Each Others: Rita Valencia and Charlotte Sáenz

The Secret Ingredient

“How do we build these understandings from a decolonial, antiracist and antipatriarchal basis? How do we build real solidarity bridges that do not replicate patronising structures of power? How can we learn and build with those who have resisted and re(x)isted, in order to open new imaginaries to heal mother earth, the other, and ourselves?” Rita Valencia and Charlotte Sáenz

These are just some of the questions we explore with Rita Valencia and Charlotte Sáenz on this edition of The Secret Ingredient with Raj Patel, Tom Philpott, and Rebecca McInroy.

Rita Valencia has been working for several years with the Proceso de Liberación de la Madre Tierra movement in the Cauca region of the Nasa people in Colombia, and she along with Charlotte Sáenz talk with us about joy, the difference between translation and interpretation, reimagining liberation, time and social movements, and the paradigm shift that must take place today.

In our correspondence prior to this recording, Charlotte and Rita wrote: “It feels important for us to hear and learn from such pueblos en movimiento, that are doing things beyond the nation-state and reframing ways of doing, not only politics but also social and even ontological existence. This is particularly important because complex concepts such as Mandar Obedeciendo or Buen Vivir are being imported into English and other dominant languages and mindscapes as mere translations (bad ones for that matter), and not as grounded practices. This becomes even more urgent and necessary because extractivism, repression, and all climate change drivers are increasing and will continue to do so during the current global pandemic and economic recession.”

Read more about Rita and the Food March, the movement organized to feed the most dispossessed in the cities, in a piece published in La Jornada newspaper’s Ojarasca.

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