Exploring Volunteering

UPDATE: This event has been cancelled

“Guatemala : A Forgotten History”

Date – Monday 19th June
Time – 8.00pm – 10.00pm
Large Conference Hall, RISC, Reading International Solidarity Centre.

In association with the “Mayan Threads of Identity” exhibition members of the Guatemala Solidarity Network (GSN) will give some background about the country from which these beautiful textiles originate.

RISC – 35-39 London Street, Reading RG1 4PS.

A Radical Activist Network conference, supported by War on Want.

1pm-7pm, Saturday 15th July (3rd Floor, University of London Union, Malet Street, London WC1). Featuring Oscar Olivera, Spokesperson for the Coalition in Defense of Water and Life in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

Plus Hilary Wainwright, Red Pepper
Andy Higginbottom, Frontline Latin America
Sue Branford, chair of the Latin America Bureau
Nick Buxton, Fundacion Solon, Bolivia
Paul Chatterton, Kiptik (Zapatista solidarity network)
and others to be confirmed

Whether it be indigenous rights movements, people fighting neoliberal economic policies or US domination of the continent, or the struggle for land and work rights, social movements are now embedded in the political landscape across Latin America. In Bolivia, popular mobilisation over the last six years has seen its electoral expression in the victory for Evo Morales and the Movement towards Socialism (MAS in its Spanish initials). This conference aims to examine how social movements in Latin America are organised, what they've won and their different relationships with the growing number of left leaning governments in the continent.

Oscar Olivera is spokesperson for the Coalition in Defense of Water and Life, ('La Coordinadora'), which was at the forefront of a popular uprising in Cochabamba in 2000 against US multinational Bechtel who had taken over their water systems as an IMF-imposed condition for Bolivian debt relief.

GSN should be there too- watch this space for more information.

Sandy Henderson, after spending time in Guatemala, has put together
with Barbara Lowe, a brilliant exhibition on Mayan weaving at the Reading Internationcal Solidarity Centre (RISC).
Sandy has put the exhibition together with the support of GSN and the
Mayan Hands, a fair trade organisation that works with a large number of
Mayan women weavers, particularly around Solola and Lake Atitlan, but
also other parts of the highland regions.

For more information about the exhibition, contact RISC. You can see more photos of the exhibition here.

We don't usually include go off-country on this blog- but it isn't often that there is a chance to hear a Latin American president speak in London. So we'll make an exception…

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez will now be speaking at a public meeting organised by the Greater London Authority in central London on Sunday 14th May at 3-7pm at the Camden Centre, 38-50 Bidborough St, London WC1. 

President Hugo Chavez will address the meeting hosted by the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone. President Chavez Frias will address the meeting on current social and economic policies issues in Venezuela that are relevant to London.

People are required to register their names with the GLA or they will not be admitted. Places will be allocated on a first come first served basis and there is no charge for entry. To register you must contact anna.roberts@london.gov.uk or sandeep.sra@london.gov.uk.

For more information contact: Venezuela Information Centre at info@vicuk.org.

Oscar Berger, Guatemala's President was quoted yesterday by EFE (10-05-06) as saying that Chavez is increasingly trying to influence politics in Central America. Berger is also in Europe at the moment for negotiations over the trade pact between Central America, South America and the European Union. The event is referred to as the 'Business Summit'

Film: CPR (Communities of Population in Resistance), éxodo de un pueblo

After the Guatemalan army burned and killed the peasants of their village, Mateo and his family took refuge in the mountains of El Quiché. There they found thousands of refugees escaped from another massacres.

Friday, 5th May 2006 at 7:20pm at Instituto Cervantes, 102 Eaton Square, London (UK)

Post by Morven Gregor- Artistic Director- Mouth of Silence- Birds of Paradise Theatre Company

Readers of reports such as REMHI (Recovery of Historical Memory 1998) or CEH (Historical Clarification Commission 1999) are probably all too familiar with the catalogue of atrocities visited on the people of Guatemala during the 36 years of conflict. Unfortunately, both then and now, most folk in the UK know nothing about it.

Ten years on from the signing of peace in December 1996 – how much media coverage will that anniversary get here in the UK?

