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Epsy Campbell (San José, 59 years old) refuses to think that the human being has the self-destruction chip inserted.
She is aware of the ills of a highly polarized world, suffering from the effects of the pandemic and war on the economy and facing an unprecedented climate crisis.
But she remains optimistic and compares the current situation to what women feel when giving birth: intense pain, almost unbearable, but necessary to give birth to a new life, in this case a new generation that is more aware and in greater harmony with the environment. .
For the former vice president of Costa Rica (2018-2022), the solution to current problems lies in a new social organization with a feminist leadership that, without excluding men, puts the common good above competition: "The idea it is to understand that we are part of a collective and that either we are all saved, or no one is saved.
That we really have different roles at different times, but from a collaborative logic, ”she maintains.
She imagines it as a global tribe in which women have a leading role in finding solutions.
"That female leadership is the only one that can save the planet," she says in an interview with América Futura after participating in the event 'Many Voices, one region: Latin America and the Caribbean working on the 2030 agenda for sustainable development', organized by CAF- development bank of Latin America this week in New York.
Campbell sings her theories in a panel on leadership like someone who tells a story and receives special praise from another of the participants, the Brazilian deputy Áurea Carolina: “You are a very special reference for us in Brazil, for the movements of black women and the people who believe that politics can have another way of existing and the picture of power can change”, he told him.
The one who was the first black vice president of Latin America believes that women like her reach positions of power or have more visibility in public spaces —as happened recently with the choice of a black actress to interpret the Disney classic
The Little Mermaid
— helps to change the collective imagination, something especially relevant for girls belonging to minorities who can dream of one day arriving there too.
“When one builds imaginaries, it is not only for the excluded, it is for a society that has to be convinced that diversity is a characteristic, that exclusion is unacceptable even if we have historical explanations and that it is possible to give a life of dignity to everyone who is born”.
For this reason, she especially celebrates the arrival of Francia Márquez to the vice presidency of Colombia: "Her triumph is my triumph, as is the triumph of a lot of other women," she points out.
Ask.
What different approach can women leaders bring?
Response.
We come from a form of leadership that is competitive, individualistic, predatory, violent by definition and has a logic of every man for himself.
This is done in families, in communities and in countries.
That is a form of masculine power.
That form of exercising power that denies the common good as the objective of power is masculine and we have to overcome it if we want to preserve ourselves as a species and guarantee that the planet survives with us.
I think the logic is to move to a more collaborative female matrix of power, which has to do with collective preservation, which is also more compassionate.
So, while many women had and had to learn in that ugly way of destructive power, we now have something to teach.
And that is the logic of using this vision that mothers understand very well.
All mothers have as an idea the preservation of the tribe, of their small tribe.
That which was despised, that is what we have to use as a model for this new humanity.
Q.
Who inspired you?
R.
I am like an activist from home.
I come from a family of five women and two men.
But there is a leader of the process of liberation from slavery in the United States, Harriet Tubman, who impressed me very much that what she did for the rest was impossible.
She made a route to save people at a time when the law was that black people and their descendants were slaves and she never thought that this was impossible and she was generating something that is the logic of the tribe.
She was always on the road finding people who supported her mission to free hundreds of people from conditions of slavery.
And that route was not only with black people.
He went with others who were also against that situation of injustice and they were facilitating that tunnel for freedom.
I connect with that key that it is possible to transform leadership.
We women have to believe the story that transformation really happens by being back at the center of the organization of human survival.
I recognize that we live in very difficult times.
But the only answer to that is to do.
It is learning from others.
It is looking for those who are in tune with one.
It is not looking for excuses.
A feminist view of the construction of the new humanity starts from the fact that we understand alliances.
And furthermore, the leadership of women, by definition, will never exclude that of men.
Because we do recognize without so much embarrassment that we have brothers, uncles, partners, cousins... The men wanted to concentrate this thing like this and that nobody gets involved.
We have the collective gaze.
Epsy Campbell, Vice President of Costa Rica (2018-2022) and Francia Márquez, Vice President of Colombia, pose during a meeting in Bogotá (Colombia).DARWIN TORRES
P.
