Author

Marisol Cortez

Marisol Cortez is Deceleration’s Executive Editor. As a writer and community-based scholar, her work is grounded in Chicanx and decolonial movements for justice and earth protection in South Texas. Beginning her political life as a poet, she later participated in grassroots campaigns for environmental justice in San Antonio, which inspired her doctoral research at the University of California at Davis. After graduating with her Ph.D. in Cultural Studies, she has walked between academic, activist, and artistic worlds in an effort to make the labor of thinking and writing useful to on-the-ground struggles in her home community of San Antonio, Tejas. As a community-based scholar, she has used research to support grassroots struggles around development and displacement, and as a creative writer she is author of the award-winning cli-fi novel Luz at Midnight (FlowerSong Press 2020) and I Call on the Earth, a chapbook of documentary poetry about the displacement of Mission Trails Mobile Home Community.

Marisol's Latest Articles

VideoVIDEO: Foraging Dewberries at Canyon Lake

By Marisol Cortez ● Deceleration Video ● May 6, 2024

It’s dewberry season in Texas. Some practical advice and poetic reflections on red wasps, slippery slopes, and the exuberance of foraging in a time of peril and suffering.

Albert Garcia’s Death Recorded as Drug Overdose by Bexar County Medical Examiner

By Greg Harman & Marisol Cortez ● San Antonio ● February 21, 2024

Albert Garcia died beneath a highway offramp after living unsheltered for nearly a month during San Antonio’s hottest summer on record. A decision not to include heat as a contributing factor has sparked debate.

‘Against Terricide’: Arturo Escobar Speaking in San Antonio on Decolonial Movements

By Greg Harman & Marisol Cortez ● Analysis ● March 30, 2023

Renowned Latin American scholar-activist, Arturo Escobar, brings a vision integrating human communities and the Earth in the face of climate crisis.

words for birds feature

VIDEO: Words for Birds and the Trees They Live In

By Greg Harman & Marisol Cortez ● Broadcast ● April 25, 2022

‘Word for Birds’: Ahead of yet another public hearing on a proposed mass tree removal, a group of San Antonio poets stand in solidarity with the tree and bird protectors of Brackenridge Park.

winter storm survey

Winter Storm Survey: Unmet Physical and Emotional Needs a Year After Winter Storm Uri

By Greg Harman & Marisol Cortez ● Reportando ● February 18, 2022

Deceleration’s Winter Storm Survey shows the freezing blackout is a lingering specter. Only community-led solutions-making can exorcise it.

su nombre es albert parte 3

‘His Name Is Albert’: Lessons from a Polar Vortex ( 3 of 3)

By Marisol Cortez ● San Antonio ● January 26, 2022

This is what we learned from a year-long intervention on behalf of an unhoused man who lost limbs during February 2021’s polar vortex.

‘His Name is Albert’: Lessons from a Polar Vortex (2 of 3)

By Marisol Cortez ● San Antonio ● January 19, 2022

This is what we learned from a year-long intervention on behalf of an unhoused man who lost limbs during February 2021’s polar vortex.

su nombre es alberto

‘His Name is Albert’: Lessons from a Polar Vortex (1 of 3)

By Marisol Cortez ● San Antonio ● January 12, 2022

This is what we learned from a year-long intervention on behalf of an unhoused man who lost limbs during February 2021’s polar vortex.

volver a tierra veronica castillo

Going Plastics-Free with Veronica Castillo of Galeria EVA

By Marisol Cortez ● Analysis ● November 27, 2021

Against the might of an economy organized around disposability and extraction, ceramics artist Veronica Castillo and Society of Native Nations team up to reacquaint local families with ancient and intimate relations to clay, body, and earth.

blue body water

TAKE ACTION: Attend Our Panel on Environmental Justice & De/Coloniality

By Marisol Cortez ● Decolonial ● November 11, 2021

On November 17 at 9am CST, join Deceleration and Environmental Humanities at UTSA in a co-sponsored virtual keynote panel on environmental justice and de/coloniality. What’s that, you ask?