How Indigenous Traditions Are Saving Zimbabwe’s Endangered Wildlife

 
Local communities’ traditional methods of conservation reduce conflict and can offer strong protection for threatened animals.

"Marimba," a female pangolin, in an animal sanctuary in Harare, Zimbabwe.
PHOTO BY JEKESAI NJIKIZANA / STRINGER VIA GETTY IMAGES

BY ANDREW MAMBONDIYANI
JUN 20, 2022

Ahill with an imposing protruding rock stands on the outskirts of Village F, a small farming community in Zimbabwe, about 50 kilometers south of the eastern border city of Mutare. A small perennial river, Nyadziye, meanders leisurely around the hill, which is known locally as Buwesunike. Dense trees surround Buwesunike Hill, and a plethora of bird species chirp excitedly in the undergrowth.

For years, this hill has been a nesting place for a small group of southern ground hornbills. In this part of the country, southern ground hornbills—identified by their unique jet-black feathers, bright-red throats, and large black beaks—are considered sacred. Farmers in this area say the birds bring in the rains and herald the start of the farming season. In the local Jindwi dialect, farmers call these giant birds mariti; in other dialects, they are known as matendera. Killing them would anger their ancestors, the farmers believe, resulting in droughts for the whole community and bringing serious misfortune to the offender.

A mix of beliefs like these, taboos and myths, passed orally from generation to generation, has been at the center of wildlife conservation in many parts of the Zimbabwe. While these taboos are not grounded in scientific explanation, they have helped to protect and preserve some of country’s endangered wild animals and birds from poachers—including the southern ground hornbill.

Poaching and destruction of habitats of animals and birds by farming and other activities are growing issues in the country. Tensions around conservation have risen particularly in communities living near wildlife conservancies and game parks.

However, Indigenous groups under traditional chiefs, including Zimunya and Marange in eastern Zimbabwe, have found other ways to limit hunting and activities that harm the animals. Local traditional leaders—village heads, headmen, and chiefs—strictly enforce the limits and taboos and impose heavy fines on whoever is caught breaking them. On the rare occasion a villager breaks the taboos, they are brought before the traditional leaders’ courts and forced to pay for the violation in the form of livestock: cattle, goats, sheep, or chickens, as well as grain. In some cases, the fines are used for the revered rainmaking and thanksgiving ceremonies or wildlife conservation projects in the area.

David Mutambirwa, executive director and founder of Mhakwe Heritage Foundation Trust, a Zimbabwe-based foundation advocating for heritage and culture preservation, says Indigenous knowledge systems are critical to wildlife protection.

“Indigenous knowledge systems have been used and are still being used to preserve and conserve wild animals,” he says. “There are certain trees which cannot be cut down. These knowledge systems involve taboos, values, and norms which are followed in many rural communities.”

Following White colonial rule in Zimbabwe, which ended in 1980, he says some communities discarded their traditional ways of wildlife conservation.

“The advent of the so-called Western civilization in our country affected our cultures in many ways,” he says. “But we are working hard to sensitize these communities through a multifaceted approach.”

Farmer and beekeeper Nicholas Mukundidza explains how he is protecting

 a nesting place for southern ground hornbills in Zimbabwe. 

Photo by Andrew Mambondiyani

In Village F, though, residents held on to their reverence for the southern ground hornbills.

“We jealously protect this nesting place,” says Nicholas Mukundidza, a farmer and beekeeper at Village F. “As you can see, we don’t cut down trees here. Instead, I have put my beehives to protect these trees,” he says, pointing to several wooden beehives scattered on trees in the thick forest.

Mukundidza took me on a short hike through a heavily wooded path to the edge of Buwesunike Hill. But on this particular hot afternoon, the southern ground hornbills could not be found.

“I’m sure they have flown out to forage for food. They can spend a couple of days out before they come back,” he says.

A recent study reveals that southern ground hornbills have now disappeared from some parts of Africa as a result of human activities, including habitat destruction, indirect poisoning, and electrocution, as well as trade in live birds and use in traditional cultural practices.

But for over 40 years, Mukundidza has been farming close to Buwesunike Hill. He says he has never seen or heard of anyone trying to harm or kill the birds.

There is no proper research done on traditional methods of conservation in this part of the country. However, a study done at Zimbabwe’s Nharira community of Chikomba district reveals that conventional strategies of conserving wildlife and forest resources through fencing the protected areas or imposing fines on trespassers usually creates disputes between locals and the forest and wildlife management authorities.

“When compared to conventional strategies, the [Indigenous knowledge] approach is better as it avoids such conflicts and requires less state resources for enforcing laws to protect wildlife and forest resources,” the study says.

In Chikomba district, local people believe poachers in the sacred Chirozva and Daramombe hills can be chased away by bees, wild animals, or snakes, the study documented.

“In other instances, mishaps such as prolonged dry spells and reduction in crop yields may befall the entire community,” the study adds. “Key informants further reported that the convicted individuals [for breaking the taboos] are forced to pay fines in form of a livestock or buckets of grain to the traditional leaders.”

However, Sharon Mushure, one of the researchers involved in the study, cautioned that there are weaknesses too: Fires started by villagers can threaten habitat, and the lack of documentation of traditional beliefs makes them vulnerable to disappearing.

A hill where southern ground hornbills nest in Mutare district, Zimbabwe.

 Photo by Andrew Mambondiyani

Elsewhere in the Mutare district, leaders rely on traditional beliefs to protect pangolins, known here as harakabvuka or haka. Geofrey Rugohwo, a traditional leader in Chitora, says it is a serious offense for anyone to be caught with a pangolin, let alone kill or eat it.

“This animal is important for us. It’s a highly respected animal and cannot be killed by anyone in this area. If a person kills or eat it, that person will face the wrath of our traditional leaders or the spirits of the land,” Rugohwo says.

Experts say very little is known about the status of pangolins in Zimbabwe, but they are thought to be in decline. More than four decades ago, the pangolins were placed on Zimbabwe’s Specially Protected Animals list. A recent report by Earth.org reveals that worldwide, more than a million pangolins have been poached for commercial use over the past decade.

Although the forests in this part of country are still home to a number of pangolins, Rugohwo says it is uncommon to find these reclusive and nocturnal mammals. A sighting signifies a long life or a chance for greatness, says Mutambirwa.

“We don’t know how many pangolins are in this area, but we still have many. It’s our duty to protect them for future generations,” Rugohwo says. “We have very few cases of outsiders coming to poach the animals here.”

Rugohwo says if a person kills a pangolin in middle of the forest without being caught, that person will ultimately be punished by the spirits of the land.

“The offending person will suffer from various curses or misfortunes, which will only be broken if the person surrenders himself or herself and confess to the traditional leaders and pay a heavy fine,” Rugohwo explains.

