Creating a Currency to Raise Awareness
Editor's note:
Professor Frances Negrón-Muntaner is the co-creator of Valor y Cambio, a community-based storytelling and community-building project. In a video below, she talks about how the project, which is introducing a community currency for Puerto Ricans, is raising questions about societal values in debt-ridden Puerto Rico. The currency will be introduced to New Yorkers on Sunday, May 26, at the Loisaida Festival, the largest Latinx celebration in Lower Manhattan.
Below is an article from earlier this month when Columbia announced that Negrón-Muntaner was the recipient of the 2019 LASA Latina/o Studies Frank Bonilla Public Intellectual Award.
May 09, 2019
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]