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.
In a lively conversation, The Border Chronicle founders grapple with the last three months of militarization and surveillance, and ponder what’s to come.
What is happening on the border three months into the Trump administration? Well, you’ve come to the right place. Here, Border Chronicle founders Melissa and Todd spend the hour discussing just that.
Among the topics covered are Stryker armored vehicles deployed in El Paso, including one conducting surveillance from a garbage dump; DHS secretary Kristi Noem recounting an epiphany about a Target store by Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele (this epiphany helps Bukele justify the 40,000-person capacity “terrorist” prison accepting U.S. deportees); the chilling surveillance tower known as the Torre Centinela looming over Ciudad Juárez; a DOD spokesperson telling Melissa that “you know more than we know”; and Todd sharing the story of how he got kicked out of the Border Security Expo 10 years ago (yes, there is some good old-fashioned humor as well).
Militarization, surveillance, privatization, water, and climate change are all addressed as The Border Chronicle attempts to grapple with what has happened, what is happening, and what’s to come.
And since there is so much to discuss, we’d love to hear your perspectives about the last 100 days. Please feel free to comment below. What are your thoughts and opinions? Border residents, what have you seen? Anything of note? Please don’t be shy about adding to our conversation.
Also, here’s a few of Melissa’s favorite signs from the “Hands Off” protest in Tucson last week as mentioned in the podcast.
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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.
