Seven activists will be featured at a conference hosted by the Department of Sociology and Anthropology on the “Defense of Migrant Families and Human Rights.”
The conference will be held from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday in Health Affairs Building West 1.404 on the Edinburg campus. Students, faculty and community members are invited to the event.
Jose M. Villarreal, Department of Sociology and Anthropology lecturer, will serve as host and a panelist for the event.
“The panelists are experts,” Villarreal said. “They are not only academics, but they are activists who are at the forefront of defending migrant families and we need to be more conscientious of those who are less fortunate and try to do the right thing, to help in any capacity that we can.”
The conference will feature Ana Bulnes, the consul of Honduras in McAllen; Norma Pimentel, executive director of the Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley; Eduardo Canales, secretary and treasurer of South Texas Human Rights Project; Cristy Andrino, the consul of Guatemala in McAllen; Elisabeth “Lisa” Brodyaga, immigration attorney; Nephtalí De León, author and muralist; and Jorge Lopez, an activist for the Chicanx movement.
Villarreal, who on his personal time is a community activist and advocate, said he visited the Catholic Charities Respite Center in McAllen. The center is a nonprofit organization that helps the “poor” and the “vulnerable population” in the community, according to its website.
“There were about 1,000 or 1,500 people there: families, men, women and children” he said. “And the staff is overwhelmed. They need volunteers.”
The department hopes that the conference will “spark” the effort in the audience to become proactively involved in the community and become volunteers.
“We are hoping to educate the UTRGV community and the Rio Grande Valley community of the real issues behind the migration,” Villarreal said.
Free tacos will be provided.
