“The asylum system is a rejection of anything that disrupts American universalism. It’s kicking people out who offer an alternative view of the world.”
Tag: Mexico
The US Arrested Her—Then She Changed Chicago
In the 1960s, Chicago’s white neighborhoods didn’t want Mexican Americans moving in. But one determined real estate broker changed everything.
How Mexican Chicago Remembers Tenochtitlan
500 years have passed since the fall of the Aztec capitol. But like that city, Pilsen’s power lies not in its buildings, but in its people.
Selling Violence
Some Mexican filmmakers now mirror global stereotypes about Mexico’s violence, which make the films legible for international liberal audiences.
“Reality Entails Risks That Fiction Doesn’t Know”: Talking with Everardo González
“There is definitely a line between victims and perpetrators. But that line is not essentially determined.”
Criminalized Borders and US Health-Care Profits
The pandemic took the health inequalities generated by US imperialism, and made them worse.
The Enduring Disposability of Latinx Workers
When employers fail to provide PPE, testing, sick pay, or job protection, the message is clear: Latinx laborers are “not us.”
A Quiet Disaster: Mexico City, Mexico
Apocalyptic writers would be surprised by the suddenness with which Mexico City, during the pandemic, took on the guise of a ghost town.
Isolation and the Incomplete
Assemblage in search of insight is the guiding ethos at the heart of two dynamic recently published books by Mexican authors.
Injustice in the Breeze
Energy companies promise to “go green.” Yet they use the same forms of extractive capitalism that have destroyed the planet’s climate.
Can a Novel Be Silent?
John Cage's concerts taught us to hear silence. Can novels do the same?
Books and Abandonment
Fernanda Melchor’s Hurricane Season makes other authors’ moral delicacy look like condescension.
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.
One Border, Two Walls: Douglas, Arizona, and Agua Prieta, Sonora
The sun is setting behind the Tohono O’odham Nation Reservation, and ...
What Future for Magic Mushrooms?
Hallucinogenic mushrooms have been used for centuries by numerous indigenous peoples around the world. These fungi appear in Aztec statues (like the one ...
The Immigration Crisis Archive
Back in 1954, the Eisenhower administration shut down the US government’s last remaining long-term immigrant holding facility, an ...
“The Political Body”: Radical Women and Latin American Art
Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985 was conceived 10 years ago ...
Reading with Strangers
On a visit to Bogotá in 2006, riding on the then new TransMilenio bus rapid transit system, I discovered that it sponsored Libro al Viento (Books on the Wind), a series of free publications ...
The Big Picture: The Promise of Sanctuary
In June 2015, during the early days of his candidacy during the Republican primaries, Donald Trump declared: “I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for ...
The Big Picture: Building the Wall
Since November 2016, I’ve unfriended one family member on Facebook, and have been tempted to unfriend others. I blocked a cousin who lives in Texas and posted about Mexicans taking American jobs. It ...