Charles Bowden, visionary writer and crusading muckracker, died in Las Cruces, NM this past Saturday. Bowden joined us here in Marfa for the inaugural Marfa Dialogues, a program that looked at the culture and politics of the U.S./Mexico border which Bowden reported on in with his “surrealist fever dream” prose, capturing the sadness and madness of the drug war in equal measure. Marfa Dialogues co-founder Hamilton Fish talked to Marfa Public Radio’s Tom Michael in remembrance of this irreplaceable American hero:
He had a gruffness and he had a weathered, Western affect, but it belied a gentleness, a tenderness, an emotional vulnerability and a sensitivity to the human condition that contributed to making him one of really great figures in American journalism in the last era. It’s a great loss.
Find more of Marfa Public Radio’s coverage of Bowden’s passing at marfapublicradio.rog.