Meet the Latina Who’s Ending Bullfighting for Good
Animal rights activist Yennifer Martinez is on the virtual frontlines of ending animal cruelty in Latin America
Intersectional justice is always about taking the blinders off the single issue of your focus and looking around. What else does the issue touch? Who else? Animal rights is no different. Who else, beyond the animals, does this touch? Are we allowing room for their human experience? There’s no shortage of empathy that prevents you from examining the humanity of the slaughterhouse worker — likely an undocumented immigrant working minimum wage in one of the most physically and psychologically harmful professions in the United States. Research shows that slaughterhouse work is linked to PTSD, alcoholism, addiction, an increase in crime rates in the surrounding communities, and increased domestic violence. These are the jobs that only the most vulnerable would take. There are layers of societal illness that form parasitic symbiotic relationships that ultimately line the pockets of CEOs of dairy, meat and egg corporations.
I say this because, as a Latina myself, I don’t want my non-Latino readers to take a single-minded view of my culture. I say this because, I, too, once took the easy path of villainizing other cultures for eating dogs or foie gras. It…