A local story tells of two men believed to be from Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, who tried to smuggle a pangolin from the area. They had to abandon it after it started making weird noises as the duo were driving toward a police traffic checkpoint. This story amplifies the mysteries and trepidations surrounding pangolins.

The Zimbabwean government supports efforts like those in Village F and Chitora. Any person convicted of the unlawful killing, possession of, or trading in any protected animals gets a mandatory jail term of nine years, or more for second offenders.

“Our common agenda is to protect wild animals, and we work with the communities to protect the animals,” says Tinashe Farawo, a spokesperson for the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority. “Our relation with these communities is like that of the fish and the water. We rely on them for information on what is happening and what needs to be done. As long we are working well with the communities, the cases of poaching will go down.”

Ultimately, Farawo says local communities are the ones responsible for wildlife day to day.

“They’re the ones who stay with the birds, and they are the ones sharing boundaries with these animals. They’re the custodians of the wild animals.”

ANDREW MAMBONDIYANI is a journalist based in Zimbabwe with a special interest in climate change and the environment in general. His work has appeared in local and international publications including BBC, Thomson Reuters Foundation, IPS, Mongabay, Aljazeera, and Yale E360 among others.

USA

Teachers Have 2 Hours a Week to Teach Social Studies, Prepare Informed Citizens

Allison Shelley / EDUimages

By Kenneth Anthony July 4, 2022
FROM THE CONVERSATION

The founders of the United States were intentionally building a nation based on the ideals of the Enlightenment, a movement centered on individual happiness, knowledge and reason. This new approach to defining a country – rather than basing it on language, ethnicity or geographic proximity – meant the new United States would have to educate its citizenry with the ideas, skills and values necessary to build and grow their democracy.

As a result, the founders called for schools to be established and funded. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and others believed it was the responsibility of the government to provide that education. Jefferson believed that education would serve as the moral foundation of the nation and redress the effect of poverty because education would be available to all children.

Though public schools did not become widespread until the 19th century, the goal of educating informed citizens capable of inquiry and critical thinking was part of the democratic republic from the start. But nearly 250 years after the nation’s founding, its schools struggle to achieve that goal.

An illustration in Harper’s Weekly in 1874 depicts a village school lesson in rhetoric. 

(Harper’s Weekly via Library of Congress)

A fourth basic subject

Foundational American educational theorist John Dewey, who worked and wrote in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, promoted education that would help build and maintain a democracy made up of different groups of people. In his 1916 book “Democracy in Education,” he warned that focusing education only on the “three Rs: reading, ‘writing and ‘rithmetic was not enough to educate a useful citizen.”

It is no accident that Dewey’s career in educational philosophy coincided with the rise of a new field of education, called social studies, aimed at cultivating good citizenship to build a stronger American society.

In 1916, the term was used by the National Education Association to “designate formal citizenship education and [place] squarely in the field all of those subjects that were believed to contribute to that end.”

That purpose remains today. According to the National Council of the Social Studies, the current goal of social studies education “is to help young people develop the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world.”

But since at least the 1980s, the nation’s public schools have consistently put social studies on the back burner. This process accelerated with the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which required schools to focus on the “three Rs,” to the exclusion of social studies.

A 2010 study demonstrated the relative importance of social studies when it reported that elementary school teachers spent 2.5 hours on social studies, 11.6 hours on Language Arts, and 5.3 hours on math per week.

A lower priority

As a scholar of social studies education, I have noticed that social studies is often a lower priority than reading, writing and math in many schools.

For instance, from 1993 to 2008, the time allotted to social studies instruction dropped by 56 minutes per week in third through fifth grade classes in the U.S. Over the same time, math, English and language arts instruction increased. This trend continued, with a 2014 study that documented an “an average of 2.52 hours of social studies instructional time per week.”

This reduction in social studies instruction has affected minority students more than others. Federal statistics show that since at least 1998, Black students have tended to score lower on tests of civics knowledge than white students.

One study described how that this civic education gap contributes to a civic participation gap, in which poorer people and those from nonwhite ethnic groups vote less. That study declared the gap “challenges the stability, legitimacy, and quality of our democratic republic.” Those comments echo those of Jefferson and Dewey, who believed that the purpose of schools was to prepare children to be citizens.

There was a need for civic education in their time – and the complexity of modern society and the increasingly obvious fragility of U.S. constitutional government indicate that social studies is more relevant and more vital now than ever before.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Dark Legacy of the Indian Boarding School System All Americans Need to Know

Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Albuquerque Indian School, 1947-ca. 1964 (most recent creator). (1900). Early class of younger girls in school uniform at the Albuquerque Indian School [Photograph]. National Archives (292874).

By Trip Jennings July 2, 2022
FROM NEW MEXICO IN DEPTH


This week the U.S. Interior Department released a 100-page report on the lasting consequences of the federal Indian boarding school system.

You might recall last June Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, an enrolled member of the Laguna Pueblo, announced the federal agency would investigate the extent of the loss of human life and legacy of the federal Indian boarding school system, a chapter of U.S. history many Americans know little to nothing about.

This week’s report is the first of possibly many, and it deserves to be read by as many Americans as possible.

Here are some of the investigation’s top-level findings:Beginning in the late 1800s, the federal government took Indian children from their families in an effort to strip them of their cultures and language.

Between 1819 and 1969, the U.S. operated or supported 408 boarding schools across 37 states (or then-territories), including 21 schools in Alaska and 7 schools in Hawaii.
Of those 37 states, New Mexico had the third-greatest concentration of facilities, with 43, trailing only Oklahoma and Arizona.

The schools “deployed systematic militarized and identity-alteration methodologies to attempt to assimilate American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children through education, including but not limited to the following: (1) renaming Indian children from Indian to English names; (2) cutting hair of Indian children; (3) discouraging or preventing the use of American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian languages, religions, and cultural practices; and (4) organizing Indian and Native Hawaiian children into units to perform military drills.

The Federal Indian boarding school system focused on manual labor and vocational skills that left American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian graduates with employment options often irrelevant to the industrial U.S. economy, further disrupting Tribal economies.

Boarding schools in New Mexico got an early start.

Two years after the first boarding school, the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, opened in 1879, the Presbyterian Church opened the Albuquerque Indian School (AIS) for Navajo, Pueblo and Apache students. Later, the school transferred to federal control.

The Albuquerque Indian School merits several mentions in this week’s report, including five photos as I counted them of young Indigenous girls and boys in class, and of the building itself.

Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Albuquerque Indian School, 1947-ca. 1964 (most recent creator). (ca. 1885). Albuquerque Indian School in 1885, Relocated from Duranes to Albuquerque in 1881 [Photograph]. National Archives (292865)].

