I filmed this video with Homero Fernandez for Alumnos47 back when Down & Delirious in Mexico City came out. Had so forgotten! Continue reading

Last summer, at the urging of a friend, I sent a 30-dollar check and 22 pages of writing to the judges at MacDowell Colony. I was either being delusional or just resigned to the tumult and shock I've already endured in the rough two years since I moved back to America from Mexico. Nothing here makes sense anymore. And everyone in a way is wildly deluded by the infections spread by technology. Me included. In November, just before I signed on to become editor of LA Taco, I got word that I had gotten into MacDowell for Winter/Spring, off those... Continue reading

It's like thirty years old but this is all of us right now. And it's true. Bob Dylan was on stage during the recording of this fundraising anthem gold from the 1980s (Remember "Solidaridad"?). But he was evidently cut out of the edit entirely, and it's kinda brilliant how they did it. Reference: Current mood: Bob Dylan in the ‘We are the world’ video. pic.twitter.com/Ki8xzt08A8 — Sam Hammond (@vomcruise) October 18, 2017 Continue reading

Me subí al metro, tome taxis de la calle. Pasé por los tacos que más que gustan y por los mariscos donde siempre me reciben de lo más chido. Me empede en la cantina del Sanborns todo una tarde porque era "2x3". Alcance correr a Antropología solo para ver a la madre del hombre, Coatlicue. She's pissed. This guy above is not her. That's Xochipilli, my dad. Talk later ... Continue reading

The sun on Friday was amazing. Life is more or less back to normal in Mexico City, seventeen days after the earthquake that everyone here describes as the "strongest" and most "violent" they've felt since the 1985 disaster. The anxiety is unifying. Put on autoplay and watch the compilation videos if you fancy reliving the trauma. Such a weird place, this city. You walk two blocks and see ten different startling things. So much good food literally anywhere the eye lands. It's like a contact high just walking around. A pulsating energy. People are kind, and also ready to be... Continue reading

** Open thread, check back for updates. Marcela Turati reports in Proceso that government and military personnel with experience in digging through rubble for survivors are complaining that civilians had "taken over" the rescue operations at collapsed buildings in Mexico City. The trained personnel say picking away stones from the top of a collapsed structure — bit by bit, as civilians have lined up to do since the minutes after the quake hit — does not work. "We made a tunnel, but we should have made five more," one unnamed engineer told Turati from an apartment tower that crumbled on... Continue reading

President of Mexico Enrique Peña Nieto and some kids along with the secretary of the navy Vidal Soberón Sanz, today from the balcony of the Palacio Nacional, during the military Independence Day parade at the Zócalo of Mexico City, Sept. 17, 2017. (Handouts) Left: Salvador Cienfuegos, secretary of the army. Super cute. Continue reading

This is an essay about growing up going back and forth between the U.S.-Mexico border, on the land where I am from — San Diego/Tijuana. It is posted at Highline, the HuffPost's long-form vertical, in conjunction with the release of a short film by Laura Gabbert on Friendship Park. An excerpt: Crossing the border was made possible by my privilege. On my family’s returns into San Diego, all we had to do was smile and declare “U.S.!” when a border agent asked our citizenship. We were brown-skinned Americans, and no other proof was needed. This was the 1980s, and others... Continue reading

One of the greatest and lesser known joys of a (sometimes joyless) Berkeley education was the access to so many truly great lecturers in the buildings that dotted the campus. There were many professors with rockstar-style reputations among Berkeley undergrads for lectures that electrified audiences: Pedro Noguera in education, Barbara Christian in African-American studies, Filippenko in astronomy, Abel in English, the brave Tyrone Hayes in integrative bio, and so on. Another such name was bio professor Marian Diamond, who died last month at age 90. She was the prof known for an infectious fascination with the human brain, which she... Continue reading

* Robertson and Olympic. This year I am co-judging the journalism prize of the Pen Center USA Literary Awards, with writers Maria Bustillos and Edward Humes. I was also one of the co-judges of the inaugural Christopher Isherwood Prize in autobiographical prose at the L.A. Times Festival of Books. These tasks have helped me confront my own writing, and challenged my relationship to prose as a reader and editor. I've also had a glimpse of the complexity of making an editorial decision with other minds, in disparate places, and under deadline pressure. Continue reading

A brilliant piece of performance art. These devices are so so satisfying when in use. Continue reading

