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Benjamin T. Smith

@benjamintsmith7.bsky.social
354 followers 629 following 55 posts

History Content Provider at University of Warwick. "If Raymond Chandler had written a history of the drug trade, it would read like the Dope"

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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 03/02/2025
👇This
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 14/12/2024
Odd, met very few Cruz Azul fans in Oaxaca. None in team I played for...very badly.
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 14/12/2024
Immensely enjoyable.
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 14/12/2024
RIP MKV. Brilliant historian of modern Mexico. uapress.arizona.edu/book/cultura...
uapress.arizona.edu
Cultural Politics in Revolution | UAPress
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 14/12/2024
Well deserved. Congrats! Just finished it. Genuine eye opener.
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
Yep, v true. How can you claim state can't find organised crime if it can capture 350k migrants in 2 months.
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
Here's a fucking cat.
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
Rant over. Here's a podcast I did on this open.spotify.com/show/6w9YAIl...
open.spotify.com
Borderland with Vincent 'Rocco' Vargas
Podcast · IRONCLAD · New Episodes Every Monday. An unfiltered look at real stories from America's Southern Border. Each week, special operations combat veteran, actor, writer, and veteran BORSTAR A...
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
Wake up. This is the liberal order, just like the old one. For communists read migrants. West is just exporting its problems to other countries, while maintaining a thin veneer of civilisation.
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
Rich countries farm out the state of exception to poorer neighbours. While media wang on about tariffs (never going to happen) and end of liberal order.
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
Yet what is happening in Mexico (and Hungary, and Poland, and Turkey) appears to be the key dynamic in contemporary international relations.
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
Morenistas ignore it (as it is a stain on AMLO and Sheinbaum's governments...payment for a degree of national autonomy). Nor does the PRIAN (same reason as the Republicans).
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
Yet, US liberals don't talk about it (as Democrats as complicit in this as Republicans). Republicans don't talk about this (as they don't give a shit).
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
Military effectively runs detention centres. And often shoot to kill www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... Torture, rape, extrajudicial killing is common.
bbc.co.uk
Six migrants killed after Mexico soldiers open fire
Officials say the incident happened after a military patrol saw a vehicle carrying 33 migrants travelling at speed.
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
Right, got your attention. Can someone explain to me why no one is talking about/investigating the 500,000 migrants detained in Mexico on U.S. orders? In just October and November, 350,000 were detained. www.reuters.com/world/americ....
reuters.com
Mexico detains more than 5,200 migrants in single day
Mexican authorities detained more than 5,200 migrants across the country on Tuesday, officials said on Wednesday, in a major sweep as the nation is under pressure from the incoming U.S. government to crack down on arrivals at the U.S.-Mexico border.
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
Here's something thoughtless and snobbish about Trump supporters.
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
Here is a picture of some books.
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
Here's a cute cat.
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Reposted by Benjamin T. Smith
Thomas Graham @thomas-graham.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
Three months of war in the Sinaloa Cartel have left 1000+ dead or disappeared, and a city in a kind of humanitarian crisis. Culiacán is trying to return to normality – but is frequently reminded it lives at the whim of organised crime. 📸 by Jesús Verdugo www.theguardian.com/global-devel...
theguardian.com
‘Mother of all battles’: terror for Mexicans as war rages inside Sinaloa cartel
Violence shows few signs of ending after three months of war between rival factions that have left more than a thousand dead or disappeared
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
Loved appearing on Vincent Vargas' Borderland Show. Genuinely good fun. great host and great show. www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gNN...
youtube.com
The Secret Deals Between Governments and Cartels: Kingpins, Migrants and Cocaine | Borderland #43
YouTube video by IRONCLAD
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 06/12/2024
There are currently 500,000 migrants in Mexican detention centres. It is the story no one will touch.
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 06/12/2024
Don't worry, they won't affect the price of your car. But they will be used to stick 100s of 1000s of Central and South Americans in squalid, militarised detention centres in Mexico.
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 06/12/2024
