On Thursday, September 27, concerned UM students and faculty, working with community members concerned with human rights and worker rights, will show two films about Oaxaca, Mexico:  Granito de Arena (about the movement for a democratic teachers’ union in Oaxaca from the early 1980s to the present) and Un poquito de tanta verdad (about the uprising in Oaxaca in 2006).   Both films are open to the public.

Granito will be shown in Haven Hall, Room 3512, starting at 3pm.   Poquito will be shown in Schorling Auditorium, in the School of Ed building (on East University) at 7pm.

The film-maker, Jill Freidberg, will be on hand to introduce both films, answer questions about them (after each showing), and update us on the most recent developments in Oaxaca.

Jill Freidberg burst onto the documentary scene in 2000 with her much-acclaimed film on the anti-WTO mobilization in Seattle, “This is what democracy looks like.” Since then she has continued to focus on neoliberal globalization with a critical lens, with particular attention to Oaxaca, Mexico’s most indigenous state.

In “Granito de arena” (2005), Freidberg focused on the formation of a democratic current of the national teachers union (la CNTE) in Oaxaca in the early 1980s, tracing its members’ efforts to democratize their union while fending off federal government efforts to de-fund and privatize public education in Mexico under the auspices of IMF structural adjustment agreements.

Less than a year after the release of Granito, Freidberg was back in Oaxaca to document the extraordinary civil society mobilization against the authoritarian Governor of Oaxaca.  The uprising began as a strike by la CNTE which, as in many past years, involved occupying Oaxaca City’s central square.  However, following police efforts to break the strike, it quickly mushroomed into a much broader coalition of civil society groups known as APPO.  The story of the strike and APPO’s struggles, from May to November 2006, is told in Freidberg’s just-released film, “Un poquito de tanta verdad.”

Sponsors:  Latin American and Caribbean Studies (LACS) program; Residential College (RC); Latina/o Studies Program; MSA Peace and Justice Commission; Migrant and Immigrant Rights Association (MIRA); Lecturer Employees’ Organization (LEO); Interfaith Counsel for Peace and Justice (ICPJ); Washtenaw County Workers’ Center (WCWC); Students Organizing for Labor and Economic Equality (SOLE).