This award, established in memory of pioneerng producer and founding Rex board member Bill Graham, himself a refugee, is designated for organizations and individuals working to assist children who are victims of political oppression and human rights violations.

Alejandra Alvarez is a social worker and community organizer who was born in Mexico City, and has been living and working with indiginous communities since 1973. She created TADAS (Tecnologia Apropiada para el Desarrollo Agropecuario y Servicios; Appropriate Technology for Appropriate Development) as a vehicle for organizing development activities in Health Care, Education, Agriculture and Self Government.

Her specific request of the Rex Foundation was support for basic educational services (transport, supplies, and teacher training) for the twice-displaced children of refugees from the Guatamalan civil war. In receiving the 1997 Bill Graham Award, she said:

"In La Lupita are living now the new generation of the people that in 1987 [when she began her work] could barely believe that somebody was interested in changing their reality. Some of these kids are already starting school and now it is important to support them to continue with that for their own sake, and for the new possibilities that are opening up to Guatamala after the Peace Treaty. They know what they want and they are trying to become independent. It is certainly a new generation. All of them, the same ones that I saw in mud up to their noses, big bellies and very few hopes, have become at last, alive. I hardly recognize them with all that security in themselves and stubborness to live a better life."

The road followed by one large group of families illustrates the plain reality of refugees, caught in the middle, and their organizational and educational needs if basic continuity is to be maintained amidst the shifts of war. Alejandra Alvarez described her participation in this process :

"In 1987, I started working with several hundred Guatemalan refugees who had fled to Mexico from the civil war in Guatemala which took the lives of thousands of persons, many of them civilian women and children. They arrived in Mexico, ill and malnourished, gathering mostly in the state of Chiapas. There they survived in extreme poverty for many years, building small communities. By the time I started to work with them, 80 families with over 300 children were spread among three refugee camps.

"The families who fled from the violence in Guatemala were considered to be guerrillas by the Guatemalan government. To return home was not safe, and to remain in Mexico was very difficult. It was the children who suffered the most.

"The elected community representatives formed their own organization and learned to do their own record keeping, banking, reporting and planning. They gained confidence in themselves. They stood as an organization with the owners of the sugar cane fields to demand better payment and treatment and won the right to rent small pieces of land to farm food for their own families.

"Then the situation in Chiapas began to get very bad politically. These refugee families were uprooted a second time. Many families wished to return to Guatemala, but the internal conflict remained and they were in fear of their safety should they return. Refugees were still suspected of being rebels. All the families in one camp were forced by the Governor of Chiapas to move to another state.

"Then came the Zapitista uprising within Chiapas. These refugee families who had already been ravaged by war and looked on with suspicion by their own Government, were now seen by the Government of Mexico as likely perpetrators of the revolutionary movement that emerged within Chiapas. The families needed to return to their native Guatemala. Through loans and with help from US and European charitable groups, all of the families were able to return to Guatemala and settle together on a farm where they begin again to reorganize, create housing and plant corn.

"These children and their parents presented a request to us to help them finish their education. They wish to be trained in other tasks such as typewriting, health care, dental promoters etc. They said, 'we are going to live different lives from our parents' so we need to have different options for how we earn our livings". These children have organized themselves at the age of 12 to 14 years.

"They have a small school partly built and need supplies to finish it. They need to be able to pay a teacher so he can afford to not spend his days farming. They need money for supplies for the school and for each of 350 children. And the older children who have reached the secondary school level and are able to attend the local schools in the town, also need school supplies and bus fare to travel to the nearest town each day." Alejandra Alvarez

The Rex Foundation honors Alejandra Alvarez for her work with the Guatamalan refugees, and her desire to sustain the hopes and aspirations of the children themselves in overcoming the grave misfortune of their situation.