US-Mexico Border Dynamics and the Spread of Violence: Vermont Event

Tuesday, November 1 · 7:00pm – 9:00pm

Vermont Workers’ Center

294 N Winooski Avenue, (Corner of North Winooski and Archibald)

Burlington, Vermont

Parking Available

Join Macrina Cardenas de Alarcon, a community activist and educator from Tijuana, Mexico, who will be discussing the reasons behind increasing violence along the US-Mexico border, including international arms traffic, reliance on a maquiladora economy, and US military aid. Macrina is the former Legislative Coordinator for the Mexico Solidarity Network in Washington, DC, and she will draw on her five years of experience working as a community activist and educator in Tijuana with the Casa del Migrante.

This event will include an introduction from Danilo Lopez of the Vermont Migrant Farmworker Solidarity Project.

Event organized by Toward Freedom, a progressive perspective on world events (TowardFreedom.com), and co-sponsored by the Vermont Migrant Farmworker Solidarity Project, (vtmfsp.org).

Event info. on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=296057050405150

This talk is a part of a national speaking tour organized by the Mexico Solidarity Network. (http://www.mexicosolidarity.org/)

Questions? Call 802-540-2516 , or email [email protected]

More event information:

More than just bloody turf wars between competing cartels, the current conflict in Mexico is shaped by free trade agreements, the rise and fall of political parties, massive amounts of US military funding and a voracious appetite for drugs north of the border. Macrina will draw on her experience, formerly as the Legislative Coordinator of the Mexico Solidarity Network and currently with the Casa del Migrante in Tijuana, Mexico, to unpack this complex situation.

Border towns such as Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez are caught between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, decades of maquiladorization have left border towns heavily invested in boom-and-bust industry that can all too easily move across the world in search of cheaper labor. Left without jobs in Mexico or in a depressed US economy, migrants arrive in Tijuana to find their “American Dream” has died before it ever started. Meanwhile, youth turn to cartels as the only remaining option.

On the other hand, via the 1.4 billion-dollar Mérida Initiative US taxpayers are supporting a Mexican military fraught with corruption and human rights abuses, while also undermining the same military by allowing cartels full access to US-made arms and by cutting deals with high-level narcotraffickers. As Macrina explains, people in the US may feel this is “Mexico’s problem,” but taxpayer money and demand for drugs place Americans squarely within the scope of this conflict.

Join Macrina Cárdenas Alarcón and the Mexico Solidarity Network for an in-depth discussion of the current situation, one that weaves together a political analysis of the conflict, an appreciation for social movements’ acts of resistance and solidarity, and Macrina’s firsthand stories from life in Tijuana.