WOMEN AND LABOR IN MEXICO IN TIMES OF NEO-LIBERALISM

WOMEN AND LABOR IN MEXICO IN TIMES OF NEO-LIBERALISM


Presented by: Organizer, Writer, Activist from Cuernavaca, Mexico-- Irene Ortiz


Brown Bag Discussion

Friday Novemeber 17th, 2006

12:00 - 1:00 p.m. (noon)

@ the Latin American and Iberian Institute (LAII)

801 Yale NE / 505-277-2961


Free Refreshments!!!

Discussion about the politics of women in labor, the transformation of the cultural patters on the family and the impact on the quality of life of these women.

Irene's brief biography:

Feminist involved in the movement at the continental level but dedicated to work with women of the poor classes. Irene lives in Cuernavaca, Mexico. In 1975 she integrated herself in the editorial Project of the periodical Maria, Liberación del Pueblo, a bimonthly publication by and for women of the poor neighborhoods in the state of Morelos. For five years she directed the publication of the periodical, participating directly in the development of groups of women readers of the same, beginning circles of literacy, reading and writing.

In 1980, she founded the first shelter for women domestic workers in the city of Cuernavaca, with the desire to empower women by means of workshops of education in labor rights, to place them in jobs that improved their work conditions and human conditions, from women living in shelters to women from this sector with problems of violence, loss of work and day care for their small children.

In 1987, Irene founded in Mexico City Colectivo Atabal, another project directed also at women in domestic service. The objective is the defense of the sector through promotion of their labor rights and valuing their services, through mass media, an employment service, workshops on self-esteem and introduction to the making of contracts in just conditions. In 1998, Irene became director of the Colectivo Atabal and dedicated herself to involving women from academia, communications and legislatures, functionaries of the local and federal government, so that they might aid in the incorporation of these workers into labor legislation and social policy.

Irene has written articles from the perspective of gender in the daily newspaper La Jornada, the review Fem, and other media, including the journal NACLA, (North American Congress on Latin America), edited in New York. She is co-author of the book, “Asi es Pues”, results of a socioeconomic study on the domestic workers, and editor of the book “¿Trabajo Domestico, Ayer, Hoy y Siempre?” She has participated as a
presenter on gender themes in diverse forums, also before students from the US and Canada from the programs of Centro de Educacion Mundial (based in Minneapolis at Augsburg College, a center in Cuernavaca), the Cuernavaca Center for Dialogue on Development, as well as Spanish schools.

FREE DOCUMENTARY SCREENING

GRANITO DE ARENA

MONDAY OCTOBER 23RD

@ 7:30 @ THE SUB THEATER

DISCUSSION ABOUT THE TEACHER'S MOVEMENT IN OAXACA WILL FOLLOW

SPECIAL GUEST: DR. LOIS MEYER

Description: For more than 20 years, global economic forces have been dismantling public education in Mexico, but always in the constant shadow of popular resistance. 'Grain of Sand' is the story of that resistance -- the story of hundreds of thousands of public schoolteachers whose grassroots, non-violent movement took Mexico by surprise and who have endured brutal repression in their 25-year struggle to defend public education.

SPONSORES BY SOLAS

FAVELA RISING

DOCUMENTARY SCREENING

OCT. 6TH , 2006.

7:15 P.M.

@ THE GUILD

TICKETS: $5

Favela Rising is an important reminder of how human beings can unite to effect grass-roots social change...

PLOT DESCRIPTION

This documentary follows one man's efforts to better his own life and the community he calls home. Anderson Sa grew up in the ghettos of Rio de Janeiro (known locally as "favelas"), where drug dealing, gangs, corrupt police officials, and violence were a common part of daily life. However, Sa came to realize that the life he was living was a dead end, and gave up selling drugs and gang life to become a community activist. Sa also had musical talent, as did a handful of like-minded friends, and together they began fusing the energy and immediacy of hip-hop with the hypnotic grooves of reggae, creating a new sound called afro-reggae in the process. Favela Rising follows Sa and his comrades as they share the story of his violent past, his vision of a better future for the favelas of Brazil, and the crucial message behind their music.


SPONSORED BY TERCERA RAIZ AND CO-SPONSORED BY SOLAS

This Friday SOLAS Brown Bag

October 6th, 2006

12-1 (noon) @ the LAII (801 Yale NE)

SOLAS Brown Bag

Speaker: Albino García

Community Organizer & Religious Leader

The Life Story of Albino is inspiring and powerful!

Lunch will be served

MACHUCA

SOLAS FREE MOVIE

WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 20TH, 2006

11:00 AM

@ THE SUB MOVIE THEATER

Santiago, Chile, 1973: Pedro Machuca is a poor boy of tribal descent, brought into an upper class private school during Chile’s brief socialist era. Gonzalo, the well-to-do boy seated a row ahead, befriends Pedro against the bullying will of his classmates. In so doing, he discovers a raw, thrilling but wildly complicated world outside his own previously sheltered homelife. Pedro’s fierce, attractive young neighbor Silvana by turns mocks Gonzalo’s pampered background, only to fondly lead both boys in a number of kissing games. All around them, Chile drifts towards civil war. At school, their humane headmaster Father McEnroe comes under a hysteria-driven attack by parents for his charity toward poor students. Little Gonzalo must also contend with more intimate kinds of upheaval. His sexy, melancholy mother is having a love affair with a wealthy older man. His father is sweet but ineffectual, and lacks the fire to fight for his marriage. He therefore escapes into his friendship with Pedro. Pedro gets a look at the intense dysfunctions in Gonzalo’s life, and Gonzalo in turn is immersed in Pedro’s world of extreme poverty. The two boys share a love of comic books devoted to the Lone Ranger. With Silvana’s encouragement they also take part in protest marches--selling cigarettes and flags to demonstrators on the right as well as the left, but chanting with committed vigor when marching with the left. The already enormous rift between Gonzalo’s comfortable household and Pedro’s hard-scrabble life a few miles away in an illegal shantytown ultimately becomes impossible to bridge, once the bloody military coup of September 11, 1973 erupts. All three children suddenly face moral tests far beyond their young capacities.