In her new book, Belén Fernández is driven by an urge to expose empire’s death-making machine, even if it means exposing her own absurd participation in it.
Tag: Latin America
Escape from Earth: Raquel Forner’s Space Paintings
If the iconic NASA astronaut is a confident (male) neo-colonist, Forner’s Astronauts are infantile, unprotected, vulnerable.
They’re Not Metaphorical Demons: Mariana Enríquez and Magalí Armillas-Tiseyra
“As a horror trope, the child is always scary. It turns our notions of purity, innocence, violence, upside down.”
A Novel the CIA Spent a Fortune to Suppress
Mr. President shows widespread corruption around a fictional Guatemalan dictator. This did not please the country’s real dictators.
The Best Classroom Is the Struggle
“As a historian and educator of college students, my experience teaching on US imperialism is one of disappointment.”
Cuba & the US: Necessary Mirrors
Exponentially more enslaved Africans were forced to the lands that now make up Latin America rather than the United States. Where is their story?
This Review Should Not Exist
Latin American authors must defer to “Latin America”—as imagined by centers of literary power—to be translated, to sell, to make money.
Build Culture, Build Community, Break Fascism
On both sides of the border, artivistas—art activists—infuse their creative and political work with minority struggle and solidarity.
From “Crisis” to Futurity
Introducing a new series to push forward our thinking and action about immigration and borders.
Petro-Ghosts and Just Transitions
Latin America shows how hard it is for states dependent on oil and gas—that is, practically the whole world—to break with fossil fuel capitalism.
Storytelling Is Big Business
When creating and selling culture, you’re also selling a story about that culture—for good and for ill.
What Can Latin American Journalism Teach the U.S.?
In Latin America, high levels of violence threaten journalists today, and dissent has been effectively marginalized in the past.
Global Inequality and the Corona Shock
COVID-19 is the first truly comprehensive crisis of the Anthropocene era, affecting virtually everyone on the planet.
How the Welfare State Became the Neoliberal Order
Today's neoliberalism emerged when US policymakers built New Deal–style projects abroad—for private gain rather than the public good.
Can a Novel Be Silent?
John Cage's concerts taught us to hear silence. Can novels do the same?
Public Thinker: Geraldo Cadava on the Past and Future of Hispanic Republicans
“I was shocked to learn that Hispanic conservatives celebrate Cortes’s arrival in Mexico.”
Whose Spanish, Anyway?
Policing the borders of the Spanish language was a tool of religious and racial discrimination. Yet Spanish is not inherently imperial.
Books and Abandonment
Fernanda Melchor’s Hurricane Season makes other authors’ moral delicacy look like condescension.
How to Read Short Stories Like an Underdog
Departing from a fixed form, some Latin American writers employed the short story as a laboratory of writing.
Mexico: The Essential Neighbor
Paul Theroux’s On the Plain of Snakes is the richest portrayal of contemporary Mexico available to Americans, and an urgent one.