Politics encroaches on all aspects of our lives. Powers that be is a column written by External Politics Columnist Maya Tommasi about the ways in which political power — corporate, federal, provincial, Indigenous and municipal — affects the lives of those who call themselves part of the UBC community.
Maya Tommasi (she/her) is a third-year political science student and The Ubyssey’s politics columnist. She is a trans woman and latine immigrant, and holds a previous degree in psychology with multiple years of research experience. You can find her on Bluesky or reach her by email at m.tommasi@ubyssey.ca.
Politics is nearly always about economics. Look at the way the federal government talks about immigration and halving the number of planned new student permits next year.
However the policy is carried out, it seems that international students already in Canada will experience increased anxiety. If this move indicates a less restrictive immigration policy in the future, international students are left wondering if it will be harder to renew their permit if they decide to extend their degree by a year. What about a master’s? What about the countless students whose permits expire before their degree is expected to end? While this uncertainty will inevitably affect thousands, at no point does their suffering enter the conversation.
This is not exclusive to federal politics. Here at UBC, our AMS seems not to have considered this either, despite international students accounting for over a quarter of the student body. In a recent statement addressing the cuts, they note how it will “[threaten] the financial stability of post-secondary institutions,” and “undermine the quality of education.” The closest they come to defending international students is granting that they “add to the diversity and richness of campus life” and “contribute to the local economy.” They frame international students as tools to improve UBC, not living, breathing individuals whose experiences should be valued.
This is not exposing some sort of conspiracy. Politics is always framed through a specific lens. Nobody observes anything through a truly unbiased lens. The social and cultural context we live in inevitably shapes how we interpret politics. But we should recognize that the politics of today exist as consequences of history.
Recently, I watched an interview with historian Greg Grandin, where he discussed the developmental differences between Latin and North American politics. It’s the subject of his new book, America, América. Grandin locates humanism — a philosophical tradition which emphasizes the intrinsic worth of respect for human dignity — as a key part of the political thought of Latin America. Humanism started in opposition to colonialism and in association with the School of Salamanca, a movement in the Catholic Church. Early on, humanists believed all people — including non-white, non-Christian and Indigenous peoples — had equal value and deserved equal care.
Humanism’s foundational nature in Latin American history is in no small part due to how long it’s been around. One of the most famous proponents of the movement, Bartolomé de Casas (a Dominican friar who chronicled and opposed the colonial violence against Indigenous peoples), was writing and advocating in the early 16th century. His book, Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (“A short account of the destruction of the Indies”), was published 50 years before the English set foot in Jamestown.
Grandin explains humanism’s pervasiveness as a consequence of a very different colonial history from that of North America. The Spanish arrived not only before the English, but were much more aggressive. They quickly and brutally subjugated Indigenous people; in just a few years, they had taken most of Latin America, horrendously. Documentation of Spanish violence was widely available, and while the English (and eventually, British) conquest was no less brutal, it occurred much more gradually. Even a century into their colonial project, some Indigenous nations still had independence. This dilution of colonialism over centuries made its impact less intrinsically shocking.
Because of the obvious brutality of the conquista and reports of violence in Latin America, opposition grew early on. But colonialism happened differently in North America, and humanism never took off here in the same way as it did in our southern sister continent. The origin of North America’s dominant political values is more likely found in Protestantism, and in the liberal ideas of the American revolutionaries.
The effects of these different influences are perhaps best noted in a constitution. One of the primary differences between our Charter of Rights and Freedoms is the inclusion of “social rights” in similar documents from Latin America. Social rights often come in addition to individual, legal and political rights, which broadly make up liberal rights. Together, they create a new understanding of the government’s role.
