los honestos contribuyentes (de raza blanca), se originó en la base de la inconsciencia estructural de Estados Unidos (Litchman, 1982).

Mujeres de toda América Latina están emigrando hacia el norte poniendo en riesgo sus vidas. El destino deseado es, lógicamente, Estados Unidos, esa gran central eléctrica que, a pesar de sus documentadas violencia y explotación históricas que continúan contra América Latina, sigue siendo capaz de crear esa confusión ideológica que alienta la esperanza en ese ilusorio “sueño americano”. Estas mujeres, al límite de la desesperación resultado de una pobreza, una necesidad y un miedo inimaginables, se arman del valor que solo las mujeres de color saben que tienen (lo tienen grabado a fuego en la piel y en el corazón como resultado de su historia de opresión) y comienzan un viaje que cambiará su vida para siempre.

Women from across Latin America are migrating north at great peril to their lives – their intended destination is, as expected, the US – that giant powerhouse that in spite of its well documented historical and continued imperialist violence and exploitation against Latin America is still able to create the ideological haze that encourages hope for that illusive “American dream.”  Pushed to the brink of desperation resulting from unimaginable poverty, privation, and fear, these women muster the courage that only women of color know that they have (it is imbued in their flesh and in their hearts as a result of their histories of oppression) and begin a journey that forever changes their lives.

Our societal conceptions of love, sexuality, and family are deeply implicated in the sustenance of capitalist social relations. Falling in love can be described as a euphoric event that exhilarates and excites but its enduring qualities and its potential for connecting us to anOther and to our own humanity is forfeited under the suffocating confines of a capitalist structure that is founded on unequal relations of ownership and domination. Instead of luxuriating in love, in the possibility that love engenders, we live our lives attempting to snatch moments of “love” in an otherwise routinized life of narcissism and self indulgence with little understanding of what it means to truly love – to value and respect one’s significant others but also to create a foundation for social justice outside of one’s immediate interests. That is, to create a social universe outside of value production grounded in an interculturalism, respect for diversity, and a «régimen de desarrollo» that fosters «el buen vivir» by requiring all of us to exercise social responsibility in the communities in which we live and labor.