The Mystical and Militarized Desert
On the Spanish thriller Sirāt, the concept of Saharanism, and our reckoning with narratives about the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.
Arts & Culture
43 articles
The Mystical and Militarized Desert
On the Spanish thriller Sirāt, the concept of Saharanism, and our reckoning with narratives about the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.
The Borderlands’ Lost Third Country
Mexican writer Álvaro Enrigue’s new novel, Now I Surrender, is an epic about the U.S. and Mexico’s joint erasure of Apachería.
How Do We Get Out of This?
At Monterrey, Mexico’s MARCO, artist Teresa Margolles seeks an exit from the apocalypse.
The Lives That Cotton Made
Cristina Rivera Garza's new book, Autobiography of Cotton, traces family history through the borderlands' cotton industry.
The Nature of Violence
Legado de Fieras, an exhibit by Sonoran artist Miriam Salado, reflects on the natural world and the artifacts of human violence.
“Re-envision No More Division”: A Reflective Photo Essay of 2025
Take a photographic stroll in 2025--from Inauguration Day in January to unauthorized cows crossing the Rio Grande in the fall--as we seek a “different way forward.”
“A border / was placed upon / land and dermis”
A Q&A with author Raquel Gutiérrez on art, the apocalypse, Interstate 10, and their new poetry book, Southwest Reconstruction.
How Do You Live in a ‘Disabled Ecology’?
A new exhibition in Tucson commemorates community resistance to the borderlands’ military-industrial complex.
“We pay for borders with everything"
An interview with Russ McSpadden about his debut poetry collection, Borderlings.
Cabeza de Vaca—Reincarnated as a Cactus
A newly available film tells the story of the borderlands' first conquistador from an unexpected point of view.
Filmmaker Alex Rivera on his Cult Classic "Sleep Dealer", and Creating a New Cinema for the Border
See Sleep Dealer at the Fox Theater in Tucson on October 15 with a panel, featuring Alex Rivera, and an audience Q&A afterward.
Wild Waters and Unfulfilled Promises
Photographer Eunice Adorno captures Mexico’s aging dams as “monuments to an idea of progress that never arrived."