Dr. Pablo Piccato
Director, Institute of Latin American Studies, SIPA
Piccato is associate professor at the Department of History and Director of the Institute of Latin American Studies, Columbia University. He joined the faculty at Columbia in 1997, where he has taught courses on Latin America and Mexico. He has taught courses at universities in Mexico City, Morelia, Xalapa, Culiacán. His work focuses on the social and political history of modern Mexico, with particular interest in crime, politics, and culture. He received his B.A. from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in 1989 and his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 1997. His published work includes City of Suspects: Crime in Mexico City, 1900-1931 (Duke University Press, 2001). He is currently working on a political biography of poet Salvador Díaz Mirón, and on a history of Mexican civil society’s responses to crime from the 1920s to the present.
Dip. Gerardo Priego Tapia
Mexican Congressman (PAN) Chair of Special Commission on Attacks against Journalists and the Media
Priego Tapia has a BA in economics from the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM) and an MA in Public Administration with an emphasis in development from New York University. He is currently a doctoral candidate in Political Science and Public Administration from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). Priego Tapia has extensive experience in the private sector, in government and with the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) focusing on development, corruption, poverty, and the right to information. He has been an active member of various organizations including the Red Cross, Scouts, the Latin America Studies Association (LASA), la Sociedad Internacional para el Desarrollo (SID), AiESEC Internacional and Economistas Aliados para la reducción del armamento (ECAAR). Previously he worked for the Division for Public Administration and Development Management of the UN. He has worked in or carried out missions in over 33 countries throughout the globe. He has been a editorial commentator in regional and Tabasco state electronic and print media. Currently, Tapia is a Federal Legislator for the state of Tabasco and is a member of the Commission on Governance, Equity and Gender, Development and he presides over the Commission on Attacks against Journalists and the Media.
Alfredo Quijano
Editor, Norte de Cuidad Juarez
Quijano started his career as a reporter for El Universal. He joined Norte de Ciudad Juarez in 1991. He became the newspaper’s justice and security section editor 10 years ago. He is now the newspaper’s editor in chief. Quijano has participated in many investigations into drug trafficking, kidnappings and the disappearance and murder of women. He writes for magazines and newspapers around the world
Sam Quinones
General assignment reporter for Los Angeles Times
Quinones grew up in Claremont, California and graduated from University of California at Berkeley. He has been a journalist for 21 years. He spent 10 years living in Mexico as a freelance writer, and is the author of two non-fiction books about Mexico. In Mexico, he traveled far and wide, visiting all the major immigrant-sending states, and writing prolifically about Mexican immigration. Called “the most original American writer on the border and Mexico out there” by The San Francisco Chronicle Book Review, Quinones returned to the United States in 2004 and now works for the Los Angeles Times, covering immigration-related stories and gangs. In 1998, he was awarded an Alicia Patterson Fellowship, one of the most prestigious fellowships in U.S. print journalism, for a series of stories on impunity in Mexico – including one about a lynching in a small town.
Arturo Sarukhan Casamitjana
Mexican Ambassador to the United States
Before arriving as Ambassador to Washington in early 2007, Ambassador Sarukhan served as coordinator for international affairs for President-elect Felipe Calderón’s transition team. Prior to that he was the campaign coordinator for international affairs and international spokesperson for Calderón. He obtained a BA in International Relations from El Colegio de México and read History at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. He was a Fulbright Scholar and a recipient of the Ford Foundation Fellow Scholarships, and received an MA in U.S. Foreign Policy from the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of the Johns Hopkins University, in Washington, D.C. In 1993 he was commissioned to the Mexican Embassy in Washington, D.C. as the chief of staff to the Ambassador. In 1994, he was appointed head of the counternarcotics and law enforcement section at the Embassy. In 1998 he was posted to Mexico City as a Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Foreign Affairs on North American issues, including security and organized crime. Additionally, he was designated in 2000 as the Mexico’s National Coordinator for the Multilateral Evaluation Mechanism against Illicit Drugs (MEM) of the Organization of American States. In December 2000, Ambassador Sarukhan was the liaison official between the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs of Mexico and the Transitional Team of President-elect Vicente Fox and afterwards, was designated Chief of Staff to the Secretary of Foreign Affairs. He has been a member of various organizations and fora, among them the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations (COMEXI); the International Institute for Strategic Studies of London and the Task Force for Inter-American Security of the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. He is also a fellow of the Foreign Policy Association in New York.