Latin America Month will officially open this Saturday, 12 June from 5pm. Organised by our friends at the Latin America Solidarity Centre, this year's theme will be "Defending the Territory, Defending the Earth".
In recognition of the work of environmental defenders accompanied by PBI around the world, the opening address will feature a talk by Rocío Walkiria, feminist and environmental activist with the Honduran Centre for Community Development - CEHPRODEC. Walkiria will share the current situation of the environmental movement in the country.
We will also hear from Dr Peter Doran, lecturer with Queen's University Belfast as he speaks on the rights of nature and the Environmental Justice Network Ireland, an all-island environmental movement supporting communities and individuals that are engaged in both promoting environmental justice and challenging environmental injustice.
This online event will also feature a miniature theatre on Chilean customs, a Colombian indigenous philharmonic orchestra, and Guatemalan rapper, activist and artist, Rebeca Lane. For more information and registration, click here.
While all events will be free of charge, PBI Ireland has launched a fundraiser to allow our supporters to make donations and help us create similar events in the future.
PBI Event: Blood of the Earth - Water defenders in Central America - Webinar
This webinar is free of charge, but please register to secure your place here.
Central America and Mexico are some of the most vulnerable places on the planet to the effects of climate change. Nevertheless, they are also home to massive megaprojects that threaten our planet’s most valuable resource – water.
In 2019, amid an historic drought, a documentary film crew travelled to Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras to allow water defenders to tell their stories of life, hope, and resistance. From dried riverbeds in Honduras and prisons in Guatemala, to communities under attack in Southern Mexico, their stories speak to the ferocity of megaprojects in their search for profits.
Participants in this webinar will receive a private link to watch this documentary before its official release, and listen to two human rights defenders who have accompanied these communities in their struggle.
We are delighted to be joined by two speakers from Latin America for this webinar:
Diana Pérez is a member of the Territorial Defence Area with the Mexican Institute for Community Development (IMDEC A.C.). IMDEC is an independent, autonomous Mexican civil society organisation, founded in Guadalajara, Jalisco in 1963. Its prime objective is supporting the defence of land and common goods, the refounding of democracy, and the full guarantee of human rights through education and popular education. IMDEC carries out its work accompanying processes directly in territories together with communities, citizens’ groups, civil society organisations and social movements as trainers and educators through national and Latin American political education programmes.
Julio González is an ecologist with Colectivo Madreselva, an activist group committed to the defence of nature from a political and social perspective. MadreSelva supports accompaniment proposals from populations who take up the defence of natural goods or who resist projects that damage the balance of nature and ecological processes. The collective strategically approaches the topic of ecology under the following thematic areas: forests and natural goods, the human right to water, hydroelectric projects, mining, defence of territory, ecological risk management, “buen vivir” and citizen participation.
This webinar will be chaired by PBI Ireland and co-organised by the Latin America Solidarity Centre (LASC). The presenters will be speaking in Spanish, and we will have simultaneous or consecutive interpretation into English (depending on technology).