Learning Cluster: San Diego/Tijuana 2010

Monday, January 24

American Friends Service Committee

Honoring our human dignity

Published in 2008 as part of the Beyond Border series of AFSC's Project Voice, Honoring our human dignity talks openly about the facts and fictions surrounding immigration in the United States.

To download a PDF of this publication go to:

http://afsc.org/document/honoring-our-human-dignity-0

Coalition Justice in the Maquiladoras

Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras: Is a tri-national coalition of religious, environmental, labor, Latino and women’s organizations. Their efforts are grounded in supporting worker and community struggles for social, economic and environmental justice in the maquiladora industry. They dedicate themselves to democratic process and unity of action, maintaining sensitivity to de diverse representation within their coalition.

http://coalitionforjustice.info/CJM_Website/New_Sites/Home/Home.html

BSCC-Bilateral Safety Corridor Coalition

In 1993 a case manager named Marisa Ugarte was working at a program for runaway teens when she came across a young girl who had been prostituted. Soon Marisa, realized through her work that the young girl, like many of the women and children who walked the streets selling their bodies, were not voluntarily “on the job,” but were victims of traffickers and pimps. The women, children, and men were being commercially exploited.

The traffickers and pimps were predators and they were victimizing the vulnerable in order to commodity their bodies and turn a profit. Unlike, drugs that were only good for one hit, labor, or sex with a victim, could be sold and re-sold an infinite number of times to maximize the profit margin.

As Marisa explored the seedy under world of trafficking she linked up with grass-roots organizations in San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico where she learned that trafficking was not a problem limited to specific boundaries or the perimeter of one country but was as all about the movement of persons from one place to another.

Persons where being transported like cattle and against their will. Much like the trafficking and movement of drugs, human trafficking is controlled by international cartels and is a form of organized crime. Similarly, as Americans have high per capita earnings and access to extensive resources and disposable income, the United States is a destination country for many victims. Sadly, trafficking is often seen a problem of the “other” and the demand for illicit sex and cheap labor in the United States is over looked.

So as Marisa continue investigating she came across rape camps in among the reeds and canyons of San Diego, forced labor in the pruned and pristine agricultural fields, and children turned out in Tijuana’s infamous Zona Norte. She knew something had to be done and began to envision a “safety corridor.” Then through a UNICEF conference on human trafficking Marisa was introduced to coalition building and the advantages of strategically pulling resources to create a continuum of services for victims.

Thus 1997 was a landmark year. This was the year that the coalition was founded and began to coordinate services and advocate on behalf of victims. Today the coalition encompasses over 150 government and non-governmental agencies in the United States and Latin America who are dedicated to combating trafficking and empowering victims so that they may return to families, friends, and daily life.

As for Marisa, she is now executive director of BSCC and continues to be at the forefront of the fight against trafficking but helping other organizations and coalitions grow and build programs to help victims in both the United States and Latin America.

http://www.bsccoalition.org/

In her role as the Executive Director of the Bilateral Safety Corridor Coalition, Marisa Ugarte brings more than 20 years of experience in advocacy for exploited men, women and children, and in assisting and at-risk youth.

With a Masters degree (equivalent) in social work and psychology, Ms. Ugarte spent three years developing social services programs in Tijuana, Mexico. Ms. Ugarte is founder of the Binational Crisis Line in Tijuana, as well as the Domestic Violence Crisis Center for the Sistema Nacional para el Desarollo Integral de la Familia, Tijuana (DIF Tijuana). Ms. Ugarte continues to be an advisor to DIF and to the Civil Protection and Disaster Crisis Prevention Program in Mexico.

http://www.bsccoalition.org/marisa_ugarte.html

San Diego Maquiladora Solidarity Network

The San Diego Maquiladora Workers’ Solidarity Network ties together people in the nation’s largest border town who want to build an alliance between working people across that border. We believe that US and other multinational corporations operating factories in Tijuana and other maquiladora cities have no right to pay poverty wages, require pregnancy tests of their workers, pollute with impunity, and repress unions. We believe that union and other workers in the US will be crippled as long as they are cut off from their co-employees abroad. And we believe that there is no better place to start solving these global problems than locally.

The Network stays in close touch with workers in Tijuana and other cities fighting for their rights. We contribute to their struggles in ways that they agree upon, using the leverage that we have as residents of the home country of many of their employers. We write letters, send emails, bring workers to San Diego to tell their stories, and we organize protests and pickets. We bring attention to abuses that corporations would prefer to keep from a US audience. We are union members, students, public health advocates, environmentalists, church people and others working toward alliances with all grassroots organizations that share an interest in our work.

We meet once a month, and meetings are open to all. Anyone can join our Network by participating in our events, coming to meetings, getting on our email list, or all of the above. Please join us, and help us spread our Network throughout San Diego. Help Tijuana ’s factory workers win justice today, and help us unleash the power of workers united across borders tomorrow.

http://sdmaquila.org/

Sunday, January 23

Immigration Law Lecture (Soka University of America)

Friday, February 11, 5 p.m.

