'Y Tu Mama Tambien' stars promote rights

"Y Tu Mama Tambien" stars Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna said a gala dinner they are hosting Saturday will raise money to support human rights and shine light on poverty and injustice in Mexico.

The $300-a-plate meal in the capital will benefit Mexico's Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights as well as Witness, an organization founded by singer Peter Gabriel that promotes the use of video and film to document human rights abuses.

"Documentaries show us the injustices in the country where we live, that this problem exists," Garcia Bernal told a news conference before the dinner. "We can't escape it."

Luna and Garcia Bernal, who recently launched the Canana production company, also want to use documentaries to raise awareness about failures of the Mexican judicial system, including the unsolved murders of more than 300 women in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas.

"Each day it's harder to live in this country and in this city" and turn a blind eye to the poverty and injustice, said Luna, who recently premiered his directorial debut "Chavez," a documentary on the legendary Mexican boxer Julio Cesar Chavez.

The actors, who starred in the 2001 road movie "Y Tu Mama Tambien," have vocally backed other social and political causes such as Mexico City's new law legalizing gay civil unions.

Garcia Bernal also criticized a U.S.-Mexico border fence as "absurd," while promoting the 2006 film "Babel."