From our point of view, it is undeniable that from the 90s onwards there has been greater visibility of people with disabilities and the implementation of actions that attempt to reverse the conditions of subordination towards a sector that is still little heard and recognized. The struggle for the rights of citizens with disabilities at the dawn of the new millennium has marked a turning point in the construction of knowledge about this human condition. Ten years ago, the first transnational human rights treaty of the 21st century was signed: the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2006. This legal and political instrument has been ratified by the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, in various laws, decrees and regulations, which has led to a prescriptive incorporation of a social, interactive and ecological paradigm of disability. Among the segments of the population with specific enshrined rights, the case of people with disabilities stands out, present in the national constitutions of 11 countries (ECLAC, 2015). Therefore, there has been progress in legal, political, academic and human rights matters. Public policies throughout the region have acknowledged a paradigm shift regarding disability, given that various critical voices have pointed out the persistence of old institutional mechanisms of denigration and a lack of radical transformations in material and symbolic conditions and access to social spaces, not only for people with disabilities, but especially for them, because the conditions of exclusion that bind them and prevent them from considering real actions for their equality in current societies are accentuated. Contemporary capitalist societies are structured on a socio-cultural and political process of disabling, which produces, governs and regulates populations and subjects with disabilities. Mandates regarding reproduction, efficiency, and productivity, in contexts of rampant violence, lead individuals and groups to face scenarios of disability, even when people do not recognize themselves under that ascription. While we consider this Convention an important social and political achievement, it still contrasts with the bleak figures of inequality, discrimination, stigmatization, expulsion and exclusion, towards and about citizens with disabilities (World Health Organization, 2011). Likewise, the predominance of clinical, medicalizing, pathologizing, developmental, assimilationist, patriarchal, normalizing, monocultural and colonialist models in research and/or intervention is evident, resulting in marginal proposals that do not contribute theoretically to the field of disability. Therefore, this proposal aims at critical, post/decolonial and social perspectives in the field of disability and within the trends and approaches of Latin American social sciences. On this last point, it will suffice to review the panels, roundtables, and keynote addresses of the VII CLACSO Conference in Medellín, 2015; while also acknowledging the efforts to have working groups at the ALAS Congresses, the Franco-Latin American colloquia on disability research, the independent living movement in Spain, the networks, congresses, or events in which teams from our countries have participated, and in which we have been actively involved. On the other hand, the World Report on Disability (WHO – WB, 2011) recommends “creating a critical mass of researchers specializing in disability, as research is essential to increase public understanding of disability issues, inform disability policies and programs, and allocate resources efficiently” (p. 22). Our countries allocate minimal resources to “non-conventional research” on disability, as do our academic institutions.policy makersand even the organizations and networks of the disability social movement. We observe a marginalization of research, along with a widespread absence of institutional policies and practices oriented from critical, social, and post/decolonial research, despite the presence of researchers, groups, collectives, and academic networks that have been working on this issue for almost a decade in Latin America and the Caribbean. This situation is exacerbated in the current landscape of the population or community with disabilities, as it is estimated that 10% of the world's population is in this situation, and in countries in conflict and war, this figure can increase to 15%. It is estimated that 80% of the world's people with disabilities live in so-called "developing" (or peripheral) countries; however, the production of situated knowledge in such contexts is scarce and limited (WHO, WB, 2011). In Latin America there are around 50 million people with some type of disability, the vast majority of whom live in poverty, extreme poverty and misery. According to the World Bank in 2011, about 82% of people with disabilities in the region are poor; however, virtually all studies mention underreporting. This population faces serious problems and disadvantages in guaranteeing their rights and comprehensive care, including education, health, housing, accessibility (physical, urban, cultural, informational, etc.), employment, cultural goods and services, among many others. Intersectional problems and phenomena also emerge, related to violence against girls and women with disabilities, ethnic-cultural identities, migration and displacement (internal due to conflict, violence, or war), sexual exploitation and rape, trans and sexual diversity issues, forced disappearance, trafficking of men and women (especially young people), the erosion of cultural expectations, silencing and invisibility in mechanisms of citizen participation, institutionalization and confinement, and the dehumanization of care, among others. The inequality affecting this population continues to represent a pressing problem and expresses a profound and long-standing process of subalternization, which demands structural analysis and action. This widespread situation in the countries of the region, which does not tend to decrease in the short term, should generate, as Stang Alva (2011, p. 63) “a cross-border solidarity between groups exploited, oppressed or excluded by hegemonic globalization”. In both the Global North and the Global South, cultural and knowledge/power apparatuses, artifacts and devices have been constructed to relate to disability, that is, people with disabilities, their families, caregivers, institutions, knowledge, practices, regimes of (in)visibility, etc. The modern Western colonial matrix has entailed a teleological, linear, patriarchal, dominant, ableist, normalizing, subalternizing, reductionist, oppressive view of disability and of the subjects/communities that identify or are identified based on these categories of perception and construction of otherness. For all the above reasons, placing disability within the framework and evolution of social, critical, and post/decolonial studies in Latin America has been key to raising academic, political, epistemic, practical, and ethical debates that challenge the hegemony of this matrix as the only possible and desirable one in our region.

