Belen Fernandez – författare

"e;When I first committed to three full months in El Salvador, the feeling that I was signing up for the equivalent of marriage and reproduction was assuaged only by the awareness that, come March 2020, I'd be dashing around Mexico before flying to Istanbul and resuming freneticism in that hemisphere. Little did I know that the scribbled itinerary would never come to fruition, and that I'd only get as far as the coastal village of Zipolite in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, where March 13-25 would turn into March 13 until further notice."e;Since leaving her American homeland in 2003 Belen Fernandez had been an inveterate traveler. Ceaselessly wandering the world, the only constant in her itinerary was a conviction never to return to the country of her childhood. Then the COVID-19 lockdown happened and Fernandez found herself stranded in a small village on the Pacific coast of Mexico.This charming, wryly humorous account of nine months stuck in one place nevertheless roams freely: over reflections on previous excursions to the wilder regions of North Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe; over her new-found friendship with Javier, the mezcal-drinking, chain-smoking near-septuagenarian she encounters in his plastic chair on Mexico s only clothing-optional beach; over her protracted struggle to obtain a life-saving supply of yerba mate; and over, literally, the rope of a COVID-19 checkpoint, set up directly outside her front door and manned by armed guards who require her to don a mask every time she returns home.

“When I first committed to three full months in El Salvador, the feeling that I was signing up for the equivalent of marriage and reproduction was assuaged only by the awareness that, come March 2020, I’d be dashing around Mexico before flying to Istanbul and resuming freneticism in that hemisphere. Little did I know that the scribbled itinerary would never come to fruition, and that I’d only get as far as the coastal village of Zipolite in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, where March 13-25 would turn into March 13 until further notice.”Since leaving her American homeland in 2003 Belén Fernández had been an inveterate traveler. Ceaselessly wandering the world, the only constant in her itinerary was a conviction never to return to the country of her childhood. Then the COVID-19 lockdown happened and Fernandez found herself stranded in a small village on the Pacific coast of Mexico.This charming, wryly humorous account of nine months stuck in one place nevertheless roams freely: over reflections on previous excursions to the wilder regions of North Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe; over her new-found friendship with Javier, the mezcal-drinking, chain-smoking near-septuagenarian she encounters in his plastic chair on Mexico’s only clothing-optional beach; over her protracted struggle to obtain a life-saving supply of yerba mate; and over, literally, the rope of a COVID-19 checkpoint, set up directly outside her front door and manned by armed guards who require her to don a mask every time she returns home.

Much has been written In English about the experiences and treatment of immigrants from south of the Rio Grande once they have entered the United States. But this account, by the itinerant, effervescent and highly original journalist Belén Fernández, offers a different and wholly original take. Belén Fernández shows us what life is like for would-be migrants, not just from the Mexican side of the border but inside Siglo XXI, the notorious migrant detention center in the south of the country.Journalists are prohibited from entering Siglo XXI; Fernández only gained access because she herself was detained as a result of faulty paperwork when she attempted to return to the US to renew her passport. Once inside the facility, Fernández was able to speak with detained women from Honduras, Cuba, Haiti, Bangladesh, and beyond. Their stories, detailing the hardships that prompted them to leave their homes, and the dangers they have experienced on an often-tortuous journey north, form the core of this unique book. The companionship and support they offer to Fernández, whose antipathy to returning to the United States, the country they are desperate to enter, is a source of bemusement and perplexity, demonstrates a spirited generosity that is deeply moving.In the end, the Siglo XXI center emerges as a strikingly precise metaphor for a 21st century in which poor people, effectively imprisoned by American political and economic policies, nevertheless display astonishing resilience.

The Imperial Messenger reveals the true value of this media darling, a risible writer whose success tells us much about the failures of contemporary journalism. Bel�n Fern�ndez dissects the Friedman corpus with wit and journalistic savvy to expose newsroom practices that favor macho rhetoric over serious inquiry, a pacified readership over an empowered one, and reductionist analysis over integrity. The Imperial Messenger is polemic at its best, relentless in its attack on this apologist for American empire and passionate in its commitment to justice.About the series: Counterblasts is a new Verso series that aims to revive the tradition of polemical writing inaugurated by Puritan and leveller pamphleteers in the seventeenth century, when in the words of one of them, Gerard Winstanley, the old world was "running up like parchment in the fire." From 1640 to 1663, a leading bookseller and publisher, George Thomason, recorded that his collection alone contained over twenty thousand pamphlets. Such polemics reappeared both before and during the French, Russian, Chinese and Cuban revolutions of the last century. In a period of conformity where politicians, media barons and their ideological hirelings rarely challenge the basis of existing society, it''s time to revive the tradition. Verso''s Counterblasts will challenge the apologists of Empire and Capital.

The Imperial Messenger reveals the true value of this media darling, a risible writer whose success tells us much about the failures of contemporary journalism. Belén Fernández dissects the Friedman corpus with wit and journalistic savvy to expose newsroom practices that favor macho rhetoric over serious inquiry, a pacified readership over an empowered one, and reductionist analysis over integrity.The Imperial Messenger is polemic at its best, relentless in its attack on this apologist for American empire and passionate in its commitment to justice.About the series: Counterblasts is a new Verso series that aims to revive the tradition of polemical writing inaugurated by Puritan and leveller pamphleteers in the seventeenth century, when in the words of one of them, Gerard Winstanley, the old world was "running up like parchment in the fire." From 1640 to 1663, a leading bookseller and publisher, George Thomason, recorded that his collection alone contained over twenty thousand pamphlets. Such polemics reappeared both before and during the French, Russian, Chinese and Cuban revolutions of the last century. In a period of conformity where politicians, media barons and their ideological hirelings rarely challenge the basis of existing society, it's time to revive the tradition. Verso's Counterblasts will challenge the apologists of Empire and Capital.

