Milwaukie, OR: Breaking the chains of violence in Mexico, with Saúl Reyes Salazar
Veteran activist Saúl Reyes Salazar has lost six members of his family in the last two and a half years to gun violence in Mexico. In January, he was granted political asylum by the United States.
The United States has played an important part in the escalating war for drug prohibition. Mexican activists like Saúl are reaching out to people in the U.S. to support efforts for justice and help forge a different path.
Saúl comes from Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, where he helped to found the municipality of Guadalupe in the 1980s. He served as a local councilman for Guadalupe from 1998 to 2001. His sister, Josefina Reyes, was a prominent activist for human rights and demilitarization in Juárez until she was murdered January 3, 2010, after one of her sons had been jailed and another murdered. In February 2011, Saúl’s sister, brother, and sister-in-law were abducted, and subsequently found killed. Saúl’s mother Sara issued a remarkable appeal to the kidnappers of her children in February, just before the family house was burned down. This year, he helped to found the organization Mexicans in Exile, in El Paso, Texas. You can read an account of the Reyes Salazar family’s experience (in English) and hear an interview with Saúl (in Spanish) conducted this week.
Saúl is joined in this event by John Lindsay-Poland of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, who will address gun trafficking to Mexico, the drug war, and what we in the United States can do.
Saúl comes to Oregon after Juan Fraire Escobedo, who had been invited to speak here, was refused permission to travel by air from Texas by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on January 30. Juan, who has applied for political asylum in the United States with his next hearing in 2014, has a GPS bracelet placed on his leg that ICE declined to remove.
Saúl brings a powerful testimony of the human costs of the drug war, militarism and gun trafficking, and is part of growing actions to forge a path to peace with justice and dignity in Mexico. Pease join us.
