The J. Paul Taylor Social Justice Symposium takes place Tuesday and Wednesday at NMSU's Corbett Center. This year's focus is on Feminicide and gender-based violence and commemorates the 20th anniversary of Justice for Women. KC Counts spoke with Dr. Cynthia Bejarano, symposium co-chair and NMSU Regents professor of gender and sexuality studies and Dr. Teresa Maria Linda Scholz, symposium co-chair and vice president of NMSU’s Office of Land-Grant Inclusive Mission. Here is a transcript of their conversation.
KC Counts:
Let's begin with just an overview of the J. Paul Taylor Symposium, Social Justice Symposium, for those who maybe haven't attended before or are just hearing about it for the first time.
Dr. Cynthia Bejarano:
Sure. The J. Paul Taylor Social Justice Symposium began in 2005 through a conversation between the late, great J. Paul Taylor and the then-President Mike Martin. And Mr. Taylor wanted to know why there weren't sufficient venues to discuss social problems, community problems, social justice. And the then president, Mike Martin, stated, well, let's make sure that we make this happen. And so that was the beginning of the J. Paul Taylor Social Justice Symposium. It began through the College of Arts and Sciences, which has been its home over the past 21 years. And this is the first year that we're working with the Office of Land-Grant Inclusive Mission to collaborate and partner in the planning and coordination of this event. We've always had many partners across campus and across the local communities, but this is a really focused, concerted effort between the college. and the Office of Land-Grant Inclusive Mission.
KC Counts:
Linda, maybe you can give us a perspective on how that will enhance the symposium.
Dr. Linda Scholz
Yeah, so through the Office of Land-Grant Inclusive Mission, we also have a lot of partnerships system-wide and partnerships within the community as well. And so, it made good sense that we work closely with Dr. Bejarano on this particular effort. And also, it's grounding our land-grant mission and our community-engaged designation to ensure that we're really reaching out to our community partners.
KC Counts:
Can you identify some of those particular community partners that you really hold in, you know, the top tier of those that you want to be sure that you're reaching?
Dr. Linda Scholz:
Really, essentially any of the nonprofits that are in town. So, we partner, for example, with Catholic Charities of SouthernNew Mexico. A lot of their work is very social justice oriented. That would be a really important partner in this work. We are also going to be collaborating with FYI Plus. We have one of their counselors who is going to be there on one of the days that will be part of apanel on trans feminicides, for example. Also, we want to ensure that we include the J. Paul Taylor Academy. Specifically, what's unique about that partnership, is that we have young students ranging from 5th to 8th grade who are creating some artwork that we're hoping will be on a canvas that will be the backdrop of the panelists who are speaking throughout the day. And then also the Guadalupe Institute that has also donated some funds to help support the symposium.
KC Counts:
And let's talk about some of those speakers and exactly what they'll be talking about.
Dr. Cynthia Bejarano:
So those include some of the mothers of the missing and murdered women and girls, the femicide victims from Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua City, along with many of the human rights defenders, lawyers, women's rights organizations, directors that have been involved for over 30 years in this movement. And the children, as we understand it, are very excited to paint these images. And then also, as Dr. Schultz said, their work will be the backdrop of the panel for the, well, each panel for the symposium. So it's a really exciting project and collaboration that we've worked on for some time, along with Mr. Taylor's daughter, Mary Helen Ratje, whohas always led part of that component of our collaboration with the J. Paul Taylor Symposium each year.
KC Counts:
Tell me about coming to the agreed-upon focus of the symposium and making that on femicide and gender-based violence.
Dr. Cynthia Bejarano:
So this year was important because we're marking the 20th anniversary of the 2006 J. Paul Taylor Social Justice Symposium, Justice for the Women of Juarez. And it was important for New Mexico State to recognize this because of the issues of gender-based violence that communities everywhere, not just along the border, contend with. We've indicated that the femicides, or feminicides as they're known, marks a really difficult and dark example of a human rights atrocity that took place and continues to take place 40 miles down the road from us. We recognize as a land-grant institution, a Hispanic-serving institution, that we have neighbors across the border, that many of our students as well have family across the border. People in our tri-state region have been impacted deeply by the loss of life that feminicides represent. So, we wanted to commemorate the 20 years of what has transpired in this movement. Again, the families that have worked tirelessly to raise awareness and bring attention to these crimes, to these murders, the murders of their daughters, the human rights defenders that are laying down, literally laying down laws to codify the term femicide across Latin America, and also the artists, the young people who have been just shaken and moved by this issue.
Dr. Linda Scholz:
I also want to add that I believe that the symposium will also establish a call to action. And part of that action is for us to be aware that feminicides or femicides don't just happen across the border. but they're happening across the United States.
KC Counts:
Cynthia, when you said codifying this across Latin America, it occurred to me that we just don't call it that in the United States of America.
Dr. Linda Scholz:
Yeah, and so I think that that's really, I'm excited for the conversations that will happen as a result of the discussions that will happen with the panelists. And so I think for your listeners, we also invite them to come and attend and to contribute to these discussions and to think in a very critical manner about what these discussions call us to think about within the context of the United States as well. And many of us are bicultural and bilingual. We cross borders, too. And what does crossing borders mean as it relates also to the gendered violence that we bear witness to?
KC Counts:
Given the current stepped up immigration enforcement that we've seen over the last year especially, how concerned are you that current conditions will erode progress if there's been good progress along the way? One of the great concerns is that many people who are victims of crime will be less likely to report that crime.
