Grassroots Organising of Unpaid Care Workers for Caring Societies in Mexico and Latin America

While the pandemic context seems to have intensified quests for integral care policies, the voices of full-time care workers are mostly peripheralised in public, academic and social debates. What are integral care policies and how does that play out in Latin America and the Caribbean? What are the lights and shadows of building grass roots organisational efforts for caring societies with unpaid care workers in the complex, multicultural and unequal contexts of this region? What concrete solutions arise as unpaid care givers build alliances and ways to sustain their lives via productive ecologies beyond extractive capitalism?

Jana Vasil’eva shares insights from an ongoing participatory action research endeavour that supports the creation of the grassroots collective Yo Cuido in Mexico, Chile, Perú and Argentina as well as the materialization of local and national care systems in these contexts.

This essay is part of the Care Stories series and the Caring Societies Project.