CLAG/LASG Winter 2024-25 Newsletter
CLAGistas,
Happy winter to all – The CLAG/LASG Winter 2024-25 Newsletter is here!!
We hope everyone had the opportunity to enjoy time with loved ones over the winter break. We thank you all again for your exciting contributions to our newsletter.
It’s impossible not to reflect on what is going on in the region without the shadow of the Trump administration and what it means for Latin America.
The dissolution of USAID, upending of asylum entry, threats to seize the Panama Canal, termination of deportation protection for Venezuelans, targeting of undocumented folks for deportation, massive potential tariffs on Mexico, exporting prisoners to El Salvador, and even the symbolic “renaming” of the Gulf of Mexico. Exiting climate agreements and policies that will likely accelerate climate change- and the list goes on. There is no sugarcoating it and it is hard to be optimistic. It is a disorienting barrage of assaults on people and the environment, the impacts of which will last far beyond what is (hopefully) just 4 years.
How do we resist? What networks of solidarity will we need to build or rekindle? How do we support those whose efforts to build social and ecological resilience will suddenly be without funding by the shuttering of USAID? How many of our research projects will be put on hold with massive budget cuts to NSF or censoring work because it includes any analysis of inequality? It is a dizzying, confusing, and for me personally, scary time.
In the midst of this grim reality, it remains important that we commit to care- for ourselves, supporting each other, especially care for students whose funding declines can be existential- and to take to heart the many rich lessons of resistance and community building across Latin American cultures. Don’t we know so many stories of this creativity across many authoritarian regimes in the region? Another world(s) is (are) still possible! I don’t yet know how we build alternatives during the next four years, but I am committed to finding a way.
Elise and Beth
CLAG Newsletter Co-Editors
