Writing

Beyond the Iron Fist

President Nayib Bukele’s administration has repealed El Salvador’s 2017 metallic mining ban, paving the way for renewed extraction projects that threaten the environment and target environmental activists, such as the ongoing politically motivated trial against five water defenders from Santa Marta.

Aerial view of a city in El Salvador

Refereed Articles

2022 “Shock Mobilities During Moments of Acute Uncertainty” Geopolitics 28 (4), with B. Xiang, W. Allen, et al., pp. 1-24.
https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2022.2091314

2021 “Vital Minimums: El Salvador between youth and old age” Latino Studies 19, pp. 518-540.
https://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-021-00346-z

2021 “How to Read Equipo Maíz: Cartooning the Political in El Salvador” Radical History Review 141, October, pp. 176-202.
https://doi.org/10.1215/01636545-9170780

2021 “Waterproofing the State: Migration, River-Borders, and Ecologies of Control,” Comparative American Studies: An
International Journal, Vol. 18, No. 1, pp. 59-74. https://doi.org/10.1080/14775700.2021.1872765

2018 “Deracination/Elimination: Colonial Terror and the 1930s Race Laws in El Salvador” American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Vol. 42, No. 2, pp. 39-56.
https://doi.org/10.17953/aicrj.42.2.cuellar

2013 “Latin America, Football and the Japanese Diaspora,” Soccer & Society, Volume 14, Issue 4, pp. 722-733.
https://doi.org/10.1080/14660970.2013.792501

Peer Reviewed

2022 “Panamá, Exhausted” NACLA: Report on the Americas, Vol. 54, No. 4, pp. 369-375.
https://doi.org/10.1080/10714839.2022.2145110

2020 “El Salvador’s Hydrosocial Crisis” NACLA: Report on the Americas, Vol 52, No. 3, pp. 317-323.
https://doi.org/10.1080/10714839.2020.1809101

2020 “On Waving the White Flag” Social Text: Periscope, June 5.

Editor Reviewed

2021 “The Value of a Volcano” NACLA Web & El Faro English, Nov. 1.
https://nacla.org/news/2021/10/29/bitcoin-volcano-el-salvador

2021 “Bitcoin Sanctuaries” New Left Review: Sidecar, Sept. 15.
https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/bitcoin-sanctuaries

2020 “El Salvador’s Two Pandemics: Maximum Insecurity” ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin America, May 8.
https://revista.drclas.harvard.edu/el-salvadors-two-pandemics-maximum-insecurity/

2020 “Nayib Bukele and the Punitive Option in El Salvador” Radical History Review: The Abusable Past, March 2.
https://www.radicalhistoryreview.org/abusablepast/nayib-bukele-and-the-punitive-option-in-el-salvador/

Book Reviews

2022 “Decolonial Groundwork: On Geo Maher’s Anticolonial Eruptions,” NACLA Web, April 29.
https://nacla.org/anticolonial-eruptions-review

2022 A Left that Dares to Speak Its Name by Slavoj Žižek, Socialism and Democracy, Vol. 35, Issue 2-3, pp. 399-403.
https://doi.org/10.1080/08854300.2021.1977694

2020 “Endless Coup, Permanent Struggle” Review of Who Killed Berta Caceres? Dams, Death Squads, and an Indigenous Defender’s Battle for the Planet by Nina Lakhani, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Sept. 3. Portions translated to Spanish
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/endless-coup-permanent-struggle-on-nina-lakhanis-who-killed-berta-caceres/

2020 “On process and function in the capitalist stack” Review Essay on The Politics of Operations: Excavating Contemporary
Capitalism by Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson, Journal of Cultural Economy 13:3, pp. 331-335.
https://doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2020.1741019

2016 Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition by Glen Coulthard, Diálogo: An Interdisciplinary Studies
Journal, Chicago, IL: DePaul University, Spring. https://doi.org/10.1353/dlg.2016.0012

2013 “Towards a De-colonial Common Sense,” Review of The Darker Side of Modernity by Walter D. Mignolo, Discourse:
Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture, 35.1, Detroit, MI: Wayne State Press, Winter.
https://doi.org/10.13110/discourse.35.1.0124

Other Academic Publications

2017 “Première partie: La recherche en action”: An Interview with Michael Denning and the Yale Working Group on
Globalization and Culture, Revue française d’études américaines, No. 151, pp. 8-22.
https://doi.org/10.3917/rfea.151.0008

2017 Primary Source Translator for Heather Vrana (ed.), Anti-Colonial Texts from Central American Student Movements, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

