The Interhemispheric Resource Center

by Debra Rose

On February 26, the Interhemispheric Resource Center will celebrate its 20th anniversary by hosting a public address in Albuquerque by world-renowned linguist, political analyst, and writer Noam Chomsky, described by the New York Times as “argu-ably the most important intellectual alive.” Chomsky will speak on “Taking Control of Our Lives: Freedom, Sovereignty, and Other Endangered Species.” His address will be followed by a reception honoring New Mexico activism.

The IRC got its start in 1978 in Albuquerque, with founders Tom Barry, Deb Preusch, and Beth Wood. Tom had discovered New Mexico on a hitchhiking trip, and was at that time working as a writer for the Navajo Times. Deb Preusch was a carpenter apprentice and black-and-white photographer from Nebraska who had come to the area to attend college, and then gone on to work with undocumented workers in Arizona as a VISTA volunteer. Beth Wood, an Albuquerque native and house-mate of Tom and Deb, was a writer who worked alongside Tom on the progressive newspaper, Seers Rio Grande Weekly.

The trio’s first project, entirely self-funded, was the production of a slide show on energy development that highlighted uranium development on a Navajo reservation. The slide show, People and Energy in the Southwest, was translated into 12 languages and viewed around the globe. This early success started the trio thinking about setting up an organization to do further work, and in 1979 the IRC got its unofficial start as New Mexico People and Energy, later renamed the Resource Center. The IRC was incorporated in 1983 as the Inter-Hemispheric Education Resource Center, now the Interhemispheric Resource Center.

The group’s next project was a series of 32 reports analyzing the power structure of New Mex-ico society and industry, from ranching to telecommunications. IRC staff members were interview-ing undocumented workers along the U.S. border with Mexico when they observed that the composition of U.S. immigration detention centers suddenly shifted from mostly Mexican to nearly half Salvadoran. They traveled to El Salvador and Nicaragua to find out what was happening, and came back to write Dollars and Dictators.

When the book was picked up by Random House’s Grove Press, the team became known as experts on Central American issues to a growing number of solidarity work-ers in the U.S. and abroad. Despite other projects on the Caribbean, Mexico, and the U.S. Southwest, this reputation would chart the course of their work for the next decade.

The IRC’s border program began in 1992 with the production of an information packet on Mexico, initiation of the quarterly (now monthly) newsletter Border-lines, publication of the Mexico Country Guide, and the beginning of the Cross Border Links pro-ject, which documented a growing number of cross-border initiatives on a variety of issues such as trade, labor, environment, and immigration. Coinciding as they did with the beginning of the NAFTA controversy, these projects quickly earned the IRC a place in the growing policy debates sur-rounding the trade agreement and its impacts on the region.

In 1996, the IRC opened a Silver City office closer to the border. And in 1997, the IRC initiated the INCITRA program, an information clearing-house for activists, policymakers, and community members con-cerned with U.S.-Mexico border issues. The various elements of IRC’s border work were consolidated in 1999 as BIOS.

The IRC’s foreign policy work began to change during 1995-96 as a result of a series of conversations with other nonprofits. Those conversations led to a shift away from the IRC’s book publi-cations to an accessible short format that now appears in the Foreign Policy In Focus project.

In 1996, the IRC teamed up with the highly-respected Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. to produce an ongoing series of policy briefs that provide a pro-gressive foreign policy agenda to citizens, opinion leaders, and policymakers. Another sign of changing times is FPIF’s Progressive Response, an electronic foreign policy magazine that serves as a forum to discuss controversial issues in foreign policy within the progressive community.

Times may have changed, but Deb, Tom, and Beth are still work-ing and planning for the future. Beth left the day-to-day operations in 1989, and now serves as presi-dent of the Board of Directors. Tom is the editor of the Foreign Policy In Focus project, and Deb oversees the workings of the organization as executive director.