'Valor y Cambio': A Community Currency Project in Puerto Rico
Transcript
00:00
[MUSIC PLAYING]
00:08
[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
00:14
What?
00:20
My name is Frances Negrón-Muntaner.
00:21
I am a professor at Columbia University
00:23
in the Department of English and Comparative Literature.
00:26
And the project that I've been developing
00:27
is called Valor y Cambio which is supported by the Center
00:31
for the Study of Social Difference.
00:33
And it emerged from a working group
00:34
called Unpayable Debt that looked at the rise of debt
00:38
regimes all over the world.
00:39
But we put a particular emphasis on Puerto Rico
00:41
for our research.
00:43
And the name of our group comes directly
00:45
from a speech that the governor of Puerto Rico
00:47
gave when he announced to the island
00:50
that the government had accumulated
00:52
such an enormous amount of debt that he called it unpayable.
00:56
If you combine all debt that the government has,
00:58
it tops $120 billion.
01:00
The project, I would describe it as a art storytelling and just
01:06
economy project to launch an island-wide conversation
01:09
about what do we value as a society.
01:12
Introducing a tool, a community currency,
01:15
that could be used for communities
01:16
that are marginalized or have little access
01:20
to the formal economy to organize their resources
01:24
and talents inside their communities
01:26
through exchange of a community currency.
01:29
We also wanted the currency to tell stories of the past that
01:33
connected to the present.
01:35
So we picked figures and places that
01:36
allowed us to talk of burning issues now,
01:39
like public education, public health, or access to health.
01:43
We wanted to talk about racial and gender equity.
01:47
I think the most popular bill was 21, Roberto Clemente, who
01:52
was a baseball player, and also was known
01:55
for his humanitarian work.
01:57
So the way it worked was we got an ATM.
02:00
We added a computer to the ATM so it
02:02
could collect the stories.
02:03
And in exchange of the stories, we
02:04
would give the bills to a dispenser, a money dispenser.
02:07
We got a number of small businesses,
02:10
about 40 small businesses, to accept these bills.
02:12
So the idea was that we would demonstrate
02:15
through a participatory process what could an exchange
02:19
economy not based on profit or debt or accumulation
02:22
look like and feel like?
02:24
We had a very interdisciplinary group,
02:26
all of us trying understand, how did we get to this point?
02:30
And I think also, how can research--
02:33
art, journalism, these various areas that we were working on--
02:36
can have an impact in addressing the situation?
02:40
And our project is not about how Puerto Rico is going to pay.
02:44
What we see is the crisis is offering
02:46
an opportunity for people to rethink politics,
02:50
to rethink what the economy should be about.
02:54
[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
00:08
[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
00:14
What?
00:20
My name is Frances Negrón-Muntaner.
00:21
I am a professor at Columbia University
00:23
in the Department of English and Comparative Literature.
00:26
And the project that I've been developing
00:27
is called Valor y Cambio which is supported by the Center
00:31
for the Study of Social Difference.
00:33
And it emerged from a working group
00:34
called Unpayable Debt that looked at the rise of debt
00:38
regimes all over the world.
00:39
But we put a particular emphasis on Puerto Rico
00:41
for our research.
00:43
And the name of our group comes directly
00:45
from a speech that the governor of Puerto Rico
00:47
gave when he announced to the island
00:50
that the government had accumulated
00:52
such an enormous amount of debt that he called it unpayable.
00:56
If you combine all debt that the government has,
00:58
it tops $120 billion.
01:00
The project, I would describe it as a art storytelling and just
01:06
economy project to launch an island-wide conversation
01:09
about what do we value as a society.
01:12
Introducing a tool, a community currency,
01:15
that could be used for communities
01:16
that are marginalized or have little access
01:20
to the formal economy to organize their resources
01:24
and talents inside their communities
01:26
through exchange of a community currency.
01:29
We also wanted the currency to tell stories of the past that
01:33
connected to the present.
01:35
So we picked figures and places that
01:36
allowed us to talk of burning issues now,
01:39
like public education, public health, or access to health.
01:43
We wanted to talk about racial and gender equity.
01:47
I think the most popular bill was 21, Roberto Clemente, who
01:52
was a baseball player, and also was known
01:55
for his humanitarian work.
01:57
So the way it worked was we got an ATM.
02:00
We added a computer to the ATM so it
02:02
could collect the stories.
02:03
And in exchange of the stories, we
02:04
would give the bills to a dispenser, a money dispenser.
02:07
We got a number of small businesses,
02:10
about 40 small businesses, to accept these bills.
02:12
So the idea was that we would demonstrate
02:15
through a participatory process what could an exchange
02:19
economy not based on profit or debt or accumulation
02:22
look like and feel like?
02:24
We had a very interdisciplinary group,
02:26
all of us trying understand, how did we get to this point?
02:30
And I think also, how can research--
02:33
art, journalism, these various areas that we were working on--
02:36
can have an impact in addressing the situation?
02:40
And our project is not about how Puerto Rico is going to pay.
02:44
What we see is the crisis is offering
02:46
an opportunity for people to rethink politics,
02:50
to rethink what the economy should be about.
02:54
[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]