Talk by Mexican Human Rights Activist March 5 at COA

COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC PRESENTS TALK ON GLOBALIZATION BY MEXICAN HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST
Manuel Mendez Guzman talks on Communities Confronting Globalization: Autonomy and Human Rights

BAR HARBOR-Manuel Mendez Guzman, a human rights activist from Mexico, will be talking at 7 p.m. on Monday, March 5 at College of the Atlantic's McCormick Lecture Hall as part of the college's Human Ecology Forum. He will be discussing issues of globalization.

Guzman, a member of the Red de Defensores Communitarios por los Derechos Humanos, or the Community Human Rights Defenders Network, is on a tour of New England communities and college campuses speaking about recent issue in Mexico. His talk, "Communities Confronting Globalization: Autonomy and Human Rights," will be presented in Spanish with an English translation.

Guzman will discuss human rights abuses, their relationship to globalization, the North American Free Trade Agreement, as well as Plan Puebla Panama. It is sponsored by The Mexico Solidarity Network, which is focused on promoting dialogue and collective action for social change between the United States and Mexico.

Since the Zapatista uprising in 1994, the Mexican military and paramilitaries have waged a counter insurgency war against the Zapatista and supporting communities. Thirteen years after the uprising, communities in Mexico are developing new forms of resistance.

According to its website, The Red de Defensores operates as an autonomous human rights model in which community members who suffer human rights abuses from the army, paramilitaries and the federal government assume control of their own defense.

For more information, visit www.mexicosolidarity.org, or call Donna Gold, at 288-2944 ext. 291, or dgold@coa.edu.