Benicio del Toro: The Last Smuggler of Global Cool by “The Unimpressed Correspondent” filing from somewhere with questionable Wi-Fi and excellent rum There are two kinds of passports on Earth: the blue ones that guarantee you will stand in the “All Others” lane at immigration, and the one that Benicio del Toro carries in his…
SAN MIGUELITO, Texas—Somewhere between the breakfast-taco stands and the border fence that looks like a rejected set piece from a low-budget dystopia, a modest Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility had what the official communiqués will call “an incident” and what anyone with a working smartphone will call “Tuesday.” The attack—reportedly a coordinated effort involving…
**Juárez vs. Pumas: The Beautiful Game’s Ugly Understudy Takes Center Stage** In the pantheon of global football rivalries—El Clásico, the Old Firm, the Superclásico—few outside the CONCACAF time zone have ever heard of “Juárez–Pumas.” That’s hardly surprising; one half of the feud is a ten-year-old border-town start-up whose greatest achievement is not being relocated (yet),…
The Ballad of Two Cities, or How a Saturday Night in Mexico City Became a Global Mood Ring By Our Man in the Stands, nursing a michelada and a mild existential crisis If you squint past the omnipresent smog and the LED billboards promising salvation in 0% APR, Estadio Azteca on a Cruz Azul–Juárez match-day…
Calexico—population 38,633, elevation 2 feet below your last shred of optimism—sits on the California side of the border fence, staring across at her sister city Mexicali like a younger sibling who borrowed the car and never came back. To the untrained eye, it’s just another dusty notch on Imperial County’s belt, notable mainly for triple-digit…
Necaxa vs Juárez: A Quiet Border War the World Pretends Not to Notice By Santiago “Sam” Valdez, Senior Correspondent, Dave’s Locker The first rule of international journalism is that nothing is ever “just a game,” especially when the fixture is played within mortar range of the U.S. border, under floodlights paid for by a cryptocurrency…
Tyler Robinson and the Quiet Rebellion of One-Man Nations By our jaded foreign desk Somewhere between the death rattle of the twentieth-century nation-state and the TikTok-fication of geopolitics, Tyler Robinson—age 32, passport holder of no fixed narrative—has become the planet’s most unlikely cartographer. While the rest of us binge-watch the collapse of supply chains and…
Papers, Please: The world’s favorite new pastime is watching other people move Dateline: Somewhere between the Mediterranean’s floating graveyard and the Rio Grande’s TikTok livestream—take your pick, both have Wi-Fi and existential dread in equal measure. This week, immigration is once again the planet’s most lucrative spectator sport. From the Channel Tunnel to the Darién…
