Daniel Hernandez Joseph, Consul of Mexico in Laredo, Texas, will present the Fourth Annual Cesar E. Chavez Address at Hope College on Monday, April 15, at 4 p.m. in the DeWitt Center main theatre.
He will discuss "Crossing Borders Mending Bridges: U.S.-Mexico Immigration Debates and Challenges." A reception will follow in the lobby of the DeWitt Center, which is located on Columbia Avenue at 12th Street.
The public is invited. Admission is free.
Daniel Hernandez Joseph has been Consul of Mexico in Laredo since August of 1999. He was previously director for migratory issues in the Bureau for North American Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Relations in Mexico. From 1994 to 1998, he had served the ministry first as assistant director for Central America, and then as policy director for the protection of Mexican nationals abroad. From 1982 to 1994 he held a variety of diplomatic posts in Austin, Texas, and Houston, Texas.
He has written several articles published in professional and scholarly journals. He holds a bachelor's degree from Earlham College and a master's in Latin American studies from the University of Texas at Austin, and has done additional graduate study in Mexican foreign policy.
The lecture series through which he is speaking is named in honor of Cesar E. Chavez, who played a leading role in the 1960s in organizing the nation's migrant farm workers, and was the first head of the National Farm Workers Association, later the United Farm Workers. Chavez died in 1993 at age 66.
The April 15 address was originally scheduled in conjunction with the college's commemoration of National Hispanic Heritage Month, which ran Saturday, Sept. 15, through Monday, Oct. 15, but was postponed due to travel complications following the September 11 terrorist attacks.