SYRACUSE PEACE COUNCIL PROGRAM

Autonomous Education from Chiapas to Mexico City: Urban-Zapatista Links
A talk with Patricia Hernandez

Patricia Hernandez will be speaking on popular education in Zapatista indigenous communities and the role of urban academics as resources in constructing an autonomous education system.

Patricia Hernandez, a sociologist in Mexico City specializing in education and gender, has worked since 2001 with indigenous communities to develop their schools, following a model of autonomous education. Local leaders, who oversaw the project, wanted the community’s demands for land, food, peace, justice and democracy to serve as the content for classes on history, language and mathematics.

Her organization, Organizacion Zapatista “Educacion para la Liberacion de Nuestros Pueblos” (OZELNP) formed in 1999 and is now collaborating with a community organization in the outskirts of Mexico City to build an autonomous school.

Patricia is also engaged in feminist dialogue with a diverse group of women in Mexico committed to political change.  Since October 2007 female unionists, students, housewives, teachers and indigenous migrants have come together in the “Weavers of Resistance” Women’s Meeting Space to share the challenges they face as members of a social movement that Patricia says is “still permeated by a male-centered vision.”

Both Weavers of Resistance and OZELNP are members of the Other Campaign, the network of Mexican social movements initiated by the Zapatistas, and have campaigned to stop military and paramilitary aggression toward Chiapas indigenous communities.

Patricia and a member of the Mexico Solidarity Network will discuss:
–The meaning of autonomous education and her experiences
–the role of academics and other urban activists in the Other Campaign
–The role of women in Mexican social movments

Her presentation will be in Spanish with English translation provided by an MSN facilitator also traveling on the tour.

For more info contact Carol Baum at the Peace Council: 315.472.5478, carol@peacecouncil.net FREE TO THE PUBLIC.