Latin America Week - Galway and Gort - April 2013

international | environment | event notice Monday March 25, 2013 16:14 by Latin America Solidarity Centre - Latin America Solidarity Centre (LASC) events at lasc dot ie

Latin America Week

GALWAY Fri 5th & Tue 9th APRIL - GORT Sun 7th APRIL

GALWAY Fri 5th & Tue 9th APRIL

Fri 5th: Public Talk: Human Rights in Guatemala – Paradigmatic o High Impact Legal Cases (Transitional Justice). Speaker: Sandra Sierra. Co-organised with Amnesty International Galway and Galway One World Centre. Latin party afterwards. Venue: tbc. Time: 7.30 pm till late.

Tue 9th: Public Talk: Social and environmental impact of mega-extractive industries: the cases of Peru (La Conga), Colombia (La Colosa mine). Speakers: Milton Sánchez and Aida Julieta Quiñones Torres. Venue: Amnesty International, 2/3 Middle Street, Galway. Time: 7.30 pm till 9.30.

GORT Sun 7th APRIL

Public Talk: Social and environmental impact of mega-extractive industries: the cases of Peru (La Conga), Colombia (La Colosa mine) and Guatemala. Food and film. Speakers: Sandra Sierra, Milton Sánchez and Aida Julieta Quiñones Torres. Venue: Walsh’s Gort, Co. Galway. Time: 12 pm - 3 pm.

http://www.lasc.ie/content/latin-america-week-2013-0

THE SPEAKERS’ BIO:

Milton Sánchez Cubas

Native to the province of Celendín, department of Cajamarca, Peru. Milton is the 31-year-old president of the Plataforma Interinstitucional Celendina (PIC) (Inter-institutional Platform of Celendin) - a body that brings together 40 social organizations from Celendín. He is also the ´Comando Unitario de Lucha´ (Spokesman for the Command Control Unit of the campaign), which is the body that brings together the defense fronts of the Cajamarca Region. This body leads the defense of our natural resources endangered by the extractive industry in our region.

Milton is an accountant by profession, specializing in governance, local development and citizen participation. He has also been involved in youth organizations at a national and regional level (such as his role as Secretary General of the Regional Youth Council in the Cajamarca region). He is dealing with approximately 40 lawsuits against him from the mining company and the government, and is one of the more than three hundred victims of judicial persecution for defending our natural resources.

Aida Julieta Quiñones Torres

Colombia - Lecturer and PhD student in Universidad Javeriana. Member of the Environmental Committee for the Defense of Life which monitors the socio-environmental impact of the La Colosa mine, in the department of Tolima, Colombia. Aida is a militant researcher on the issue of resistance to 3 mining mega-projects in Colombia:

- the gold mine of La Colosa, Cajamarca-Tolima - population: small farming communities. Transnational Anglo gold Ashanti has been carrying out illegal explorations with a view to have one of the biggest open cast mines in South America. The mine is in a natural reserve. In previous projects in this mine, a family - including a baby - was murdered by state agents.

Sandra Sierra

Guatemala. Officer of Trócaire’s Governability, Human Rights, Gender and HIV Programme in Guatemala since 2004. Previously, she worked for Catholic Relief Sercives (CRS) as Education Adviser in the project Food for the Improvement of Education (Alimentos para Mejorar la Educación - PAME) and in Cáritas as Coordinator of the Research and Publication Centre. She has an MA in Management for Sustainable Human Development.