Granito de Arena, SW Tour

Granito de Arena did a whirlwind regional screening tour in the southwest, starting in LA and winding up in San Antonio, TX. Stops along the way included: Tempe, Tucson, Albuquerque, Las Vegas (NM), Farmington, Austin, and San Anto.

While I was in Farmington, New Mexico, I got the news about the brutal police attack in San Salvador Atenco, in the state of Mexico. When I got to San Antonio, I got together with my good friends from the Southwest Workers Union and we got on down to the Mexican consulate to make some noise.



















I felt pretty powerless those days. I had spent a lot of time in Atenco and knew a lot of the folks who were being beaten and imprisoned. From Texas, it felt like there was so little I / we could do. I poured a lot of time into translating articles from Narco News, about the Atenco situation, from Spanish into English.

But back to the tour. In Tempe, the film screened as part of the Indigenous Issues and Voices in Educational Research and Assessment conference at ASU. Indigenous educators from all over the US attended. Some schoolteachers from southern mexico who are studying at ASU participated in the post-screening discussion.



















The film screened twice in Albuquerque, NM...once on campus and once at the Albuquerque Center for Peace and Justice. In Las Vegas, NM, I was hosted by the Las Vegas Peace and Justice Center. Great screening, great town. The post-screening discussion led to the formation of a statewide group analyzing the impacts of No Child Left Behind.

In Austin, the film showed to a packed house at Resistencia Books, and in San Antonio, we had a great screening at the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center.

Trinational Coalition in Defense of Public Education, Oaxaca, April, 2006

In April, 2006, over 350 public schoolteachers and professors from Canada, the United States, Mexico, Guatemala, and Bolivia, came together for four days in Oaxaca, Mexico. They exchanged experiences, built bridges for teacher solidarity, and learned about the policies impacting public education in each country.

Granito de Arena screened for a crowd of over 250 people, on the third day of the conference.

Schoolteacher from Bolivia makes a presentation about indigenous education in Bolivia, at the Trinational Conference in Defense of Public Education, in Oaxaca, Mexico.

Teacher from San Mateo del Mar, Oaxaca, demonstrates how she teaches children to read in their native language of Huave.