The novel opens seven years after Gabo's mother, Ximena, was murdered by coyotes -- or paid traffickers -- during an attempt to cross the border. Her mutilated body was found, her organs gone -- sold most likely. Because of the fear surrounding this border town and the lure of the other side, all of the characters become consumed with finding Rafa. These people are neglected and abused. Like other fiction

Fake News: John Oliver and Sinclair Broadcast Group Comedian John Oliver did a segment on Sinclair Broadcast Group, essentially asserting that the television behemoth had a conservative bias, which slanted news towards falsehoods and non-facts. Oliver’s criticisms of Sinclair arose during a time when the broadcast group was close to sealing the deal on a merger with Tribune Media, a deal which was worth just under $4 billion and which would

Michael Moore so Controversial? Michael Moore was born in 1954 in Flint, Michigan -- "the home of the wealthiest corporation in the world: General Motors." (Roger and Me, 1989). The tragic plight of this once economically booming, blue-collar city is the basis for much of his filmmaking; and it is what formed the foundation for his particular outlook on the state of American society. The theme of corporate abuse and

In an unprecedented move, Khrushchev denounced many of Stalin's excesses and set about changing Soviet policy towards the developing world. This change, some call it flexibility, was the branch the Soviets offered to developing countries, like Cuba. Looking around and seeing the alienated or disenfranchized, Khrushchev felt the time was right to solidify alliances with anticolonialists in Ghana, the Congo, and especially, Cuba (Hopf). After the Bay of Pigs fiasco,

rise of Hindu Fundamentalism At the turn of the century, religious fundamentalism has emerged as a well-known trend; a custom of mind found within religious communities and paradigmatically incarnated in certain typical individuals and activities. The harassed supporters try to protect their distinctive group identity by its expressions as a strategy. The supporters strengthen it by selective recovery of doctrines, viewpoint and practices from a sacred past, feeling that this

Global Environment Continue to Deteriorate? Given the planet's struggling economic and social conditions, the exploding population, the spreading plague of violence, the increasing depletion of natural resources (forests, etc.) and the urgent need for new energy resources, the ignorance towards conservation and sustainability, and the heating up of the planet, there is every reason to believe that the deterioration of the world's environment will indeed continue. That is not to