2016 “Jorge Sanjinés,” Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism, ed. Stephen Ross, London: Routledge.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781135000356-REM344-1

2016 “Fernando Solanas,” Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism, ed. Stephen Ross, London: Routledge.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781135000356-REM348-1

2012 “Reconsidering the Radio in Media Studies” Spectator, Vol. 32, Issue 1, Spring, pp. 37-44.
https://cinema.usc.edu/archivedassets/32_1/6_Cuellar.pdf


National

2024 “With Bukele Consolidated, Salvadorans Enter Uncharted Terrain” El Faro English, Feb. 7.
https://elfaro.net/en/202402/opinion/27238/With-Bukele-Consolidated-Salvadorans-Enter-Uncharted-Terrain.htm

2022 “No One is Safe in Bukele’s Gang War” NACLA Web, Jun. 23.
https://nacla.org/bukele-gang-war

2021 “There Is No Democratic Tradition in El Salvador” El Faro English, May 8.
https://elfaro.net/en/202105/columns/25471/There-Is-No-Democratic-Tradition-in-El-Salvador.htm

2020 “Why Should the U.S. Election Matter to Central Americans?” El Faro English, Oct. 29.
https://elfaro.net/en/202010/columnas/24950/Why-Should-the-US-Election-Matter-to-Central-Americans.htm

2020 “La Crisis Hidrosocial de El Salvador” NACLA Web, Sept. 23.
https://nacla.org/news/2020/09/23/agua-privatizacion-crisis-hidrosocial-el-salvador

2020 “El Salvador Needs More than Savvy Messaging” El Faro English, April 10.
https://elfaro.net/en/202004/el_salvador/24259/El-Salvador-Needs-More-than-Savvy-Messaging.htm

2020 “Deportation Contagions” NACLA Web, March 26. Republished by Latino Rebels.
https://nacla.org/news/2020/03/26/deportation-contagions

2020 “Salvadoran Militarism and Bukele’s Post-Postwar” El Faro English, February 13.
https://elfaro.net/en/202002/el_salvador/24023/Salvadoran-Militarism-and-Bukele

International

2024 “Después del 4F, El Salvador entra a terreno inexplorado” El Faro, Feb. 14.

2022 “La República del Bitcoin” Jacobin América Latina, Jun 25.
https://jacobinlat.com/2022/06/25/la-republica-del-bitcoin/

2021 “L’America Latino e i santuari del Bitcoin” DinamoPress, Oct. 18.
https://www.dinamopress.it/news/lamerica-latina-e-i-santuari-del-bitcoin/

2021 “Santuarios de Bitcoin” SinPermiso, Sept. 18.
https://www.sinpermiso.info/textos/santuarios-de-bitcoin

2021 “Il golpe bianco di Bukele: non c’è nessuna tradizione democratica in El Salvador” DinamoPress, May 27.
https://www.dinamopress.it/news/non-ce-nessuna-tradizione-democratica-in-el-salvador/

2020 “Le elezioni negli Stati Uniti viste dall’America Centrale” DinamoPress, Oct. 31.
https://www.dinamopress.it/news/le-elezioni-negli-stati-uniti-viste-dallamerica-centrale/

2020 “¿Por qué deben importar las elecciones en EE. UU. a los centroamericanos?” El Faro, Oct. 30.

2020 “La crisi pandemica e la condizione dei migranti in Mesoamerica” DinamoPress, July 4.
https://www.dinamopress.it/news/la-crisi-pandemica-la-condizione-dei-migranti-mesoamerica/

2020 “Pandemic Statelessness in Mesoamerica” Routed Magazine & Centre on Migration, Policy, and Society (COMPAS), University of Oxford, Oxford, UK, June 21 & July 3.
https://www.routedmagazine.com/pandemic-statelessness
Translated into Spanish: https://es.routedmagazine.com/pandemic-statelessness

2020 “El Salvador tra due pandemie: è massima insicurezza” DinamoPress, June 23.
https://www.dinamopress.it/news/el-salvador-le-due-pandemie-massima-insicurezza/

Interviews

2023 “Saying Goodbye to Childhood: An Interview with Javier Zamora” Public Books, April 20.
Reprints

2022 “Vital Minimums: El Salvador between youth and old age” in K. Martínez and M. Rúa (eds.), The Art of Latina and
Latino Elderhood, London: Palgrave-Macmillan, pp. 105-127.

2014 “Latin America, Football, and the Japanese Diaspora,” in Younghan Cho (ed.), Football in Asia: History, Business, Culture
(Series: Sport in the Global Society), New York: Routledge, pp. 144-155.