Melissa Amezcua Yepiz is a PhD candidate in Sociology and History at The New School for Social Research. She is currently Fellow at the Janey Program in Latin American Studies and member of the working group: Sovereignty and its subjects: The People, Citizens, Migrants and Foreigners at the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility. She is Teaching Fellow at Eugene Lang College, and adjunct at CUSCH at the University of Guadalajara. Her research interests are: the political history of the idea of ‘the people” in Mexico, political and symbolic borders, and the relationship of space and democracy.
Kalina Brabeck, Ph.D., is a licensed psychologist with twelve years of experience in clinical work and research with Latino immigrant families. Her work focuses on the intersections among socio-structural challenges (e.g., poverty, unauthorized immigration status), family processes, and individual mental health and wellbeing. She earned her Masters in Educational Psychology and her doctorate in Counseling Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, and completed her predoctoral internship at NYU-Bellevue, where she specialized in cross-cultural treatment. She is currently an Associate Professor and Department Chair in the Department of Counseling, Educational Leadership and School Psychology at Rhode Island College. She has been an affiliated member of the Center for Human Rights and International Justice at Boston College and a co-investigator with the Migration and Human Rights Project since 2007. She is currently a Foundation for Child Development Young Scholar, and the Principle Investigator on a mixed-methods research project that explores the influence of immigrant parent legal vulnerability on developmental outcomes for US-born children.
Born in Puebla, Mexico, Benito Bravo is founder and director of Sunset Park-based dance company, Ballet Folklórico Quetzalcoatl.
Cinthya Santos-Briones studied Anthropology and Ethnohistory. She has worked as a researcher at various institutions in Mexico, such as the National Institute of Anthropology and History, the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples and HBO, with issues related to transnational indigenous migration and textiles. She has been twice a fellow of the State Fund for Culture and the Arts. In 2009 she published through the University of the State of Hidalgo and the National Institute of Anthropology and History, the documentary "The Huichapan Codex". And through the National Council for Culture and the Arts the book The Indigenous´ Worldview and its Representations in Textiles of the Nahua community of Santa Ana Tzacuala, Hidalgo. She has published and broadcasted in multi-media in Mexico, Spain and the United States , and the Journal of North American Congress on Latin America, Cuartoscuro, the newspaper Milenio, La Jornada and Universal, Channel 22, as well as in several books published by the National Institute of Anthropology and History, CONACULTA and Secretary of Public Education. She has exhibited her artwork at various venues in Mexico and Cuba at the Soumaya Museum, National Museum of Anthropology, Museum of Popular Culture and the University of Cienfuegos. Since 2007 she has worked and works with migrant indigenous Otomis, Nahuas and Tepehuas from the Sierra Veracruzana in New York, where she is also a community organizer and a freelance journalist. Currently she studies at the International Center of Photography.
Alexandra Délano is Assistant Professor of Global Studies at the New School. She received her doctorate from the University of Oxford in International Relations. Her publications include Mexico and Its Diaspora in the United States: Policies of Emigration since 1848 (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and articles in Political Geography, Politics and Society, International Migration Review, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and Social Research.
Pablo Dominguez Galbraith studied Philology at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid in Spain, and an MA in Comparative Literature by The Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mêxico (UNAM). Currently a PhD Candidate in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Princeton University, he is undergoing a multidisciplinary research on migration, security, violence and human rights from Central America to the US, combining field research in Mexico's northern and southern borders with a theoretical and cultural studies approach on the narratives of violence, exclusion, refugee status and human mobility across Latin America.
Jorge Durand is a professor and researcher at the University of Guadalajara and the Center for Economic Research and Teaching CIDE. It is co-director with Douglas S. Massey, the Mexican Migration Project (since 1987) and the Latin American Migration Project (since 1996) sponsored by the Universities of Princeton and Guadalajara. Member of the National System of Researchers (Level III) of the Mexican Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences of the United States. In the last thirty years has studied the phenomenon of migration between Mexico and the United States and has published extensively on the subject. He has taught at the Universities of Pennsylvania, Chicago, UCLA, Warsaw and the French CNRS. He is currently a columnist in the opinion section of the newspaper La Jornada, Mexico.
