EA - An update on the Spanish-speaking EA community by Jaime Sevilla

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: An update on the Spanish-speaking EA community, published by Jaime Sevilla on June 26, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.CoI warning: I am friends with many (most really!) of the people who I talk about. I direct Riesgos Catastróficos Globales, one of the organisations I talk about. I also still feel anger around the unfair situation that my partner, Sandra Malagón, had to experience. I do not speak in representation of the community or its members, but in personal capacity as a fairly involved member. I haven’t been following the community developments very closely since January, so it is likely I have missed stuff!Last year I wrote a post celebrating the Spanish-speaking EA community and its achievements. A lot has happened since then, so I am writing here to organise my thoughts and provide some transparency on the state of the community.My perception of the Spanish-speaking community has changed a lot since. Back then it felt like an integrated whole, with direction and momentum. Now it feels more like an ecosystem of independent projects, some with a lot of momentum and others languishing.A major motivator of this is that we no longer have appointed coordinators who are steering the community. Sandra Malagón, who worked full-time as community coordinator, stepped down following a series of incidents where she felt pressured to work together with a community member she didn’t feel comfortable with . She is now working instead on virtual programs for Spanish Speakers. The other part-time coordinator, Laura González, stepped down to focus on other projects.The effects of this can be seen in the activity stats of our shared workspace. Sandra left her position in early February, which matches the stop of activity growth:This is hard to separate from other causes like the FTX collapse and sex scandals in the community, so take it with a pinch of salt.Incidentally, if you are part of the Spanish-speaking community, I would like to apologise for the lack of communication about the status of the coordination team. This situation was and still is very hard to navigate.ProjectsThe lack of direction does not mean that nothing has happened over the last few months. Here are a few notable projects and developments that have happened since I last posted.The EA México fellowship programThe fellowship program received +80 participants from all around the globe who stayed over different periods between November 2022 and January 2023.This program was, in my opinion, competently run. The organisation team, including Sandra Malagón, Hugo Ikta and Miguel Alvarado, showcased incredible attention to detail and problem solving skills. The fellowship was welcoming and diverse, and it is impressive that no major incidents resulted, given the scale of the program.The impact of the program was, however, curtailed by a series of factors. First, they had to deal with the FTX scandal and sex scandals in the international EA community. Inhabiting an EA co-living space at that time was not fun. Second, Sandra renounced her position as community coordinator at the end of the fellowship, and the EA Mexico coordinators had distanced themselves from community building. The original vision of the fellowship, as I understood it, was to act as a catalyst for a community in CDMX, which could not be pursued given that nobody was in a position to do so.This doesn’t mean that the fellowship was in vain. As a participant, I got a lot of value from connecting to other professionals. This resulted in a lead for a hire for Epoch, and I feel the time I spent in CDMX was very productive. My informal impression from talking to others is similar. I’ve been told a retrospective will be released soon-ish, look out for that!EAGx LatAmThe first ever major Effective Altruism conference in Latin Ameri...