Vol. 73/No. 13      April 6, 2009

De la Paz, chair of the conference organizing committee, said in a March 22 phone interview from Monterrey that the gathering will be “a dialogue among participants from Mexico, the United States, Cuba, and other countries in the Americas. It will draw on the ideas represented by José Martí, Benito Juárez, and Abraham Lincoln” and their political legacy for social struggles throughout the Americas today.

The conference will be held on the campus of the Autonomous University of Nuevo León. Professors and graduate students from the schools of philosophy and social work, among others, will be participating.

Several dozen delegates are coming from universities in the western Mexico states of Colima and Nayarit, de la Paz reported. Others will come from the University of Guadalajara’s Martí Studies Program, the Autonomous University of Coahuila, and three Mexico City campuses—the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM), and Latin American School of Social Sciences (FLACSO).

A featured speaker will be well-known Mexican writer Pablo González Casanova. Another special guest is Raúl Vera, bishop of Saltillo in Coahuila state and a prominent indigenous rights advocate.

There will be about 20 delegates from Cuba, including Dr. Ana Sánchez, director of the Center for Martí Studies, and Rubén Zardoya, rector of the University of Havana, as well as professors from the universities of Havana and Cienfuegos. Ten people are coming from Venezuela, two from Colombia, and at least one from the Dominican Republic.

A keynote presentation will be given by Armando Hart, an historic leader of the Cuban Revolution and today director of the Martí Program in Cuba. Hart has written extensively on Martí, including his recent book José Martí: Apóstol de Nuestra América (Apostle of Our America).

The two-day conference includes plenary sessions and workshops. Several panels will take up the relevance of the political legacy of Juárez, Lincoln, and Martí. They were leaders, respectively, of the Mexican revolutionary struggle against the landed oligarchy and European intervention in the 1850s and ’60s; the second American revolution—the civil war that ended chattel slavery—in the 1860s; and the Cuban independence war of 1895 against Spanish colonial rule.

Martí, warning that U.S. imperialist domination would block the popular aspirations for which Latin America’s independence struggles were waged, summoned the people of “Our America” to conquer their “second independence.” In a letter written the day before his death in combat on May 19, 1895, Martí said his goal was, “through winning Cuba’s independence, to prevent the United States from expanding throughout the Antilles and falling with greater force on our American lands.”

To register or for more information on the May 18-19 conference, write to alma2008@mail.uh.edu or martijuarezlinconconferencia@gmail.com. Or call organizers in Monterrey at (011-52-81) 8300-4169.

New hotel information is now available. Special room rates for conference participants have been arranged with the Howard Johnson Hotel in Monterrey’s Macroplaza. To make a reservation, e-mail Leticia Mora at reservaciones@hojomonterrey.com.mx or call (011-52-81) 8380-6030.

More information on the conference will be posted to a new web site, currently under construction, at www.conferenciamartijuarezlincoln.com.  
 
 
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