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COVID-19 Places

COVID-19 Places

Collection focused on ways COVID-19 is unfolding in different places. 

Ecuador Place Essay Image

Image created with the use of a free image by Crystal Mirallegro (Unsplash website) for Ecuador's covid19 place essay

Image with rainforest trees on background

Mobilizing comedians/political commentators

makasuarez
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One of the mediums of communications that has reached well beyond the US are monologues by well-known comedians that are partly explaining, partly commenting on current BLM events. One of them is Hasan Minjah and his message We Cannot Stay Silent About George Floyd where he calls on migrants in particular to act in the face of racism rather than perpetuate it. Nearly 4 million people have seen the clip, which is part of Minjah's broader Netflix TV series The Patriot Act (who makes these videos and pays for them is also relevant here). In Ecuador, this video circulated mainly among English speaking young adults, mainly via WhatsApp. It triggered many group discussions around what is happening in the US and how we might think about this political moment with regards to our own racist history. The second video is by Trevor Noah and has over 8 million views. In it, he explains what racism means in relationship to the social contract and how it has failed for too many people. To me it is particularly interesting to see the pedagogical approach their videos take and the truly diverse audiences they speak to. The ripple effect the videos have is important for thinking about how the BLM movement has mobilized political sentiments well beyond the US and what mediums can effectively do this (and for whom).

Maka Suarez

makasuarez
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I'm a co-founder of Kaleidos - Center for Interdisciplinary Ethnography, a space for academic experimentations supported by two top ranked universities in Ecuador (University of Cuenca and FLACSO-Ecuador). We are located in Cuenca, where I am assistant professor of medical anthropology. Together with a team of researchers we have been tracking covid19 with a specific focus on Latin America through Spanish language podcasts, collective texts, webinars, and online forums.

My current ethnographic interest is on documenting data distrust networks from the neighborhood scale to the national level in Ecuador, and how these networks have produced distinctive approaches (and failures) to the current pandemic.