Event: No More Blood in Mexico+10
September 22, 2021 7-9 pm EST online
To register:
amnesty.ca/NoMoreBloodInMexico
Ten years ago, deeply disturbed by lack of awareness or public discussion in Canada about an acute human rights crisis in Mexico, Carleton University, University of New Brunswick, Wilfrid Laurier University, and Amnesty International came together to organize a speaking tour to Canada by four human rights defenders from the frontlines in Mexico. Entitled No More Blood: Struggles for Peace and Human Rights in Mexico, the goal was to shine a spotlight on shocking levels of violence, forced disappearances and other grave human rights violations, and press Canadian authorities to put the protection of lives and rights at the heart of its engagement with Mexican counterparts.
Ten years later, our Mexican human rights partners continue their vital work amid intensified violence and an unabated crisis, fueled by domestic realities, together with policies and pressures from outside countries. The need for public awareness, solidarity and support for movements for change has never been more important.
We will hear from courageous defenders from the same organizations who visited Canada in 2011, together with other respected human rights leaders, as they unpack what has and hasn’t changed in the last decade – and the challenges that must now be met to stop the bloodshed and achieve peace with justice in Mexico.
The speakers include:
Norma Don Juan is a Nahua Indigenous woman and a member of the Council of Women Leaders of the National Coordination of Indigenous Women (CONAMI-Mexico). She was part of the Collegiate Coordination team and the Collegiate Council of the Continental Liaison of Indigenous Women of the Americas (ECMIA). In 2019, she served as President of the Board of Directors of the First Women’s Parliament in Mexico City.
Grace Mahogany Fernández Morán is a member of BÚSCAME (Searching for the Disappeared Mexico), and the Citizen’s Council of the National Search System in Mexico. Ms Moran’s brother Dan Jeremeel Fernández was forcibly disappeared in Coahuila state in 2008 and her mother, Yolanda Moran Isais, who took part in No More Blood in Mexico in 2011, is a co-founder of United Forces for Our Disappeared in Coahuila and Mexico.
Julia Quiñones is the coordinator of the Border Committee of Women Workers, the Comité Fronterizo de Obreras (CFO), in Coahuila, Mexico. The CFO is an organization of rank-and-file women, led by women and men who work in the maquiladoras. The organization was born out of the needs particularly of the young women who work in the factories.
Vidulfo Rosales is a lawyer who works for the Tlachinollan Human Rights Centre in Guerrero. The Centre carries out human rights monitoring, works closely with vulnerable Indigenous communities to defend their rights and has provided legal support for several emblematic cases involving abuses by state agents, including the disappearances of 43 students of a Teacher´s College in Ayotzinapa. Tlachinollan received the MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions in 2008 and the Robert F Kennedy Human Rights Prize in 2012.
Mariano Machain is a human rights defender with Servicios para la Paz (SERAPAZ), an organization formed to continue and expand mediation work to find peaceful solutions to the conflict in Chiapas. SERAPAZ has broad experience at the local level in southern Mexico and plays an important role coordinating civil society initiatives in other regions, as well as research, training, counseling, advocacy and monitoring processes that contribute to building peace.
Alberto Xicotencatl Carrasco is the Director of the Casa del Migrante in Saltillo, Coahuila, and recipient of 2011 Letelier Moffitt Human Rights Award. His courageous work responds to the desperate situation facing tens of thousands of migrants travelling through Mexico, who are routinely victims of extortion, ill treatment, abduction, rape, and murder. Criminal gangs, often operating with the collusion or acquiescence of public officials, are responsible for many of these abuses.
No More Blood in Mexico 