Emancipation versus normality in the Global South
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EDITORIAL
Emancipation versus normality in the Global South Yadira Borrero-Ramı´rez1 • Janeth Mosquera-Becerra2 Received: 16 July 2020 / Accepted: 19 August 2020 Ó Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+) 2020
‘‘Are we able to rediscover that each of us belongs to the same species, that we have an indivisible link to the whole life? Maybe that’s the question—the last one—before we breathe our last breath.’’ Achile Mbembe (2020) At the time of writing this editorial, more than 13 million people have been diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 in the world, more than half a million have died, and the transmission does not reach its peak (WHO 2020). Latin America and the United States are the current epicentre of the pandemic today. Once again, a catastrophic fact shows us the fragility of human life. This pandemic, coupled with climate change, reminds us that we cannot continue believing and acting as if human beings were out of nature, and that nature is a storehouse of unlimited resources that some can harness more than others. This pandemic highlights central aspects of our contemporary life: the trans-nationalization of risks in the context of an unequal globalization, the limitations and possibilities of scientific knowledge, and collaborative work, the precarious living and working conditions of millions of people that make them more vulnerable. The current hegemonic market-based global economic system has somehow normalized exploitation, spoliation, This Editorial is part of the special issue ‘‘Market-driven forces and Public Health’’. The authors of this Editorial are guest editors of the special issue. & Yadira Borrero-Ramı´rez [email protected] Janeth Mosquera-Becerra [email protected] 1
National Faculty of Public Health, University of Antioquia, Medellı´n, Colombia
2
Public Health School- CEDETES, University of Valle, Cali, Colombia
injustice, genocide of black and indigenous peoples, and precarization of life. Thus, its negative consequences are most acutely borne by populations facing a greater social, economic, and political disadvantage. Hence reproducing in this pandemic historical socio-sanitary inequities. It is only enough to see what is happening with the sick and dead from COVID-19 in Brazil, or with black and indigenous populations with historically precarious living conditions in Colombia, or with Latinos and immigrants in the United States; all of them are less likely to face the pandemic today and in the future. Oxfam (2019) estimated that billionaires had increased their wealth by US$ 2.5 billion a day, while the poorest half of the world’s population had reduced it by 11%. This huge concentration of wealth is, in part, the result of an increase in job precariousness, which leads to precarious lives and a new social class: the precarious. Processes to restructure productivity led to the reorientation of policies in countries, especially in the global South, which have facilitated the involvement of private actors (with explicit
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