In Uruguay, as in the rest of Latin America, student movements organized against oppression are increasingly incorporating an anti-speciesist perspective. In this article, the Anti-Speciesist Student Coordination (CEAE) shares its worldview and hope for change.
The Anti-Speciesist Student Coordination is a space that brings together secondary and tertiary students with the aim of rethinking our relationship with other species. We start from the idea that there is an oppression exercised by the human species towards other animals, legitimized by an anthropocentric worldview, and we take action to try to change that reality.
Although we are a student-led organization, we don't focus solely on students. We've been creating spaces for dialogue around this issue, both in educational institutions and at feminist, environmentalist, and other gatherings. We understand that the struggles against various forms of oppression cannot be understood in isolation, so one of our objectives is to bring anti-speciesist ideas to other spaces of struggle and enrich the anti-speciesist movement with ideas from other emancipatory movements.
Podemos decir que hemos tenido experiencias bastante satisfactorias con las metas que nos venimos proponiendo, pero aun faltan muchos pasos por dar, alianzas que generar, y fundamentalmente, todo un sistema de opresión que abolir. Intentamos que nuestros ideales hagan a nuestra forma de relacionarnos entre compañerxs y de dar la lucha; por eso reivindicamos el carácter horizontal y autónomo de la CEAE. Procuramos que la coordinadora sea un espacio seguro; libre de agresiones machistas, racistas, capacitistas. Apelamos a la acción directa como medio de transformación.
We also resist the co-optation and ideological emptying that capitalism is carrying out on practices with an ethical foundation, such as veganism, which it ends up selling in the market as a “healthy and eco-friendly lifestyle.” In response, we reclaim veganism as an anti-speciesist stance and practice, which we consider antagonistic to exploitation, objectification, and other values inherent in the capitalist system. Generating change in a region with an economy based on livestock farming and an extractive model that constantly threatens animal life, as is the case in Uruguay, is by no means an easy task. This is why giving up is not an option; rather, faced with adverse conditions, we have no choice but to redouble our efforts and fight back.