Michael L. Evans is a senior analyst and director of the Archive's Colombia and documentation projects. Evans is editor of Colombia and the United States: Political Violence, Narcotics, and Human Rights, 1948-2010, a primary source collection of more than 2,000 declassified documents on political violence and U.S. policy in Colombia. He is the author of numerous “Electronic Briefing Books” on Colombia and Mexico, including “The Chiquita Papers,” a massive collection of the company's own internal memos documenting its illegal payoffs to Colombian guerrilla and paramilitary groups. In September 2014 Evans was named—along with colleagues from Noticias MVS in Mexico—as an official nominee for the Gabriel García Márquez Award for the revelation of a U.S. espionage center in Mexico. Evans and his colleagues have been pioneers in the use of the Mexico’s transparency law to force the release of information about grave violations of human rights. He has written columns for Semana (Colombia), Verdad Abierta (Colombia), Animal Político (Mexico), The Nation, The Miami Herald and other publications. Revelations from his projects have been published in The New York Times, Newsweek, The Washington Post and many other media outlets.
Bianey Garcia came to the United States at age 14 escaping transphobia back in Mexico. At 19, she began attending transgender support groups and worked with community leaders to educate them on STD prevention. After an unfair and discriminatory experience from the police with community members, Bianey joined Make the Road NY as a way to combat discrimination, build leadership and educate LGBT community members about their rights. Bianey uses her story as fuel to combat discrimination and support community members as one of the LGBT Organizers at Make the Road NY.
Carla García es la Coordinadora de Relaciones Internacionales de la Organización Fraternal Negra Hondureña (OFRANEH). Emigró con su familia a los Estados Unidos en el 2013 y trabaja en pro de las comunidades Garífunas desde New York, ciudad en la cual actualmente atiende el problema de la mujeres Garífunas que llegaron en la recién pasada crisis de inmigración en la frontera de USA, buscando un trato humanitario para sus hermanas y sus hijos. Carla tiene una larga trayectoria de activismo y participación en accion civica por más de 20 años. Se graduó en el Instituto San Isidro, obteniendo el título de Perito Mercantil y Contador Público en el 1989. Cursó cuatro años de Administración de Aduana en la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras. (1990-1994), estudió Administración de Proyectos en Atlantic International University (2009). Como miembro de la comunidad Garífuna de Honduras, se desempeñó como representante de la cultura a nivel Nacional e Internacional en el Ballet Nacional Folklorico Garifuna (1991-1993). Trabajó como administradora de la Organización Fraternal Negra Hondureña (1997-2000). Trabajó como administradora en la Organización Enlace de Mujeres Negras (2002-2003). Ha dado consultorías a diferentes comunidades Garífunas y actualmente es la Coordinadora de Relaciones Internacionales de la Organización Fraternal Negra Hondureña (OFRANEH) electa en asamblea general (2013).
Marcial Godoy-Anativia is a sociocultural anthropologist and the Managing Director of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics at New York University. He is co-editor, with Zeynep Gambetti, of Rhetorics of Insecurity: Belonging and Violence in the Neoliberal Era (NYU Press, 2013). He is also Editor, with Jill Lane, of e-misférica, the Institute's trilingual online journal. As part of his work on the Institute's initiative on Religion and Politics in the Americas, he recently co-edited Religiones, matrimonio igualitario y aborto: Alianzas con y entre actores religiosos por los derechos sexuales y reproductivos en Argentina (CDD Ediciones, 2014). From 2000-2007, he worked in the Program on Latin America and the Caribbean and the Program on International Collaboration at the Social Science Research Council. His publications include “Between the Hammer and the Anvil: Middle East Studies in the Aftermath of 9/11,” “We Are Living in a Time of Pillage: A Conversation with Carlos Monsiváis,” and Ciudades Translocales: Espacios, flujo, representación—Perspectivas desde las Américas, co-edited with Rossana Reguillo (ITESO, 2005). In 2003, he co-edited a special issue of Estudios migratorios latinoamericanos, entitled "Los flujos translocales en las Américas." Marcial also serves on the Board of Directors of the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA).
