Eduardo Restrepo

Latin America is moving toward a far-right political agenda that implies backwardness in matters related to human rights gained by different groups, after decades of social mobilizations, that contested to the politics of different political regimes. Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Haiti, and Ecuador are under these circumstances, threatened by politics that does not allow the coexistence of different worldviews, and more importantly, denying basic rights. The resurgence of racist, prof-facist discourses, that endorses stereotypes and promote ideas in which women, indigenous and certain religious groups, and LGTB communities should align to specific patterns of behaviour is enough evidence of this radical change. The new political agenda is resignifying historical hate discourses that pretend to exterminate the diversity that characterize the region, under the assumption that a white, Christian, and Western discourse of progress is preferable than any other ideas, and of course, epistemologies. The social sciences are under attack by a discourse that delegitimize essential epistemologies, promoting defunding of research centers and universities, and minimizing the importance and impact of social research. The Asociaci’n Latinoamericana de Antropolog’a (ALA) promotes this conference as an urgent arena to debate the new regional political agenda, and the emerging challenges to help us understand and explain the social processes that are transforming our societies in a context of economic, political, academic, and environmental extractivism..