I know a few details about AIS. Last year, New Mexico In Depth published a story that revisited the Albuquerque Indian School’s history within the larger context of the boarding school system.

In addition to locating boarding schools across the country, this week’s report identifies at least 53 burial sites for children across this system — “with more site discoveries and data expected as we continue our research.” The authors declined to identify where they are.

One of those burial sites is at the east corner of 4H Park in Albuquerque, a resting place for children and staff at the Albuquerque Indian School from 1882 through 1933. It’s been known in the city for decades. A 1999 study included it in a survey of known cemeteries and burial places across Albuquerque. After a lone marker commemorating the internment went missing, there wasn’t much to mark the burial site, save for makeshift memorials put there by community members. But after the news that a large unmarked burial site was found at a Canadian boarding school last summer, the city started a formal reconciliation process, working with leaders from tribes in the southwest, including Pueblo, Navajo, Apache and others, as well as with people who have a connection to the site.

The Interior Department report features images from other New Mexico boarding schools: Santa Fe Indian School; and in the west, Rehoboth Mission School, Tohatchi and Zuni.

And it describes the forcible removal of Mescalero children, quoting U.S. Indian Agent Fletcher J. Cowart as he described attempts in the 1880s to take Mescalero and Jicarilla Apache children, resistance from chiefs and the tribal nations and his resorting to have Indian police forcibly remove the children from their homes.

It’s unclear how many Native children went to boarding schools. But the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition estimated “hundreds of thousands of Native American children were removed from their homes and families.”

By 1900, “there were 20,000 children in Indian boarding schools, and by 1925 that number had more than tripled,” according to the group. “They suffered physical, sexual, cultural and spiritual abuse and neglect, and experienced treatment that in many cases constituted torture for speaking their Native languages. Many children never returned home and their fates have yet to be accounted for by the U.S. government.”

These atrocities were not a secret.

A sign demands a city council investigation of the circumstances of an unmarked gravesite for Zuni, Navajo, and Apache children who attended the Albuquerque Indian School in the early 20th century. The sign is at a community-built memorial near a burial ground at Albuquerque’s 4-H park. (Marjorie Childress)

Our story last year highlighted that over the past century government reports sounded the alarm about the boarding schools, beginning with the Meriam Report of 1928, which criticized the schools’ inadequate facilities and the removal of children from their homes. That report stressed repeatedly the need for relevant curriculum adapted to the culture of the children.

Forty years later in 1969, the Kennedy Report came out, sounding more alarms.

The impacts of the boarding schools were profound. This new report describes cultural and familial disruption, and tribal erosion. It references a recent report that studied the physical health of now-adult boarding school attendees’ medical status, finding those who attended boarding schools are more likely to experience chronic physical disease, as well as increased risk for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, depression and unresolved grief.

“The combined direct and indirect results … show American Indians who attended boarding school have lower physical health status … than those who did not,” according to researcher Ursula Running Bear, whose study was paid for by the National Institutes of Health.

Now, in 2022, we have another report.

As I read it, a quarter of the way through this sentence leapt out at me.

It’s a quote from the Kennedy Report.

Reading those words turned me introspective. I remember, as a young man, on occasion saying “Manifest Destiny” when talking about this country’s history. It’s what I was taught in school in Georgia decades ago.

After living nearly 17 years in New Mexico, where I’ve come face-to-face with the troubling, often horrific history tucked into the shadows by that phrase, I understand more fully the problem of saying “Manifest Destiny” to describe how this country came to stretch from sea to shining sea. I knew about the broken treaties, the removal of entire nations from ancestral lands, the deliberate campaign to rob Native speakers of their languages — the list is long. I’d read about it in books and magazines, seen films and documentaries. But it’s one thing to read about it, removed from the blood and guts of the human toll, and another to see the effects first hand of more than a century of federal policies and discriminatory laws. To hear friends and acquaintances give an alternative telling of the continental expansion that impacted their great-great grandparents and succeeding generations, all the way down to their children — it makes a difference, putting a human face on the stories you read in books.

Living in New Mexico has been part of my educational journey. It’s helped me unlearn what I learned in school. And I want to keep educating myself.

I hope all of us do. But from the political debate of the past few years, where so many seem unwilling to confront uncomfortable truths about this country, I’m unsure whether America is ready to learn this particular history 94 years after the groundbreaking Meriam report

For the sake of all of us, I hope I’m wrong.

This story was originally published by New Mexico In Depth

Chile President Receives Draft Constitution


By Paula BUSTAMANTE
07/04/22 AT 

Chile's constitutional convention on Monday handed its proposed new constitution to President Gabriel Boric ahead of a planned September referendum on adopting the text.

The convention, made up of 154 members who are mostly political independents, spent a year creating the new document to replace the constitution adopted during the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990).

The impetus for rewriting the constitution came from massive social unrest that erupted in October 2019, initially against a hike in metro fares but that morphed into general anti-government protests over inequality.

"We should feel proud that during the deepest crisis... in decades that our country has lived through, we Chileans have chosen more democracy, not less," said Boric during a ceremony in Santiago.

The president and vice-president of Chile's constitutional convention Maria Elisa Quinteros (L) and Gaspar Dominguez (R), respectively, hand the final draft to President Gabriel Boric, at the National Congress in Santiago 

Photo: AFP / JAVIER TORRES

VIDEO 01:31 Who Is Leftist Gabriel Boric, Chile's Youngest Elected President?

He immediately signed a decree calling a referendum on September 4, where voting in the deeply polarized country of 19 million people will be obligatory.

Rewriting the dictatorship-era constitution was a major demand of protesters who flooded onto the streets in 2019 and kept up weekly demonstrations for months before the coronavirus pandemic curtailed them.

In the first of the new constitution's 388 articles, Chile is described as "a social and democratic State of law," as well as "plurinational, intercultural and ecological."

"It recognizes the dignity, freedom, substantial equality of human beings and their indissoluble relationship with nature as intrinsic and inalienable values."

General view of Chile's National Congress during the presentation of the final draft of the constitutional proposal, in Santiago Photo: AFP / JAVIER TORRES

"I think we have met the social demands, with the desires of the citizens, which is what people hoped for and wanted of this process," Barbara Sepulveda, a convention member from the communist party, told AFP.

"It is a proposal that represents a historic advance in terms of democracy and the guarantee of social rights for our country, and on top of that, it is filled with feminism from beginning to end," added Alondra Carrillo, from the leftist Broad Front.

Some right-wing convention members were less enthusiastic.

For Cristian Monckeberg, this is a "missed" opportunity to "build something that unites rather than divides" the country.

But with just 37 out of 154 seats in the constitutional convention, which will now be dissolved, the political right was in a minority.