At 21, Belén left the U.S. and didn''t look back. Alone, far off the beaten path in places like Syria and Tajikistan, she confronts violence, lechery, and places where it’s hard to find a good glass of wine, and reflects on what it means to be an American in a largely American-made mess of a world. After growing up in Washington, D.C. and Texas, and then attending Columbia University in New York, Belén Fernández ended up in a state of self-imposed exile from the United States. From trekking—through Europe, the Middle East, Morocco, and Latin America—to packing avocados in southern Spain, to marrying a Palestinian-Lebanese man, to witnessing the violent aftermath of the 2009 coup in Honduras, the international travel allowed her by an American passport has, ironically, given her a direct view of the devastating consequences of U.S. machinations worldwide. For some years Fernández survived thanks to the generosity of strangers who picked her up hitchhiking, fed her, and offered accommodations; then she discovered people would pay her for her powerful, unfiltered journalism, enabling—as of the present moment—continued survival.In just a few short years of publishing her observations on world politics and writing from places as varied as Lebanon, Italy, Uzbekistan, Syria, Mexico, Turkey, Honduras, and Iran, Belén Fernández has earned a place alongside Martha Gellhorn and Susan Sontag as one of the most trenchant observers of American actions abroad.

The narrow DariÉn Gap, the only land bridge connecting South and Central America, encompasses a spectacularly hostile jungle, covered in steep mountains, dense rainforests, and flood-prone marshes. Known in Spanish as el infierno verde, or “the green hell,” it is one of the most inhospitable places in the world. Its terrain is too treacherous for roads, yet hundreds of thousands of refuge seekers contend with its horrors every year in the hopes of reaching the United States, still some three thousand miles away. And of the countless who set out for the border, an untold number never arrive.  In this book, journalist BelÉn FernÁndez visits the DariÉn Gap to report on the dehumanizing and deadly stretch of land that has become a mass graveyard for migrants. FernÁndez’s travels bring her into contact with refuge seekers, people smugglers, law enforcement officials, and many more whose stories bring life to a place overwhelmingly associated with death. Combining history, on-the-ground reporting, travelogue, memoir, and searing politico-economic analysis, she shines light on a largely made-in-the-USA crisis that has come to define our modern era.  Engrossing and heartrending, The DariÉn Gap is a poignant and compassionate indictment of structural inequality and institutionalized inhumanity in a world where the have-nots must risk death for a chance at a better life-or any life at all.

Belén Fernández hat als junge, gut ausgebildete Journalistin aus Protest den USA den Rücken gekehrt und reist seither, wohin es sie treibt. Allein und abseits von den üblichen Pfaden denkt sie darüber nach, was es heißt, Amerikanerin zu sein in einem weitgehend von den USA angerichteten Chaos in der Welt. Mit den Jahren ihres Berichtens aus Ländern wie Ecuador, Kolumbien, Venezuela, Mexiko, Libanon, ­Syrien, der Türkei, Serbien, Italien hat sie sich einen Namen als eine der schärfsten Beobachterinnen amerikanischer Interventionen rund um den Erdball gemacht.Über Monate bleibt sie an politischen Brandherden, lernt die Menschen, ihr Leben, wenn nicht Überleben und ihre Sicht der Dinge kennen, benennt konkret, wie es zu politisch fatalen Entwicklungen und haltlosen Zuständen gekommen ist und wer in höchsten Positionen dafür verantwortlich ist. Ob sie über Erdogans Kurdenverfolgung oder Trumps Pläne einer Mauer gegen Mexiko schreibt, immer hat sie auch die Berichterstattung im Blick und deckt Gefälligkeiten, Unterlassungen und Schlamperei auf.Ein höchst unterhaltsames Buch, intelligent, geistreich, zornig und mit beißendem Humor.

En las democracias liberales los abogados tienen responsabilidades sociales que están directamente conectadas con el derecho al acceso a la justicia. El contenido básico de este derecho exige que los ciudadanos tengan la posibilidad de acudir a las instancias judiciales y administrativas del Estado para hacer efectivos sus derechos2. Este contenido básico se puede ­descomponer en varias aristas que se materializan de diversas formas3: desde presentar y controvertir las pruebas de un proceso, hasta solicitar un traductor cuando no se habla el idioma en el que se conduce el juicio, pasando por la posibilidad de que un abogado represente sus intereses ante las instancias judiciales y administrativas estatales4. El derecho al acceso a la justicia es fundamental en un estado liberal: tiene como objetivo garantizar que los ciudadanos puedan defender jurídicamente sus intereses y lograr su inclusión plena en la comunidad política.Por un lado, busca que los ciudadanos puedan ejercer efectivamente su autonomía y, por tanto, escoger, modificar y materializar los proyectos de buen vivir que consideran apropiados5. Los derechos en una democracia liberal tienen como objetivo central proteger las diversas dimensiones mediante las cuales se concreta la autonomía individual6. El derecho al acceso a la justicia permite que los individuos acudan a un tercero imparcial para resolver los conflictos que tienen con terceras personas7. Si no se puede acceder a las instancias administrativas y judiciales creadas por el Estado para tal fin, los derechos en disputa no podrán protegerse; si el diseño, procedimiento y resultados de estas instituciones no son correctos, ágiles y oportunos, los derechos serán solo reglas o principios de papel, no reglas y principios jurídicos en acción. El acceso a la justicia, por tanto, tiene consecuencias en la esfera privada de una sociedad liberal. Este derecho protege la capacidad que tienen todas las personas de crear y materializar sus identidades individuales y colectivas. Los conflictos irresueltos impiden u obstaculizan que esto suceda y, por ende, no permiten que las personas puedan concretar sus potencias como agentes morales.