The Borders Between My Mexican and American Identities

I Went Searching for Documents to Validate My Binationalism. I Found Something More Complicated

This essay publishes alongside this week’s Zócalo and Universidad de Guadalajara event, “Are the U.S. and Mexico Becoming One Country?” Register here to join the program in person at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes or live online at 11 a.m. PDT on Saturday, September 21.

My favorite pecan pie recipe is from a Methodist cookbook sold at a church not far from the Virginia farm where my grandmother grew up. The pie’s perfectly gooey consistency comes from an obscene amount of Karo corn syrup; …

by Alejandra Ibarra Chaoul | September 16, 2024

Mexico’s Noisy, Colorful, Unserious Election

We’re About to Elect Our First Woman President, But Most of Us Know Real Change Isn’t Coming

by María Guillén | May 29, 2024

The biggest elections in Mexican history will take place on June 2. Citizens will vote to fill more than 20,000 offices: electing a new president and governors from eight of …

Héctor Tobar Wins the 2024 Zócalo Book Prize

Our Migrant Souls Is an Essential Exploration of ‘Latino’ Identity

Interview by Sarah Rothbard | May 4, 2024

Héctor Tobar is the winner of the 2024 Zócalo Public Square Book Prize for Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino.”

Zócalo has awarded …

In Search of the ‘Tomato King’

Finding a Mexican Migrant Politician, Rooted in California Soil

by Adrián Félix | April 8, 2024

There is only one person more obsessed than I when it comes to the memory of Don Andrés Bermúdez: his son, Andrés Junior. Junior lives with his family in the …

America’s Judges Are Bungling the 2024 Election

Does Our Democracy Need a Separate Court System?

by Joe Mathews | March 26, 2024

Last year, while organizing a global democracy forum in Mexico, a member of that country’s national electoral court requested I add a speaker to our program: an American …

In Mexico, a New Vocabulary for Grief and Justice

Most Murders in the Country Go Uninvestigated. Activists and Writers Are Coming Together to Demand Accountability

By Natalia Villanueva-Nieves | February 15, 2024

“Almost everyone lost someone during the war,” writes Cristina Rivera Garza in The Restless Dead: Necrowriting and Disappropriation.

In 2006, Mexican president Felipe Calderón initiated the …

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