Elisa Loncon (R), representative of the Mapuche people for the Chilean Constitutional Convention, attends the presentation of the final draf at the National Congress in Santiago Photo: AFP / JAVIER TORRES

The process "was not as simple and friendly as many of us would have wanted and dreamed of," writer and journalist Patricio Fernandez, one of the 104 independent members of the convention, told AFP.

If the constitution is adopted, it will make Chile one of the most progressive countries in the region.

The nationwide right to abortion -- something that has been overturned in the United States -- would become enshrined in law.

"It's a constitution from another era. I'm totally convinced that if it is approved, when we look back at this process... it will be seen with a lot more tenderness and affection than we see it now," said Fernandez.

Split equally between men and women, the constitutional convention also contained 17 seats reserved for Indigenous people, who make up around 13 percent of the population.

One of those members, Natividad Llanquileo, an activist for Chile's largest Indigenous group, the Mapuche, said the constitutional process represented "the most democratic space that we have known in the history of this country."

As well as recognizing the different peoples that make up the Chilean nation, the new constitution accords a certain amount of autonomy to Indigenous institutions, notably in matters of justice.

Several times in recent weeks, millennial leader Boric has reiterated his support for the constitutional project, adding that the current document represents an "obstacle" to profound social reform.

Even so, several opinion polls suggest the new constitution may yet be rejected. With the full text still to be published, many Chileans say they are unsure.

In Monday's ceremony, Boric warned against "falsehoods, distortions or catastrophic interpretations that are alien to reality" in the lead-up to the referendum.

Claudio Fuentes, a political scientist at the Diego Portales University, told AFP that those in favor of the new constitution "have to work to convince (others) that it will genuinely change people's lives."

Biden's Title IX reforms would roll back Trump-era rules, expand victim protections


DUSTIN JONESTwitter

NPR
June 23, 2022



Education Secretary Miguel Cardona speaks at the White House on April 27. The Biden administration proposed a dramatic rewrite of campus sexual assault rules on Thursday, moving to expand protections for LGBTQ students, bolster the rights of victims and widen colleges' responsibilities in addressing sexual misconduct.Susan Walsh/AP

The Department of Education said Thursday that it plans to reinstate Title IX regulations tossed out by the Trump administration. Proposed changes would combat sexual discrimination in schools by boosting victim protections and modifying language to include sexual orientation and gender identity for LGBTQI+ students.

Thursday marked the 50th anniversary of the Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, more commonly known as Title IX, which protects students from sexual discrimination in educational programs and activities.

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Benching the patriarchy: 50 years of Title IX and how 4 women fought for change

To commemorate the occasion, President Biden and the Department of Education announced proposed amendments to the legislation that would reinstate victim protections that were rolled back by President Donald Trump.

"Over the last fifty years, our nation has made monumental progress in advancing equity and equality for all students, including by narrowing gender gaps in sports, expanding opportunities in science and technology fields, and protecting students from sex discrimination, including sex-based harassment and sexual violence," Biden said in White House statement.

"This is what America is all about: possibilities. Millions of women and girls have benefited from the change that Title IX helped make possible," he added.
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What changes are in the proposed amendments

The Department of Education said the amendments will include clarifying text to include protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity to strengthen the rights of LGBTQI+ students.

"They would make clear that preventing someone from participating in school programs and activities consistent with their gender identity would cause harm in violation of Title IX, except in some limited areas set out in the statute or regulations," the department said.

The department also said it plans to issue a separate notice of proposed rulemaking to address whether and how the agency should amend the Title IX regulations to address students' eligibility to participate on a particular male or female athletics team.

NATIONAL
Biden Begins Process To Undo Trump Administration's Title IX Rules

Amendments will also include language to prevent discrimination base on sex stereotypes and pregnancy, the department said. It would require schools to provide reasonable modifications for pregnant students and reasonable break time for pregnant employees as well as lactation spaces.

And parents, guardians and a student's authorized legal representative would have greater protections to act on a student's behalf. That would allow these parties to seek assistance under Title IX and participate in grievance procedures, the department said.
Restoring victim protections

In May 2020, Trump's education secretary, Betsy DeVos, announced sweeping Title IX changes that reduced schools' reporting responsibilities and strengthened the rights of the accused. The changes were believed to be a "more reliable adjudication process that is fair to all students," the department said in 2020.

NATIONAL
Trump Administration Gets An Earful On New Campus Sexual Assault Rules

The Biden administration's proposed changes would reverse many of the previous controversial rules.

"Those regulations weakened protections for survivors of sexual assault and diminished the promise of an education free from discrimination," the department said Thursday.

Under the Trump-era regulations, some forms of sex-based harassment weren't considered to be Title IX violations. But the proposed changes, which will undergo a public comment period before being finalized, will include all "unwelcome sex-based conduct that creates a hostile environment by denying or limiting a person's ability to participate in or benefit from a school's education program or activity."

NPR ED
Betsy DeVos Signals A Pullback On Campus Sex Misconduct Enforcement

The Trump administration's version of Title IX, which remains in place until the amendments are approved, only requires educational institutions to investigate formal sexual harassment complaints. The Department of Education said it would keep as much of the current regulation as possible to ensure consistency, but Biden's changes would require schools to investigate all complaints.

Biden Administration’s New Title IX Rules Expand Transgender Student Protections
While undoing some Trump-era provisions aimed to protect the rights of those accused of sexual harassment, the proposal sidesteps athletics — for now

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona testifies before Congress, June 7, 2022. Cardona on Thursday proposed sweeping new protections for transgender students and others in a rewrite of federal Title IX regulations. (Oliver Contreras/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

By Greg Toppo June 23, 2022

The Biden administration is pursuing sweeping new changes to federal Title IX law to restore “crucial protections” for victims of sexual harassment, assault, and sex-based discrimination that it maintains they lost during the Trump administration.

Under the proposed changes, announced Thursday, the law would protect victims against discrimination based not just on sex but on sexual orientation and gender identity, in effect adding transgender students as a protected class. Current regulations are silent on these students’ rights.

But the proposal sidesteps the question of transgender athletes’ rights to compete in girls’ sports, an explosive issue administration officials said will get its own set of regulations at a later date.

Related:
GOP-Led States, Ed Dept. Headed for ‘Showdown’ Over Transgender Students’ Rights

“This is personal to me as an educator and as a father,” U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said during the announcement. “I want the same opportunities afforded to my daughter and my son — and my transgender cousin — so they can achieve their potential and reach their dreams.”

The changes come 50 years to the day after President Richard Nixon signed the federal civil rights law that bans sex discrimination in education.

Cardona on Thursday noted that LGBTQ youth “face bullying and harassment, experience higher rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide, and too often grow up feeling that they don’t belong.”

