Justice for Immigrants:4th Annual J. Paul Taylor Symposium on Social Justice Current Speakers
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Julian Cardonas web site: http://juliancardona.net/
Born in 1960 in Zacatecas, Mexico, Julian Cardona migrated to the border city of Juarez with his family as a small child. He attended school in Juarez, received vocational training, and worked as a technician in the maquiladora industry. He embarked on a career in photojournalism at El Fronterizo and El Diario de Juarez in 1993, the same year that extreme violence exploded on the Juarez streets. In 1995, Cardona organized the group exhibition “Nada que ver—Nothing to See,” which was featured in the December 1996 issue of Harper’s Magazine. Photographs from this exhibition inspired the award winning book “Juarez: The Laboratory of our Future.” His photographs taken inside foreign-owned factories in Juarez were also featured in “Camera of Dirt.” Cardona’s work has been exhibited in the Houston FotoFest 98; in “Borders and Beyond,” an international group show organized by Pro Helvetia, Arts Council of Switzerland; in “Lines of Sight: Views of the U.S. /Mexican Border,” at the galleries of the University of California at Riverside, Santa Cruz and Merced; and in Photography Past/Forward: Aperture at 50, at Sotheby’s New York in January 2003 and the Golden-Anniversary Publication of the same title. In 2004, Cardona received the Cultural Freedom Fellowship awarded by the Lannan Foundation of Santa Fe. His work about immigration was on exhibition at the CUE Art Gallery, New York City, in October 2005. Recently, Cardona was distinguished with the 2006 Peabody Award for “Crossing Borders,” a Radio Special program co-produced with Scott Carrier and HearingVoices.com. A book on Mexican migration to the United States, Exodus/Exodo featuring photos by Cardona and text by Charles Bowden will be published in 2008 by the University of Texas Press.
Horacio Echavarrria Gonzalez is a teacher licensed in Social Sciences, with a master’s degree in Educational Research. He is certified by the “Teacher Training Council” of Mexico in the development of education programs and budgets. Horacio Echavvaria has provided service in public and private schools for 27 years, and has dedicated 22 years to service in public education. For the past ten years, he has been a researcher at the “Centro de Estudios Multidisciplinarios en Investigacion Intercultural”, an organization he now serves as president. Horacio Echavarria now works in different indigenous communities in the Sierra Tarahumara of Chihuahua. His work is mainly focused on the environmental impacts of economic activities and the social conditions of the population in this area.
Bill Jungels' web site: http://billjungelsworks.net/
Film maker Bill Jungels turned his documentary consciousness towards to Latin American subjects in the 1980s. He made and hour long documentary about the asylum seekers from El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala titled “Where is Refuge?” This documentary was shown on public television. Jungels then collaborated in two projects with the Taller de Arte Fronterizo/Border Arts workshop. “North=South=North” exposed the working situation culture of Mexican migrant workers at the Canadian border. This documentary became part of a TAF installation at Hallwalls in Buffalo. Another short documentary “Historias Salvadorenas/ Salvadoran Stories” was premiered at a TAF exhibit at El Centro de la Raza in San Diego and became part of an installation at the Oakland Art Museum. His documentary “Sobre passando la linea/ Crossing the Line” focuses on workers in Mexico, Canada and the U.S. This documentary achieved the :Best in Show” category at the Berkeley Film and Video Festival. Jungel’s current project is still in progress, but it focuses on the Tzotzil-speaking families in the highlands of Chiapas.
Born in El Paso, Texas, Diana Molina attended the University of Texas at Austin and earned a degree in Computer Science. After several years of employment as a software engineer for IBM, she integrated her computer background with photography and marketing to begin a new career as a graphics and media consultant. She later moved to Amsterdam for a nearly a decade, working as a photographer, journalist and marketing consultant. Molina prepared feature articles for Elle, Esquire, GQ, National Geopgraphic Traveler, Vogue, Texas Highways, and New Mexico Magazine. She has produced exhibits that have appeared in the World Museum of Art in Rotterdam, Holland, The Art Museum if the Americas in Washington, D.C. and the Carnegie Museum of Art in California as well as other venues. Ms. Molina directed an award-winning documentary, La Mujer Obrera about women in the El Paso garment industry. In her work, Molina strives to illustrate the borders of her homeland and those she crosses, not only in the literal sense of a governmental division of territory, but also by the influence of ideologies, customs, politics, economics and views of life.
