Wednesday, 6/8 | 11:30AM - 1:00 PM | Main Hall

DEMOCRACY FOR WHO:

The consequences of U.S. interventions in the Americas

 

This session will dive into some of the examples of the ways in which the Organization of American States (OAS), acts on behalf of the interests of the rich, facilitating U.S. interventions across Latin America and the Caribbean, and consequently impacting democratic processes and people’s movements across the Americas.

  • Alina Duarte

    Mexico

    Alina Duarte is a feminist, socialist, anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist and anti-fascist independent journalist from Xochimilco. Duarte has dedicated herself to journalism since 2012, covering social movements and the political situation from the ground in several countries of Latin America including Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico and Venezuela. She was a correspondent for Telesur from 2017 to 2019 and she is currently a senior research fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs.

  • Fidelina Mena Corrales

    Costa Rica

    Director of the Center for Labor Rights. She studied Law at the Faculty of Law of the Universidad de la Salle in Costa Rica, currently has extensive experience in Human Rights issues, especially Refuge and Migration, as well as in the defense of the Labor Rights of migrant workers, applicants, and refugees, migrant indigenous populations and Afro-descendants. She also has studies in community methodology for social development and social network processes, at the Juan Pablo II University, Nicaragua; Turin Migration Course. Made in Costa Rica in 2013; updating of the trainer of trainers course taught by the AVINA Foundation.

    Director of the Center for Labor Rights as a Central American regional reference for the rights of migrant workers and refugees in REDNAM and RRCOM and coordinator of the Regulatory Reform Commission for Civil Society of the General Law on Migration and Aliens.

  • Gail Walker

    United States

    Gail Walker is the Executive Director of Pastors for Peace. Walker worked with IFCO from 1987 to 2002 as the Communications Director and co-led the 1988 IFCO delegation to Nicaragua that resulted in the formation of the Pastors for Peace project. At IFCO she has led a number of delegations to Central America and Cuba including Cuba Friendshipment Caravans and educational delegations to Cuba. Walker worked as a journalist and communications professional in print, video and radio, and returned to IFCO as Director in 2011.

  • Xochitl Sanchez

    United States

    Xochitl Sanchez is the Senior Organizer at CARECEN-LA, the Central American Resource Center in Los Angeles. She works on the TPS to Residency Now campaign and was the co-lead of the Refugee Project in which she coordinated humanitarian legal and medical brigades to serve asylum seekers at the US/Mexico border. She is an internationalist and anti-imperialist active in transnational solidarity efforts in Honduras, El Salvador and Cuba.

  • Cristina Escobar Dominguez

    Cuba (Video)
    Cristina Escobar Dominguez is a Cuban journalist specializing in international issues. Dominguez is a Cuban television presenter and one of the hosts of the Mesa Redonda program. She is the first journalist from Cuba who, after 54 years, was able to ask on May 21, 2015 a question to the White House spokesman at a press conference in Washington.

  • Sheila Xiao

    Moderator

    Sheila Xiao is a researcher and community organizer. Sheila is born and raised in San Francisco, CA and is a daughter of Chinese immigrants. She now resides in Los Angeles and is an organizer of the LA chapter of the ANSWER Coalition and the co-founder of the peace organization Pivot to Peace.