Thread: Activist says Mexico Censored Her (snubbed)

December 15, 2006

Activist says Mexico Censored Her

Mark Stine KOLD News 13 Reporter

"This was not going to be a situation where I would be used for a photo opportunity with the President."

Human rights activist Isabel Garcia is standing up for what she believes.

"I was contacted directly and told that I'd been nominated to receive this very prestigious human rights award."

For the first time ever, the Mexican government gave their National Human Rights Award to someone outside Mexico.

Garcia told KOLD, "For them to acknowledge me really is to acknowledge the human rights crisis on the border, so I decided to accept it."

Garcia says she accepted the award with the understanding that she could speak to President Felipe Calderon and address the country at a press conference because she had a message.

She shared that message with KOLD News 13, before she left.

"Our message to Mexico is that it must demand respect, that it too must stand for human rights that we condemn Mexico too for the deaths along the border."

When she arrived in Mexico City Monday night, Garcia received some shocking news.

"I was told that, in fact, I would not be allowed to speak at the ceremony at Los Binos and there would not be a press conference."

Feeling disrespected and censored, Garcia declined to go to the ceremony and receive the award from the president.

"This was very serious commitment from our part to go."

And because of that commitment to spread a message to the Mexican people, she didn't want the government to successfully silence her. So, Garcia and her colleagues decided to have a press conference, inviting the Mexican media.

She explained to them, "About the reality of the border, people don't know that people are dying."

While Garcia was holding her press conference, President Calderon went ahead with the ceremony without her.

She said, "President Calderon spoke of me, spoke of our work. They showed a video about me, they even had a woman with black hair almost really trying to hide the fact that I refused to go to the ceremony."

So now, Garcia is left with questions.

"Why did they change their minds at the last minute? Why did they decide to silence me?"

Garcia tells KOLD she still wants the award. She doesn't know yet if she'll get it. Garcia says she'll be contacting the Mexican government soon.
http://www.kold.com/global/story.asp?s= ... =Printable

So Isabel throws a tantrum in Mexico, because they were calling the shots and she didn't get to do it her way! She is something else...

Couldn't she have it delivered to her here in the U.S. by an illegal alien from Mexico?

More on Isabel's rant...

Published: 12.18.2006
Mexico rewards work for migrants
By CLAUDINE LoMONACO
Tucson Citizen
Mexico gave its highest human rights award to Tucsonans Isabel Garcia and Robin Hoover for their immigrant rights work, but Garcia boycotted the Mexico City ceremony Wednesday because organizers would not let her speak.
"It was a very difficult decision," said Garcia, who co-directs the immigrant rights group Derechos Humanos. "I did not go there so they could have a photo op with me and the president. We did not want to go for anything other than to raise the issue of human rights in this area to the president and to the Mexican public."
Garcia and Hoover, whose group, Humane Borders, puts water tanks in the desert, are the first two people living outside Mexico to be honored by the Mexican National Human Rights Commission. Garcia, a citizen of both countries, shared the award with the Rev. Florencio Maria Rigoni, who runs a migrant shelter in Tapachula, Chiapas.
Hoover was unable to accept the official award because he is not a Mexican citizen, but instead received a separate honor recognizing his work.
Garcia said when she arrived in Mexico City on Monday night, representatives of the organization told her she wouldn't be able to give a speech at the ceremony with Mexican President Felipe Caldéron.
"I've been very critical of the Mexican government and their complicity in the thousands of deaths along the border," Garcia said. "I guess they didn't want to hear what I had to say. Some people were surprised they gave me the award at all."
Garcia has regularly called on Mexico to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, which she said left millions of Mexican farmers unable to compete with cheap and heavily subsidized agricultural imports from the United States and has led to more illegal immigration.
A representative from the Human Rights Commission could not be reached for comment, but a spokesman for the agency, Federico Gomez Pombo, told the Mexican newspaper La Opinion that Mexico was not trying to "silence" Garcia.
"That would be completely contradictory that we would honor somebody and then try to silence them about a subject that's all over the press in the United States and Mexico," he told the newspaper.
http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/daily/local/36024.php


Garcia, a citizen of both countries, this is the first time I'd ever heard about this. This is interesting for someone who was born in the U.S.