“I remember the city before the refinery,” says Rafael Mayoral, a middle-aged professor and self-described activist in defense of the land. He is tall, broad-chested with a shock of salt-and-pepper hair that blows wildly in the violent Tehuano winds. “It was a different city back then,” he says with some...

In May of 2006, Rosario Martinez and Roberto Vega were fresh out of design school when the annual teachers union strike took on a sinister character as an explosive social movement of street protests turned into an seven-month war between the citizenry, organized by the Popular Assembly of the Peoples...

Here is this week’s addendum to the Polity of Literature series: Because writers often compose their sentences in the relative calm and isolation of home or office, some people assume that writing is a solitary, apolitical activity. To give context to that assumption, here’s the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)’s...

The twenty-second piece in our Polity of Literature series: “Reading as Poaching” is an essential text for the Polity of Literature, and a dense, word-by-word read; but flex your head, as the wise man* said, and this essay will reward you. The images are the stars! “Readers are travellers,” Michel de...

JANUARY The world is riveted by the news of an unfolding health crisis in China. A mysterious virus ravages the city of Wuhan, prompting the Chinese government to lock down surrounding areas to stem the spread. Morning news alert: Allegedly, the main source of the novel coronavirus is a bat...

The majority of the 2.3 million domestic workers in Mexico live hand to mouth. When strict orders to quarantine at home were put in place in April, many of their employers prevented their household staff from coming to work in order to protect their own families. They terminated domestic workers’ contracts and...

MIRROR | CINEMA | CITY: KARACHI CAPRI Althea Thauberger: The Capri Cinema Project By Zarmeené Shah Through a small window in a closed door, we see the world outside from within a darkened interior space. A man walks by across the street, past a shuttered healthcare shop. It is daytime...

“I really think it’s time to go,” our guide says as he nervously glances at his phone that glows half past five. Around us, as if on an unspoken cue, the air of urgency and anxiety thickens, and it strikes us that we have lost track of time and we...

Chapter 1 – Holes in the Sky MYITKYINA, KACHIN STATE, NORTHERN MYANMAR The half-dozen works of art hanging on the bare wooden walls depict family scenes—they are painted in bold primary colors with rudimentary strokes. Human figures hover ghostlike above the ground. They have no faces, nor do they reveal...