How New Mexico Learned to Love Its Ephemeral Waters
Rollbacks to the Clean Water Act may have affected the borderlands more than any other region. States are stepping up—but there’s still more to do.
An examination of official discourse and the cartel narrative, the national security paradigm, and the drug war as a policy of extermination.
For today’s podcast, The Border Chronicle welcomes back Oswaldo Zavala to discuss his new book, The War Within the Words: An Intellectual History of the “Narco” in Mexico (1975–2020). In this discussion, Zavala examines and disassembles drug war narratives in official discourse and mainstream storytelling, both in news media and fictional accounts.
Zavala, a Juarense professor of Latin American literature, directly challenges entrenched and preconceived ideas—as he did last year, when we had him on the podcast to discuss his first book, Drug Cartels Do Not Exist. Zavala’s provocative work ultimately offers a new understanding of the drug war and a way to challenge what he calls “a policy of extermination.”

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Independent news, culture and context from the U.S.-Mexico border.