POST: How we fought (and sometimes lost) for our rights during the pandemic
The CELS team began thinking about this book in the middle of 2020, when the “human rights agenda” was in flames. Under the deceptive pause of the quarantine, everything happened: land occupations and evictions, difficult or impossible access to justice for ordinary people, hunger in the most impoverished sectors, abandonment of patients in psychiatric institutions, tenants who had to resort to debt to avoid being left on the street, people from the trans or non-binary community dodging multiplied obstacles to sustain medical treatment.
For this reason, POST does not seek to reflect in abstraction on the social consequences of covid-19 but to tell, very specifically, what a human rights organization could do in an exceptional situation, in which conflicts and problems it decided to step in and what the balance is in each case. This book is a testimony of the experience of an organization that works in dialogue and alliance with other groups and organizations. It is a chronicle of the interventions that helped contain the disaster, of the efforts that sometimes achieved a lot and sometimes just weren’t enough.
POST also recounts what the State could and could not do, it tells of how while some of its agencies provided care of and distributed resources, others operated at low speed, heavy, blocked, or simply did the opposite of protecting rights.
POST is a book about the present that asks what we can do with what 2020 has done with us, how to relaunch the fight for the expansion of rights. It is a demand to the institutions and powers that were not up to the task. It is also a confirmation of the power that lies in grassroots organizations and in the activism of community networks. Ultimately, it is also, an invitation to discuss the future of human rights.
Full book in Spanish available for purchase and for download.
Authors: Agustina Lloret Ana Sofía Soberón Anabella Museri Anabella Schoenle Antonella Giordano Ariel Wilkis Betiana Cáceres Camila Barretto Maia Cynthia Palacios Reckziegel Diego Morales Fabián Murúa Fabiana Donati Fabio Vallarelli Federico Ghelfi Federico Orchani Florencia Labiano Florencia Mogni Guadalupe Basualdo Joaquín Castro Valdez Juan Cruz Goñi Leandro Vera Belli Lucía de la Vega Lui Stegmann Luna Miguens Macarena Fernández Hofmann Macarena Sabin Paz Manuel Tufró Marcela Perelman Margarita Trovato María Hereñú Mariana Biaggio Michelle Cañas Comas Myriam Selhi Paula Litvachky Quimey Ramos Sol Hourcade Teresa Texidó Vanina Escales Víctor Manuel Rodríguez Victoria Darraidou Ximena Tordini