Buh Bye Kristi Noem, and who the heck is Markwayne Mullin? Trump's new pick for DHS secretary. Plus, an epic novel about the U.S. and Mexico's joint erasure of Apachería, and historian and author Lydia Otero on Tucson's racial and urban history, and more.
Historian and writer Lydia Otero on growing up in the borderlands, Tucson's racial and urban history, and their most recent book, Storied Property: María Cordova's Casa.
Mexican writer Álvaro Enrigue’s new novel, Now I Surrender, is an epic about the U.S. and Mexico’s joint erasure of Apachería.
Melissa and Todd discuss the election aftermath and what it means for the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.
In an episode that you’ve surely been waiting for, Melissa and Todd discuss what Trump’s election might mean for the border. This includes addressing the question, What is a “border czar”? The Donald Trump campaign seemed to know, spending the last several months claiming (falsely) that Kamala Harris had held this somewhat imaginary position under Joe Biden. And, then, after the election, it took Trump only a few days to appoint his own border czar, former ICE commissioner Thomas Homan, who might be the first such czar since Alan Bersin in the late 1990s. Melissa talks about Homan’s background and his central role in a border disinformation network—known as Border911—that profits off the migrant “invasion” narrative. She even coins a new term: the MAGA ego system.
This is but one point of many discussed in this podcast episode. Melissa and Todd talk about Trump’s mass-deportation promise and the Democrats’ uninspiring ironfisted campaign on the border. Todd talks about what it was like to cover Election Day from the Mexican side of the border. And Melissa analyzes the election results in Arizona. As always, there is a bit of a media critique and a recommendation on where to look for hope and solutions: the border communities themselves.
Please feel free to use the comment section as a discussion forum for any of your own concerns, thoughts, or observations about the election and what’s to come. We appreciate the collective knowledge and wisdom of our subscribers. Also, we wanted to let you know that we will be pausing for a week for the Thanksgiving holiday. We are grateful to have you here with us.
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Walking from a blasted mountain top--a planned site for new border wall construction--to a makeshift military camp along the border in a remote part of southern Arizona led to a tense yet revelatory moment.
Logan Phillips was born in Tombstone, Arizona—a town best known for Old West-themed gunfight tourism. In his new book, Reckon, Phillips explores his relationship to the unusual setting of his childhood through themes of masculinity, history, and land.
While menacing Venezuela and Greenland, an “unbound” Trump has unleashed the empire on itself in Minneapolis.
In the spirit of broadening the analysis beyond ICE, Border Chronicle cofounders Melissa del Bosque and Todd Miller discuss the
Independent news, culture and context from the U.S.-Mexico border.