What no one seems to mention is that they are not policy proposals but THREATS. They are aimed entirely at forcing Mexico to act as the US's Border Patrol.
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 06/12/2024
They are covered by the Anglophone newspapers like they are realistic policy proposals. www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a... They are mostly just ignored in Mexico.
independent.co.uk
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 06/12/2024
But it has made me even more annoyed about coverage of Trump's threats against Mexico.
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 06/12/2024
Just finished Jason de León's extraordinary Soldiers and Kings www.amazon.co.uk/Soldiers-Kin.... It is beautifully written, moving, defiant and like Levi Vonk's Border Hacker strangely hopeful.
amazon.co.uk
Amazon.co.uk
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 05/12/2024
So it is a rich area. There are loads of hippy memoirs. But no histiry I know of
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 04/12/2024
I, for one, do hope this doesn't start a bout of copycat targeted assassinations of the superwealthy.
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 02/12/2024
Great piece
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 01/12/2024
I am amazed that evangelicalism has flatlined in Mexico. Surely not correct?
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 29/11/2024
It would explain the stunning lack of concern.
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 28/11/2024
I really hope you are wrong and this is just a bargaining chip...debate in Mexico about this is 0....
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
In all seriousness though, this all play acting, right? Threats designed to exact concessions. Mexico will open dozen more migrant detention centers. Job done.
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
Immediately creating a black market...and offering more money to cartels. Genius
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
Debería ser lectura obligada para cualquiera que quiera escribir sobre lo que está ocurriendo en México con compasión y comprensión.
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
Es una mezcla de conmoción, horror, humor y catarsis, todo mezclado en trece historias cortas.
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
Pero no creo que nadie lo haya conseguido como Dahlia de la Cerda. La forma en que nos sumerge en las vidas de sus protagonistas, los ata a estas estructuras crueles y brutales, y luego concluye con una pieza de desafío, es increíble.
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
Me encanta el humor de Juan Pablo Villalobos o la prosa atronadora y claustrofóbica de Fernanda Melchor.
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
Muchos autores han intentado escribir la historia de lo que la DEA denomina las "atrocidades" sin perder el sentido del amor, el humor, la rebeldía y la humanidad que aún existe en México.
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
En mi opinión, es el mejor relato de ficción sobre la guerra contra el narcotráfico, a la altura de La Virgen de los Sicarios de Vallejo.
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
Acabo de terminar el libro extraordinario de @dahliabat.bsky.social , Perras de Reserva www.amazon.co.uk/Perras-reser...
amazon.co.uk
Perras de reserva
Buy Perras de reserva by Cerda, Dahlia de la from Amazon's Fiction Books Store. Everyday low prices on a huge range of new releases and classic fiction.
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
Should be required reading for anyone who wants to write with compassion about what is going on in Mexico.
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
It's a mix of shock, horror, humour and catharsis all blended into a tight thirteen short stories.
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
But I don't think that anyone has succeeded like Dahlia de la Cerda. The way that she hurls one into her protagonists' lives, ties them into these cruel and brutal structures, and then concludes with a fist-pumping piece of defiance is amazing.
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
And I can't get Fernanda Melchor's thundering, claustrophobic prose out of my head.
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
I love the playfulness of Juan Pablo Villalobos's Down the Rabbit Hole or I Don't Expect Anyone to Believe Me.
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
Many authors have tried to write the history of what the DEA terms the "atrocities" without losing the sense of love, humour, defiance, and humanity that still exists in Mexico.
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
Imo it is the best fictional take on the drug war, up there with Vallejo's Our Lady of the Assassins.
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
Just finished @dahliabat.bsky.social extraordinary Perras de Reserva www.amazon.co.uk/Perras-reser...
amazon.co.uk
Perras de reserva
Buy Perras de reserva by Cerda, Dahlia de la from Amazon's Fiction Books Store. Everyday low prices on a huge range of new releases and classic fiction.
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Benjamin T. Smith @benjamintsmith7.bsky.social · 21/11/2024
Just started Dahlia de la Cerda podcast. Fucking hell, it's really, really good.
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