
Conversations on Gender, Geography, and Violence against Women in Mexico & Central Americ
The Violence Takes Place series is pleased to present a set of conversations on gender, geography, and violence against women in rural Mexico and Latin America.
Six episodes with leading women working on violence in the region: researchers, journalists, activists.


A conversation with Nina Lakhani
We speak with the first and current environmental justice correspondent at The Guardian, Nina Lakhani, about both her experience investigating obstetric violence in Guerrero, Mexico, and her new book Who Killed Berta Cáceres? Dams, Death Squads, and an Indigenous Defender’s Battle for the Planet (2020).
A conversation with Andalusia K. Soloff
We speak with Andalusia K. Soloff, a multimedia journalist based in Mexico City who specializes in state violence, migration, indigenous land struggles and gender based murders in Latin America. In her reporting, Andalusia seeks to center on the voices of those most affected by these crises and violence.We discuss her new graphic novel on forced disappearances in Mexico, the impact of Ayotzinapa’s missing 43 on the students’ parents and communities, cases of forced marriages in Guerrero, and much more.


A Conversation with Daniela Rea
In this episode recorded in Spanish, we speak with Daniela Rea, a Mexican journalist and writer. Daniela is Editor at “Pie de Pagina”, an independent media.
With Daniela, we talk about her book “La Tropa, ¿por qué mata un soldado?”, written with Pablo Ferri, analyzing issues of militarization and gender violence in Mexico.
Daniela is also the author of “Nadie les pidió perdón”, and the co-editor of investigative books “”Entre las cenizas, historias de vida en tiempos de muerte”; ” Romper el silencio, 22 voces contra la censura” y “Ya no somos las mismas y aquí sigue la guerra”.
A Conversation with Deborah Bonello.
In this 4th Episode of the Series, we talk about Deborah Bonello’s investigations on organized crime and illegal logging in Mexico, and then jump into a discussion about her current book project on Women in the Sinaloa Cartel. Deborah Bonello is a journalist, editor and investigator and has been based in Latin America since 2005. She is the Senior Editor for Latin America at VICE World News.
She is a former employee of The Los Angeles Times, the Financial Times and InSight Crime, and has reported for many international media outlets. In recent years, much of Deborah’s coverage has focused on organized crime and drug trafficking across Latin America, from investigating the Central American street gangs MS-13 and Barrio 18, to the role of Mexico’s cartels in the illicit production and trafficking of fentanyl.


A conversation with Lina Britto
Lina Britto is a Colombian historian, journalist, and an Associate Professor of History at Northwestern University. In this episode, we talk about her book, Marijuana Boom: The Rise and Fall of Colombia’s First Drug Paradise, which came out in Spring 2020 with University of California Press.Lina Britto received her PhD from New York University, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, Harvard University. She has published her academic and journalistic work in the Hispanic American Historical Review, the Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History, NACLA: Report of the Americas (NYC), El Espectador (Bogotá), Universo Centro (Medellín), among others.
A Conversation with Gema Kloppe-Santamaría
In this 6th Episode of the Series, we talk to Gema Kloppe-Santamaría, Assistant Professor of Latin American History at Loyola University, Chicago.
Her research deals with questions of violence, security, religion, and gender in Latin America, with a particular focus on Mexico and Central America. She holds a PhD in Sociology and Historical Studies from the New School for Social Research and a Master in Gender and Social Policy from the London School of Economics.
She is the author of In the Vortex of Violence: Lynching, Extralegal Justice and the State in Post-Revolutionary Mexico (University of California Press, 2020). In addition to her work on vigilante justice and state formation, Kloppe-Santamaría is currently working on a new project that deals with the contentious relationship between religion and violence in Mexico.
