Alfredo Corchado and Shannon O’Neil
Monday, September 30 at Noon AT THE SAMOSET
Topic: Mexico and the US
Alfredo Corchado, Mexico bureau chief for the Dallas Morning News, is a noted expert on immigration, drug violence, and foreign policy between the U.S. and Mexico. He has reported on everything from the disappearance of women in Juarez to the exodus of Mexico’s middle class to the United States. Over the years Mr. Corchado has exposed government corruption and the reach of Mexican drug traffickers into U.S. communities. He has described the perils that journalists face and the disturbing result: an increasingly silent Mexican press.
Corchado is the author of Midnight in Mexico: A Reporter’s Journey Through a Country’s Descent into Darkness. From one review: “In the last six years, more than eighty thousand people have been killed in the Mexican drug war, and drug trafficking there is a multibillion-dollar business. In a country where the powerful are rarely scrutinized, noted Mexican American journalist Alfredo Corchado refuses to shrink from reporting on government corruption, murders in Juarez, or the ruthless drug cartels of Mexico.”
Shannon K. O’Neil is a senior fellow for Latin America Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a nonpartisan foreign-policy think tank and membership organization. Her interests and expertise include politics and economics in Latin America and immigration. She is the director of the U.S.-Mexico Initiative at CFR.[1] O’Neil publishes the blogs Latin America’s Moment and Latintelligence.
She is the author of Two Nations Indivisible: Mexico, the United States, and the Road Ahead. From the overview: “Tales of grisly murders conveyed by American media shape the widespread perception of Mexico as a dangerous place, overrun by brutal drug lords. But there is far more to Mexico’s story than this narrative would suggest, writes CFR Senior Fellow for Latin America Studies Shannon K. O’Neil, in Two Nations Indivisible: Mexico, the United States, and the Road Ahead.”