Amy Gottlieb is the Associate Regional Director for the Northeast Region of the American Friends Service Committee. Amy worked from 2001 – 2014 as Program Director of the AFSC Immigrant Rights Program in Newark, and prior to that as staff attorney there from 1996 - 2001. Amy also worked in the spring 2012 as a Visiting Assistant Clinical Professor in the Cardozo Immigration Justice Clinic. Amy graduated from Rutgers Law School - Newark in 1996, where she has taught immigration law as an adjunct professor. She is past chair of the steering committee of the Detention Watch Network, and is a board member of La Fuente and Houses on the Moon Theater Company. She is a recipient of the Fannie Bear Besser Public Service Award from Rutgers Law School, the ACLU of New Jersey’s Legal Leadership Award (2012) and the Arthur Kinoy People’s Lawyer Award from Rutgers Law School Student Lawyers Guild (2012).
Ayten Gündoğdu is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Barnard College-Columbia University. She is the author of Rightlessness in an Age of Rights: Hannah Arendt and the Contemporary Struggles of Migrants (Oxford University Press, 2015). Her research centers on critical approaches to human rights, political and ethical dilemmas posed by international migration, and contemporary struggles for rights and citizenship.
María Lezama: Llegue de Mexico a la edad de 16 años huyendo de la violencia en contra las jóvenes y a reunificarme con mi madre después de la desintegración familiar. En el año 2011 a la falta de oportunidades y abusos en los trabajos comencé a envolverme en una organización que lucha por los derechos de los vendedores ambulantes mayormente conformada de mujeres muchas de ellas madres solteras. Al ver el liderazgo se me dio la oportunidad de tomar clases de ciencias políticas en el Lehman College. Actualmente estoy trabajando en una de las campañas que lucha por los llamados carwasheros o lavadores de autos que son aproximadamente 5000 a nivel de la ciudad y un 90% son latinos y el resto de otras partes. Los carwasheros constantemente son víctimas del robo de salario, no cuentan con ningún tipo de protección para los químicos que usan a diario, sus propinas muchas veces son utilizadas para pago por daños a carros o toallas que clientes se llevaban. Muchos de ellos han sido víctimas de accidentes las cuales los han dejado con mutilaciones. Pero gracias a la valentía de muchos de ellos ya se ha logrado que tengan sindicato para asegurar que esos abusos ya no pasen. Actualmente ya son ocho car washes con sindicato y el año pasado se logró que una de las compañías más grandes de lavaderos de autos restituyera 3.9 millones de dólares a más o menos 1000 trabajadores por salarios robados.
Jorge Romero León holds an MA in political science from the New School for Social Research, in New York, where he is also a PhD Candidate. His areas of specialization include democratic theory, migration, sovereignty and accountability. He has worked with national and international organizations developing policy and accountability strategies, and has over fifteen years of experience leading strategic advocacy networks and activities, and training civil society organizations, legislative staff and public officials on accountability and applied budget work. He is an independent researcher and consultant most recently working with the European Union’s EuroSocial II project and Transparency International. In 2012 and 2013 he helped a collective of over 80 organizations develop a strategic agenda for influencing Mexico’s National Development Plan, which led to the creation of the first ever Special Program on Migration. He was senior program officer on accountability for the Open Society Foundations’ Public Health Program in 2011, Secretary of Organization for the International Network on Migration and Development in 2010, and Executive Director of Fundar, Center for Analysis and Research from 2007 through 2009, where he led a team of 35 lawyers and researchers implementing a diversity of projects related to budget and policy analysis, accountability, human rights and access to justice. He has served in the Mexican executive and legislative branches of government. He worked as advisor and information coordinator in the Senate in 1998; and as advisor and project coordinator in the Ministry of the Interior and the Mexican Institute of Social Security, from 1999 to 2001. He has published several articles and working papers on human rights, accountability, budget and policy analysis in México and Latin America.
