UCSC: Xip Xop oaXaca & Indigenous Strategies for Hood Liberation

Film and Workshop By:
Simon Sedillo

11:30 am Workshop: Indigenous Strategies for Hood Liberation

This presentation identifies several specific institutions, which threaten the lives of average everyday people everywhere. From banks and corporations to non-profits and universities, to prisons, weapons and drugs; what role do these institutions and industries have in making the poor stay poor, while making the rich get richer? This workshop also shows how the devaluation of traditional forms of self governance and self determination, has lead to the criminalization of entire sectors of society. Finally this presentation shares some indigenous strategies for self determination as guides for urban community (hood) liberation.

1pm Film: Xip Xop oaXaca

The implications of conscious hip hop have reverberated around the world, from south east Asia, to Chile, to Palestine, to Oaxaca, Mexico. Hip Hop has proven itself to be a recurring primary path towards a positive recovery from the trauma inflicted by poverty, repression and social unrest. The indigenous people of Oaxaca have been in resistance to colonialism for over 500 years. In the summer of 2006 Oaxaca, Mexico a city of one million, erupted into a six month popular uprising against the extremely repressive governor, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz. The uprising was met with state violence, which left hundreds incarcerated, 26 dead, and an unknown amount of disappeared. 30+ years after the birth of Hip Hop, its influence as a tool of community liberation and community mental health, is evident in the streets of Oaxaca, Mexico. This film demonstrates that the taking back of identity, territory, and community through the 4 elements of hip hop culture, is alive and well today.

Films by Mano Vuelta on 2010 Spring Tour

Simón Sedillo

is a community rights defense organizer and film maker. He has spent the last 8 years documenting, producing and teaching community based video documentation in Mexico and the US. Through lectures, workshops, and short films, Sedillo breaks down the effects of neoliberalism, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and militarism on indigenous communities, immigrant communities, and communities of color in the US and Mexico. Through collaborative media projects, Sedillo’s work has contributed to a growing network of community based media production whose primary objective is to share, teach, and learn from one another, about community based media production and the collective construction of horizontal networks of community rights defense.

Sponsored by the

UCSC MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chican@ de Aztlan)