New Mexico Mercury

Border Environmental Controversies Considered

Border region air quality summit discusses proposed gas-fired power plant, environmental injustice and toxic release levels.

Magic and Realism in a Homemade Chihuahua Museum

A chance encounter opens a portal into an eclectic world of prehistory, Mexican rural history, and a vision of homegrown environmental sustainability.

Juarez Mothers Renew International Campaign

Missing daughters and femicide haunt Mothers Day in border region.

Water fights flare in border region

Drought, water pumping, new pecan farms and dated international water treaties are all contributing to rising water tensions in the border region.

Changing perspectives on U.S.-Mexico relations

It’s unfortunate that the two presidents chose to hold their May 2-3 summit in Mexico City. Both nations and Presidents Barack Obama and Enrique Peña Nieto would have been better served by a meeting at the border – where the grim reality of neighborly relations would not be masked by the pomp and circumstance of the grand presidential residence of Los Pinos.

A meeting at the customs building in Ciudad Juárez – the site of the first Mexico-U.S. presidential meeting in 1909 between Porfirio Díaz and William Taft – would have likely resulted in a more memorable and productive summit of the current heads of state, Enrique Peña Nieto and Barack Obama. As it is, this meeting will likely be soon forgotten – lost in protocol, predictable rhetoric about interdependence, and the photogenic smiles of the two presidents...

Low-Tech and High-Tech Braceros

Is the IT industry being allowed to import a low-paid labor force amidst ample STEM graduates?

Struggles on New Mexico’s Other Borders

At an honoring of his life and work, longtime Native American activist, writer and scholar John Redhouse reflects on the roots of his resistance and adds perspective to Native struggles.

The Coming Water Wars in Mexico

Once forbidden as a transgression of God’s natural laws, irrigated agriculture backed by increasingly deep wells and the most advanced farming machinery has become the norm. Mennonite farmers are meeting—and taking advantage of—the challenges of climate change and intensifying drought cycles by embracing the most unsustainable practices of capital-intensive, resource-depleting agribusiness...

Obama’s political framing of immigration reform lacks depth

President Obama’s understanding of immigration and border policy is fundamentally political. For Obama, immigration reform makes good sense politically.  As such, the president’s vision of immigration reform is framed by political platitudes and slogans – such as the stress on combatting transnational crime, deporting and excluding “criminal aliens,” and fortifying border security.

Taking a stand on the Rio Grande

In the final days before the expected destruction of the Asarco stacks in El Paso, critics have not ceased their demands for a halt to the demolition on environmental and public health grounds.