* Sigman (left) was born in Obregon, Sonora. There’s a reason you saw more sugar skulls and calaveras on the streets of the U.S.A. this year. It’s one of the many after-effects of the second major historical wave of U.S. migration from Mexico, which more or less coalesced around the opening of the North American market and has reached net-zero in relation to migrants who are returning to Mexico. In its wake, Americans have adopted the taco truck, the liberal use of Spanish phrases in rap by major American hip-hop stars like Kayne West and Kendrick Lamar, and the Days... Continue reading

Via INAH: "Concurso infantil de baile organizado por el periódico 'El Demócrata'. Ciudad de México, 1920-1925. INAH. Sinafo.FN." Continue reading

* Campus de la Escuela Normal Rural Raul Isidro Burgos, Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, Mexico, 2014. It's been an honor reporting the news in Latin America. And it's been especially rewarding to cover news in Mexico, on Mexico, and especially for Mexico. Now, after eight years of doing so, I'm relocating to Los Angeles and picking up where I left off. I've been trying for weeks to come up with something decent to say about this change. I've received anxious reactions from readers asking why I'd leave, and believe me, I've been anxious too. It's a combination of personal factors and the... Continue reading

I once said this song is an "artifact, a witness, an indictment, a prayer." Ten years later, "Dry Drunk Emperor" by the 2000s New York band TV on the Radio remains the most stirring offering in any language of mourning to the victims and survivors of Hurricane Katrina. And more potently, ten years after the avoidable disaster, the song is a clear call for revolution. It's references to then-President George W. Bush as a "dry drunk emperor" of "gold cross jock skull and bones" and a "mocking smile" are reminders of the darkest moments of the Bush-era decadence. In the... Continue reading

Above, our VICE News documentary produced by the Mexico bureau, regarding the case of Alberto Nisman, the federal prosecutor who was investigating the 1994 bombing of the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association in Buenos Aires. Our crew spent a week in BA investigating this case, with local producer Gaston Cavanagh. It was one of the more complex stories I've had to cover, because every time we reached what seemed like a reasonable conclusion about something, the next turn, the next interview, completely flipped it. The assignment was also challenging because it dealt with the thorny themes of anti-Semitism, terrorism, the Kirchners, the... Continue reading

** Originally published at Munchies, on May 7, 2014: “Why is it that we have allowed people who are totally incompetent in food to design our food?” Diana Kennedy was saying, her gray and white hair lifting lightly in the breeze. “Our food doesn’t have the flavor it used to have. I remember the chile poblanos, full of flavor, thin-fleshed, very dark green, and that big. Now ¡olvidalo!” “Forget it,” she said. Today, there is actually a four in ten chance a chile poblano served to you anywhere in Mexico has been imported, most likely from China. Kennedy knows this,... Continue reading

* Photo by Hans-Máximo Musielik. Here's a link to my print feature in the January issue of VICE magazine, on the Raul Isidro Burgos Ayotzinapa Normal School, near Tixtla, Guerrero. Excerpt: It's said as a slur, but it happens to be somewhat true. The Federation of Campesino Socialist Mexican Students, uniting the student leadership at 16 schools across Mexico, including the one in Ayotzinapa, formed in 1935. One of Ayotzinapa's best-known graduates, Lucio Cabañas, was national president of this group when he studied there. Cabañas would go on to form the Poor People's Party, a militant political organization with an... Continue reading

* With my homie Franco, an hincha for club Newell's Old Boys in Rosario, Argentina, May 2014. Photo by producer Raymundo Perez-Arellano. There is no use apologizing. Intersections, like a lot of blogs that started in this long-forgotten blog big bang of 2005-2006, went into posting decline after the realization that it was impossible for me to keep up. Not while at the same time taking on a reporting and writing job with extremely demanding responsibilities and expectations. When I was in the DF bureau of the LA Times, at least I managed to re-post my stories, most of the... Continue reading

Check out the official trailer for the Guide to Oaxaca I am hosting for MUNCHIES, the newly launched food channel at VICE. It's a quick taste of the five-part, hour-long series I recorded in November with colleagues Santiago F. and Guillermo A. from VICE México. Yes, I tried the turtle eggs. * Previously, "BBC: Mexico's youth culture explosion," "Video report: Tacos de guisado in Polanco." Continue reading

* Photo: Bloomberg via Getty Images. ** Originally published at VICE.com and VICE News, on Feb. 24, 2014. “I’m a farmer.” So said Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán when the press asked him what he did for a living on June 10, 1993, following his arrest and extradition to Mexico after years on the run. In a way, no truer words have been spoken in the history of the country’s bizarre and bloody drug war. Guzmán was indeed a kind of “farmer.” The poppy and marijuana crops under his control were the basis of a multibillion-dollar transnational trafficking empire that would... Continue reading