Americas: Bloggers Participate in Blog Action Day – Part II · Global Voices
Eduardo Avila

October 15 marked the annual event of Blog Action Day.  On this date, bloggers from all around the world pledge to publish a blog post aboug a particular topic.  This year the chosen subject is poverty.  This campaign hopes “to change the conversation that day day, to raise awareness, start a global discussion and add momentum to an important cause.”
Here is part two of a collection of Latin American bloggers who participated in the campaign (see part one here):
The blogger, Sérgio Coutinho of Mundo Em Movimentos [pt] is a university teacher and says the following that poverty is not just related to money:
Combater a pobreza não significa, como tem sido feito pelo capitalismo, combater os próprios pobres, achatando suas rendas e dignidades, mas combater o pensamento miserável, escravo do momento em que se vive sem perspectivas de transformação do próprio mundo.
Reducing poverty does not mean, as Capitalism has done, fighting the poor people themselves, flattening their income and dignity, but to fight against the miserable thought, slave of the moment in which we live with no prospect of transforming the world itself.
Ciberescrituras [es] finds the statistics associated with poverty in South America very troubling:
Es absolutamente insultante que en nuestros países de America del Sur se esté hablando aún de 80% de pobreza crítica y es que no hablamos solamente de aquellos que se mueren de hambre segundo a segundo sino de aquellos que no pueden ir a la escuela, que son explotados y humillados a veces en condiciones premodernas, casi medievales en los cinturones de miserias de nuestras ciudades capitales.
It is absolutely insulting that in our South American countries that there is talk of 80% of critical poverty and that we are not only talking about those that die from hunger second to second, but those that cannot go to school, those that are sometimes exploited and humiliated in prehistoric, almost medieval conditions in the areas of misery of our capital cities.
At Artepolítica [es], Charlie Boyle compiles a list of Argentine bloggers that have written about Blog Action Day.  Vientos del Cine [es] is normally a blog that discusses cinema and for Blog Action Day, they keep with the subject, but write about films that contain scenes of poverty. Sine Metu of BlogBis [es] also reflects on the audience of this campaign, “Very few poor people will read this post.  Probably none.”
María Cristina Martínez from Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas and who blogs at City @ Ciudad [es] writes:
Empecemos por poner nuestras profesiones o conocimientos al servicio de los demás. Miremos en nuestro interior y actuemos con amor ante las necesidades de las personas que nos rodean, y recordemos que por mínima que sea la acción que realicemos ésta hace el mundo diferente.
To tackle the issue of poverty, German Macias of Estación Macias [es] writes that we must “stop looking in the past, and we must look forward to find new ways of the future.”
Nathan aka The Data Geek [es] writes about the problem of poverty and its related problem of crime that takes place in Guatemala, and thinks he has a possible solution:
… crear fuentes de trabajo, capacitar a las para que desempeñen un trabajo, y a los menores de edad, brindarles de educación necesaria para superarse en la vida, pero se que esto no se logra de la noche a la mañana, para que esto funcione, depende de nosotros, no ser discriminadores, sino ayudar a las personas, podemos darles las cosas que ya no usamos, como zapatos, ropa, cobijas y cuando podamos darles comida.
… create jobs, train those to do a job, and for youth, provide the necessary education so that they can get ahead in life, but this does not happen overnight, for that to work, it depends on us, to not discriminate, but to help others, we can give them things that we no longer use like shoes, clothes, blankets, and when we can, food.
Special thanks to Luis Carlos Díaz and Paula Góes for providing links for this article.