Francia Márquez has said that she does not believe in breaking glass ceilings, that this is more for women like Hillary Clinton, associating that concept with white feminism.
But seeing women like you in positions of power inspires many.
What do you feel when you see that others arrive, that there are more and more?
R.
Well, it feels pretty good.
When she won France, which is a woman with whom I already had an exchange relationship, she said: "I want to be there."
Her triumph is my triumph, as it is the triumph of a lot of other women.
There is a part that is the change of imaginary.
Why do we women feel so far from power?
Still today you see the meetings of the European Union and you see the leaders and it is even lazy at this point in the party that women continue to be an exception.
It means that we are still behind.
But as you see images of women, the smaller creatures see that it was not so impossible.
Because before reaching anything, one imagines it.
But there are millions of creatures who have not had the possibility of having that idea because the collective tells them: "You can't get there."
We have been interrupting these imaginaries of exclusion, but it has to become common, not extraordinary.
Every time there is one more, we are getting closer to it being a super common thing in the future, hopefully not too far away.
And that if you are a black girl, you can say: I want to be president or an artist, a scientist or I want to go to the moon, whatever I want.
France will continue to inspire many people and we have to accompany her throughout her process because it is no longer worth being the exception, it is not worth that you inspire, we want many to inspire.
The logic is to change that photograph to make it look like humanity.
Just as we try to preserve biodiversity, how is it that we do not do everything to give a place to that human diversity in conditions of dignity for all?
P.
Despite all the problems, I feel optimistic.
Do you have hope for a change of mentality in the new generation?
A.
I call that generation the generation of light.
Because I am more and more convinced that they have the possibility of looking at the past and assessing good things from the past.
But it is a more compassionate generation.
Twenty years ago, none of you would have interviewed me like you're doing.
This is part of a new moment for humanity, and I believe that this is a growth movement.
Still, as we are told, conservatism is growing.
I say that other parts are also growing.
More different people than could celebrate with me when I won the election, celebrated when France arrived.
You didn't have to be black to celebrate.
That means there is something else.
For me, the murder of George Floyd was a turning point in humanity.
Black Lives Matter
it was a movement of people screaming for Black lives, but it didn't start in 2015. You hear the speeches of Malcolm X in the '60s or Marcus Garvey in the 1920s talking about police brutality.
But it was always black people talking about it.
When I began to see the demonstrations on a global level of people who cared about a human being and said: 'Enough is enough', it was also a manifestation that we are in another time.
Not only is Bolsonaro a manifestation that conservatism lives on.
In my country, the president invited the presidents of the supreme powers to sign a manifesto against the murder of George Floyd.
Even we, who have such a dependent relationship with the United States in Latin America, condemn murder at the hands of the police.
The president at that time was 40 years old.
I see more and more women, for example, concerned about issues of systemic racism, concerned about issues of homophobia, transphobia, discrimination based on sexual orientation.
And you don't have to be one of that group.
I see more and more young men concerned about women's rights.
It is not my invention.
There is empirical evidence that this is happening.
I think that this is the germ of transformation.
P.
I can't stop asking you about the difficult situation in your region, Central America: the crisis in Nicaragua, the growing authoritarianism in El Salvador...
A.
No… Central America…
P.
And Guatemala, with attacks on judicial independence, journalists...
R.
The situation in Central America gives me pain.
I don't think even the 80's were worse than now.
Systematic exclusion happened from one war to another war.
And the worst thing is that the world does not seem to care about Central America.
The levels of impotence that one can feel when she looks at what is happening in El Salvador, in Nicaragua, the number of Salvadoran people who are going to Costa Rica now.
Those who were activists because they cannot be there, because today there is no right to have a different opinion.
In Honduras, the situation is dire for most people.
Yes, we are in a real crisis and I hope that a group of Central American women can collectively think about what can be done in Central America, because it is very hopeless, it is a lot of pain.
The situation requires an act of total emergency.
I don't know what the way out is, but I do think that we have to think about it in terms of women, because the logic of the peace agreements does not work.
It is the great challenge that we have today, because it is a challenge of economic and democratic exclusion, of human survival and of dignity.
We really have to put our heads and energy into Central America because the situation is dramatic.
