Chiapas Media Project (11/19)

The Chiapas Media Project is an award winning, bi-national partnership that provides video equipment, computers and training to enable marginalized Indigenous communities in Southern Mexico to create their own media.  Collaborating with autonomous Zapatista communities since 1998, the project has trained indigenous youth to produce videos on agricultural collectives, fair trade coffee, women’s collectives, autonomous education, traditional healing and the history of their struggle for land. Despite the challenges of little formal education and unreliable electrical supply, regional coordinators from the communities in Chiapas are not only producing their own videos but are also running the introductory camera, editing and internet workshops for their regions, providing more opportunities for even more communities to tell their own stories.

Alexandra Halkin, founding director and international coordinator of the program, will screen some of their most recent productions and discuss the role of indigenous media and self-representation, the effects of globalization in the context of the current socio-political situation in Mexico and the effects of the war on drugs on indigenous communities.

The event is Thursday, November 19, 7 p.m., in the Biological Sciences building, Lecture Hall 1. For more information, contact John Stolle-McAllister at stollem@umbc.edu.

This event is sponsored by the Department of Modern Languages, Linguistics and Intercultural Communication; Office of the Provost; College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences; Language, Literacy and Culture program; Humanities Forum; Social Science Forum; Media and Communication Studies program; Shriver Peaceworkers; New Media Studio; and UMBC Solidarity Coalition.