The proposed regulations, he said, “send a loud message to these students and all our students: You belong in our schools. You have worthy dreams and incredible talents. You deserve the opportunity to shine authentically and unapologetically. The Biden-Harris administration has your back.”

Education and civil rights groups welcomed the proposed rules, with Ronn Nozoe, CEO of the National Association of Secondary School Principals saying they “greatly strengthen principals’ abilities to ensure schools provide what students need.”

Amit Paley, CEO of The Trevor Project, a suicide prevention and mental health organization for LGBTQ youth, applauded the administration’s bid to extend Title IX protections to sexual orientation and gender identity, saying, “School should be a place where students learn and are comfortable being themselves, not a source of bullying and discrimination.”

Related:
Deja Vu as Ed Department Revisits Contentious School Sexual Misconduct Rules

But the proposed rules irked some conservative groups. In a statement, Nicole Neily, president of Parents Defending Education, called the move a “federal overreach” and dubbed the proposed regulations “The Biden administration’s ‘Must Say They’ rewrite of Title IX,” refering to the preferred pronoun of some who are transgender.

“American families should be deeply concerned by the proposed rewrite of Title IX,” Neily said. “From rolling back due process protections, to stomping on the First Amendment, to adding ‘sexual orientation and gender identity’ into a statute that can only be so changed by Congressional action, the Biden Administration has shown that they place the demands of a small group of political activists above the concerns of millions of families across the country.”

Taken together, the proposed regulations would create a sharp contrast to Trump administration rules adopted in 2020 under then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Under DeVos, for instance, schools were prohibited from opening Title IX cases if an alleged assault took place away from school grounds. Under the new rules, schools would be required to address “hostile environments” in programs and activities, even if the conduct that contributed to the hostile environment “occurred off-campus or outside the United States,” a senior official told reporters.

“Our view now is that the existing regulations do not best fulfill Congress’ mandate in Title IX,” the official said. “There is more we can do to ensure that students do not experience sex discrimination in school.”

Transgender rights advocates stood outside of the Ohio Statehouse in 2021 to oppose and bring attention to an amendment to a bill that would ban transgender women from participating in high school and college women’s sports. (Stephen Zenner/Getty Images)

Cardona’s proposed changes both expand the definition of sexual harassment and potentially limit opportunities for students accused of sexual assault or harassment to confront their accusers. Administration officials said the new regulations would require schools to take “prompt and effective” action on campus sex discrimination.

But they also said the regulations in effect loosen requirements on schools’ sex assault investigations: The proposed rules, for instance, would “permit but not require” schools to hold live hearings in which accused students can directly confront survivors.

A senior department official, who briefed reporters Thursday on background, said the administration has concluded that a live hearing, which resembles a courtroom procedure, “is one, but not the only way, to address investigation and to determine what has occurred.” The official noted that the vast majority of schools were not conducting live hearings before the Trump administration began requiring them in 2020. “And it was clear to us that a live hearing was not essential to determination of outcomes and a fair process,” the official said.

In a statement, Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), said the move “returns to the deeply flawed campus disciplinary process of the Obama Administration, which led to hundreds of inconsistent judgements and more than 300 legal challenges. The existing rule struck a balance that follows the law and is fair to both parties.”
Related:
Women Who Fought for Title IX 50 Years Ago Divided Over Transgender Inclusion

Notably absent from Thursday’s announcement was any mention of Title IX’s application to athletics, which has caused a furor due to a handful of transgender athletes’ bids to compete in girls’ sporting events.

The administration said it will engage in a separate rulemaking process to address the law’s application to athletics and gender, but offered no immediate timeline for the process. A senior department official said the topic “deserves its own separate rule-making process.”

Administration officials have previously said Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination and harassment in programs receiving federal funds, will echo the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, which extended protections against sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace to LGBTQ employees.

While the department’s interpretation of the Bostock ruling doesn’t mention sports, the Biden administration last year filed a brief in a West Virginia case in which a transgender girl who wants to compete with girls on her middle school cross country team is challenging the state’s 2021 law banning students born as male from participating in girls’ sports.

Vice President Kamala Harris and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona watch schoolgirls playing basketball during a Title IX 50th Anniversary Field Day event at American University Wednesday. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

A group of 15 Republican-led states, led by Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, has threatened to challenge the regulations in court,. Since last year, a dozen states have passed legislation prohibiting trans females from competing in girls’ and women’s sports.

Last week, the International Swimming Federation, the world governing body for swimming, voted to prohibit transgender athletes from competing in high-level women’s competitions unless they began medical treatments to suppress testosterone production early in their lives.

The group, known internationally as Fédération internationale de natation, or FINA, said it would also establish a new, “open” category for athletes who identify as women but do not meet the requirement to compete against people who were female at birth.

By contrast, World Cup and Olympic soccer star Megan Rapinoe told TIME last week that she is “100 percent supportive of trans inclusion” in sports, noting that what most people know about the topic comes from “relentless” conservative talking points that don’t reflect reality.

“Show me the evidence that trans women are taking everyone’s scholarships, are dominating in every sport, are winning every title,” she said. “I’m sorry, it’s just not happening. So we need to start from inclusion, period. And as things arise, I have confidence that we can figure it out. But we can’t start at the opposite. That is cruel. And frankly, it’s just disgusting.”

The public has 60 days to send comments on the new proposal, which could take several months to finalize.

LGBTQ Students Would Get New Protections Under Biden Plan

The rights of LGBTQ students would become enshrined in federal law and victims of campus sexual assault would gain new protections under new rules proposed by the Biden administration.

COLLIN BINKLEY

Jun 23, 2022,


The rights of LGBTQ students would become enshrined in federal law and victims of campus sexual assault would gain new protections under new rules proposed by the Biden administration on Thursday.

The proposal, announced on the 50th anniversary of the Title IX women’s rights law, is intended to replace a set of controversial rules issued during the Trump administration by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

President Joe Biden’s education secretary, Miguel Cardona, said that even though there have been significant strides toward gender equality, discrimination and sexual violence persist.

“Even as we celebrate all the progress we’ve achieved, standing up for equal access and inclusion is as important as ever before,” he said.

The proposal is almost certain to be challenged by conservatives, and it is expected to lead to new legal battles over the rights of transgender students in schools, especially in sports. It now faces a public feedback period before the administration can finalize any changes, meaning the earliest that the policy is likely to take effect is next year.

The step meets a demand from victims rights advocates who wanted Biden to release new rules no later than the anniversary of Title IX, which outlaws discrimination based on sex in schools and colleges. Advocates say DeVos’ rules have gone too far in protecting students accused of sexual misconduct, at the expense of victims.

