Laura will be screening the latest Chiapas Media Project film 'LIVING JUAREZ: Collateral Damage in Mexico’s Drug War" and discussing various aspects of the War on Drugs in Mexico and US drug policy.
LIVING JUAREZ looks at the Ciudad Juárez neighborhood of Villas de Salvárcar where in January 2010, of a group of youth attending a birthday party were brutally murdered and in the massacre's immediate aftermath, Felipe Calderón characterized the youth as gang members. The outraged families personally confronted the president at public forums in Juárez during his visits to the city after the massacre.
The film tells the story of the real victims in Calderón’s Drug War: regular people just trying to survive in a city over run by senseless violence, and corruption. The neighborhood of Villas de Salvárcar is organized and speaking out against the arbitrary and frequent abuses that are committed by the armed forces against civilians and particularly the youth in Juárez.
Laura Carlsen, a graduate of the Stanford Center for Latin Americas Studies, is the director of the Americas Program of the Center for International Policy. Laura has been a political analyst and writer in Mexico for over twenty years and has written extensively on trade, security, immigration and gender issues and appears frequently as an expert on these issues in US and Latin American media. She is the author of "A Primer on Plan Mexico" and has been closely tracking the drug war and the Merida Initiative over the years, working with U.S. and Mexican groups to develop facts-based assessments and explore alternatives.
Here's the tour's schedule:
March 29th: Edinburg, Texas: University of Texas Pan American Student Union Theater, 7PM,12010 West University Dr.
March 30th: Galveston, Texas: University of Texas Medical Branch, Administration Building, Caduceus Room, 6-9 PM
March 31st: Nacogdoches, Texas: Stephen F. Austin University, Baker Pattillo Student Center Movie Theater, 7-9 PM
April 3rd: Chicago, Illinois: Calles y Suenos, 1901 S. Carpenter St., 7 PM
April 4th: Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Harper Memorial Library, Room 103, 116 East 59th St., 6:30-8 PM
April 5th: Chicago, Illinois: Depaul University, Student Center, Room 325, 2250 N. Sheffield Ave., 6 PM
April 8th: Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina, GEC Building (aka FedEx Building), Room 2008, 12-2 PM
April 10th: Washington, DC: American University, 11:30-1 PM
Laura's presentation in Washington is on the last day of the three-day Latin America Solidarity Conference against militarism and militarization of relations with Latin America. The event is sponsored by the Latin American Solidarity Coalition and is being held in conjunction with School of the Americas Watch Days of Action.
No comments:
Post a Comment