Do you have questions about the recent buoy debacle on the Rio Grande? Our reporting has you covered, plus an important new hire at The Border Chronicle, and our new project Wall Watch.
As floodwaters swept hundreds of one-ton border buoys downstream, international bridges closed, commerce slowed, and officials struggled to get answers from DHS about a project advancing despite local opposition, environmental concerns, and treaty questions.
Hundreds of massive orange buoys staged for a controversial DHS floating barrier project broke free near Eagle Pass and are now drifting toward Laredo, threatening bridges, commerce, drinking water supplies and downstream communities.
Join us for an illuminating conversation about borders, belonging, myths, and oracles. She warns, “What we have created is a ruinous map for a ruinous future.”
I was so happy to get a chance to talk with writer, author, and journalist Lauren Markham about her insightful and page-turning new book A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging. In this conversation we take a journey through the layers of this book starting with a deadly 2020 fire at the Moria refugee camp on the island of Lesbos in Greece, we talk about borders and bordering throughout the world, maps, getting lost (both psychically and physically, as Lauren puts it), mythology and confronting myths, the layers of history both personal and global, journalism, and, sweetly, how oracles can be medicine. As Lauren told me in the interview, “What we have created is a ruinous map for a ruinous future.” Please read A Map of Future Ruins, you won’t regret it.
Lauren Markham has also written the award-winning The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life. Her writing and journalism can be found in many places including The Atlantic, Harper’s, and The New York Times Magazine.
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As floodwaters swept hundreds of one-ton border buoys downstream, international bridges closed, commerce slowed, and officials struggled to get answers from DHS about a project advancing despite local opposition, environmental concerns, and treaty questions.
Hundreds of massive orange buoys staged for a controversial DHS floating barrier project broke free near Eagle Pass and are now drifting toward Laredo, threatening bridges, commerce, drinking water supplies and downstream communities.
In February, the country broke an ominous record: over 68,000 people were being held in detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, more than ever before.
As immigrant families face detention, shrinking legal protections and the threat of deportation, Camp Hope offers children a rare chance to play, heal and dream. One former camper is headed to an opera conservatory in Italy.
Independent news, culture and context from the U.S.-Mexico border.
