Charla de Merienda Presents: Latinx Bodies and COVID-19
COVID-19 and Marginalized Bodies
Araceli Masterson-Algar | Associate Professor | Portuguese and Spanish | University of Kansas
The Covid-19 virus has taken up 95% of all global, national and local news. Yet, the lack of specificity and of thorough analysis addressing the structural causes and diverse manifestations of this pandemic for a variety of contexts and human realities is nearly absent. While some people are promoting a ‘social distance’ and ‘stay home agenda’ others cannot do either. As the ‘curve is allegedly flattening’ the dominant narrative is turning to debates on how and when everything will go back to ‘normal’, as if the status prior to the pandemic was anywhere close to normal. I propose that we turn to the variety of responses to the pandemic in the Latin American region, and in the U.S., with attention to how Covid-19 has unveiled, and most possible, enhanced, social hierarchies of class, gender, race, etc. in a variety of national contexts putting forth, once again, how some lives matter more than others. I call for the urgency to reflect on how some of the national policies implemented across the Latin American region and in the U.S. play out in Latinx femme populations, with a focus on the migrant and undocumented body. My central stance is the urgency to think about the ways in which the moralist discourses stemming from those who have a home where they can stay and be ‘distant’ threatens to further distance their bodies -bodies that matter- from the lived experiences of those whose lives were deemed disposable well before Covid-19.
El Covid-19 constituye el 95% de la cobertura mediática local, nacional y global. Sin embargo, la falta de especificidad y la ausencia de análisis sobre las causas estructurales y manifestaciones diversas de la pandemia para una variedad de contextos y realidades humanas destaca por su ausencia. Tanto el llamado a la distancia social como la implementación de políticas para ‘quedarse en casa’ son inaccesibles a grandes sectores de la población. Actualmente, ante la supuesta disminución de casos, la narrativa parece centrarse en debates sobre la vuelta a la normalidad, como si el estado anterior a la pandemia pudiera aceptarse como ‘normal’. En este encuentro propongo pensar en varias respuestas a la pandemica desde la región Latinoamericana, y desde los Estados Unidos, enfocándome en cómo el Covid-19 ha desenmascarado, y posiblemente agudizado, las jerarquías sociales de clase, género, raza, etc. de una variedad de contextos nacionales, revelando, una vez más, cómo algunas vidas importan más que otras. Hago una llamada a la urgencia de reflexionar sobre las consecuencias de las políticas nacionales sobre cuerpos marcados por género, tanto en EEUU como en varios contextos Lationoamericanos, y con atención a los cuerpos migrantes e indocumentados. Enfatizo, ante todo, la urgencia de repensar las maneras en que los discursos moralistas que emanan de sectores ‘con casas en las que pueden quedarse’ revelan, de hecho, su distancia física y social de cuerpos considerados deshechables desde mucho antes del Covid-19.
Movilidad transfronteriza en tiempos del COVID19
Sylvia Fernández Quintanilla, Ph.D. | Public and Digital Humanities Postdoctoral Research Fellow | Hall Center for the Humanities | University of Kansas
Lxs habitantes de la frontera han aprendido a negociar las distintas oportunidades y limitaciones específicas de la vida fronteriza y las diferencias de aquellas en el interior de cada país, lo que da como resultado una forma de pensar o una sociedad/cultura fronteriza (Newby 2006).[1] A través de la crónica periodística y la poesía, Adriana Candia y Amalia Ortíz, escritoras jerundias de la frontera México-Estados Unidos, es posible trazar las dinámicas transfronteriza que los habitantes de la frontera han desarrollado e integrado en sus vidas a lo largo de los años.[2] Esta presentación abordará el tema de la movilidad transfronteriza desde un análisis literario basado en las interseccionalidades de los cuerpos femeninos en la frontera. Esto con el fin de mostrar las estrategias de sobrevivencia y resistencia que los cuerpos fronterizxs desempeñan para contrarrestar violencias sistémicas, culturales y patriarcales dentro de una región binacional. Con esto en mente, se pretende tener una conversación interdisciplinaria respecto a las situación actual a la que se enfrentan las mujeres y las comunidades de la frontera respecto a las restricciones migratorias y de cruce acordada por los gobiernos de ambos países en regiones fronterizas a causa del COVID19.
*La presentacion sera en espanol pero la sección de preguntas y respuestas será abiertamente en inglés, español o espanglish.