Maria Cristina Morales received a Ph.D. from Texas A&M University and us currently an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas at El Paso. Her research areas of interest include social inequality (ethnicity, gender and immigration/citizenship), labor, and structural violence. Dr. Morales has published in the areas of immigration, race and ethnic demography, spatial inequality, education, Latina/o labor, globalization and violence.
Maria Nape serves as the Director of the ACLU New Mexico’s Southern Regional Office, which focuses primarily on border and immigration issues. Prior to joining the ACLU in June 2007, Maria spent several years working as an advocate for the rights of migrant farmworkers as Director of the Migrant Farmworker Project at Legal Services Organization of Indiana and as Executive Director of the Farmworker Coordinating Council of Palm Beach County, Florida. She most recently served on the faculty of Florida Atlantic University’s School of Public Administration teaching administrative law and other law courses. Maria earned her undergraduate degree at Purdue University and her law degree from Indiana University School of law at Indianapolis.Dr. Guillermina Gina Nunez-Mchiri
Dr. Guillermina G. Nunez-Mchiri received her PhD from the University of California, Riverside in 2006 in Cultural Anthropology. She is an assistant professor of anthropology and teaches Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Applied Cultural Anthropology, Ethnographic Research Methods, and Urban Anthropology with a focus on colonia communities at the University of Texas at El Paso. She has strong research interests in Mexican and Latina/Latino issues in the United States, particularly migrant farm-working and colonias populations. She has published in the areas of immigration, barriers to health care, and applications of Service Learning in curriculum reform. She is particularly committed to applied research efforts in the areas of education, environmental health, housing, urbanization/ community development, health, immigration, research and outreach.
Raymundo Eli Rojas, J.D., is a long –time labor and immigrant advocate and current Executive Director of Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center in El Paso. He was the founder of the non-profit Kansas City Worker Justice Project, of which he served as director until June 1, 2007. A native of El Paso, Rojas’ professional background includes employment with the Farmworker project of Colorado Legal Services; the Farmworker Project of Legal Aid of Western Missouri; Upward Bound; as well as law firms in Washington, D.C. and Kansas City. His volunteer work has been with Interfaith Worker Justice of Greater Kansas City, the Kansas City Voter Rights Steering Committee, Student Advisory to the U.T. System Board of Regents, UTEP Chicano Studies, UTEP’s Chicano Pre-Law Society, Su Voto Es Su Voz, UTEP Student Government Association, Project Bravo, and more. A scholar of Chicano Literature, Rojas has reviewed books and written articles of the El Paso Times, the Pueblo Chieftain, and Dialogo, among others. He is also the editor of Pluma Fronteriza, a publication spotlighting Chicano(a) writers from El Paso. He has earned recognition and other awards, including most recently the 2006 Corazon Award for Outstanding Service to the Kansas City Latino Community. He has a B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Texas at El Paso and a juris doctorate from the University of Kansas School of Law.
Olivia Salcido hold and M.A. in anthropology from Arizona State University. She has conducted graduate studies in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Quertaro, in Quertaro, Mexico. She currently a doctoral candidate at Arizona State University at the School of Justice and Social Inquiry. Her research focuses on immigration and domestic violence the U.S. Southwest bordelands.
Lilia Soto is a PhD candidate in the department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She is finishing her dissertation titled, “Migration as a Matter of Time: Perspectives from the Mexican Immigrant Adolescent Girls in California’s Napa Valley,” in which she interview twenty immigrant girls concerning their migrating journeys to the Napa Valley.
Vivian G. Lopez is a doctoral candidate in the Literacy, Language and Culture program at the Curriculum and Instruction department at New Mexico State University. Her areas of research interest include critical literacy, bilingual and critical multicultural education, social justice and equity issues, parent voices within education, identity.language/culture, and socio-political issues pertaining to Indigenous People, Latina/Latinos, immigrants and populations who have been historically marginalized. She has over twenty years of experience working with children, families, and educational practitioners in teaching classes and facilitating workshops, conducting public presentations, serving as a spokesperson, and coordinating and overseeing educational and social service programs.