Óscar Martínez writes for ElFaro.net, the first online newspaper in Latin America. The original edition of his book Los migrantes que no importan was published in 2010 by Icaria and El Faro, with a second edition by Mexico’s sur+Ediciones in 2012. Martínez is currently writing chronicles and articles for El Faro’s project, Sala Negra, investigating gang violence in Latin America. In 2008, Martínez won the Fernando Benítez National Journalism Prize in Mexico, and in 2009, he was awarded the Human Rights Prize at the José Simeón Cañas Central American University in El Salvador.
Guillermo Alonso Meneses is an Anthropologist. He received his Doctorate (PhD degree) at the Universidad de Barcelona in 1995. Since 1999 he has been a researcher at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Tijuana, México. He is the author of "El desierto de los sueños rotos. Detenciones y muertes de migrantes en la frontera México-Estados Unidos, 1993-2013".
Benjamin Nienass is Assistant Professor of Political Science at California State University San Marcos. He received his doctorate in Politics from The New School for Social Research in New York. His articles have appeared in The Review of Politics, Politics and Society, Globalizations, the International Social Science Journal and the International Journal for Politics, Culture, and Society. He is also the coeditor of Silence, Screen, and Spectacle: Rethinking Social Memory in the Age of Information (Berghahn Books, 2014; with Lindsey Freeman and Rachel Daniell).
Librada Paz: I was only 15 years old when I made the decision to leave my native country and came straight to work in the farms. I had migrated on the east coast of the United States, learning to pick various type of fruits and vegetables. I then settled down in Brockport and during my high school years I started to get involved with migrant workers’ issues. Years later I became a council and a board member of the Rural & Migrant Ministry. in joining the RMM, I realized so much about what I did not know as a farmworker—that we did not yet have the basic rights that everybody else has in New York State. I became an activist once I learned that there is a lot to be done around the farmworkers issue. For that reason I am still fighting for their right to be able to be more respectful and have a voice. Librada Paz is a graduate of Mechanical Engineering at Rochester Institute of Technology and has served on the Board of Rural Migrant Ministry since 2002. In 2012 she received the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award.
Rossana Reguillo holds a doctorate in Social Sciences, with a specialization in Social Anthropology from the CIESAS. She is a researcher (Investigadora Nacional, SNI—Sistema Nacional de Investigadores—level III) and a member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences. She is a professor in the department of Sociocultural Studies at the ITESO. Her research interests include: youth and urban cultures; the social construction of fear and the politics of affect (the emotions); as well as the cultural dimensions of narco-traffic and violence. Her published books include: Horizontes Fragmentados (Fragmented Horizons), Comunicación, cultura, pospolítica (Communication, Culture, Postpolitics), El (des)orden global y sus figuras(Global (Dis)Order and its Figures); her most recent book is Los jovenes en México (The Youth in Mexico, ed). A visiting professor at New York University, she has held the Andrés Bello Chair in Latin American Culture and Civilization (Fall 2011).
Rita Laura Segato es argentina, doctora en antropología, profesora dela Universidad de Brasilia e investigadora de nivel máximo del Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones de Brasil. Ha publicado sobre los temas género y violencia; raza y racismo en América Latina; y la perspectiva teórica de la Colonialidad del Poder.
Christina L. Sisk is an associate professor in the Department of Hispanic Studies at the University of Houston. Her areas of interest are U.S. Latina/o Studies, U.S.-Mexico Border Studies, Mexican Literary and Cultural Studies, and Latin American Cinema. She is a triple graduate of Tulane University in New Orleans, LA. As a scholar specialized in migration, she is particularly interested in bridging the gaps between Latin American and U.S. Latina/o Studies. She is the author of Mexico, Nation in Transit: Contemporary Representations of Mexican Migration to the United States (University of Arizona Press, Fall 2011). This book explores the topic of migration from a transnational approach that includes analyses of Mexican border film, la literatura de la frontera, Mexican rock music, migrant narratives, Hollywood films made by Mexican directors, and texts written by the immigrant second and third generations. She has published articles in Latinos Studies, Aztlán, and A Contracorriente. Continuing with her interest in migration, she is currently working on a book project on the representations of the criminal alien.
