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you are here, the journal of creative geography based at the University of Arizona, has published my prose piece “A Hot Griddle in a Small Town.” The piece starts with the pupusa, a classic Salvadoran dish, and how I learned to make it in Ixtepec, Oaxaca. I continue on to reminisce on my time in El Salvador and at home in Washington, DC and the people who bring those disparate places together. “Loroco: Scientific name, Fernaldia pandurate. A plant native to El Salvador. Its small…Continue Reading “A Hot Griddle in a Small Town” →

Mi nuevo artículo sobre la migración cubana y su trayectoria por México. Publicado con En el Camino un plataforma de Periodistas de a Pie. Léelo aquí en completo. Fotos por Encarni Pintado. El fin de la guerra fría entre Cuba y Estados Unidos provocó una inesperada carambola en Centroamérica y México: la salida de miles de cubanos que quieren aprovechar un privilegio de varias décadas, para obtener la residencia estadunidense tan sólo con pisar el suelo de ese país. La certeza de que esta política…Continue Reading “Cubanos, los inesperados migrantes que llegan del sur” →

My first investigative piece on Vice News on the surge in Cuban immigrants passing through Mexico. Reported in Tapachula, Chiapas and Ixtepec, Oaxaca. “One recent evening 200 Cubans milled about the grounds of an immigration detention center in the southern Mexican city of Tapachula, smoking cigarettes and checking cell phone messages. They waited all day before agents started calling out names. Mike Hernández Aroche, 28, of Cienfuegos, Cuba, was one of the first. Beaming he showed off the piece of paper he received through the…Continue Reading “There’s a Big Increase of Cubans Heading Through Mexico to the US” →

My first piece on Vice News discusses the recent meeting between Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and his Cuban counterpart, Raúl Castro. “The presidents of Mexico and Cuba sought to bury the memory of a period of chilly bilateral relations this Friday with a meeting in the Mexican city of Merida.   ‘We have underlined the affection, respect and admiration that both nations have historically had for each other,’ Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto said after the meeting. ‘And most importantly we have relaunched the bilateral…Continue Reading “The Presidents of Mexico and Cuba are Relaunching Their Relationship” →

By  Martha Pskowski February 2, 2015 “We organized to take this land. Why? Because we know that the government is dispossessing land all over the country. On December 21stwe woke up at 6am to recuperate this land. Four hundred of us compañerosand compañeras from the community arrived.” The masked representative of San Sebastián Bachajón, Chiapas, describes in a Jan. 1 interview how residents of this Tzeltal indigenous community reclaimed the entrance to the Aguas Azules waterfalls on Dec. 21, 2014. Government officials at the tollbooth…Continue Reading “Tourist Development Behind State Repression of Non-Violent Indigenous Movement” →

The Americas Program December 3, 2014 Adrián Rodríguez Garcia and Wilson Castro, who provided food and other aid to migrants in Mexico State were shot to death in their pick-up truck on Nov. 23. The news came as a devastating blow to the human rights community in Mexico. A criminal gang that Rodríguez and Castro had denounced for its assaults on migrants in the town of Tequixquiac, north of Mexico City, fired a round of bullets into the truck, parked outside the home of Rodríguez’s…Continue Reading “Mexican Immigration Authorities Impede Humanitarian Aid to Central American Migrants” →

The Americas Program December 3, 2014 The central plaza of Oaxaca is plastered with posters and banners denouncing one atrocity after another, the layers of social movements overlapping on every wall available. Ayotzinapa, the struggle of the Section 22 teachers union, the recent murder of a teenage girl. In this cacophony of protest, on Nov. 30, the Caravan of Central American Mothers Searching for their Disappeared Children arrived in the plaza and called for unity among the movements of Mesoamerica. Representatives of the teachers’ union,…Continue Reading “In Oaxaca, Caravan of Central American Mothers Calls for Unity of Movements” →

By Martha Pskowski and Octavio Morales November 25, 2014, The Americas Program General Emiliano Zapata would roll over in his grave. The Morelos Integral Project, or PIM for its initials in Spanish, is a 160-kilometer natural gas pipeline and two thermo-electric plants in the heart of Mexico’s fertile central valleys, and in the shadow of an active volcano, Popocatépetl. The PIM, a partnership between the federal electricity agency, CFE, and Spanish and Italian energy companies, has been pushed through without community consent on the lands…Continue Reading “In the land of Zapata, a community fights natural gas development” →

I met Paola Quiñones in March of this year, 2014, while she was staying at the Brothers in the Journey Migrant Shelter in Ixtepec, Oaxaca. She was waiting for her papers in Mexico, to continue north to the United States. Seven months later, Ixtepec brought us together again. Paola has become an advocate for Central American migrants in Mexico, who suffer brutal conditions in their passage through the country. She is part of a group of migrants in Mexico who have taken the struggle for…Continue Reading “A Honduran migrant’s journey from victim to advocate for migrant rights” →