University Library News Release
Date: November 1, 2007
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Jeanette Smith, NMSU Library, (575) 646-7492, jcsmith@lib.nmsu.edu
NMSU Programs to Spotlight Human Rights Activists
Two programs on Friday, November 9, at New Mexico State University will spotlight Esther Chávez Cano and Paula Bonilla Flores, women activists from Ciudad Juárez.
The NMSU Library's Department of Archives and Special Collections will host a program and reception to honor Esther Chávez Cano on Friday, November 9, in Zuhl Library, 2nd floor east, from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m.
The program will honor Chávez for her efforts toward establishing justice in the border region and celebrate her donation of the "Esther Chávez Cano" papers to the Library's Rio Grande Historical Collections. The collection documents fourteen years of human rights activism in Ciudad Juárez, with a major focus on violence against women.
In 1992, Chávez began to collect documentation on the growing wave of violence against women in Juárez. She also founded the group "Ocho de Marzo" (Eighth of March) to pressure the Chihuahuan government to preserve and protect the rights of women. In 1999, Chávez established Casa Amiga Centro de Crisis, the first organization of its kind in Juárez and the northern border region to provide shelter, counseling and legal services to victims of violence.
Dr. Cynthia Bejarano, of NMSU's Criminal Justice Department, who has worked with families of victims of violence, contacted the NMSU Library about the possibility of preserving Chávez's archive. Molly Molloy, the NMSU Library's Border & Latin American specialist, worked with Bejarano and the Archives to acquire the collection. Archivist Charles Stanford has organized the collection and developed a guide to its contents, which will soon be available online.
The evening of November 9, Juárez community activist Paula Bonilla Flores will show a slide presentation on the work of Fundación Maria Sagrario and the kindergarten she founded in the community of Lomas de Poleo in Juárez. Flores is the mother of Maria Sagrario González Flores, one of more than four hundred women who have been killed in the border region in the past thirteen years. The program will be held from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. in NMSU's Hardman Hall, Room 208.
Flores will also discuss the "Movimiento de Familias Fortalecidas Para Exigir Justicia," a group of families organized to stage protests at government sites in Ciudad Juárez, demanding justice for family members who have disappeared or been murdered.
The two events are sponsored by the NMSU Library's Department of Archives and Special Collections, the NMSU student organization Advocates to Stop Chihuahua Femicides, the Center for Latin American and Border Studies and the Student Association for Latin American Studies. Presentations will be in English and Spanish with translation provided.
For more information contact Molloy at (575) 646-6931 or mollymolloy@gmail.com.
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