Episode 0- Teaser

“Hey! Welcome to BORDERLANDS!”, it’s one of the first sentence I heard when I arrived in Tucson (Arizona). BORDERLANDS is a podcast on the US Mexico border and the impact of its control and surveillance system on communities. ...BUT… BORDERLANDS, what does it mean? For some people is the southwest border, the Far-west with sun, cactus and dust, like in the movies. For others, it’s part of a broader Native Land. For some others, it’s El Norte – the North of Mexico … “Borderlands” could also be materialized by the Sonoran desert sitting on both side of the border…“Borderlands” is a mix of communities with different perspectives in seeing and living this region. … The podcast will focus on the Pima county in Arizona… one of the most militarized, controlled and deadly counties of the border WELCOME TO BORDERLANDS… I’m Eva Ottavy… I’ve been working for 15 years on migration and borders’ issues in the Euro-African region. I’m a French activist and a Fulbright grantee, who lived in Tucson, Arizona, for 6 months, in 2021. Sponsored by Fulbright and hosted by the American non-profit, Colibrí center for human rights … in the US, I worked on death and disappearance at the US-Mexico border. I’d like to share with you several podcast episodes about the situation on this issue. …One of my many imprefections: I don’t speak Spanish. So, it wasn’t possible for me to record correctly testimonies of people who crossed the border or stories from their families. The podcast tries, with a maximum of diversity, to compile interviews in English of people living and working on migration in the Borderlands. The goal of this podcast is two-fold: At first, to alert, like many others before me, about the dangerousness of the ongoing migration policies at the US-Mexico border. Crying out for international law and freedom of movement respect. Secondly, it’s a way to be grateful and leave something to the people I met in the Borderlands during these 6 months. WELCOME TO BORDERLANDS! Credits: - A podcast by Eva Ottavy and mixed by Nicolas Puissant. - Music: Dusty Sun by Serj Anto. - Graphic Identity by Eva Ottavy (Borderlands brewery’s front in Tucson-Arizona and “Chinche al agua”, a mural painting of Victor “Mask” Casas in El Paso-Texas)