Dr. Cynthia Bejarano:
So the topic of femicide or feminicidio has been one that I've been involved with for many years, since 1990. one of the speakers that will open up the symposium. Her daughter was killed in 1998. Her name is Paola Flores Bonilla. And I, since that time, in learning about her work and working with her and seeing her as a mentor and being quite grateful that she's accepted the invitation to come and speak, along with about 25 other people, experts, who've been involved in this movement for so many years, I'd I like to think of the term femicide or feminicide in this horrible phenomena as something that stems out of community violence. And so it's something that we should all be impacted by. And so to your question about how will some of the enforcement that we have seen along the border, but not just the border within the United States as it pertains to migrant communities or immigrant communities or border communities, I think it really deeply impinges on people's opportunities to report crime. And I say that as a criminologist. Again, I teach in gender and sexuality studies. As A criminologist, we've known this always. So it's important for communities to build trust and feel trust with law enforcement. And when you evaporate that trust or you see the disintegration of that trust, then it also exacerbates crime and it exacerbates violence. So I think it's all, there are threads of these issues that come together in this particular symposium, even though we're talking about femicide or feminicide, we're also going to be talking about crimes against people in general everywhere and also on this side of the border. So as Dr. Schultz said, I think it's important not to... consider contextualized violence as something that is southbound or in the global south. It happens in our communities too. We're tied together, tethered together. So whatever form of violence impacts one side of the border also impacts the other. And that's important for our university located at the borderlands. We need to be cognizant of that. And I also want to say that for a symposium like this, the J. Paul Taylor Social Justice Symposium has allowed us for 21 years to consider to really think and reflect on what's happening to our communities and how we can build relationships across borders, but within our own communities to address our social problems, whatever they might be. In this case, it's gender-based violence, femicides. We refer to it in the United States as homicides. But we want to reflect on that gender perspective and how that also affects people as victims of crime, as family members of crime. How does it impact and saturate communities in violence? How are journalists impacted by this violence? We will have a panel on journalists as well. Many, many different areas that that have touched upon this issue that are relevant and important.
KC Counts:
Dr. Schultz, what are you hoping that students will take away from this symposium?
Dr. Linda Scholz:
Our current students are the future of this work. We have incredibly talented, engaged students throughout the NMSU system that includes the community colleges. So some of our students are pre-law. Some of our students are going into public health, because components of this arepublic health concerns. Many of our students bring incredible assets, and that's their bilingualism and biculturalism. And so the lens through which they view the world will provide some nuanced and new perspectives to this work. And so I'm hoping that they'll go and, yes, be touched and impacted by the stories that they will hear, but I'm also hoping that that will be a form of inspiration and motivation for them to think about how they can contribute to research going forward. And not just research, but also practice moving forward.
KC Counts:
Because it really comes down to when you talk about the communities where at-risk individuals live, a question of trust and having those people that share community with them, kind of looking out for them.
Dr. Cynthia Bejarano:
And if I can add, when I referenced earlier about ideas of community violence, it takes entire villages to address these forms of violence. I'm really proud of the work that we've built on at New Mexico State and our community partners. I wanted to mention that in 2006, we featured an outdoor installation of 450 crosses where dresses hung off of each cross. This was an exhibit by an artist, Irene Simmons. She will be participating via Zoom on March 31st for a dressmaking and canvas making event at the museum, the art museum in Devasthali Hall. But I mention that because we will have a much more clipped display of that exhibit that Aggies Without Limits, which is a student-based organization led by a faculty member, retired faculty member Kenny Stevens is leading. And those students will be making a dozen, two dozen crosses for us so that we can display across the university campus. We've also had the Camp Student Council, the College Assistance Migrant Program that has been working with us, many of Dr. Schultz's units, staff, students. I don't know if you want to mention them at all.
Dr. Linda Scholz:
So we've got the different programs that support students across the system also. So Latin American Programs, Black Programs, Asian Pacific Islander, American Indian Programs, and LGBT Plus Programs. So it's the professional staff, the student staff, and then also the students.
KC Counts:
All right. So let's just let folks know the basic information about how to take part, when to take part, where to go for more information.
Dr. Cynthia Bejarano:
So we have a website with more information advertising the 21st annual J. Paul Taylor Social Justice Symposium. The title is Ni Una Mas, Standing Together Against Feminicides and Gender-Based Violence. And again, it's scheduled for April 7th and April 8th all day at NMSU New Mexico State University's Corbett Center. We will have several panels throughout both days, keynote speakers. The first 100 attendees will have access to free lunch at Taos Cafeteria, so please register and visit our website, jptsjs.nmsu.edu.
KC Counts:
You can remember it, J. Paul Taylor, JPT, Social Justice Symposium, SJS.
Dr. Cynthia Bejarano:
All of that, and if people can also please register for the symposium, I want to say it's free and open to the public, and also we will provide interpretation from Spanish to English. So if you're not bilingual, please don't keep that from having you attend. We will have interpretation available for you. And we have been working really, really hard, really diligently to create a meaningful symposium for everyone who's interested in this topic, who wants to better inform themselves of these issues, and then also if they want to participate. That would be fantastic. We will end with a candlelight vigil on the evening of April 8th at the Corbett Center Outdoor Stage. And we'd love to have as many people attend that as is possible, the entire symposium.
KC Counts:
Anything you would like to add, Dr. Schulz, that I haven't asked yet.
Dr. Linda Scholz:
So to the listeners, I just want to reiterate, please come and join. This is open to anybody who is interested, who has no idea about the femicides to people who do have some idea but may not know what is currently happening and some of the movement forward. So please come and join us.