Transborder mobility in times of COVID19
Border natives have learned to negotiate the different specific opportunities and limitations of life in the borderland and the differences between those within each country, resulting in a borderline mindset or society/culture (Newby 2006). Through the journalistic chronicle and poetry, Adriana Candia and Amalia Ortiz, border natives writers of the Mexico-United States border, it is possible to trace the transborder dynamics that the inhabitants of the border have developed and integrated into their lives throughout the years. This presentation will address the subject of transborder mobility from a literary perspective based on the intersectionalities of female bodies on the border region. This in order to expose the survival and resistance strategies that borderlands bodies play to counter systemic, cultural and patriarchal violence within a binational region. With this in mind, it is intended to have an interdisciplinary conversation regarding the current situation faced by women and communities that reside in borderlands’ regions regarding the crossing and migration restrictions in border region due to COVID19.
*The presentation will be in Spanish, but the Q&A session will be openly in English, Spanish or Spanglish.
[1] Newby, Alice. “Border Crossing and Settlement in El Paso, Texas: Understanding Transborder Actors”. Annual Meeting, Montreal, 2006.
[2] Candia, Adriana. Mujeres eternas, crónicas de Adriana. Revista Arenas Blancas, NMSU, Universidad Modelo (Mérida, Yucatán), EÑEDICIONES, 2016.
Ortiz, Amalia. Rant.Chant.Chisme. Wings Press, 2015. The Canción Cannibal Cabaret & Other Songs. Aztlán Libre Press 2019.
Marginalized Bodies and the COVID-19 Pandemic
Hannah Soyer | MFA in Creative Writing | University of Kansas
In my home state of Iowa, where Gov. Kim Reynolds is one of eight governors (as of Apr. 8) yet to order a statewide Stay at Home order, three of the 25 staff members at the Iowa Veterans Home have tested positive for COVID-19. The Iowa Veterans Home houses over 500 veterans who need more healthcare than what can be provided at their homes. It should go without saying that these individuals all have various acquired disabilities and health issues and are at a heightened risk if they were to contract the virus.
And yet, still, we don’t have the necessary precautions in place. Hospitals are not getting the necessary medical supplies they need. Things at the federal level are not going well. And individuals across the country are referring to COVID-19 as a form of natural selection.
Here’s another anecdote: On April 1st, a friend of a friend tested positive for COVID-19 in Austin, Texas. She had tried to get tested five other times before this, and it was only after she refused to leave the hospital that she finally got the test (despite having intense difficulty breathing). This woman is also a Venezuelan immigrant.
We don’t know to what extent this woman’s race and heavy accent affected her access to care, but the fact that she was brushed off five times previously, and the fact that this woman isn’t white are surely intertwined. Historically, pain and symptoms of illness from women, specifically women of color, have been met with denial from doctors and the medical complex. Critical Race and Feminist Theorist Rebecca Wanzo’s work has explored how suffering, which accompanies pain but is often forgotten by the Western medical world, is interpreted through one’s cultural positionality.
Her work shows, for example, that African Americans are under-treated for pain, likely because healthcare professionals may believe that the pain someone is describing is not as bad as they say it is. This suffering, then, can easily result in African Americans—especially African American women—being less likely to seek pain management and routine care from doctors.
As a white disabled woman currently studying disability and trauma theory, I bring all of this up for two reasons: One, it is essential for us all to acknowledge how race impacts pain and suffering (and how it impacts illness and disability). Two, it illustrates how some lives are being prioritized over others in the response to COVID-19, as can be seen in various states’ criteria for access to critical care, and policies on ventilator use (see also New York’s 2015 ventilator guidelines). Judith Butler asks in her book Precarious Life, “What counts as a livable life and a grievable death?” My theory, especially when we look at the current situation, is that the lives of those with normative bodies are deemed livable and their deaths grievable, while those of us with non-normative bodies are just seen as collective collateral in this universal pandemic.
Individuals who claim that COVID-19 is performing some sort of “natural selection” are not just justifying the death of the elderly and those with compromised immune or respiratory systems (the disabled and chronically ill, for example), but also those who are barred access to the healthcare they need to get well. As the research has shown, this means individuals of lower socioeconomic status and people of color.
The deaths that result from COVID-19 will ultimately not just be as a result of the virus. Many of them have been and will continue to be facilitated by an intersection of various oppressive and violent systems, systems which privilege certain bodies, and thus certain lives, over others.