Binational Conference on Border Issues 2018
Beyond the Wall: Resistance among Border Communities
Thursday, November 15
San Diego City College, San Diego
Friday, November 16
El Colegio de la Frontera Norte and
Autonomous University of Baja California
Tijuana, Baja California
Program:
Special thanks to our co-sponsors and collaborators: San Diego City College, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, City College Chicana and Chicano Studies, Colectivo Raíces sin Fronteras, Colectivo Ollin Calli, University of San Diego Karen and Mulvaney Center for Community Awareness and Social Action, American Federation of Teachers local 1931,UC San Diego Institute of Arts and Humanities, City Cognate Collective, City College Gallery, City World Cultures Program
About the Conference
At a time in which democracies are failing, in the face of a dehumanizing and predatory system, and as we witness the fortification of the wall between Mexico and the United States, we are interested in discussing and showing the forms of resistance that have arisen from the border and transborder communities. The Trump administration generates tension that directly affects the daily life of Latina/os, especially those from Mexico and from border communities. What are the possible ways to face this new neoconservative order? From what organizational experiences have we begun to create spaces for reflection and transformative action? How do we respond to new and old forms of discrimination against marginalized communities?
About the Program
The Seventh Binational Conference will discuss the forms of resistance that arise from the border and cross-border communities, going through them in different times, spaces and forms. We will have the opportunity to hear the voices of activists, students, scholars, maquila workers, farmworkers, migrants, and artists who organize and resist violence, labor inequity, health, education, etc. Their words and art will take us from the United States – Mexico border to borders in Guatemala, El Salvador and even Palestine. They will lead us to different moments of resistance from the conquest of the original peoples of the Americas to this era in which borders mean migration from southern countries to the United States, deportations from the United States to the south, and stories written in the streets, the classrooms, the factories, and the agricultural fields.
Challenging borders
It is no coincidence that the mobilization of migrant communities and their challenge to national borders is the central topic of the Conference. National and transnational migrations are undoubtedly one of the most important movements of our time; products of Neoliberal globalization. Migration will be one main focus in the conference from different perspectives.
Panel 4: Cross-border students who live in a country and attend school in another tell us about their challenges and mainly about their successes organizing in Collective TASO.
Panel 7: The original communities of Mexico, many of them Mesoamerican, have migrated by the thousands to the north. The Indigenous Front of Binational Organizations tells us about the efforts of the original peoples to organize their communities, now binational, in exile.
Panels 14 and 25: Andrea González, scholar from UNAM and member of the collective "You are Us," will share stories of migration in Mexico City that is now not only a place of passage for migrants but it has also become a space of destination and refuge for communities from Central America, Venezuela, Colombia, Haiti and other Latin American, Asian and African countries.
Panels 13 and 24: Steven Mayers and Jonathan Freedman tell us the stories of young Central Americans who have arrived in the United States after successfully crossing at least three national borders.
Panel 21: Leslie Quintanilla and America Martinez will present on the struggles of the Palestinian people on the borders imposed by Israel.
Panel 15: Teresita Rocha and Shira Goldenberg discuss gender inequity in health issues at the borders of the USA with Mexico and Mexico with Guatemala.
Resisting deportations
Panel 6: Maggie and Etziba, members of the collectives "Other Dreamers in Action" and "Casa Poch @" come from Mexico City to talk about young people who grew up in the United States and are now in Mexico due to deportation or return. They will discuss the realities of an unjust immigration system, and how they are organizing in their country of birth and advocate for immigrants justice.
Panel 23: Esmeralda Flores presents the efforts of ACLU in building a network that defends the community against immigration raids and attacks.
Examination of Border Organized Crime
Panel 10: Victor Clark, faculty at SDSU will take us on an imaginary trip to the streets of Tijuana to learn how organized crime has been reproduced and consolidated; It is no longer just a group that maintains a monopoly on drugs and violence, but several that dispute the market, causing scandalous levels of violence, which have affected and disrupted life in the city.
Panel 19: Jane Terrazas presents her work constructed by textile vestiges of the femicides of Juarez. The heartbreaking pieces of cloth reconstructed by Jane are a tremendous testimony of the struggle of the women of Juarez against the murder and the gender exacerbated violence.
Maquiladoras
Panels 12 and 15: Since NAFTA was imposed, the maquiladoras have expanded on the border zone recruiting more than one million workers; scholars, workers and activists will give us an update on labor and gender rights in maquiladoras at Puebla, Aguascalientes and Tijuana as well as in the “agricultural maquiladoras” of San Quintin, Baja California.
Right to Water
Water is undoubtedly one of the great issues of the border and beyond. The right to water mobilizes thousands in Mexico, the United States, other countries, and on the borderland. In Panel 2, professor and water defender León Fierro tells us about the struggle for water in a binational context, and especially in the City of Mexicali, where people fight against Constellation Brands, the corporation that owns Corona and other beers, due to the building of a beer maquiladora that will confiscate thousands of gallons of water in an area already with problems of supply for the population. In Panel 21 Mellissa Linton-Villafranco presents the struggle of an indigenous community of El Salvador in defense of its water.
Art and Border
The Frontier inspires an increasing artistic production that the Conference explores. The “Desde Más Acá” exhibition brings together 18 artists, researchers and collectives working in San Diego, Tijuana, Calexico/Mexicali, El Paso/Ciudad Juarez and throughout the borderlands whose practices trace how those who live, study and work in this transnational territory contend with the US/Mexico border and its problematics on a quotidian level -- at the scale of body, labor, and movement through spaces.
Panels 19 and 20: Jane Terrazas, Diana Cervera, Omar Pimienta and Sara Solaimani present their artistic and cultural work against feminicide, the intersection of gender, race, identity and migration, trans-nationality and the historical context.
Panel 11: A group of academics and activists give us an update on the renovation and preservation of Chicano Park, the renovation of its murals, and the resistance against the White supremacist groups that have directed their efforts against the park.
In Panel 22 Marlene Solis reflects on the symbolic dimension of the border from the works Tijuana la Horrible: Tijuana la Horrible: entre la historia y el mito, De contrabando y mojado, la frontera imaginada (México -Estados Unidos) and Fronteras reales /fronteras imaginadas recently written by Humberto Félix Berumen.
Cinema and border
Panel 17: Mael Vizacarra presents her documentary "Everything We Do" about the street vendors on the line of cars crossing from Tijuana to San Diego. In Panel 18, Ebony Bailey exhibits her short documentary about the Haitian community in Tijuana.
History
In Panel 3, historians Javier Torres of UNAM, Miguel Angel Castañeda of SDSU and Justin Akers Chacón of City College recover important moments of the struggle of our peoples on both sides of the border.
There is more…
The Conference brings much more. City College students present some of their works in Panels 1 and 8; several authors explore the resistance to segregation policies in Panel 5, 16 and 23. The program does not end here. There is more; check the Program