Soka University of America, 1 University Avenue, Aliso Viejo, California

Grand Reading Room, Ikeda Building, Room 400

A conversation with Professor Marisa S. Cianciarulo, Associate Professor of Law, Chapman University School of Law

Screening of Sin País (dir. Theo Rigby, 2010, 20 min.)

Professor Cianciarulo is a specialist in clinical teaching and immigration law with a human rights focus. She is the Director of Chapman’s Family Violence Clinic, which she launched in 2007. Professor Cianciarulo taught in the Villanova Clinic for Asylum, Refugee and Emigrant Services for three years prior to joining the faculty at Chapman. She previously served as a Staff Attorney with the American Bar Association’s Commission on Immigration in Washington, D.C., was a partner in a law firm specializing in immigration matters, and served as interim legal director of a non-profit immigration services provider in Arlington, Virginia. Professor Cianciarulo received her B.A. from the Catholic University of America, her Juris Doctor from American University Washington College of Law, and her M.A. from American University School of International Service. She teaches the Family Violence Clinic, Gender & the Law, Refugee Law and Remedies. She publishes on the intersection of gender and immigration with an emphasis on vulnerable immigrant populations.

Courses Taught: Family Violence Clinic and Gender & the Law, Refugee Law and Remedies

Saturday, January 22

Sin Pais (Without Country), dir. Theo Rigby

Sin País (Without Country) attempts to get beyond the partisan politics and mainstream media’s ‘talking point’ approach to immigration issues by exploring one family’s complex and emotional journey involving deportation.

In 1992, Sam and Elida Mejia left Guatemala during a violent civil war and brought their one-year old son, Gilbert, to California. The Mejia’s settled in the Bay Area, and for the past 17 years they have worked multiple jobs to support their family, paid their taxes, and saved enough to buy a home. They had two more children, Helen and Dulce, who are both U.S. citizens. Two years ago, immigration agents stormed the Mejia’s house looking for someone who didn’t live there. Sam, Elida, and Gilbert were all undocumented and became deeply entangled in the U.S. immigration system.

Sin País begins two weeks before Sam and Elida’s scheduled deportation date. After a passionate fight to keep the family together, Sam and Elida are deported and take Dulce with them back to Guatemala.

With intimate access and striking imagery, Sin País explores the complexities of the Mejia’s new reality of a separated family–parents without their children, and children without their parents.

http://sinpaisfilm.com/

Que suene la calle (Let the street be heard), dir. Itzel Martínez del Cañizo

Que Suene la Calle

Tuesday, January 17th, Ghandi 303, 7 p.m.

Que suene la calle es un video documental que se adentra en la dinámica de una ciudad como Tijuana, a través de la perspectiva de sus adolescentes que viven en la calle. Cuatro mujeres menores de edad nos cuentan sus historias, nos relatan sus vivencias y comparten con nosotros sus sueños y deseos.
Son ellas quienes toman las cámaras y actúan para mostrarnos su realidad y revivir los momentos más representativos de su vida en pequeñas historias de video. Cada una desde su barrio, desde su espacio personal y urbano, nos adentra a un lado desconocido de esta ciudad fronteriza para hacernos ver la complejidad de crecer y hacerse adulto bajo esas circunstancias.

Director: Itzel Martínez del Cañizo
Producción: Yonke Art, inSite_05, PACMYC, FOECA BC, UABC Escuela de Humanidades, Solo Por Ayudar AC
Año: 2006
País: México

Festivales:
International Documentary Film Festival Ámsterdam (2006), Festival Internacional de Cine de Morelia (México 2006), Gira Documental Ambulante (México 2007), Latin American Film Festival Ultrech (Holanda 2007), VIVA 13th Spanish and Latin Film Festival (Manchester 2007), Kosmorama Trondheim International Film Festival (Noruega 2007), Sguardi Altrove Film Festival (Milan 07), Festival Internacional de Mujeres en el Cine y la TV (México 06).

Premios:
Premio del Jurado, San Diego Women Film Festival 2006; Mención Honorífica y Premio Signis de la Comunicación en el Encuentro Hispanoamericano de Documental Contra el Silencio Todas las Voces 2004.

http://revista.cinedocumental.com.ar/2/articulos_04.html

http://www.polenaudiovisual.com/News.html

Señorita Extraviada, Dir. Lourdes Portillo, 2001

Wednesday, January 12, 2011, Game Room, 7 p.m. Soka University of America

Señorita Extraviada, Missing Young Woman tells the story of the hundreds of kidnapped, raped and murdered young women of Juárez, Mexico. The murders first came to light in 1993 and young women continue to "disappear" to this day (2005) without any hope of bringing the perpetrators to justice. Who are these women from all walks of life and why are they getting murdered so brutally?

The documentary moves like the unsolved mystery it is, and the filmmaker poetically investigates the circumstances of the murders and the horror, fear and courage of the families whose children have been taken. Yet it is also the story of a city of the future; it is the story of the underbelly of our global economy.

For more information about the film visit Lourdes Portillo's website:

http://www.lourdesportillo.com/senoritaextraviada/index.html