On 30 September 2019, Bartolo Fuentes, Honduran journalist, politician and activist, will give at lecture about the recent history of the Migrant Caravans that tried to organize a safer, collective journey to the United States for the ever increasing numbers of poor families that try to escape poverty, repression and discrimination in their home countries.
Note: This lecture will be given in Spanish. Some whisper translation will be available.
- Speaker
- Date
- Monday 30 Sep 2019, 15:30 - 17:00
- Type
- Lecture
- Location
- International Institute of Social Studies
- Ticket information
This event is jointly organized by the International Institute of Social Studies and Impunity Watch
Building on his own experience while accompanying the caravans as a journalist, he will offer inside information on what happened. He wants to show how from all different sides and angles, politicians at the local and the international level have been inventing their own 'truths' and explanations for the migrant caravans and try to instrumentalize them for their own political benefit.
After the talk, the public will be invited to raise questions and open a discussion on how to move ahead in the present situation of increasing authoritarian rule, electoral fraud and generalized corruption in the region.
- How to stop the serious threats to democracy, the rule of law and human rights in the region?
- What can and should the international community do to reverse the negative trend?
- And what can civil society, solidarity links and development cooperation do?
About the speaker
Bartolo Fuentes is a Honduran journalist, politician and activist. As a long-time activist on labour rights and migration issues, he accompanied the thousands of Salvadoran, Honduran and Guatemalan migrants who formed caravans to travel overland to seek asylum in the United States in the last couple of years.
He is a former Congressional representative for the oppositional LIBRE party (2014 till 2018) and is an active critic of the highly contested November 2017 elections that kept president Juan Orlando Hernandez in power. He is also the editor of Vida Laboral magazine and the Honduras Labor web site and is a host of the radio show Without Borders.
In October 2018 Bartolo was arrested in Guatemala after the Caravan entered that country on its way to the United States, and was three days later deported to Honduras. He has since been accused by the governments of Honduras, the US and Guatemala of planning and leading the initial migrant caravans. He took refuge for some time in El Salvador.
