Madeleine Wattenbarger

Oct 23, 2024 | theguardian.com | Madeleine Wattenbarger

Amid incense and white lilies, thousands of mourners packed the town center of San Andrés Larrainzar, in Mexico’s mountainous southern state of Chiapas. They had come to bid farewell to a beloved priest known as a peacemaker in a region racked by violence. A half-open casket, draped with an embroidered stole, revealed the bandaged head of Father Marcelo Pérez , who was shot and killed while leaving mass in the city of San Cristóbal de las Casas early on Sunday.

Sep 25, 2024 | thebaffler.com | Madeleine Wattenbarger

The Mexican edition of the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference, held late last month in Mexico City, brought Ronald Reagan back from the dead. After the audience sang the Mexican national anthem and a Trump favorite, Christopher Macchio, belted out “Ave Maria,” sparkler cannons shot over the stage, and a deepfake Reagan appeared on the conference hall’s screen.

Jun 13, 2024 | thebaffler.com | Madeleine Wattenbarger |Rafia Zakaria |Arvin Alaigh

The sun breached the horizon just moments before Fabiola arrived at the airport in Torreón, a city of around seven hundred thousand in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila, to pick up her passengers for the day. Two young women from Mexico City, fresh off the hour-and-a-half flight from the capital, stowed their suitcases in the trunk of Fabiola’s beige sedan.

Jun 22, 2023 | lux-magazine.com | Madeleine Wattenbarger

“I understand Cristina’s repulsion towards her sister’s killer,” said a judge during the ceremony for a top literary prize in Mexico last year, “but as a reader I’m intrigued by that character.” The award-winning book was Liliana’s Invincible Summer, by the prolific, multi-genre author Cristina Rivera Garza. A work of nonfiction, it chronicled the life of her younger sister, who had been murdered by an ex-boyfriend decades earlier.