Mexico
Benjamín Santamaría Ochoa
Benjamín Santamaría Ochoa is an accomplished writer, poet, actor, teacher
and longstanding activist for the human rights of children. He fled Mexico
in the summer of 2002 after his lawyer was shot to death by assailants who
left a note behind which threatened some colleagues involved with her on
human rights issues. He published two books in Spanish aimed at raising
youth awareness of social justice issues: Don't Forget, Mexico 68, a short
novel on the massacre of students in Mexico, supported by the CIA, and
Colour your Rights (Only For Those Children by Heart), a friendly version of
the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. In 1997 he was appointed the
first Ombudsman for the children of Durango, north of Mexico.
Street kids gave him the name of The Monkey King while working for them in
Mexico City.
He had lead, presented and directed several Popular Theatre plays for children and youth in the USA and South America. In Canada he presented several versions of the play Acting for a Radical Childhood. He has presented The Sacred Training to Liberate all Desert Roses, a play on human trafficking, workshops, storytelling and lectures in colleges, cultural centres and universities.
Benjamín Santamaría has a youth novel called Tales of the Monkey King, published in Canada by Tundra Books. He is working on several manuscripts for children and young readers: The Forbidden Report of the Children of Durango (based on the report which prompted threats in Durango, turned into a realistic horror novel), The Colour of the Street (a poetic novel that tells the hidden history of the American Continent) and a new version of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, made with stories from all cultures, times and civilizations from around the world. He also wrote an adult poetry booklet called Zen Poetics, and a memoir of his experience as a refugee in Canada.
Currently he is the founder and Executive Director of a non-profit organization called Desert Roses, the aim of which is to raise awareness of human rights issues and to promote self realization among youth and children.
Emma Beltran
Emma Beltran is a poet from Mexico. Since 1994, she has been involved in the struggle of indigenous peoples facilitating poetry and popular theatre workshops for women and children throughout Mexico. Beltran was a founding member of the first community radio station in Mexico’s history during the student strike at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1999. This work caused her to be subject to political charges, kidnapping and torture, by the Mexican National Army (March 2001). Exiled in Canada since May 2002, Beltran was an award-winning artist selected for Artscape’s Gibraltar Point International Artist Residency Program in 2005. Her poetry has been published in various literary journals and anthologies. She is a member of PEN Canada’s Writers in Exile Network and was a Writer in Residence at the University of Windsor during the spring of 2006. Beltran had recently finalized her participation at the Wired Writing Studio at The Banff Centre for the Arts, from which she was granted a full-scholarship.
Currently she is working as a Writer-Consultant for the TAXI-Project with PEN Canada and ARCfest and is a member of freeDimensional, an international organization that creates community arts space and local resources for the support and protection of individuals who create dialogue on global issues and inequalities through their art and media.
