‘Changing the framework is part of building power’

This episode of Handing over the Mic is in Spanish.

In this episode, hosts Valeria Santi and Eliott de Smedt Day hand over the mic to Alejandra Ancheita, a Mexican human rights lawyer and Executive Director of ProDESC. With her work, she supports workers, Indigenous and rural communities in their struggles against structural inequality and corporate power.

Drawing on her personal and professional trajectory, Alejandra Ancheita offers a critical reflection on Europe as a political imaginary, a cultural entity and a global actor, addressing its colonial legacy and influence, and the contemporary dynamics between Europe, Latin America and the so-called Global South.  
 
While acknowledging the pain and violence of the colonial past, Ancheita offers a different perspective: Europe is also a space where emancipatory theories, democratic struggles and human rights frameworks have emerged. These are tools that can be reclaimed and re-signified rather than rejected altogether. She invites us to move beyond a reading of history grounded solely in trauma, and to engage with liberating knowledges that help us understand today’s shifting forms of coloniality, particularly those driven by economic domination and cultural extraction. Ancheita rejects the idea of Latin America ‘rising’ within the existing geopolitical order, instead framing it as an opportunity to change the rules of the game altogether.

‘I believe that Latin America should not be seen as advancing within the same framework, but rather as an opportunity to change the framework. I believe that this is part of building power. And how to move from an extractive relationship [with Europe] (...) to a relationship based on rights, shared responsibility and limits. I believe that this equation is formulated under the logic of seeing ourselves as equals, and that is the challenge. On the current geopolitical board, we are not seen as equals, economically and politically speaking, nor culturally. There is still a logic of superiority - and I believe that is where the opportunity lies, but it is also a major challenge.’

Throughout the conversation, she explores key issues such as collective power, intersectional feminism, decolonial thinking and the challenges surrounding labour and social inequality. She emphasizes the need to rethink power relations and to fundamentally transform existing frameworks. For Alejandra Ancheita, only approaches grounded in equality, rights and collective organization can lead to more just international relationships and help address today’s social, economic and democratic crises.