Tara Plath is a PhD student in the Film & Media Studies Department at UC Santa Barbara. She holds an MA in Research Architecture from Goldsmiths, University of London and a BFA in Sculpture and BA in Visual and Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is an interdisciplinary practice-based researcher whose ongoing research uses mapping and open-source investigation techniques to challenge state violence, surveillance, and militarization at the US southwest border in Arizona.

In a conversation following the end of Title 42, Tara and Taylor discuss the compounding crises of disappearance and death in the Sonoran Desert; border militarization and the weaponization of humanitarian aid as part of Border Patrol’s long-term strategy of Prevention Through Deterrence. Plath’s transdisciplinary research and activism helps us better visualize the devastating effects of the occupation of Indigenous land throughout the Sonoran Desert and beyond, while offering methods and platforms for transborder solidarity.

Tara Plath: Visualizing the Human Costs of Prevention through Deterrence

Gabriel Dozal discusses his debut collection, The Border Simulator, where the U.S.-Mexico border is redefined as a place of invention; crossing it becomes a matter of simulation. The poems accompany Primitivo, who attempts to cross the border, an imaginary boundary that becomes more real and challenging as his journey progresses; and his sister, Primitiva, who lives an alternate, static life as an exploited migrant worker in la fabrica. He chats with Taylor about the experience of writing and living the borderlands, and shares the process of translating the work, completed by Natasha Tiniacos.

Gabriel is a writer and educator from El Paso, Texas. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from The University of Arizona and he is a poetry editor for DIAGRAM. His work appears in Poetry Magazine, The Iowa Review, Guernica, The Brooklyn Rail, The Literary Review, The Volta, and elsewhere.

The Border Simulator, with Gabriel Dozal

Our guest for this episode of JSW Radio is Alex La Pierre. Alex is co-founding director, with his wife Rocío La Pierre, of the binational, Southern Arizona-based non-profit organization, Borderlandia. Borderlandia’s mission is to expand public understanding of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands through a diversity of activities, including, especially, educational tours in southern Arizona and in Sonora, Mexico. I ask Alex about this work and about his view of public history more broadly. We also discuss how perceptions of the borderlands region seem to become more distorted the farther away one gets, and how Borderlandia’s work aims to combat this distorting effect of distance and politics. 
https://www.borderlandia.org/

Alex La Pierre: Borderlandia, Citizen-Level Diplomacy

The Journal of the Southwest Radio Hour brings the voices of researchers, educators, activists and community members working to better understand the region’s past and envision possible new futures.

New tracks tagged #us mexico border