Invited by the German Development Cooperation, GIZ, Hector returned to Colombia in May and offered theater workshops.

He offered his skills to facilitate dialogue amongst  leaders of the diverse organizations of Colombia’s Internally Displaced (ID) population. There are over 5 million people that have been Internally Displaced in Colombia, the largest population in the world, over Sudan and Iraq. Hector offered his methodologies to process gender issues, leadership challenges, and the many murders and death threats suffered by this most vulnerable population. This trip marked Hector’s second venture back to Colombia to work with local organizers for human rights, peace and justice.

ImaginAction is seeking more funding to be able to continue this imperative work, so please click here to make a contribution!

Diane Lefer joined Hector at the First International Theater Festival for Peace in Barrancabermeja, La Carpa de La Paz, where they offered theater and writing workshops. Diane wrote two lucid, informative and moving articles about the experience: this one for the website New.Clear.Vision and this one for LA Progressive. For the many of us who couldn’t make it to Barrancabermeja, the articles are a quick & inexpensive trip there and back. Enjoy!

Below is a short video, in Spanish, of the powerful festival:

Hector will perform Nightwind, an original movement-based piece reflecting on his own arrest and torture at the hands of Colombian police, in Los Angeles this June. Afterwards, he will offer a workshop and meditation session.

“Exploring the Unimaginable”

Friday, June 17
7:30pm
Club Fais Do-Do
5257 West Adams Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA

The event commemorates Torture Awareness Month, with proceeds going to support the Program for Torture Victims. Hector is a member of the Board of directors of PTV, the oldest organization of its kind in the US working with torture survivors. He would also like to extend warm thanks to those who contributed to PTV’s recent fund raising event.

For more information, call: (323) 931-4636 or click here.

ImaginAction added its voice to others this April, marching to close the School of the Americas (SOA) and end U.S. aided militarism in South America and abroad. Click here for a fantastic video by Eddie Becker documenting the actions.

The design and creation of giant puppets played a huge role in the march; their imposing figures, beautiful and charged with meaning, brought magic to the work. Click here for another video by Eddie Becker regarding the creation of these giants.

27 peaceful activists were arrested at the culmination of this April’s actions. ImaginAction stands in solidarity with them, and all those who have lost their lives due to U.S. aided militarism.

Friends! Please click here enjoy a radio interview regarding Hector’s work in Brattleboro, Vermont.

For more information about the workshops and performances in Vermont, click here!

ImaginAction and Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace (ICUJP) invite you to join them at the Los Angeles Times Book Festival this Saturday, April 30, 2011!

The panel discussions will take place at USC in the sanctuary of the United University Church on the corner of Hoover and Jefferson.

The schedule is as follows:

12:30-1:30 PM: “The Crime of Punishment, Torture, and the War on the Poor” Panelists: Steve Rodhe (Progressive Jewish Alliance), Hector Aristizábal,  Jim Burklo (USC Religious Life) and  Eisha Mason (AFSC)

2:00-3:00: “Interfaith Peacemaking: Hope for a New Millennium” Panelists: John Ishvardas Abdallah (Sufi), Anthony Manousos (Quaker), and Sarrah Shahawy (Muslim), and Phil Goldberg. Moderator: Representitive from Peace Kids/United University Church

3:30-4:30 PM: “Cultivating a Culture of Peace” Panelists: Stephen Longfellow Fiske, Joseph Prabhu, Soraya Deen and Susan Stouffer. Moderator: Grace Dyrness

Come join us in this important dialogue! Click here for more information on the Book Festival’s website.

Many thanks to Bill Hamilton for the lovely interview he conducted with Hector on politics in America, torture and his performance in Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig. Click here to watch it on YouTube!

ImaginAction board member Carol Gomez reports on how the Secure Communities program – billed as a means of identifying and deporting violent offenders – is already impacting the immigrant (Latino) communities in Los Angeles where she provides therapy to families of color at Casa de la Familia.

 ”Folks are expressing fears about driving, fears about seeking medical attention for their basic needs or calling the ambulance for medical emergencies for fear the family would get arrested (resulting in one elderly person’s death)….all real effects I’m bearing witness too in the last few days/ and weeks prior to S-Comm and in general since anti-immigrant bills have been consistently introduced in the name of homeland “security”.

I’m sadly also hearing directly from both sides — a lot of anti-immigrant and racist internalizing among both black and Latino families I work with here in CA — each side laying blame for economic conditions of the country of each other ….. while the real systemic/corporate/political culprits remain invisible nor held accountable.