Disability is a historical-cultural, contextual, situational, situated and specific construct, which in each geographical and relational space manifests itself in a specific way, as a concept, phenomenon, representation, mentality and object, and which has implied a transformation of “paradigms” of research, production of knowledge and epistemes, while a multiplicity of connections, overlaps, relays, contradictions have been established with state or public policies, processes of intervention, care, education, health issues, etc., and with the organization of the base communities of people with disabilities and their families, caregivers and allies of this social movement. Research in the Global North, initially conducted within the modern-colonial frameworks of the Global North, began from positivist medical-psycho-pedagogical perspectives. However, in the last two decades, perspectives and interventions have been increasingly pluralized, moving towards alternative, deconstructionist, postmodernist, critical, post/decolonial, intercultural, anti-oppressive, emancipatory, and de-disciplinary “epistemic archipelagos.” This occurs within a planetary struggle for epistemic, social, and economic justice and equity, based on the radical recognition and defense of differences, listening to the heart of a planet that yearns for and demands a new post-developmentalist and post-capitalist era. In the Global South, a powerful North of modern science exists—a science that is colonizing, pathologizing, medicalizing, and so on. Thus, the South-North relationship can be viewed not as a geo-opposition, but as a locus of enunciation—discursive and profoundly ethical-political—that prompts us to reflect and debate: the Global North as a colonizing modern medical model and the South as depathologizing Afro-American and Indigenous knowledge systems, or in other words, pluriversal perspectives on "disability," that is, within the limits of Euromodernity. The imaginaries, the symbolic burden, the material conditions, and the place within social space that weigh on people with disabilities have varied throughout history, but all coincide in marking them negatively: concealment, annihilation, being seen as divine punishment or as an object of assistance, among others. Hence the relevance of studying this topic from different, unconventional perspectives, in a dialogue and ecology of knowledges that fosters the collaborative and challenging construction of knowledge. This GT is woven into the intricate tapestry of critical, social, and post/decolonial currents, trends, and movements from both sides of the globe. Initially, it reflexively situates itself in relation to the disability studies, or social studies of disability, of Anglo-Saxon tradition. In other references, it is known as the social or political model of disability (especially in the Post-Convention 2006 Era). This approach becomes a condition of possibility to address everything that crosses and challenges it, that is, to analyze economic, political, cultural, epistemological and theoretical aspects of what we have spoken about before for the field of disability, but also what –apparently– exceeds it and paradoxically constitutes it. With this basic location, its analytical, epistemic, ethical and political limitations and boundaries are discussed and located from other enunciative places that have their rhizomatic roots in Latin American critical thought (which according to Arturo Escobar in 2015 bifurcates into a left-wing, communal and Earth-oriented thought), in postcolonial studies (Spivak, Bhabha, Parry, McClintock, among others), in the decolonial inflection/turn (Mignolo, Escobar, Castro-Gómez, among others), in the Epistemologies of the South (Sousa Santos, Meneses, among others), in Latin American popular and critical thought, among others. These epistemic coordinates in the Global South have under-theorized, made invisible, and displaced systematic and border-oriented reflection on disability and communities with disabilities.  We position an intersectional approach, because the conditions of social class, gender, sexual identity, racialization processes, age, etc. These are factors that explain how the experiences of a disability are lived and constructed in a given context. The idea is to demystify that when we talk about disability, we are talking about a single experience reducible to an idea of ​​a homogeneous oppressed group, showing the heterogeneity of the community. It is not about accumulating conditions, but about approaching the understanding of how the fabric surrounding disability is articulated as an intersubjective process, which invites us to unveil, describe and analyze the personal and collective experience of people