As a presidential candidate, Biden had promised a quick end to DeVos’ rules, saying they would “shame and silence survivors.”

In announcing its proposal, Biden’s Education Department said DeVos’ rules “weakened protections for survivors of sexual assault and diminished the promise of an education free from discrimination.”

For the first time, the rules would formally protect LGBTQ students under Title IX. Nothing in the 1972 law explicitly addresses the topic, but the new proposal would clarify that the law applies to discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

It would make clear that “preventing someone from participating in school programs and activities consistent with their gender identity would cause harm in violation of Title IX,” according to the department. More specific rules dealing with the rights of transgender students in school sports will be released later, the department said.

Biden marked the anniversary of Title IX by acknowledging the impact the law has had in advancing equity but acknowledging there was more to do.

“As we look to the next 50 years, I am committed to protecting this progress and working to achieve full equality, inclusion, and dignity for women and girls, LGBTQI+ Americans, all students, and all Americans,” he said in a statement.

Many of the proposed changes would restore Obama-era rules that DeVos’ policy replaced.

The definition of sexual harassment would be expanded to cover a wider range of misconduct. Schools would be required to address any allegation that creates a “hostile environment” for students, even if the misconduct arises off campus. Most college employees, including professors and coaches, would be required to notify campus officials if they learn of potential sex discrimination.

In a victory for victims rights advocates, the proposal would eliminate a rule requiring colleges to hold live hearings to investigate sexual misconduct cases — one of the most divisive aspects of DeVos’ policy. Live hearings would be allowed under the new policy, but colleges could also appoint campus officials to question students separately.

Biden’s action drew praise from victims rights groups, LGBTQ advocates and Democratic lawmakers.

“These proposed regulations demonstrate a strong commitment to protecting educational opportunities for all students including LGBTQ students,” said Janson Wu executive director of Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders. “Especially in light of ongoing state legislative attacks, we are grateful for the administration’s strong support of LGBTQ youth.”

Republicans in Congress were quick to denounce the proposal. Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, the top Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee, said the rules will “demolish due process rights and the safety of young women and girls across the country, with promised regulations still to come to undermine women’s access to athletic opportunities.”

If the proposal is finalized, it would mark the second rewrite of federal Title IX rules in two years. DeVos’ rules were themselves intended to reverse Obama-era guidance. The Obama policy was embraced by victims advocates but led to hundreds of lawsuits from accused students who said their colleges failed to give them a fair process to defend themselves.

The whiplash has left many schools scrambling to adopt ever-changing rules. Some have pressed for a political middle ground that will protect students without prompting new rules every time the White House changes power.

“It doesn’t serve anybody’s interest to have this ping-pong effect of changing rules every five years,” said S. Daniel Carter, a campus security consultant and president of Safety Advisors for Educational Campuses. “That’s just not a good way to get things done. It’s very difficult for everyone involved.”

DeVos’ rules dramatically reshaped the way colleges handle allegations of sexual assault and harassment, with an emphasis on ensuring the constitutional due process rights of the accused.

Under her rules, accused students were given wider rights to review and respond to evidence against them, and students had the right to cross-examine one another through a representative at live hearings.

The live hearing requirement was applauded as a victory for accused students, but it drew intense backlash from other advocates who said it forced victims to relive their trauma.

DeVos also reduced colleges’ obligations in responding to complaints. Her policy narrowed the definition of harassment and scaled back the types of cases colleges are required to address. As a result, some campuses have seen steep decreases in the number of Title IX complaints coming in from students.

Under her rules, for example, colleges are not required to investigate most complaints that arise off campus, and they do not have to act on any complaint unless the alleged misconduct is “severe, pervasive and objectively offensive.”

The overhaul was partly meant to lighten the burden on colleges as they mediate complex cases, but some say it ultimately added more work.

Leaders of some colleges have said the DeVos rules are too prescriptive and force them to turn campus discipline systems into miniature courtrooms. Many schools have continued to address all sexual misconduct complaints even if they do not meet the narrowed harassment definition, but they have had to set up separate discipline processes to handle those cases.

Advocates on both sides say that can be confusing for students.

“It shouldn’t be that way. It should be, if anything, more uniform — that’s the whole reason the Title IX regulations were put into place,” said Kimberly Lau, a New York lawyer who represents students in Title IX cases

Biden’s proposal is a major step in keeping his promise to reverse DeVos’ rules. He started the process last year when he ordered the Education Department to review the rules, but the agency has been bogged down by a slow-moving rule-making process.
___

For more on Title IX’s impact, read AP’s full report: https://apnews.com/hub/title-ix

Video timeline: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdgNI6BZpw0

___


The Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Brief, cross-partisan conversations about sensitive political topics have scant power to narrow divisions, study finds

by University of California - Berkeley

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

The premise is simple, and it seems like common sense: If Republicans and Democrats could come together for good faith dialogue, the conversations would reduce tensions and ease the corrosive polarization that threatens U.S. democracy.

But a new study co-authored by UC Berkeley political scientist David Broockman found that brief, cross-partisan conversations about sensitive political topics have scant power to narrow divisions. Conversation about neutral topics can create some goodwill, the authors found, but even there, the effect doesn't last.

"There's an assumption that these conversations will have positive consequences for democracy," Broockman said. "Under this assumption, someone might say, 'I've gotten to know the other side, and I like them more, and so now I'm more OK with my representative working with a representative from the other side, and I'm less likely to vote for a politician in my party who's going to try to disenfranchise the other side.'

"Basically, though, we didn't find any of that," he added. "Simply liking the other side's voters more doesn't appear to affect your political behavior."

The new research was released today in the journal Science Advances. It was co-authored by Broockman and Erik Santoro, a Ph.D. student in social psychology at Stanford University.

Broockman's recent research has focused closely on the dynamics of political division and the role of communication in nurturing more constructive engagement.

His work has found that political advocates going door to door to promote a cause can have a significant, long-lasting persuasive impact by listening effectively and by talking about people's life experiences. Earlier this year, he reported that conservative Fox News viewers who spent a month tuning to CNN instead experienced a broad shift in their political opinions—until they returned to watching Fox.

Another paper by co-authored by Broockman, forthcoming in the American Journal of Political Science, finds that reducing the hostilities associated with political polarization might not, in fact, improve the health of democracy.

Intriguing insights on what works—and what doesn't work

Alarmed by the increasingly vicious divide in the American electorate, a growing legion of organizations in the U.S. is working to bring right and left together for discussion and deliberation. For example, BridgeUSA, a 6-year-old nonprofit with close ties to Berkeley, is working on university and high school campuses to encourage discussion that transcends partisan rancor to focus on defining challenges and solutions.

