Former member of Sandinista government to speak Wednesday, Nov. 17 - 2010-11-12

Oscar Flores to deliver second Payne Lecture at Paul Smith’s College

Contact: Kenneth Aaron, Director of Communications, (518) 327-6297

A former member of the Sandinista government in Nicaragua will deliver the second Douglas W. Payne Lecture on the United States and Latin America on Wednesday, Nov. 17, at 7 p.m.

Oscar Flores, a lecturer of Spanish and Latin American studies at SUNY-Plattsburgh, was director of bank credit for the Central Bank of Nicaragua during the 1980s.

His talk Wednesday, which is free and open to the public, will be held in the Adirondack Room of the college’s Joan Weill Adirondack Library.

Flores has an extensive background in economics, rural development and sustainable agriculture, and has led students in their studies in Mexico and Central America. He was also a founding member of the North Country Mission of Hope, a spiritually based humanitarian group that builds sustainable programs in education, health care and community and ecological development in Nicaragua.

The lecture is part of Prof. Kirk Peterson’s Latin American Studies class. Peterson established the talk in honor of Payne, an Adirondack resident who died in 2009. Payne was a journalist who covered Latin America and the Caribbean, reporting on human rights conditions, politics, drug trafficking, refugees, the environment, trade and labor issues. He wrote for publications including The New York Times, Dissent, Harper’s, The Nation, Double Take, the Journal of Commerce and the Lake Placid News, and delivered several lectures to Peterson’s classes.

Payne also trained political asylum officers on human rights conditions in Central and South America, was a consultant for the Organization of American States and testified before the U.S. Congress on Latin American and Caribbean issues.

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