with disabilities, and therefore, it is about approaching subjective processes from a structural perspective. We are convinced that a task of this magnitude requires a de-disciplinary approach, one that includes care work; the study of the body and embodiment; the vision(s) of rights and citizenship; the advances and setbacks in legal, educational, labor, health or sanitation issues; the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion (in-exclusions) that operate in current societies; theoretical and methodological trends; enhancing the visibility of social movements of people with disabilities; eco-sustainable universal design and architecture, among many others. One aspect that should be a priority for those of us who make up this GT is to encourage collaborative research with subjects (people and groups) with some disability, not only on the level of informants (much less as objects). The first challenge of the GT is to work within a shared universe of meanings that will lead us to pinpoint and prioritize together what is being done in our countries and the region, which requires greater drive and work: legislative actions, different approaches to rights (human, political, etc.), public policies, adversity and cultural strengthening (stigma/ discrimination/exclusion and agency/ resistance/ confrontation), among others. Below we explain some practical challenges we face: ● Approaches to disability must be directed towards the exercise of rights and this implies disrupting privileges. In this sense, this Working Group will focus on proposals that question and shift meanings about disability, normality, ableist exaltation, among other concepts. ● While the symbolic aspect, the imaginary and the representations surrounding the population with disabilities are relevant, it will be important to highlight what can influence the material conditions and contribute to achieving real equality for people with disabilities. ● In quantitative research, there is a clear demand for reliable and detailed data on the condition and position of people with disabilities at the national and regional level, in different social spaces. In addition, having similar indicators to establish comparative frameworks. ● Qualitative research is not only about deconstructing representations of disability, but also about highlighting the real and symbolic violence that these representations imply, as well as their effects on subjectivity and how they materialize in living conditions, not only in terms of what is said, but also the silencing that has been imposed on the majority of the population with disabilities, especially those from lower classes, who experience specific racialization processes, or whose experience of disability is complicated by issues of gender and/or sexual orientation, being children, among other issues. This would also involve making visible the agency of people with disabilities despite the existing socio-political obstacles, that is, highlighting the actions of resistance and confrontation that, thanks to their political action, can challenge us all, shifting the discussions towards "the ideology of normality" and the processes of exclusion that operate in all societies.

In this three-year period, we want to emphasize that our research is not about people or communities with disabilities. We are committed to collaborative research that highlights horizontal methodologies to explore and discuss our embodied subjectivities and the emotions that are woven into and permeate our research approaches and work. We also aim to increasingly involve the Working Group, groups and individuals with disabilities, and colleagues from priority countries: Central America, the Caribbean, Bolivia, and Paraguay. ● Complex analyses are crucial to delve deeper and clearly demonstrate the close relationship between disability and poverty. Under neoliberalism, poverty has deepened, despite government programs to combat it. Therefore, it is important to understand how the conditions of this context particularly impact people with disabilities, as well as the current challenges faced by Latin American families (traditionally responsible for caregiving) who, living in poverty, are subjected to daily struggles for survival. It is crucial to strengthen ties between academia and policymakers to influence national and regional programs and plans, and to maintain a critical and attentive perspective on paternalistic approaches that perpetuate dependency and silencing. Likewise, it is vital and an urgent challenge to generate micropolitical processes of co-construction between academia and grassroots organizations to question and influence public policies, starting with training in research capacities for emancipation.