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: Mexico
Growing Up in the World Made by Femicide
A dystopian buddy story shows misogynist violence emerging spontaneously—almost casually—from male camaraderie, from ennui, from dipshit youth.
Natalia Molina on “A Place at the Nayarit”
Writing Latinos is a new podcast featuring interviews with Latino authors discussing their books and how their writing contributes to the ever-changing conversation about the meanings of latinidad.
Death in Mexico Means Something Different Now
Mexico once cultivated a “special relationship” with death. But cultural globalization and rising violence is weakening that bond.
“No One Is There Who Has Somewhere Better to Be”: Talking Migration with Levi Vonk
“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.”
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 ...