Nestora Salgado on Organizing Indigenous Community Self-Defense

Nestora Selgado is a naturalized US citizen and a former political prisoner in Mexico. She was seized without an arrest warrant and unjustly detained in a maximum-security prison for two years and eight months by Mexican federal soldiers in August 2013.

This was a direct reprisal for her leadership role in community policing against organized crime, which has swept through the indigenous communities of the state of Guerrero over the last several years. Persecution of indigenous leaders such as Salgado, and the attempt to suppress autonomous community police, may have a broader purpose: to silence any opposition toward government neoliberal policies and foreign mining companies who had contracts to extract the resources of gold and other minerals from the rich resources of the mountains of Guerrero.

Socialist Alternative Vancouver and Left Alternative are pleased to welcome Nestora Salgado to this special event. We will hear from Nestora about her experiences followed by a brief commentary on the state of Canadian extractive industries and their impact on Indigenous communities. There will be open discussion. Translation from Spanish to English will be provided.