My essay, The Ugly History at the Root of the Border Standoff, appeared in the March 3rd edition of the NYT Sunday Review. In the piece, I argue for analyzing current border disputes and much border policy as the latest iteration of the nation’s centuries old frontier wars.
To many Americans, the U.S.-Mexico border is imagined as a remote outpost, a site of immigration and drug smuggling and distant to U.S. life. But border politics has powerfully influenced elections, public spending and plays a critical role in shaping national identity. It is also a political tool for delusional politics where facts and data […]
Survivors of the Uvalde massacre and the public still have not received a full accounting of the May 2022 mass killing. It was recently reported that a judge agreed to seal the autopsy reports at the request of prosecutors. We do know that immediately following the massacre and continuing for months statements about the events […]
Republican voters in South Texas became something of a fixation following the 2020 election when the GOP picked up votes in the region. I explained and analyzed the factors that contributed to the election climate and parsed the numbers in Great Latinxpectations which was published in The Baffler. The ‘Latinos are breaking for the GOP’ […]
The aggressive response in Del Rio underscores an immigration system that prioritizes the spectacle of force over an investment in the construction of systems needed to process asylum-seekers.
On September 1, Texas new law, SB8, restricting abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, before most people know they are pregnant went into effect. Another law, SB4, limits the acquisition of “abortion pills.” For the Women’s Media Center’s I/DAR channel I analyze the new laws through the lens of political, economic and social power. But […]
Ten years ago today, September 21, the state of Georgia executed Troy Davis. In 1991 a jury sentenced Davis to death for the August 19, 1989, murder ofSavannah police officer Mark Allen MacPhail in a Burger King parking lot.Without a weapon or any physical evidence, prosecutors relied largely oneyewitness testimony to persuade a jury that […]
This was bigger than abortion; I felt compelled to take a stand against the social, political and economic forces that bear down on our bodies in so many ways and
crystallize in the dismal state of our health care.
For The Baffler I wrote about the the Great Latinxpectations embedded within the convenient mythology of “Latino vote.” What is often referred to as the “Latino vote” is merely the propensity of political and media elites to fault Latino voters for not abiding by their expectations, even as actual Latinos delivered critical votes to preserve […]
My election coverage began in February with “Latinos and the Morality of American Politics” which appeared in Palabra, a new publication launched by the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. I argue: If Democrats don’t have a message for Latinos, they don’t have one to disarm Trump. Without a coherent message that includes Latinos – who […]
Michelle García 