The Chicano Latino Research Center (CLRC) and the Latin American and Latino Studies (LALS) Department welcome the campus and community to a free, public screening of Marcela Zamora's powerful 2010 documentary about Salvadoran women migrants and their journeys north. This free, public event, part of Alumni Weekend and a series on migration taking place in the spring of 2016, helps kick off the LALS Department's fifteenth anniversary celebration.

UCSC’s Chicano Latino Research Center and Latin American and Latino Studies Department present a free, public screening of María en tierra de nadie / María in No Man’s Land (2010, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala), a documentary about women migrants and their dangerous journey from Central America to Mexico and the United States, on Thursday, April 28, 2016, at 7:00pm at the Rio Theatre (1205 Soquel Ave, Santa Cruz). Professors John J. Leaños (Film and Digital Media) and Cecilia Rivas (Latin American and Latino Studies) will moderate a Q&A with the director, Marcela Zamora, immediately following the screening.  In addition to fostering a conversation about migration and mobility, this event will kick off the Latin American and Latino Studies Department’s quinceañera (15th anniversary).

Please note that María en tierra de nadie grapples with the violence of migration and violence against women and may not be appropriate for children.

This event is free and public, but attendees are asked to register here.

Marcela Zamora is a documentary filmmaker and journalist.  She has made 14 films about gender and human rights, including María en tierra de nadie and El cuarto de los huesos / The Room of Bones (2015), a documentary about the quest to unearth and identify the disappeared in El Salvador.  She studied journalism in Costa Rica and documentary filmmaking in Cuba and has worked for Al Jazeera, TeleSUR, and Elfaro.net, Latin America's first online newspaper.

This free, public event is part of Borders and Belonging:  A Series of Events on Human Migration and enjoys the support of the UC Santa Cruz Foundation, Chicano Latino Research Center, University Relations, and Department of Latin American and Latino Studies.

Migration is both a process and state. Some migrants move: they fly, cling to moving trains, scale walls, and cross rivers and oceans. Others get stuck--for example, in refugee camps, border cities, or the state's red tape. In The Beast (Los migrantes que no importan, in the original Spanish), intrepid Salvadoran journalist Óscar Martínez accompanies migrants on "the Beast," the train that travels from Central America through Mexico to the United States. Meanwhile, UCSC Professor Emeritus Lewis Watts has captured some of the stasis of migration in his photos of “the Jungle,” the refugee camp near Calais, France.  Mr. Martínez discusses the migrant trail and Professor Watts shares some of the photos he took in and around Calais in the fall of 2015 at this free, public event.  Professor Jennifer González (History of Art and Visual Culture) moderates their conversation.

This event is free and public, but attendees are asked to register here.

Óscar Martínez is the author of Los migrantes que no importan:  En el camino con los centroamericanos indocumentados en México (Icaria/El Faro, 2010), which was translated by Daniela Maria Ugaz and John Washington as The Beast:  Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail (Verso, 2013).  The New York Times has described Mr. Martínez's writing as "graceful" and "incisive."  His second book, A History of Violence, is forthcoming from Verso in 2016.  Based in El Salvador, he writes for Elfaro.net, Latin America's first online newspaper.

Lewis Watts joined the Art Department at UC Santa Cruz in 2001 after having taught at UC Berkeley for 23 years.  He is a photographer of cultural and urban landscapes, with a focus on the African diaspora.  He has photographed African and Afro-descent communities in the United States, Latin America, and Europe and is the co-author (with Elizabeth Pepin) of Harlem of the West:  The San Francisco Jazz Fillmore Era (Chronicle Books, 2005) and (with Eric Porter) New Orleans Suite:  Music and Culture in Transition (University of California, 2013).

This free, public event is part of Alumni Weekend and Borders and Belonging: A Series of Events on Human Migration.  The CLRC is proud to cosponsor it with University Relations, the Latin American and Latino Studies Department, and the Division of Social Sciences, with generous support from the UC Santa Cruz Foundation.