Pitches wanted (LatAm politics, human rights, colonialism) | $100-$200 per article
Added 2025-04-18 16:25:45 +0000 UTCCOMPANY/PUBLICATION: NACLA
Deadline: 2 May 2025
Julianne Chandler, Managing Editor at NACLA, is looking for pitches:
NACLA is currently accepting proposals for our Winter 2025 issue on the Americas as both site and system of imperial experimentation and return. Send us your pitches by May 2, 2025.
CALL FOR PITCHES
In Discourse on Colonialism (1950), Aimé Césaire viewed the rise of fascism and violence in Europe as inseparable from its colonial past, making it inevitable that imperialism—like a boomerang—would return to devastate its point of origin. Operation Condor’s dark legacy of coordinating the capture, torture, and disappearance of dissidents perpetrated by dictatorial regimes across South America resonates today as new repressive technologies take hold of the region that are clearly learning from this brutal past. From the Cold War to the neoliberal turn, from the School of the Americas to the expansion of corporate militarism and logistical regimes, the convergence of the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) and Military Industrial Complex (MIC) has shaped how states manage dissent, movement, and life itself. Today, these neocolonial afterlives erupt into new forms of border militarization, algorithmic surveillance, ecological collapse, and the criminalization of migration. But what makes this historical moment different?
As fascist regimes solidify across the hemisphere, these new infrastructures of empire have become more sophisticated, overt, and advanced.As fascist regimes solidify across the hemisphere, these new infrastructures of empire have become more sophisticated, overt, and advanced. Biometric detention centers, forced disappearances, and drone intelligence are now central to how power organizes the world. Mike Davis’s 1995 essay “Beyond Blade Runner” reminds us that the dystopian future is not on the horizon—it is already here, structured by a political economy that relies on specific architectures: racial capitalism, environmental murder, and militarized spatial and urban planning designed to maximize profit extraction and maintain territorial control.
Perhaps now, more than ever, it is crucial to understand how both rural and urban sites across the Americas have long served as testbeds for technologies of repression and dispossession, where infrastructures and logistics converge to preempt uprisings and control political and spatial mobility. This moment is not only marked by authoritarian resurgence—it is also defined by an intensified capacity to coordinate violence through networks of techno-fascism: from ICE raids tipped by keywords on social media account searches, to unlawful drone surveillance and warfare; from necropolitical AI profiling to the re-circulation of extractive capital, both human and non-human.
The Winter 2025 issue of the NACLA Report will be guest edited by Romina Green Rioja and Sergio Beltrán-García. For this issue, we invite scholars, artists, and activists to interrogate the Americas as both site and system of imperial experimentation and return.
We welcome articles and creative projects that engage, but are not limited to, the following themes:
Historical comparisons between current U.S. politics and Latin American military regimes
The material politics within the infrastructures of techno-fascism and algorithmic governance: AI, drones, satellites, optic fiber, power plants, and rare earth extraction
Counterforensic insights and strategies which expose the black boxes and spatial logistics of neocolonialism
The School of the Americas and the return of its counterinsurgency legacies, where serious human rights violations are now enacted within the United States, such as disappearances of dissidents
The visual and aural cultures of American fascisms in Latin America, and its current reactivations in the United States
Reactivation of World War and Cold War-era legislative acts for population control
Border regimes, deportation infrastructures, and the management and surveillance of mobility
The reconfiguration of logistics capitalism and the racialization of supply chains
Technologies of resistance under fascism through collective action
Data Subversion: Data Feminism, rethinking Project Cybersyn, and other projects
We want contributors and readers to reflect on how colonial technologies endure, how past and present blur through logistics and control, and how we might imagine a world beyond the new infrastructures of domination. We especially welcome work that bridges disciplines, links history with the contemporary, or emerges from collective struggle and organization. We give preference to articles that are based on original research and interviews, and also welcome artistic and creative proposals.
Please send a brief pitch (250 words) outlining the thrust and tone of your proposed piece and why you are well positioned to write it by May 2 to managing editor Julianne Chandler at jchandler@nacla.org. We will respond to pitches by mid-May. Drafts of accepted articles (2,500-3,500 words) will be due on August 15, 2025.
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CONTACT INFORMATION (please do not share the email address publicly):
Questions/submissions: jchandler@nacla.org
TO HELP YOU CRAFT YOUR PITCH:
Learn more about the publication: NACLA Report on the Americas is a quarterly magazine published by the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA). It covers political, social, and economic issues in Latin America and examines the region’s relationship with the United States. The publication provides analysis and reporting on topics such as social movements, environmental justice, and human rights, with a focus on amplifying perspectives often overlooked in mainstream media. More information here.
Read through a selection of recent articles/stories on its website.
Review the submission guidelines here. Note that these are the publication's general guidelines to help you refine your pitch. You must still follow the editor's specific instructions above.
Check out our collection of pitch excerpts on this page and find more sample pitches at The Open Notebook and at SuccessfulPitches.com.
Do not forget to end your pitch with (1) a short introduction about yourself; (2) a few lines highlighting your writing experience, relevant credentials and publication credits; and (3) links to your strongest work or portfolio, and online profile.
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