Otramérica: 6 months into the journey

Otramérica was hatched in secret on May 1 and at the end of June we went public. Since then, we have had 122,000 total visits and 57,000 single visitors. But most importantly, we have told hundreds of stories, offered multiple glimpses into a melting pot of humanities.

When focus is shared, it grows; it gets bigger, multiplies, and turns into a crowd. And that is happening with Otramérica. Today is our six-month anniversary on the network (merely a sigh in the time span of the universe) and those who do the sums on this bewildering digital landscape tell us that our pages have been visited 120,000 times and that 57,000 people that we do not know are now part of our community.

We do know that our visitors are diverse (in the lead are Colombia, Spain, Argentina, Panama, Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, USA, Costa Rica, Venezuela and Ecuador) and we have other data to hand that does not actually interest us that much, because we are not competing, we are not in a race, we are on a journey, in a process that will last as long as the struggle for the dignity of our peoples.

Brief history

We dreamed up Otramérica when part of our team (at Human Rights Everywhere) was living in Panama and we wanted to try to make visible certain realities that the mainstream media did not want to show. At first, the challenge of doing so was greater than the sum of our parts, and yet we were egged on by the certainty that what we were doing was much needed. Many moons passed between the dream and the reality, and in that time the Otramérica project grew from a regional to a global portal, part of our team was expelled from Panama for their support for indigenous communities and their struggle against mega mining projects, and our hopes of getting financial resources that did not compromise our independence vanished into thin air…

What happened next? Well, the feeling of duty, the endless task to decolonize our thinking and multiply alternatives, the essential challenge of re-viewing rights and societies from multiple but always alternative viewpoints. With the commitment of Rodrigo Fino and Paula Ripoll from Buenos Aires, with the monumental work of Carlos Reyes from Panama and his technical team from Colombia, with conceptual support and unlimited back up from Helene Le Du and Fidel Mingorance in Luxembourg, with feedback from the critical eye of Sofia Izquierdo, and with the coordination of our base team, Otramérica was more or less ready by April 2011 (nearly eight months after work began).

On June 21, 2011, from a kind of exile, we presented Otramérica in the Casa de America in Madrid with the magnificent presence and support of Mayte Carrasco (from Reporters without Borders) and the amazing commitment of José Manuel Martín Medem. We were able to listen to leaders, journalists and activists examining why something like Otramérica needed to exist. Other media also discussed the event, telling of our origins and our rough edges .

Since then we haven´t stopped, we have two alternative routes (French Guyana / Suriname / Guyana and Honduras / Guatemala), around 90 collaborators, nearly 200 news stories published, 60 videos, an ever vaster Bookshop, 160 references to key blogs in Latin America and the Caribbean …

We have learned and matured. Our commitment is clear, and we are biased because we always tell stories from the communities´ viewpoints, but as we become more radical at the same time we gain greater plurality in our stories. We still have a lot to do. We are covering some countries very poorly; there are realities that elude us. We will succeed. We have also learned that there are people willing to tell their story in every corner of Otramerica, and that our dream to gain micro-funding based on donations from users is nearly impossible (everyone is already too caught up in their own micro and macro struggles to be able to donate to a new one) and that to maintain our independence we must accept the precariousness of our financial situation alongside our wealth of experience. We have strengthened ties with many sisters and brothers from Otramérica, for example with El Ciudadano (Chile), Antropología de Género and La Silla Vacía (Colombia), Mujeres Creando and El mAERTadero (Bolivia), with Espacio Común y El Kolectivo and the Centro de Estudios Estratégicos (Panama), Traficantes de Sueños and Frontera D (Spain), Rebelión (Global), among others …

Today we celebrate! We welcome you and invite you to view a selection of some of the most exciting stories we have collected and multiplied.

We wish you health and send you fraternal embraces from the whole team, from every corner of Latin America and the Caribbean.

Some (and only some) of the stories on Otramérica

It is difficult to choose highlights from so many stories that we have told, however, here are just a few:

• 15-O. Otramérica travelled to Mexico City, Lima, Buenos Aires, Santiago and New York.
• The meaning of serious conflict between the government and indigenous movements in Bolivia because of the case of TIPNIS
• We have tried to navigate the terrain of feminist struggles, the discrimination that many women are subjected to, the marches of prostitutes throughout the continent, the essential task of removing patriarchy from our societies
• We have endeavored to look behind the shadows that hide domestic workers and other collectives, and communities like the Ayoreo, the Hmong and the Naso, entire countries like Paraguay, the struggles of afro-descendant peoples, of the Sarayaku community or of the indigenous and peasant communities of the Xingu River in the Amazon.
• We have asked questions. How are human rights being violated? Has anything changed in Colombia after Uribe’s demise? What’s behind regional “development” plans? How do economic megaprojects affect indigenous peoples? International cooperation: what is it for, what good does it do, how does it work? How does the football circus work and how does it damage us?
• We have brought you closer to other ways of thinking about development in the midst of the insanity of the extractive industry, the nightmare of Potosí, which continues to torment us.
• We have witnessed the rise to power of Ollanta Humala and the confirmation of Cristina Fernández.
• Writers like Santiago Roncagliolo and Caballero Bonald have passed by Otramérica and left part of their soul with us, as have personalities such as Carlos Tiburcio and Roberto Savio, and social leaders like Juan De Dios Mosquera, Sergio Ramírez and Luis Mario Martínez…
• We have even presented a mini-documentary about the town of Naso Tjër Di in Panama, and we have taken you to old slave plantations, to an African party in the heart of African Suriname and we have told you minimalistic and fundamental stories like that of señor Pamari.
• And finally, even though it hurts to tell the tale, we accompanied on their last journey back to Pacha Mama some of those who left us during this time, including Facundo Cabral, Raúl Leis, Gonzalo Rojas,Ernesto Sábato, Abdías do Nascimento and Rafael Menjívar Ochoa.