We’re back for season 4 of Writing Latinos! Our first guest is Jazmine Ulloa, a national political reporter for The New York Times who just published her first book. Titled El Paso: Five Families and One Hundred Years of Blood, Migration, Race, and Memory (from Dutton), it’s a moving portrayal of her hometown. The 2019 shooting by a self-described white supremacist at a Walmart in El Paso, which left more than 23 dead and 22 injured, haunts Ulloa’s narrative and is the point of departure for her exploration of the city’s history over the past 150 years. From the Mexican–American War, to the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz, to the charismatic healer Teresa Urrea—also known as La Santa de Cabóra—and to the anarchist Flores Magón brothers, Ulloa shows how El Paso has long been at the center of US and Mexican histories of immigration, race, capitalism, and empire. We talk about the tragedy at Walmart, how her family ended up in El Paso, and her views on the relationship between history and journalism.
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View a transcript of the episode here. 