“Counter Narratives: Troubling the Cartels War Discourse in Mexico”
November 26, 2014, 7-9pm
SFU Harbour Centre, Room 7000
November 27 and 28, 2014
Liu Institute for Global Issues (November 27: Case Room; November 28: Boardroom), the University of British Columbia Point Grey Campus
You are invited to a workshop featuring Julián Cardona and Dawn Paley. Based in Ciudad Juárez, Cardona is an award-winning photographer and journalist, and is an important critical voice in Mexico on the violent effects of regional integration and free trade. Paley’s journalistic work is crucial for understanding drug-related violence in Mexico. She is the author of Drug War Capitalism and currently doing a PhD at the Autonomous University of Puebla, Mexico.
Workshop rationale: According to the Mexican government and mainstream media, violence in Mexico today results from turf wars between cartels. Cardona and Paley’s investigative reporting contests these narratives by showing how the Mexican military’s so-called war on criminal organizations has sparked violence that is affecting the population at large. This workshop creates space for Cardona and Paley to outline their critique of mainstream conceptualizations of drug-related violence and allows faculty and students to engage in a sustained discussion with Cardona, Paley, and each other about research on topics like the so-called war on drugs, militarization, and regional security. The larger objective of the workshop is to support the dissemination of alternative accounts of contemporary violence in the Americas.
Tentative workshop schedule (stay tuned for updates on times and locations):
Wednesday, November 26, 7-9pm. Public presentation at SFU Harbour Centre, Room 7000
On Thursday, November 27, at 4pm, the workshop will open with a public lecture by Julián Cardona and Dawn Paley in the Case Room at the Liu Institute for Global Issues.
On Friday, November 28 from 10am to 4pm, in the Liu Institute Boardroom, we will return for a sustained discussion with Cardona and Paley as well as faculty and graduate students doing work in this area. Dr. Juanita Sundberg will moderate and facilitate. Lunch will be included for registered participants.
If you are interested in participating in Friday’s workshop, please send a brief message outlining your interest and area of research to Dr. Sundberg at juanita.sundberg@ubc.ca.
Workshop Sponsors: This workshop is funded by a grant from the UBC Faculty of Arts and is sponsored by the Latin American Studies Program at UBC, Latin American Studies at SFU, Office of the Vice President Research and International, Department of Geography, and the Liu Institute working group on Latin America and the Global. We thank these funders and sponsors for their support.
Workshop Leaders:
Since 1993, Julián Cardona has documented the violent implications of globalization for Mexico, including the social effects of low wages paid by assembly plants; the degradation and decomposition of social networks in a border region controlled by power structures allied to favor the financial interests of United States’ transnational corporations; the voices of parents and relatives of women murdered in Ciudad Juárez; and, in the NAFTA era, the exodus of Mexicans fleeing their country and its collapsing economy.
In 1995, Julián curated the exhibition, “Nada que ver / Nothing to see,” which included the participation of several photojournalists from Diario de Juárez to document immigration, gangs, corruption, drug trafficking, and poverty in the NAFTA era. This exhibition led to the publication of Juárez: The Laboratory of Our Future (New York: Aperture, 1998), featuring texts by Charles Bowden, Noam Chomsky, and Eduardo Galeano. Julián’s work has been featured in various exhibitions and books in Mexico and abroad. Documenting the historic migration of Mexicans to the United States, Cardona’s photographs are included in No One is Illegal and Exodus/Éxodo. Exodus was featured in the 2011 edition of Promenades Photographiques, a photo festival held annually in Vendôme, France. In Charles Bowden’s Murder City, Cardona documents the explosion of violence in Ciudad Juárez. In September 2013, Julián’s photographs were exhibited in “Remember Them,” a collective show to remember the victims of feminicide in Ciudad Juárez, at the Victoria Gallery, the University of Liverpool. His more recent exhibition, “Herencia de sangre,” was inaugurated on May 2014 at the Gallery José María Velasco, in México City. The exhibit reflects on the range of experiences facing women in the United States-Mexico borderlands.
Dawn Paley is a journalist from Vancouver, BC (Coast Salish territories). Her first book, Drug War Capitalism, is due to be released November 15, 2014, with AK Press. She’s written for magazines and newspapers including the The Guardian, Vancouver Sun, The Globe and Mail, and many others. Her work in radio and television has been featured on Democracy Now!, Free Speech Radio News, and CBC Radio.
In 2010, Dawn completed her Masters in Journalism at the University of British Columbia. Her thesis project proposes that journalists should study transnational theory as a prerequisite for responsible foreign correspondence, and examines the formation and evolution of the Honduran elite in relation to the 2009 coup d’etat as a case study. Dawn has a Bachelor’s degree in Women’s Studies and First Nations Studies from Simon Fraser University. She is currently a graduate student mentor in the Department of Geography at UBC. Dawn is currently also a doctoral student at the Meritorious Autonomous University of Puebla in Mexico. Her doctoral research is focused on clandestine mass graves and the war on drugs in Mexico.