University Library News Release

Date: February 18, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Jeanette Smith, NMSU Library, (575) 646-7492, jcsmith@lib.nmsu.edu

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NMSU Library Donor Esther Chávez Cano Receives Human Rights Awards

Esther Chávez Cano came to the border in the early 1980s after retiring from her career in Mexico City as an accountant. Since then she has worked tirelessly for women's rights and human rights through her women's shelter in Juárez, Mexico, Casa Amiga.

According to the NMSU Library's Latin America and Border Studies Librarian Molly Molloy, Casa Amiga has become a model, both nationally and internationally, for empowering victims of violence. Since the shelter opened in February 1999, more than 80,000 women, children and men have received direct therapy or have participated in violence prevention classes.

In 2006, Chávez Cano donated her collection documenting many years of activism against violence in Juárez to the New Mexico State University Library's Rio Grande Historical Collections. It is cataloged as the Esther Chávez Cano Collection, Ms. 0471.

In early December 2008, the Lannan Foundation presented Chávez Cano with its prestigious Cultural Freedom Award for her work. The award was announced in an advertisement in the New York Times (see http://www.lannan.org/lf/bios/detail/esther-chavez-cano/).

As with other cultural and social reformers, Chávez Cano has long been recognized more outside of Mexico than inside. However, on December 12, 2008, she traveled to Los Pinos, the presidential palace in Mexico City, to receive the National Human Rights Award (Premio Nacional de Derechos Humanos) from President Felipe Calderón. The official declaration recognizes "her distinguished trajectory of 16 years in the effective promotion and defense of human rights, especially those of women, with emphasis in the cases of the murdered women in Ciudad Juárez."

Casa Amiga's counseling and prevention work continues in the face of difficult economic conditions, and Chávez Cano says that without this work, the violence in the streets would be even worse. "Women in Mexico are advancing very slowly. Women's rights are not a priority in the society, and the murders of women have caused great suffering. There is so much work left to do."

Chávez Cano says that these awards are a great honor and bring with them an enormous responsibility to the entire community to continue to work for change. Molloy relates that one Juárez resident told Chávez Cano that he felt the national human rights award had been given to all of the citizens of Juárez, that it encourages all citizens to struggle against the violence of the city.

For more information, please contact Molloy at (575) 646-6931 or mmolloy@lib.nmsu.edu.

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