Time: 5:00 - 7:00pm Venue: Room 3.26, Bancroft Building, Mile End Campus
Public Forum with Laura CarlsenSponsored by the Centre for the Study of Global Security and DevelopmentChair: Dr Jeffrey R. Webber, Senior Lecturer, Queen Mary University of London
The disappearance of 43 rural education students and the assassination of six others at the hands of local police in Iguala, Guerrero has sparked the most profound political crisis in Mexico in years. Yet this terrible event just lifted the lid on a long-simmering situation of corruption, state violence and repression that has characterized the war on drugs since its inception in December of 2006. A grassroots movement made up mostly of youth has called for the resignation of the president, international human rights bodies are investigating the Mexican government, violence against women has risen in the context of impunity and overall violence, and corruption scandals are further tainting the Peña Nieto administration. Join us to discuss the crisis and new paradigms for Mexico and for international relations with the country.
You can register for the event via Eventbrite Laura Carlsen is a bilingual, binational political analyst, writer and media commentator in Mexico. She is a former Fulbright Scholar, award-winning journalist, who has written extensively on NAFTA, the drug war, immigration and gender issues in Americas Updater, Counterpunch, The Nation, Truth Out and others. She is a columnist for Huffington Post and Foreign Policy in Focus, and a commentator with Al Jazeera, CCTV, Democracy Now!, NPR and Mexican television and radio stations. She hosts the weekly television program Interview From Mexico, and the Spanish-language program Entrevista desde México. She is co-editor of Confronting Globalization: Economic Integration and Popular Resistance in Mexico and has participated as an analyst and activist in the movement against militarization and the drug war on both sides of the border.