From New Mexico to Costa Rica

Pan American group sets sights on Costa Rica - Alamogordo Daily News

Pan American group sets sights on Costa Rica
Alamogordo Daily News
By Bev Eckman-Onyskow, For the Daily News
Article Launched: 09/03/2008 12:00:00 AM MDT

Belong to a New Mexico Pan American Round Table and see the world, or at least the Western Hemisphere.

A delegation of seven women is headed to San Jose, Costa Rica, for the Alliance of Pan American Round Tables international convention Sept. 17-21.

They are Charlene Garing of La Luz, Pan Am state director and director of the Alamogordo Table; Sadie Valverde, associate state director from the Las Cruces Table; Cecelia Rivera, director of the Albuquerque I Table; Gayle Guaderrama, state parliamentarian, the official delegate from Las Cruces; Janey Brink, alternate delegate from Albuquerque I; delegate Narcisa Zarate, also from Las Cruces; and Pilar Ontiveros, an alternate from Las Cruces.

The women firmed up their plans at the Aug. 23 state Pan Am board meeting in Socorro. A colorful new Alamogordo Table yearbook, put together by Mannie Salgado of La Luz, will go to the convention with the delegates.

There are five Pan American Round Tables in New Mexico -- one in Alamogordo, two in Albuquerque, one in Las Cruces and one in Deming.

There are Pan American Round Tables in 22 countries in the Western Hemisphere. Garing said there are three in California, 28 in Texas, two in Washington, D.C., two in Oklahoma and one in
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Miami. The Alamogordo Table celebrated its 43rd birthday in January.

"Going to the conventions, I've made friends from many different countries, including the Dominican Republic, Argentina and Mexico," Garing said. She is an archaeologist and spends part of her time doing fieldwork in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico.

"I'm going as the state director from New Mexico, and also as the delegate from the Alamogordo Table," Garing continued. "We expect hundreds of delegates in Costa Rica."

Guaderrama said other concerns that will be addressed "are women's issues in South and Central America, like poverty, abuse and education and medical needs of women and children."

There will also be an election of new Pan American Alliance officers.

So far, the New Mexico delegates have been to Alliance conventions in Puebla, Mexico; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Monterrey, Mexico; Cordova, Argentina; and Corpus Christi, Texas, over the last decade.

The Alliance convention moves around the Western Hemisphere. The current one is in the Central America, so projections are that the next, in 2010, could be in Mexico, and then possibly followed by South America in 2012 and back to the United States in 2014.

"I'm all excited about going to Costa Rica," Guaderrama said. "I'm looking forward to visiting a new place, seeing friends and sight-seeing. I've heard it's a jewel down there."

The fun has a purpose, Garing said.

"We're not getting together just to have a good time. You have to be a spokesperson for people who want to learn about other countries," she said.

That is the purpose of the Pan American Alliance, "furthering of knowledge, understanding and friendship between people of the Americas." The Alamogordo Table provides scholarships and donates bilingual material on the cultures of Latin American countries to libraries.

For example, Florence Terry Griswold founded the first Pan American Round Table Oct. 16, 1916, in San Antonio, Texas, to help other women. She enlisted friends for the purpose of providing housing and care for women and children who were refugees from the violence of the Mexican Revolution.

In doing so, she and her friends saw the need for better understanding among the peoples of the Americas and believed women could best advance this tenet, according to Pan American history in the Alamogordo yearbook.

Griswold structured the Pan American Round Table concept after the Pan American Union, the oldest regional society of nations in the world, which is now the OAS, the Organization of American States.

In 1939 in one of her speeches, Griswold said, "If you study and watch and learn all about the countries of the Americas, you will become authorities yourselves. Think what it means to know the geography, history and culture of a hemisphere."

Each month each table puts on a program developing an overall theme. The theme for 2008-09 is "History, Customs, Arts and the Impact on the Western Hemisphere" of a given country. Each member is assigned a country for the program year, from Argentina through Canada and from the United States to Venezuela.

Garing has risen to a prominent position in the Pan American Alliance as New Mexico state director, but she started as a walk-on.

"I read in the paper that Pan Am was sponsoring a 'marienda,' a picnic. I went and Eve Jaenke and Helen Baumgartner, who were two of the founders, took me under their wing," Garing said.

"I literally walked in off the street. I thought I needed to get involved in something, and this was the only thing I was interested in."


Bev Eckman-Onyskow is a a member of the Alamogordo Pan American Round Table. E-mail her at beckmanonyskow@aol.com.