Broockman, in an interview, stressed that his latest research doesn't contradict those efforts. Rather, he said, it's essential to study what kind of engagement works to ease polarization—and how to make positive results deeper and more long-lasting.

The research detailed in Science Advances covers two experiments. In one, the authors paired up hundreds of Republicans and Democrats for brief, one-on-one discussions about a topic that usually isn't controversial: What makes a perfect day?

Those conversations produced large reductions in polarization, Broockman and Santoro found. But within three months, the reductions had all but disappeared.

In the second experiment, the researchers repeated the first experiment, but also brought Republicans and Democrats together for one-on-one discussions that focused on potentially tense political topics. They were split into two groups—in one, pairs of Democrats and Republicans were assigned to talk about why they identify with their own parties, and in the other, they were assigned to discuss why they dislike each other's party.

These conversations had virtually no effect on reducing polarization.

Still, the study produced some intriguing insights about how we can all get along. Among those assigned to talk about what they liked about their own parties, the research subjects felt their discussion partners weren't really listening to them. Those conversations typically lasted about 13 1/2 minutes.

But those assigned to discuss what they disliked about the opposing political party seemed to have an easier time. Their conversations lasted much longer—nearly 18 minutes, typically.

While the chats didn't change political opinions, those individuals were more likely afterward to say that cross-partisan conversations were important. The study even found signals of hope that suggested very slight reductions in polarization and increases in warmth toward people in the opposing party.

"People tend to think their own party is OK, but they don't love their own party," Broockman explained. "Their feelings are lukewarm. And so when someone else says, 'Here's what I don't like about your party,' most people will agree and say, 'Yeah, my party isn't perfect.'"

As it turns out, real life is more civil than Facebook

That points to another insight from the study. With participants' consent, all of the conversations were recorded, and Broockman said he was struck by the consistently civil tone he saw in the transcripts.

"None of the conversations that I looked at devolved into the kind of arguments that you would see on Facebook," he said. "Our research participants didn't leave hating each other more. In some ways, this is maybe better than people would have expected.

"When we think about the other side, we tend to think about the people who show up on social media saying the most extreme things in the most uncivil way. But that really is not how the average person interacts when they're actually talking face-to-face."

Such insights—modest, but encouraging—suggest that further research could shed light on a recipe for political discussions that might reduce polarization and produce other democracy-enhancing effects.

For example, Broockman said it might be interesting to see what would happen if the person-to-person engagements were more extensive, longer-term discussions and not just one-offs. If researchers could find a way to reduce polarization through one-on-one engagements, he said, they could then study the interventions that could help to sustain and build on that trust.

But ultimately, Broockman advised, we probably should let common sense temper our optimism. Democracy is difficult; conflict and polarization are features, not bugs, of the system.

"Democracy exists to manage the inevitable differences of opinion that exist in any society," he said. "The differences of opinion are not themselves necessarily a problem. But people do need to be able to discuss them."When Fox News viewers flip to CNN, their opinions shift too, study finds

More information: Erik Santoro et al, The promise and pitfalls of cross-partisan conversations for reducing affective polarization: Evidence from randomized experiments, Science Advances (2022). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abn5515

Journal information: Science Advances , American Journal of Political Science 

Provided by University of California - Berkeley 

USA

Denying Patients Physician-Assisted Suicide Is a Civil Rights Issue

It shouldn’t be a crime for those who are too sick to live to decide how and when to end their suffering.


BY SHELBY WILDER
JUNE 23, 2022

Maia Calloway welcomes me into her home in Taos, New Mexico. It’s a warm and calming space surrounded by high desert. Calloway was first diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) at age thirty-three. In the nine years since then, she has experienced a steep decline, suffering from paralysis throughout parts of her body, debilitating episodes of pain, and cognitive and physical impairment. She needs full-time care.

Despite these challenges, Calloway has “stuck around” to speak out about one’s right to die and to educate people on the law in the United States. She believes that there is no better proponent for this case because, like many in her situation, she wants to end her own life.

Throughout her journey with MS, Calloway has desperately desired to leave her body, something that has robbed her of so much in recent years. “I would love to live,” she says. “But I can’t, because my level of disability is not acceptable for me; it’s not being true to myself. I have really lost a lot of who I was.”

Medical aid in dying, or MAID, which is legal in only a handful of states, allows doctors to prescribe lethal medication to terminally ill patients with less than six months to live. But even for those who try to legally end their life, like Calloway, many obstacles remain. The existing legislation specifically excludes individuals with degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, ALS/MND, and MS from qualifying for MAID.

While the campaign for MAID gains momentum across the country, it continues to work against some of the people who need it most. “The biggest part of my activism has been the realization that the right to die is as important as the right to live, that it’s a human rights issue,” Calloway says. “It’s a civil rights issue. It’s not a medical or moral issue.”

Calloway has tirelessly advocated for MAID, asking lawmakers to consider adding more compassionate expansions to existing legislation.

“We just need to look at countries that have experience with euthanasia,” she says. “We can look to models in Europe or Canada and see the success that they are having. Individuals should be assessed on a case-by-case basis.”

Last summer, New Mexico legalized MAID by passing HB 47, but it unfortunately does not pertain to Calloway’s case. Even though her medical diagnosis is incurable and debilitating, she is not considered “terminally ill” and is, as a result, not approved to receive the medication. “The irony is that if I waited until they deemed me ill enough,” she adds, “I still could not access MAID because I would not be able to swallow the drug on my own.”

In the final stages of MS, patients are bed-bound, often unable to move, and eventually unable to breathe, making it impossible to meet the law’s requirement that patients must be able to independently take the lethal medication.

Falling through the cracks of the law, Calloway spends most days in bed, her laptop serving as a window to the world. She has witnessed a growing underground movement of activists calling for “exit,” as it’s called online, among communities of people in chat rooms where many are trying to find ways to die.

Falling through the cracks of the law, Calloway spends most days in bed, her laptop serving as a window to the world.

From individuals documenting their travels to South American pet stores to buy Nembutal, a barbiturate that can cause death; to sharing home videos of people experimenting with pig salts they ordered online; to those offering DIY methods for death, like using a makeshift plastic bag, “People will go to extreme lengths to be able to end their suffering,” Calloway says. “We are forcing Americans to commit a hard suicide. And it doesn’t always work out.”

The discussion on MAID in the United States has been documented from various angles, but most people with degenerative diseases find themselves facing the same situation as Calloway: being denied the right to end their own lives in the manner of their choosing, a right that seems largely ignored or dismissed.

Right-to-die organizations often focus on legalizing MAID in other states over expanding existing laws, fearing that widening access will slow or completely stall the movement’s progress by sparking pushback claiming that these laws go too far. Such opposition typically consists of disability rights organizations and religious groups. “There is this irrational idea that all of a sudden we are going to have slippery slopes and people are going to be taken advantage of and coerced,” Calloway says. “These are scare tactics by the right-to-lifers.”