Senseless black on brown/brown on black youth violence continues on the streets. And documented people’s contempt for the undocumented is visceral – even within families.

Meanwhile, sexual-domestic violence remains silently and pervasively at the base, alongside racism and xenophobia — the wielding of interpersonal power and control over those closest to us. Breaking spirits and bodies and creates fissures in our communities that continue to maintain silence and complicity on the matter.

We have a lot of community education and deconstructing work to do. We need to be constructing and connecting the jigsaw puzzle of these intersecting oppressions and violence — so that people can see that our destructive actions toward each other stem from our blindness to a larger systemic oppression that permeates our consciousness and results in our loss of humanity.

She shared this rerport from California Watch:

March 3, 2011 | Marie C. Baca 

California’s participation in a federal immigration enforcement program may endanger undocumented victims of domestic violence, according to groups that work with abuse victims.

Last week, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced that all 58 California counties had been linked to the federal Secure Communities program. The program provides ICE agents with the fingerprints of individuals arrested by local authorities; the agents then use a national database to determine whether or not that individual is eligible for deportation.

Gov. Jerry Brown has consistently defended the program as an important tool for immigration enforcers. But others say the initiative puts undocumented victims of domestic violence at risk by discouraging them from reporting incidents to authorities.

Camille Hayes, a spokeswoman for the nonprofit California Partnership to End Domestic Violence, said that victims of domestic violence are often arrested along with their abusers if law enforcement can’t immediately determine who is the primary aggressor. Should a victim be identified as an illegal immigrant through the fingerprinting process during the arrest, the victim could be deported.

“Even in the best of circumstances, it is difficult for victims to reach out for help,” Hayes said. “To erect an additional barrier in this process is completely unconscionable.”

Hayes said that immigrant communities are already less likely to report domestic violence incidents because of language issues and a fear of investigation into their or a family member’s immigration status. If the implementation of Secure Communities increases that fear, “victims may be more likely to stay with an abusive partner,” she said.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to requests for comment.
Launched in late 2008, Secure Communities was the Obama administration’s answer to the increasingly heated issue of immigration enforcement, and was characterized as a program that emphasized collaboration between federal and local authorities to capture the “worst of the worst” using sophisticated fingerprinting technology.

According to the state Department of Justice Criminal Justice Statistics Center, California law enforcement received 167,087 domestic violence-related calls for assistance in 2009, the most recent year for which data is available. Of these incidents, 67,702 involved a weapon.
California isn’t the only state dealing with the issue. In Texas, an attorney at an immigrant law center set off a firestorm of controversy after telling Women’s E-News that she no longer advises undocumented immigrants to contact police to report domestic violence incidents after the state adopted Secure Communities.

Much of the national debate over Secure Communities has centered on whether the immigrants being deported are individuals who have been convicted of a crime – the people the program was designed to catch. The Mercury News reported that the program has led to the deportation of 32,645 immigrants from California since spring 2009, but 8,933 of those individuals had not been convicted of a crime.
It is also unclear whether counties have the ability to opt out of the program. San Francisco and Santa Clara counties initially objected to participating in the program but were told they had no choice in the matter, according to the Mercury News.

Friends:

Steph Greegor has written a wonderful article about Hector’s work in Columbus, OH! The article can be found here .

As a member of the board of the Program for Torture Victims, Hector was pleased to get word of a victory for one of  PTV’s clients. 
In a major victory for anti-torture activists, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has ruled against Mexico in a closely watched case involving two ecologists, one of whom was treated by PTV staff.
Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera were abducted by the Mexican army in 1999 as part of a crackdown on activists fighting to save mountain-side forests from illegal logging.They were tortured into signing false confessions and imprisoned for two years before being released due to international pressure.

Montiel, who received asylum in the U.S. and now lives in Southern California, sought help from PTV staff. Co-founders Dr. Jose Quiroga and Ana Deutsch prepared the medical and psychological affidavits for his case against the Mexican government.
The court found that the army had violated the victims’ “rights to liberty and personal integrity” as well as their rights to due process and judicial protection.
It ordered Mexico to conduct an investigation of the torture allegations and pay Montiel and Cabrera damages.
“This is a victory for justice,” said Dr. Quiroga. “Let us hope that the court’s decision serves as a warning to the Mexican government and others around the world that torture will not be tolerated.”
To read more about the Inter-American Human Rights Court’s decision .
To read more about Rodolfo Montiel’s story/.