Border barriers on the river could be fatal during floods, say Laredo landowners, a reflection on desert narratives and the U.S.-Mexico border, and become a sustaining member of The Border Chronicle today, get some cool, new merch, and help us hold those in power accountable.
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.
On the Spanish thriller Sirāt, the concept of Saharanism, and our reckoning with narratives about the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.
The Maasai leader gives an on-the-ground look at the mass exodus of people from Tanzania after a violent land grab and talks about what the border really means for indigenous people in Africa.
This is the last and third part of my series on the border in Kenya. If you missed the first two articles, never fear! The first piece focused on the United States’ externalization of its border to Kenya. The second one comes from a trip I took to the border with Maasai leadership from the Kenyan side. It’s “reporter’s notebook” style. I describe scenes and impressions and add context to a situation where a private company and state-led border building have converged to violently evict people from their ancestral land. Today’s podcast will tie it all together through the voice one of the Maasai leaders who brought me to the border, Meitamei Olol Dapash.
The Maasai leader gives an on-the-ground look at the mass exodus of people from Tanzania after a violent land grab and talks about what the border really means for indigenous people in Africa.
Twenty years ago, Maasai leader Meitamei Olol Dapash snuck across the Kenya-Tanzania border to report on what the Otterlo Business Corporation was doing. In today’s podcast he explains what he saw then: The company was capturing animals, sending them to zoos, and starting a trophy-hunting operation. And now, two decades later, this company wants to expand its business into more land. This has led to attempts by Tanzania to violently evict Maasai communities from their ancestral land.
Last week, I wrote about this ongoing crisis. Here, Meitamei gives a firsthand account of arriving on the scene in June after police attacked Maasai communities. Many people were seriously injured and had to run for their lives. And he describes the humanitarian aid effort.
Meitamei is the director of the Dopoi Center located in the Maasai Mara in Kenya and one of the founders of the Institute for Maasai Education, Research, and Conservation. Meitamei has dedicated his life to working for Maasai culture and land rights. His mother was born in Tanzania, across the colonial border, as he calls it. As Meitamei describes, the Maasai are a “transborder” community, and the international boundary itself was and still is an imposition by European powers.
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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.
When Alex González Ormerod, editor of the Mexico Political Economist, started researching his book about the Mexican right wing, he
A Q&A and exclusive screening of a documentary short by award-winning filmmaker Bernardo Ruiz.
Each year since 1995, the Tohono O’odham Nation has held the Unity Run. “These runs,” Amy Juan says,“not only have their purpose as prayer for the people and the land but also put us on the ground to actually see what is happening” on the border.
Independent news, culture and context from the U.S.-Mexico border.
