Texas Monthly’s Balli Offers Sánchez Lecture Series Monday at 7 P.M

The 2006 A.R. Sánchez Sr. Distinguished Lecture Series presented by Texas A&M International University’s College of Arts and Sciences will continue Monday, March 27 at 7 p.m. with writer Cecilia Balli at the Center for the Fine and Performing Arts Recital Hall. Her lecture title is “Nuevo Laredo and Juárez Women’s Murders.”

This event is open to the public and free of charge.

A Brownsville native and writer-at-large for Texas Monthly Magazine, Balli lives in El Paso where she is gathering information and working on her dissertation and a book about the unsolved murders of young girls and women Ciudad Juárez, México. She is a doctoral candidate in cultural anthropology at Rice University.

Balli wrote “Borderline Insanity,” in August 2005 issue Texas Monthly Magazine. This article detailed the wave of crime at the Laredo - Nuevo Laredo border. Starting with the murder description of the barely-appointed Nuevo Laredo chief of police Alejandro Dominguez Coello, she detailed the drug cartel war, Los Zetas and the disappearances of U.S. citizens. She provided detailed information on the crime wave origins and the specific situations in which Mexican and U.S. citizens of this area are living.

Balli majored in American Studies and Spanish and graduated from Stanford University with honors. She has presented lectures around the state on the history and social dynamics of regional Mexican music, Juárez women’s murders, Latin American Music, and the history of the borderlands.

The next speaker, scheduled Tuesday, April 18, will be Dr. Dean Hamer, one of America’s leading geneticists. He will discuss “The Gay and the God Gene.”

For additional information on the A.R. Sánchez, Sr. Distinguished Lecture Series, please contact the Office of the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at 956.326.2460.

University office hours are from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.

Journalists who need additional information or help with media requests and interviews should contact the Office of Public Relations, Marketing and Information Services at prmis@tamiu.edu