Graphic courtesy CADTM of Latin America

Call of the indigenous peoples, afro-descendants and peoples’ organizations of Latin America

CADTM, Collective 3 April 2020

The crisis that COVID-19 has provoked globally presents a crossroads to the peoples of Abya Yala – Latin America. The popular organizations are the first line of resistance against the worst expressions of the decomposing system.

We are going through a complete crisis that threatens life in all its forms. The COVID-19 has become a pandemic at a time when the capitalist crisis is intensifying and economic forces repeatedly try to make the working class bear the onus of restoring the corporate profit rate. This coincides with the weakening of health systems, the deterioration of living conditions and the destruction of the public sector as a result of the neoliberal shift. Asphyxiated by foreign debt, international organisations and the permanent oppression of imperialism against our sovereignty, we are heading for a scenario with very serious consequences.

In an America where we refuse to accept structural adjustment and the imposition of new imperialist policies, and where our peoples have had first hand experience of major popular uprisings in recent months, the pandemic has become a pretext to legitimize the presence of the armed forces on our territories and to implement adjustment measures along with the deterioration of living conditions for the working class. Likewise, this crisis has once again revealed the brutality of patriarchal violence against women and sexual dissidents, as well as the historical exclusion of indigenous peoples and people of African descent, who are forced to face the pandemic in conditions of extreme vulnerability.

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