Francisco “Pancho” Argüelles

Francisco “Pancho” Argüelles is co-founder of Colectivo Flatlander, and began working in popular education in 1983 in Chiapas as a rural teacher. He is co-author of BRIDGE: Building a Race and Immigration Dialogue on the Global Economy. Pancho is currently a training coordinator with Houston Interfaith Workers Justice and is an independent consultant on Popular Education and Training/Organizing Strategies, with the Highlander Center of Tennessee; the PRAXIS project; NNIRR and the Colorado Coalition for Immigrant Rights (CIRC) among others.

Pancho is Mexican, living in the US since 1997. He studied Pedagogy and was part of the student movement in Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. He later worked with Guatemalan Refugees in Chiapas; with Campesinos in Nicaragua (training promotores in sustainable agriculture); went back to Mexico and coordinated a research collective on Poverty and Environment; and from 1994-1996 coordinated “Caminemos Juntos” a rural development project in the mountains of Central Mexico.

In the U.S., he has worked mainly with the immigrant rights movement, especially with Maria Jimenez in Houston and nationally with the AFSC groups, the National Organizers Alliance (NOA) and the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR) where he was a board member until December 2006.