Marta Sánchez Soler

In this Spanish name, the first or paternal surname is Sánchez and the second or maternal family name is Soler.

Martha Fernanda Sánchez Soler (born 1941) is a Mexican sociologist and activist. She is the president of the Movimiento Migrante Mesoamericano (MMM), a movement initiated in 2006, which aims to help mothers of disappeared migrants to find their lost ones, by travelling via caravan for several days along routes they usually make during the illegal trip to the United States. In 2016, she was one of the 9 inspiring and influential Latin American women named in the BBC 100 Women list.

Early life

Sánchez Soler was born in France in 1941 to refugees fleeing Francoist Spain. She was raised in Mexico and then completed her university studies in the United States, majoring in social science at San Diego State University of California. Her second husband, José Jacques y Medina, was a student activist, who fled to the United States to avoid an arrest for protest during the Mexican Student Movement of 1968.

Career

In the early part of her career, Sánchez worked as a teacher in marginalized area of Southern California. Then she spent many years working with impoverished populations. Through the 1990s Sánchez worked in education and defending the human rights of marginalized people. She was responsible for implementing the Memorando de Entendimiento sobre Educación de Adultos (Memorandum of Understanding on Adult Education) in Baja California, which was signed by the Presidents of Mexico and the United States. She developed regional educational materials in Baja California to improve the quality of education delivered to migrant students. As a teacher, she helped improve the education of populations considered geographically dispersed and marginalized in Baja California.

In 2005, Sánchez helped establish the Caravan of Central American mothers, in which mothers search for their children who may have been arrested, kidnapped, or disappeared on their journey through Mexico to the U.S. Each year, since founding the group, mothers from throughout Central American countries, gather and search along migration routes for family members who have gone missing. To raise awareness of the issue, Sánchez participates in conferences, like the 2nd Mesoamerican Meeting of Human Rights Defenders (Spanish: II Encuentro Mesoamericano de Defensoras de Derechos Humanos) held in El Salvador in 2013.

In 2006, Sánchez and her husband, founded the Mesoamerican Migrant Movement, to better facilitate the caravans and press for government action to protect migrants. Together with the movement, Sánchez Soler operates a caravan containing Central American mothers from Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala, who travel each year to find their children and raise awareness about the risks faced by migrants. Traveling the length of Mexico, but focusing on the southeastern border where most migrants enter the country, Sánchez has led groups for over a decade resulting in locating more than 250 Central Americans among the missing.

Sánchez and three other activists, Pilar Arrese Alcala, Claudia Medina Tamariz and Brenda Rangel Ortiz attended the North American Leaders' Summit in mid-2016 to urge the leaders of Canada, Mexico and the United States to deal with the problems of detention, disappearance and torture, which has plagued various states in Mexico during the last decade as fallout from the War on Drugs.

References

Bibliography

• Ávila, Enrique Bachinelo (30 May 2015). Crónicas de la vida: Columnas, ensayos y comentarios 2004-2013 (in Spanish). Xlibris Corporation. p. 895. ISBN 978-1-5035-6690-3.
• Blanchfield, Mike (23 June 2016). "Rights activists want Trudeau to push Mexican 'amigo' Nieto". The Globe and Mail. Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Archived from the original on 24 June 2016. Retrieved 11 December 2016.
• Chávez, Basilio Verduzco (24 March 2015). Cada quien su imperio: Preferencias institucionales y patrones territoriales de inseguridad (in Spanish). Editorial Universitaria, Libros UDG. p. 39. ISBN 978-607-742-173-3.
• Marlo, Mario (23 March 2013). "Movimiento Migrante Mesoamericano y algunas historias de migrantes". Somos el medio (in Spanish). Mexico City, Mexico. Archived from the original on 9 December 2016. Retrieved 9 December 2016.
• Martínez, Sanjuana (6 December 2015). "Madres centroamericanas demandarán al Estado mexicano por desaparición forzada" [Central American mothers will sue the Mexican state for forced disappearance] (in Spanish). Mexico City, Mexico: La Jornada. Archived from the original on 11 December 2016. Retrieved 11 December 2016.
• Maurer, Katja; Sälzer, Christian, eds. (July 2015). "Grieving mothers become activists". Annual Report 2014. Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Medico International: 8. Retrieved 9 December 2016.
• Melimopoulos, Elizabeth (26 October 2012). "Migrant mothers search for their lost sons". Al Jazeera. Archived from the original on 26 February 2016. Retrieved 10 December 2016.
• Ríos Navarrete, Humberto (27 September 2015). "Martha, defensora de migrantes" [Martha, a migrant advocate]. Milenio (in Spanish). Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico. Archived from the original on 16 May 2016. Retrieved 9 December 2016.
• "Aristegui y Sánchez Soler: las dos mexicanas en la lista de la BCC de mujeres inspiradoras 2016" [Aristegui and Sánchez Soler: Two Mexican women on the BCC list of inspiring women 2016]. Revista Líder Empresarial (in Spanish). Aguascalientes, Mexico: CEOS New Media Agency. 24 November 2016. Retrieved 9 December 2016.
• "BBC 100 Women 2016: Who's on the list". BBC. 21 November 2016. Retrieved 11 December 2016.
• ""Han desaparecido 70 mil migrantes en tránsito por México", Martha Sánchez Soler en CNN" ["70,000 migrants have disappeared in transit through Mexico," Martha Sánchez Soler on CNN] (in Spanish). Aristegui Noticias. CNN. 12 December 2013. Retrieved 11 December 2016.
• "Instan a América Central a presionar a México sobre migrantes" [Urge Central America to Press Mexico on Migrants]. The San Diego Union-Tribune (in Spanish). San Diego, California. EFE. 9 September 2013. Archived from the original on 9 December 2016. Retrieved 9 December 2016.
• "Internacional UABC" (PDF) (in Spanish). Convenio INEA. 11 May 1990. Retrieved 11 December 2016.
• "Quiénes son las 9 latinoamericanas en la lista de las 100 mujeres del 2016 de la BBC" [Who are the 9 Latin American women on the list of the 100 women of 2016 of the BBC] (in Spanish). BBC Mundo. 21 November 2016. Retrieved 11 December 2016.