Archive
Browse all 22 articles across governance, urban systems, ecologies, and latitudes.
Who Owes Whom an Apology? Spain, Mexico, and the American Mirror We Keep Avoiding
As Mexico's president asks Spain to apologize for the conquest, the United States watches from the sidelines. But settler colonialism left different scars than imperial colonialism. An essay on apologies, archives, and what contrition might purchase.
The Spanish Echo in the Non-Spanish Caribbean
Spanish heritage did not disappear from the English-, French-, and Dutch-speaking Caribbean; it migrated into other rooms of the house. This essay maps the living echo through Trinidad's parang, Jamaica's Spanish Town, Belize's bilingual markets, and the ABC islands' Papiamento—arguing that these.
Medellín''s Miracle? Urban Design, Politics, and the Limits of Transformation
Once suffering extraordinarily high violence rates, Medellín remade itself through transit, public libraries, and public-space investments. This essay traces the politics, innovations, ambivalences, and lessons for U.S. cities seeking equitable urban transformation.
Why Hispaniola Kept Changing Flags: Spain, France, and the Road to Haiti
The island we now call Haiti and the Dominican Republic did not change hands because monarchs were whimsical. It moved with the tides of European war, sugar profits, and administrative exhaustion. This essay untangles the geography, the names, and the power ledger behind Hispaniola's shifting flags.
The Labyrinth of Three Clocks: Venezuela 1998–2025
María Corina Machado's Nobel Peace Prize arrives as Venezuela navigates 27 years measured by three clocks: output, distribution, and rights. A data-driven narrative tracking boom, crash, and the quietest clock—democracy—that decides repair.
America''s Other Founding: The Spanish Story
The most American thing about the United States is that we keep mistaking prologue for plot. We nod at Spain and Mexico in the opening credits, then hit fast-forward to railroads and robber barons. But the decisive drama—the social inventions, the legal improvisations, the urban.
Why the U.S. Treats Latin America Differently
Walk into any American newsroom on a slow afternoon and point to a globe. Paris elicits sighs; Prague, a study-abroad anecdote; Berlin, a memory of train schedules that ran to the minute. Say Tegucigalpa, and the room tilts. Not hostility—just air pockets of unknowing.
The Hidden Hemisphere: How Spanish America Built the United States—and Why We Forgot
Every nation is a story told about land. The United States has preferred the tidy novella: thirteen British colonies, a heroic revolution, then Manifest Destiny. But walk any city with your ears on—Los Angeles, San Antonio, Santa Fe—and the place names remind you that the harmony was written in.
The Anti-Woke Playbook: How Florida and Hungary Are Redesigning Democracy's Distance
From Florida's classrooms to Hungary's parliament halls, the 'anti-woke' movement reveals itself as more than culture war—it's a systematic attempt to redesign the distance between citizen and state, neighbor and neighbor, in ways that fundamentally alter democratic participation across the.
One Drought, Many Borders: Why the Americas Need Institutions as Big as Their Problems
Climate, migration, trade — the Americas are entwined. This essay argues that effective responses to shared crises require institutional designs that match hemispheric interdependence: joint infrastructure, finance, and democratic cooperation.
The Forgotten Republics of Light: Reading America Through the Ghost of New Spain
Beneath every American highway lies the dust of empires that spoke in another grammar. The Spanish colonial past offers an alternative genealogy where identity was not binary but layered—a continental experiment from Florida to California that still defines our moral noon.
The Double-Standard Doctrine
How Washington treats Europe like a roommate and Latin America like a distant cousin—and what it would take to change the house rules. An empire doesn't have to call itself an empire. Sometimes it just keeps two sets of house rules. When Europe coughs, the U.S. shows up with casseroles and cash.
Latin America's Next Boom Is North America's Insurance Policy
Why Latin America's next boom is North America's best insurance policy. For two decades the world's factory pointed east by reflex. Then pandemics and geopolitics broke muscle memory. 'De-risking' entered the catechism, and procurement teams began measuring distance again—how far the ship must.
Neighbors at Arm's Length
The double standard that warps U.S. policy toward Latin America—and how to fix it. Europe gets the Rules for Allies; Latin America gets the Rules for Neighbors. Here's a field guide to ending the whiplash.
The 2026 Test: What North America Does Next With Its Trade Deal
A blueprint for a clean, fast, bilingual North American economy ahead of the 2026 USMCA review. Trade is a sentence written in verbs: make, certify, clear, deliver. For three decades, North America conjugated those verbs under NAFTA; in 2020 we swapped the grammar for USMCA and kept moving.
Ten Interventions That Bent a Hemisphere
Across the 20th century, U.S. covert and overt actions in Latin America traded short-term "stability" for long-term democratic fragility. From Guatemala's 1954 coup to Plan Colombia, the pattern is visible in declassified files: regime change at the top, mass graves at the bottom.
The Republic of Yeast: A Latin American Chronicle of Invisible Trade
There is a secret cartography beneath every holiday table. You can draw its contours with a fork: the tremor of cranberry tartness, the quiet starch of potatoes, the kernel's soft pop in a spoonful of corn. None of these flavors is provincial. All of them are hemispheric—what remains of the first.
The Long Reverberation: How the Spanish Civil War and the Franco Years Shaped Latin America
The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) did not end on the Jarama or the Ebro; it spilled across the Atlantic into classrooms, publishing houses, barracks, parishes, ports, and headquarters. The Franco regime that followed became a source of exiles who rebuilt Latin American culture and a distant mirror.
Latino History Unveiled: The Overlooked Stories of Hispanic America
More than one in four Americans live in territory that once belonged to Mexico. This essay traces how treaties, courts, and maps changed flags—but not always the people—arguing for policy and planning that honors place-based continuity.
The Atlantic's Other Shore: Spain and Latin America as the Future's Unlikely Power Couple
The future likes to hide in plain geography. One shore is Spain: reforming, digitizing, and growing faster than its neighbors, with a power grid now majority-renewable. The other shore is Latin America: a continent of copper and code, lithium and logistics.
Madrid After Miami: How Spain Can Become the Hemisphere''s Other Capital
For a generation, Miami has styled itself the 'capital of Latin America'—a boast stitched from air routes, private-banking ledgers, and the glow of Spanish-language studios on the Palmetto. The proposition of this essay is not to deny that reality but to widen the map: Spain can shoulder a.
The Accidental Foundry: How Napoleon Broke Spanish America and Forged Latin America
Napoleon did not set out to invent Latin America. He wanted Europe, and the way to Europe ran through Madrid. Yet in toppling the Spanish monarchy, seizing Louisiana and flipping it to the United States, wrecking Spain's fleet, and turning sovereignty into a traveling mask with no face behind it,.