I grew up in Brazil. In the Brazilian constitution, you will find “individual and collective rights and duties” and “political rights” mentioned in chapters 1 and 4, respectively, which approximately represent the same rights protected in the Canadian Charter. However, in chapter 2, you will find social rights: protections for housing, healthcare, education, leisure and social security; but also a minimum wage, 40-hour work week, paid weekly leave and 120-day maternity leave, among other things. And while social rights are more common in leftist thought, they are not exclusive to it. In Chile’s constitution, developed under Augusto Pinochet — a far-right dictator with a proclivity for free-market values — you will find similar protections for education and social security.
In the same way humanism transcends the left-right spectrum in Latin American politics, liberalism does so in Canadian politics. Take housing, for example. No matter what party you’re talking about in Canada, the solutions to the housing crisis are market-oriented ones. We talk about regulating the market through an empty homes tax or increasing supply (building housing) while decreasing demand (reducing immigration). These track with the liberal heritage of our politics.
The housing conversation in Brazil, however, does not sound like this. There, the most contentious issue is that of land reform and appropriations. In that political ecosystem, there are organizations that occupy empty housing and build encampments for people who live in poverty, and the current government supports them. Land in Brazil legally has to serve a social function; abandoned properties can’t. The well-being of people is prioritized over traditional property rights. That’s unheard of in North America.
Tension between traditional property rights and humanist values exists even in Latin American contexts. There, some believe land appropriations are not only illegal but instances of terrorism. Others believe it’s a constitutional responsibility. While groups will draw different lines around humanism, you will be hard-pressed to find a group that rejects it outright. Humanism exists in conjunction with liberalism — one does not overtake the other. An argument for humanism isn’t an argument against liberalism. I’ve written before about how I actually believe liberalism is a good foundation for a democratic system and is not (at least for the most part) in conflict with humanism. What I am trying to show, though, is that political heritage has recognizable effects on politics anywhere.
Compared to Latin America, colonial conquest plays a more active role in the national histories of both the United States and Canada — with manifest destiny and western expansion in America and a less antagonistic break from empire to federation in Canada. This doesn’t mean Latin American nations didn’t participate in colonialization, or are absolved of responsibility for their participation. They aren’t. But their national identities are based less on the original colonial project and more on emancipation. Brazil’s founding myth focuses on the union of three peoples: Indigenous, Black and white. The story goes that by being a union of three distinct but equal peoples, Brazil developed a "racial democracy" where, unlike other nations, it overcame racism. It’s a pure fabrication. Brazil continues to have deep race-based inequality to this day. It was built on chattel slavery and colonial atrocity. But this myth still perpetuates a view of Brazilian citizenship that is less about individual heritage than it is about participation in a society.
Canadian multiculturalism, by contrast, focuses on a group identity. In that frame, immigration policy (i.e. international student cuts) affects diversity — but the citizenry is already diverse, so restrictions on immigration don’t end multiculturalism, conceptually. Immigration policy, despite disproportionately affecting non-white people, is not really about multiculturalism, then, and criticism of it isn’t about the human experience of individuals — like what the AMS said in its statement.
It’s natural that we prioritize the economy. Housing too, as an especially important part of our economy. That wouldn’t change through a humanist framing. But could we not envision a politics that also takes into consideration the humanity and well-being of everyone, not only citizens?
I think we can engage in politics more creatively. We can recognize, criticize and even shed a lot of our ideological baggage. We should, as a society, hope for advancement. And despite the grand scale of those ideas, they are still possible. Even in the case of Latin American humanism, its influence is not absolute — far from it. It’s not the solution for all our problems. But I genuinely believe in centring the individual human experience, and that their well-being should come before group identification or national projects.
There is a lot I do not miss about Latin American politics, and a lot I admire and appreciate about our Canadian counterpart. However, I wish we would concern ourselves a bit more with collective responsibility to humans, as humans, regardless of their origin. The conversation about immigration severely lacks it.
This is an opinion essay, and a part of a regular column. It reflects the columnist’s views and may not reflect the views of The Ubyssey as a whole. Contribute to the conversation by visiting ubyssey.ca/pages/submit-an-opinion.
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