Mining operations have been in the center of borderland labor conflicts for more than a century. These photos tell the moving story of one such town, through its cemetery.
The Trump Administration is destroying sacred sites for more border wall, a podcast on a new investigation into the massive surveillance tower opening in Ciudad Juárez, plus more events and news from the borderlands.
Torre Centinela, a Mexican surveillance hub that will share intelligence with U.S. and Texas law enforcement is slated to open soon. Olivares discusses his investigation on Torre Centinela and the private corporation running it.
“This is the moment of solidarity. This is the moment for mutual support.”
As the late Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano put it in his book Upside Down: A Primer for a Looking Glass World, the terminology used in mainstream political discourse often describes precisely the opposite of reality. Cut-throat capitalism is free trade. Violence is law and order. Extraction of natural wealth from communities is increasing revenue.
So where does “border security” fit in to this? Part of the answer is that borders do not produce security but subordination. This point has been made for two decades now by sociologist Nandita Sharma (see the essay “Why No Borders?,” which she cowrote with Bridget Anderson and Cynthia Wright). The point of borders is not to keep people out but to keep them in line. Borders are foundational to a global system fraught with injustice.
The struggle for no borders, Sharma explains, is a practical political project.
Sharma is the author of two books, Home Economics: Nationalism and the Making of “Migrant Workers” in Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2006) and Home Rule: National Sovereignty and the Separation of Natives and Migrants (Duke University Press, 2020). She teaches at the University of Hawai‘i.
During our conversation, I wondered aloud whether “no borders” is still a practical political project, now that Donald Trump will take office for a second term. She responded without hesitation, “It’s not only a viable step, it’s the only step.”
As we concluded, we discussed the provocative quote from Italian thinker, philosopher, and Marxist Antonio Gramsci: “The old world is dying. The new world is struggling to be born. Now is the time of monsters.”
Those monsters are easy to identify with the incoming Trump administration and the nation-state it represents, along with increasing climate catastrophe. “This is the moment of solidarity,” Sharma said. “This is the moment for mutual support.” Indeed, she hinted, the moment has arrived to not only imagine but also to work for another possible world.
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Torre Centinela, a Mexican surveillance hub that will share intelligence with U.S. and Texas law enforcement is slated to open soon. Olivares discusses his investigation on Torre Centinela and the private corporation running it.
Todd witnesses a border security spending frenzy at the annual Border Security Expo in Phoenix, a Q&A with the author of a new book on El Paso's importance to U.S. history and immigration, and much more!
With more than 40 percent of the U.S.-Mexico border now under military authority, we discuss our Border Chronicle/The War Horse investigation examining this unprecedented expansion of federal power and its impact on border communities.
As federal officials fast-track billions in border wall construction and floating buoy barriers, local leaders and residents say they’re in the dark, and fear the worst.
Independent news, culture and context from the U.S.-Mexico border.