As Calloway notes, individuals seeking to use the law must pass a medical review board, a rigorous process that has many failsafes in place. This process cannot be easily completed, at least not in the United States, where many individuals die while waiting on the bureaucratic process for approval.

Due to her lack of legal options, Calloway plans to travel to Switzerland in the coming months; there, the criteria for assisted suicide are much broader.

“Patients from all over the world are traveling to countries that provide [assisted suicide or] euthanasia in order to have this option,” she says, “because many of them are denied this right in their own country, which is the same problem that I have.” Once she arrives at Pegasus, a nonprofit voluntary-assisted-dying organization, she will take a lethal intravenous substance and pass away within two minutes.

While she emphasizes how that moment will finally bring her the peace she seeks, Calloway understands that it does not come without financial and emotional hurdles.

Calloway must pay nearly $20,000 for travel and accommodation for herself and a caretaker.

Calloway must pay nearly $20,000 for travel and accommodation for herself and a caretaker. To help raise funds, she started a GoFundMe page titled “A good death.” But, while Calloway has raised more than $7,000 so far, the fact that she needs to travel to a clinic abroad in order to die humanely is an indictment in itself.

“I can’t die in my own bed with my family holding me,” she says, “because the law in America is so cruel.”

Worse still, the window of time for Calloway to travel to Switzerland is narrowing. As her mental and physical states decline, Swiss doctors must be able to certify that she’s cognizant before she can be approved for physician-assisted suicide.

“Choosing a date to die is the most difficult thing that any human being could ever have to choose,” she says. “There would always be another birthday, there would always be another family get-together. You [instinctively] keep delaying this decision but I have to make it soon if I want to have a dignified end.”

“MS is ending my life,” Calloway continues. “I’m just choosing to die one way as opposed to another on my own terms, with assistance from a doctor.”

The Other Americans: El Salvador’s Bitcoin House of Cards Falls

The collapse of cryptocurrency has cost the country millions of dollars, but President Nayib Bukele is telling residents not to focus on the economic downturn.

A sign reads "aceptamos bitcoin" ("we accept bitcoin").

BY JEFF ABBOTT
JUNE 30, 2022

Bitcoin, the best-known of the world’s virtual currencies, has collapsed, losing trillions of dollars in the process along with all of the other cryptocurrencies. This has created massive losses for the nation of El Salvador, which in 2021 became the first country in the world to accept Bitcoin as legal tender. It is estimated that the fall in Bitcoin’s value has cost the Central American government more than $50 million.

“The failure of Bitcoin has freed us from a catastrophe.”

Nayib Bukele, resident of El Salvador, invested more than $100 million in the digital currency after a law was pushed through the country’s legislative branch in less than seventy-two hours last September. The law was approved without any oversight or fiscal research into what the cryptocurrency would mean for the country’s economy.

But the crypto crash is not being felt equally: the majority of Salvadorans remained skeptical of the currency and did not utilize Bitcoin.

“Most people still use dollars to make their transactions,” Ricardo Castaneda, a Salvadoran economist with the Central American Institute for Fiscal Studies, tells The Progressive. “The main impact is the loss of public money that had been used to buy Bitcoin. The fall of Bitcoin does have implications directly because of the money that [the people] have paid through their taxes.”

He adds, “It is as if someone went to bet in a casino with the people’s money, and they are currently losing.”

The lack of popular support for the use of Bitcoin throughout El Salvador means that the effects of the loss on residents have yet to be seen.

“The failure of Bitcoin has freed us from a catastrophe,” Carlos Acevedo, an economist and former president of the Central Reserve Bank of El Salvador, tells The Progressive. “If Bitcoin had been successfully received that would have meant people were using Bitcoin, that taxes were being paid through Bitcoin, that people were sending remittances through Bitcoin. Then this fall in the price of Bitcoin would have been catastrophic, but almost no one is using it.”

El Salvador was the first country in the world to recognize cryptocurrency as legal tender; it was presented as a cheap and easy way for migrants to send remittances from the United States home to family members.

But nearly one year after the country adopted Bitcoin, the government found the population resistant to adopting it. Initially, the government had given $30 to every user that opened a Chivo account. But this backfired.

“They took out the $30, but just to [keep as cash],” Morena Herrera, a feminist and human rights deffender in El Salvador, tells The Progressive. “It is a currency that is of little interest to the people.”

According to Acevedo, only around 2 percent of remittances are sent back through the cryptocurrency, and no one is paying their taxes with it.

Bukele had promised the public that Bitcoin would reach a value of $100,000 per coin by the end of the year, but it never reached that level—rather, it fell drastically. But as the country faces the collapse of Bitcoin, Bukele is urging the population to not focus on the collapse.

“Bukele made a statement telling people to not look at the Bitcoin chart,” Herrera says. “He said ‘It will go up, enjoy life.’ ”

El Salvador has seen a rapid deterioration of conditions within the country in the three years since Bukele took power. Since March, the president has ruled the country under a State of Emergency to combat gangs, resulting in the incarceration of more than 40,000 people.

Bukele requested the emergency declaration following the deaths of more than eighty people in one weekend, and has since accused the gangs of trying to form a guerrilla movement against the power of the state.

“This government came in with a huge anti-corruption discourse. But in practice, what we have found with the facts is that there has been a systematic practice of hiding information.”

Human rights organizations have criticized the declaration and the violation of rights. In addition to those who have been arbitrarily arrested under the state of emergency, at least forty people have died in prison since March, according to human rights organizations.

The state of emergency was extended yet again for another thirty days on June 21.

At the same time, Bukele has overseen the systematic co-optation of the state in a move that many have referred to as authoritarian. He maintains direct control over all branches of the state as part of an attack on democratic institutions, which has meant that corruption is running rampant.

“This government came in with a huge anti-corruption discourse,” Castaneda says. “But in practice, what we have found with the facts is that there has been a systematic practice of hiding information.”

He adds, “In the government’s discourse, yes, it is fighting corruption. But in practice, what it is doing is destroying any and all efforts that really fight corruption.”

In June 2021, the administration shut down the Organization of American States-backed International Commission Against Impunity in El Salvador. An action that was met by dismay from the United States, which had invested two million dollars in the anti-corruption body just months prior.

Throughout all of this, the adoption of Bitcoin has further permitted corruption and strengthened Bukele’s control over the country.

As Castaneda says, “The president has control of all institutions.”


Jeff Abbott is an independent journalist currently based out of Guatemala. “The Other Americans” is a column created by Abbott for The Progressive on human migration in North and Central America.

READ MORE BY JEFF ABBOTT