The Mosbacher Institute for Trade, Economics, and Public Policy at the Bush School of Government & Public Service is pleased to announce the continuation of The Other Side of the Border: Ties that Bind and Issues that Divide, a speaker series organized by Bush School Assistant Professor Aileen Teague as part of the Institute’s Borders & Migration Program. The series will host two events this fall with practitioners working on the Border and in Mexico and Latin America.
On September 28 at 6:00 p.m. Central Time, Jhanisse Vaca Daza will present “Politics and the Environment in the Bolivian Amazon” via Zoom. Jhanisse Vaca Daza, cofounder of Ríos de Pie (Standing Rivers), a nonviolent citizen movement focused on human rights and environmental rights in Bolivia, was one of many volunteers working on the ground in the 2019 and 2020 Bolivian Amazon fires. Vaca Daza is a native of Chuquisaca, Bolivia, and her story illuminates the challenges of administering international aid amidst a complicated political situation. She will also speak about the contradictions in environmental policy implementation often unknown to the international community, the local picture in Bolivia, the progress that has been made in fighting rainforest fires, and what environmental policymakers must know for confronting similar challenges in the future.
Then on November 10 at 6:00 p.m., Alfredo Corchado, the border-Mexico correspondent for The Dallas Morning News, will join us to present “Reporting Crime, Violence, and Narcotrafficking in Mexico: Challenges, Insights, and the Road Ahead.” It is planned to be an in-person event at the Bush Center’s Annenberg Presidential Conference Center. Corchado will describe issues he has encountered with press freedom in Mexico, speak candidly about the current state of the drug war and its intersections with Central American migration, and reflect on what policymakers on both sides of the border can do to best move forward given the lack of transparency in crime and drug issues in Mexico.