Marta Sánchez Soler es co-fundadora y coordinadora del Movimiento Migrante Mesoamericano de Abril 2006 a la fecha. Esta organización nace como resultado de la situación de emergencia que viven los migrantes particularmente los centroamericanos en su tránsito por México y los mexicanos en los Estados Unidos incidiendo en apoyar la organización trasnacional de la lucha migrante. El Movimiento Migrante Mesoamericano es una red regional de activistas cuyos fundadores vienen de una lucha de más de tres décadas en los Estados unidos quienes al regresar a México, extendieron su radio de acción a la región mesoamericana.
Diana Taylor is University Professor and Professor of Performance Studies and Spanish at NYU. She is the author of Theatre of Crisis: Drama and Politics in Latin America (1991), which won the Best Book Award given by New England Council on Latin American Studies and Honorable Mention in the Joe E. Callaway Prize for the Best Book on Drama; of Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina's 'Dirty War', Duke U.P., 1997; and The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Duke U.P., 2003), which won the ATHE Research Award in Theatre Practice and Pedagogy and the Modern Language Association Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize for the best book in Latin American and Spanish Literatures and Culture (2004). The Archive and the Repertoire has been translated into Portuguese by Eliana Lourenço de Lima Reis (Belo Horizonte, Brazil: Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais 2012) and Spanish by Anabelle Contreras (Santiago de Chile: Ediciones Universidad Alberto Hurtado, forthcoming, 2015.) She published PERFORMANCE (Buenos Aires: Asuntos Impresos, 2012), a new revised version which is now forthcoming in English with Duke U.P.; and Acciones de memoria: Performance, historia, y trauma, Peru: Fondo Editorial de la Asamblea Nacional de Rectores(2012). She is co-editor of Estudios avanzados de Performance (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2011), Stages of Conflict: A Reader in Latin American Theatre and Performance (Michigan U. P., 2008), Holy Terrors: Latin American Women Perform (Duke U.P.,2004), Defiant Acts/Actos Desafiantes: Four Plays by Diana Raznovich (Bucknell U. P., 2002), Negotiating Performance in Latin/o America: Gender, Sexuality and Theatricality (Duke U.P., 1994), and The Politics of Motherhood: Activists from Left to Right, (University Press of New England, 1997). She has edited five volumes of critical essays on Latin American, Latino, and Spanish playwrights, and several digital books such as What is Performance Studies (co-edited with Marcos Steuernagle) and Dancing with the Zapatistas (forthcoming Duke U.P.) Her articles on Latin American and Latino performance have appeared in journals such as PMLA, Profession, Critical Inquiry, TDR: The Drama Review, Theatre Journal, e-misférica, Performing Arts Journal, Latin American Theatre Review, Estreno, Gestos, Signs, MLQ and other scholarly journals. She has also been invited to participate in discussions on the role of new technologies in the arts and humanities in important conferences and commissions in the Americas (i.e. ACLS Commission on Cyberinfrastructure). Taylor is the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005, an ACLS Digital Innovation Fellowship, 2013-14, and was recently elected 2nd Vice President of the Modern Language Association (MLA) and will be President in 2017. Diana Taylor is founding Director of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, funded by the Ford, Mellon, Rockefeller, Rockefeller Brothers and Henry Luce Foundations.
A native of San Cristóbal de las Casas, Moysés Zuñiga Santiago began his study of science and technology at the University of Xalapa in Veracruz in 1998 where he worked in television, photography and radio. In 2003, he began work in Xalapa at Diario AZ as a photojournalist and was subsequently hired by Milenio de Veracruz as the photography editor. Beginning in January of 2006 he served as the correspondent for Mexican photography agency Cuartoscuro during Subcomandante Marcos’ ‘Other Campaign’ and traveled the entirety of Mexico with Marcos. During this time, Zúñiga also worked with the Associated Press (AP), EFE (Spain) and Agence France Press (AFP). Since 2007, Zúñiga has worked with La Jornada in San Cristóbal de las Casas and covers the Chiapas region for the Associated Press and EFE. In 2009 he received a Rory Peck Training Fund grant for freelance journalists in high-risk areas from the Rory Peck Trust. Moysés participated in two roundtable discussions on Chiapanecan photography held during the 2010 and 2011 Encuentros at Centro Hemisférico.