Radio Bilingüe convenes and broadcasts a bilingual public forum on Violence and the Human Rights Crisis in Mexico on Tuesday January 27 from 7 to 9 PM in San Francisco. Featured guests are renowned Mexican poet and author Homero Aridjis and a group of respected U.S. based Latino intellectuals and artists known as Los Macarturos – recipients of prestigious MacArthur Foundation Fellowships. Leaders of Mexican and human rights organizations from Northern California and the public are also invited to attend and contribute to the dialogue.
Mexico is in the grip of a spiraling wave of violence, corruption and impunity. Some 100,000 people have been murdered and more than 25,000 disappeared since 2006. According to human rights watchdogs, Mexico is facing the worst human rights crisis since 1968. The recent disappearance of 43 rural students at the hands of Mexican police has detonated months of unprecedented and massive protests in and out of Mexico. The San Francisco Bay Area has been the scene of many such rallies.
Aridjis, long time environmental and social justice activist on the international stage, recently released his latest novel: Ciudad de Zombis. It captures Mexico’s current reality of violence, corruption and terror.
The two-hour forum conducted in Spanish and English will be broadcast live on the Radio Bilingüe national public radio network (also streamed live at radiobilingue.org). Bay area media partners include public radio stations KPOO-FM and KPFA-FM, Spanish-language AM radio station KIQI, as well as community newspaper El Tecolote.
The forum is convened in partnership with Centro Binacional para el Desarrollo Indígena Oaxaqueño and is funded in part by The California Endowment.
Homero Aridjis is a renowned poet, author, and one of the leading environmentalists of Latin America. He has been elected twice president of International PEN, of which he is now President Emeritus. In 1985, he co-founded and has chaired Grupo de los Cien, a group of writers, artists and scientists, which included Gabriel García Márquez and Octavio Paz. The group has called for the protection of the environment in Mexico, Latin America and the world. He served as Mexico’s ambassador to UNESCO. His most recent novel, Ciudad de Zombis, pictures Mexico’s current reality of violence, corruption, impunity and indifference.
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