Political Media Review

Among the villains in the crosshairs of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) 2012 Fiscal Year budget are coyotes, the “smugglers” migrants often hire to help them enter the United States without authorization.

Class is oftentimes as much about self-identification as it is about actual ceremony and recognition from others. How one sees oneself in the class order is intoxicating for some people.

“What do you read for fun” is indubitably one of those questions for which answers are reserved for fiction writing, Garfield and celebrity gossip magazines. Fun. Harmless a word, though loaded with assumptions.

From 1980 to 1992, the Central American country of El Salvador was embroiled in a civil war between the military-led government and the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional.

Ostensibly about the recent political strife in the Mexican state, Diario de Oaxaca will likely be far better known for its gorgeous visuals and packaging as a diary, complete with ribbon bookmark. The book, with bilingual versions of the story under the same cover, tells the story of artist Peter Kuper’s life in the community there. However, this book is much more than that.

I have occasional conversations with associates about the unusual political and cultural space occupied by Latinos, and the challenges young Latinas in particular face. Often sexualized and objectified by mainstream white culture as exotic succubi, Latinas further occupy a racialized place of privilege that Black women are not permitted.

This richly illustrated and designed volume, featuring indigenous art and photographs on nearly every page and unprecedented interviews with members of the early villages, is a result of the seven years Mexican journalist Gloria Muñoz Ramírez’ spent with the Zapatistas in Southern Chiapas.