That’s why as the touring production for 2006, Birds of Paradise Theatre Company are creating Mouth of Silence a new play inspired by the struggle for justice in Guatemala.

In some ways, the process started a long time ago, before I became an Artistic Director and volunteered with the Guatemalan Accompaniment Group living with a community of returned refugees in the Department of Huehuetenango. That experience in some ways inspired this year’s production.

However, theatre is a collaborative process and everyone involved in the workshopping (pre-rehearsal) period brought something to the process.

Writer, Gerry Loose has worked on many projects connected with peace and conflict resolution. One of the actors, Rachel Amey, had passed through the country, travelling. Designer Claire Halleran visited Guatemala in January this year. So, with a sense of creative enquiry, the help of others who had worked and volunteered there and lots of research materials we spent several days together exploring what we wanted the production to be.

Large issues demand a large canvass and for this reason we decided the performance will combine scenes in promenade and outdoor stations as well as in more traditional indoor theatre spaces. The audience and performers will mingle in market and return scenes, heightening their involvement in the piece. Working with deaf actor, EJ Raymond, we also decided to make the production inclusively signed – using the relationship between sign language and English as a parallel to the power relations between indigenous languages and Spanish in Guatemala.

With all these decisions made, we went our separate ways: Gerry to produce the script, Claire the model box and me to wait for the results!

So far, so good – rehearsals start on the 22nd May and we open at the Tramway Theatre, Glasgow on 22nd June as part of Refugee Week, before touring across Scotland.

Come and see the show, if you can. We’ll also tour a small exhibition and information stall, encouraging people to take action related to Guatemala.

And if you can’t join us we plan to have a tour weblog, so you can see how the production progresses across the country.

Production opens at the Tramway Theatre, Glasgow 22nd – 24th June 7.30pm
And then tours throughout Scotland; including Edinburgh, Taynuilt, Ballachulish, Banchory, Drumnadrochit, Isles of Gigha, Harris and North and South Uist.

See the Birds of Paradise website for details.

The Human Rights Watch International Film Festival is taking place in London 15th-25th March and brings together a collection of very interesting films this year. OneWorld.net resumes the festival here.

The full film schedule: here.

The festival includes the premiere of Killer's Paradise on the issue of violence against women in Guatemala. In particular, the film documents the story of Claudina Isabel Velasquez, a 19 year-old student, who was found dead in August 2005. Claudina's case was supported by Amnesty International as part of its campaign against violence against women.

Killer's Paradise is to be shown: Monday, 20th March at 6pm at the Ritzy.

Brixton Oval, Coldharbour Lane
Brixton, London SW2 1JG
box office: 0870 7550 062
www.picturehouses.co.uk

Tickets cost £6.75 and include the following film, “How To Plan A Revolution“. You can book online here. Both films are distributed by BBC Worldwide TV.

Here's the film's synopsis on the HRW film festival website:

“In this powerful film, the award-winning team of Olenka Frenkiel and Giselle Portenier (Murder in Purdah, Israel’s Secret Weapon) document the story of the brutal killings of women in Guatemala. Since 1999, more than 2,000 women have been murdered there, with the numbers rising every year. In 2005 alone, 640 women, nearly two a day, were killed. That’s one woman in every twelve thousand murdered last year, almost ten times as many, per capita, as in Britain.

And in Guatemala, the murders are rarely investigated. Few statistics are kept, details rarely are logged, potential forensic evidence is often ignored or contaminated, so the killers invariably go free and no one, not even the country’s president, has any idea who they are or why so many women are murdered.

The answer, at least in part, is the failure of Guatemalan authorities to pursue justice for perpetrators of abuses during a civil war which killed 200,000 people. Three generations of killers have gone free; though the country is trying to show it has changed, old habits die hard.

KILLER’S PARADISE documents the story of Claudina Isabel Velasquez, a 19 year old law student murdered in summer 2005, as her family urges the authorities to investigate who killed her”.

In an incredible interview in the Guardian, Carlos, originally from Chile, explains the extraordinary sequence of events that led to him living and settling in London.

Admission is free from 11am-6pm daily

the.gallery@oxo, Oxo Tower Wharf, Bargehouse Street,
South Bank London SE1 9PH (see gmap)