Journal of the Southwest Radio

Historian and anthropologist Carlos Vélez- Ibáñez famously stated that the U.S.-Mexico border is only two grandmothers old. Those grandmothers would recognize many things about the 21st century border, but other aspects would seem as strange to them as the technology, slang, and styles of their great-great-grandchildren. Yet the border is, as Gloria Anzaldúa and Homi Bhabha have both written, a th...

On April 25, 2023, a phone call from an out-of-state number ended La Estrella de Tucsón, leaving the city without a Spanish-language newspaper. For Liliana López Ruelas, who had spent years as an editor there, it was a moment of frustration—but also of determination. Host Carlos Quintero speaks with Liliana about what happened next: a return to school, a master's degree at the University of Arizon...

Since 1986, La Estrella Bakery has been much more than a place to buy pan dulce, it’s been a pillar of Tucson’s cultural life, a space of ritual, memory, and early morning conversations over conchitas and cuernitos. As we celebrate Hispanic Heritage month, host Carlos Quintero speaks with Erica Franco, second-generation member of the family behind La Estrella, about what it means to carry on a tra...

In this powerful conversation, Jennifer Jenkins, director of the Southwest Center, speaks with Don Unger, recent PhD and environmental historian, about his groundbreaking research on uranium mining reclamation on the Navajo Nation. Unger discusses the ethics of storytelling, the balance between technical and spiritual approaches to healing the land, and his concept of Critical Reclamation Studies,...

In this episode, we talk with Roberto Wolfe, Mexico General Manager for the Northern Jaguar Project, a binational conservation effort based in Tucson, Arizona, and Sahuaripa, Sonora. NJP’s mission is to preserve and recover the world’s northernmost population of jaguars, an apex predator and keystone species whose survival supports entire ecosystems. Through partnerships with local ranchers, envir...

Dr. Nicolás Pineda Pablos is a political scientist and researcher at the Colegio de Sonora, in Hermosillo, and one of Mexico’s foremost experts on urban water provision. Here, Dr. Pineda rings us up to speed on Hermosillo’s current water situation. Hermosillo, the state capital, is a Sonoran Desert city with close to one million people and faces profound climate-related challenges: a swiftly warmi...

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,...

Politics and Prison Ink in Arizona: A Map for Navigation in a World of Post-structural Violence, by Enrique Alan Olivares-Pelayo was published in the Autumn 2023 edition of Journal of the Southwest. In this episode, the author of the piece discusses his work on embodied carceral geographies, how the punishment of the prison system manifests in and on the bodies it ensnares. And that's a lot of peo...

This episode is a companion to our November 2024 piece about invasive plants and land management in the Sonoran Desert. It features three practitioners of Indigenous cultural and ecological preservation – Karl Hoerig who works for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe; Jacelle Ramon-Sauberan whose academic work captures Tohono O’odham history; and Raeshaun Ramon, who serves as a Saguaro National Park Ranger. JSW...

The Sonoran Desert is renowned for its iconic, endemic species—and home to many people who are dedicated to studying and preserving them. Invasive species present a threat to desert ecologies that is growing along with globalized plant trade, climate change and resource depletion. Harmful, prolific plants displace native species and disrupt ecological processes like fire regimes and food productio...

In episode 3 of the Flood Justice en las Fronteras podcast doctoral candidate Lucas Belury interviews Dr. Caroline Tracey, a geographer, journalist, and author of the forthcoming book Salt Lakes (W.W. Norton, 2026). In this episode we discuss the politics of the 1954 Falcon Dam (Presa Falcón) in the Rio Grande/Río Bravo river. This dam provided irrigation water and hydro-electricity to both Texas...

In episode 3 of the Flood Justice en las Fronteras podcast doctoral candidate Lucas Belury interviews Dr. Caroline Tracey, a geographer, journalist, and author of the forthcoming book Salt Lakes (W.W. Norton, 2026). In this episode we discuss the politics of the 1954 Falcon Dam (Presa Falcón) in the Rio Grande/Río Bravo river. This dam provided irrigation water and hydro-electricity to both Texas...

This episode of JSW Radio features an interview with Scottsdale resident (and the host’s brother-in-law) Justin Driscoll, who tells the story of his rattlesnake bite experience in 2021. Driscoll and a friend were hiking in Aravaipa Canyon, east of Phoenix and north of Tucson. Aravaipa is one of the few spots in central and southern Arizona with a perennial stream, and, because of this, the wildlif...

Beverely Elliott is the Executive Director of the African American Museum of Southern Arizona, the only museum of its kind in the state. In this episode she gives us a tour of the young museum's exhibitions, tracing Black history in the Sonoran Desert.

This series explores the historical foundations of the American Southwest and their effect on urban issues today, including the region's worsening housing crisis. Housing segregation was made illegal in 1968, but its effects remain visible in Southwest cities. A coalition of researchers, advocacy groups and community members recently completed the Mapping Racist Covenants (MRC) Project, which iden...

Dr. Michelle Berry is a historian and professor with dual appointments in the History and Gender & Women's Studies Departments at the University of Arizona. She is involved with the Public History Collaborative and passionate about creating engaging and accessible pathways for everyone to experience history in the making. Patricia Schwartz speaks with Dr. Berry about her critical frameworks, histo...

Flood Justice in the US-Mexico Borderlands: Rio Grande/Rio Bravo Delta (In English) by Southwest Center

Flood Justice in the US-Mexico Borderlands: Rio Grande/Rio Bravo Delta (En Español) by Southwest Center

Flood Justice in the US-Mexico Borderlands: Ambos Nogales (En Español) by Southwest Center

Journal of the Southwest Radio is proud to present this series about flood justice in the US-Mexico Borderlands. Hosted by Lucas Belury, these bilingual episodes address the environmental, demographic, and political factors shaping the paradoxical issue of flooding in arid lands. The first episode, an interview with Dr. Adriana Zuniga-Terán, discusses green infrastructure, equitable policy and flo...

The 2023 edition of Tucson Meet Yourself honored the Corrido and one of its most prominent researchers and writers, Dr. Celestino Fernandez. He was interviewed by Dr. Estevan Azcona, musicologist and associated research scientist at the Southwest Center, as local corridistas played some of his compositions. “Running tales” inspired by real events, Corridos amplify voices often muffled by dominant...

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...

Dr. Bellante is a geographer whose research and teaching focus on food justice, food systems, and global environmental change. Bellante lived and worked in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas for six years before returning to the U.S. to pursue master’s and doctoral degrees in human-environmental geography. Her research centered on small-scale Chiapas corn farmers struggling with a changing clim...

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 tec...

Dr. Nicolás Pineda Pablos is a researcher in El Colegio de Sonora, Hermosillo. He has a doctorate in public policy and community planning from the University of Texas at Austin and wrote his dissertation on Mexican urban water policy. Since that time, he has continued to focus on water issues across Mexico, from the northern border states to the Yucatán Peninsula. Pineda is indeed one of Mexico’s...