By Coral Gables Gazette staff
Former U.S. Sen. and Ambassador Ken Salazar, whose career has taken him from a family ranch in Colorado to the U.S. Senate, a presidential Cabinet and the American embassy in Mexico City, will discuss a new memoir built around the border that has shaped both his family history and his public life Tuesday, Sept. 1 at Books & Books.
Salazar will appear in conversation with veteran journalist Maria Elena Salinas at the bookstore’s Coral Gables location for a 7 p.m. discussion of “Borderlands: My Fight for an Inclusive America,” published last month by BenBella Books.
The pairing brings together two prominent Mexican American voices whose careers have repeatedly intersected with immigration and U.S.-Mexico relations.
Salazar served as U.S. ambassador to Mexico from 2021 to 2025, U.S. secretary of the Interior under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013 and Colorado’s U.S. senator from 2005 to 2009. Before going to Washington, he served as Colorado attorney general.
But “Borderlands” begins much earlier.
Salazar is a fifth-generation Coloradan whose ancestors have lived in the American Southwest for more than four centuries. He grew up on his family’s homestead in the San Luis Valley, where the Salazars continue to farm and ranch land they have held since before Colorado became a state.
That history provides the personal foundation for a book that moves between memoir and political argument.
A border viewed through family and public life
“Borderlands” traces the relationship between the United States and Mexico from the conflicts and treaties that established the modern border through the contemporary battles over migration, identity and citizenship.
Publisher materials explicitly frame the book against what Salazar characterizes as Donald Trump’s attacks on American diversity, while also criticizing what the book calls the “political malpractice” of both major U.S. parties on migration and border policy.
Salazar’s central argument is that the country’s ethnic and cultural diversity should be understood not as a weakness but as an American strength.
The book draws on stories from his childhood, his years in Colorado politics, his service in Washington and his final major diplomatic posting in Mexico City. It asks questions about who qualifies as American, how the United States should understand its history as a nation of immigrants and whether the two countries can move toward a relationship based less on division and more on economic and cultural integration.
During his four years as ambassador, Salazar was directly involved in a period when migration, border security, drug trafficking and economic integration dominated relations between Washington and Mexico City.
Before that appointment, his public career had already spanned environmental policy, natural resources, energy and Western land and water issues. The U.S. State Department described him upon his nomination as a fifth-generation rancher with extensive state and federal experience.
The 368-page memoir has drawn endorsements from political figures including Sens. Mark Kelly and Catherine Cortez Masto and Reps. Joe Neguse, Veronica Escobar and Jason Crow, as well as actress and producer Eva Longoria.
Salinas brings her own border reporting
Tuesday’s moderator brings a parallel history to the subject.
Salinas spent more than 30 years as co-anchor of Univision’s national evening newscast, becoming one of the most recognizable journalists in Spanish-language television in the United States.
Her reporting has taken her through presidential elections, wars, natural disasters and repeated debates over immigration and the Latino experience in the United States.
In 2015, Salinas and Univision News received a Peabody Award, an Emmy and the Walter Cronkite Award for “Entre el abandono y el rechazo,” a documentary examining why children from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala were making dangerous journeys toward the United States. The Cronkite judges praised the report for focusing on affected families rather than politicians.
Salinas was also the first Latina to receive an Emmy Award for Lifetime Achievement, in 2012, and has been inducted into the National Association of Broadcasters’ Broadcasting Hall of Fame.
That makes Tuesday’s event more than a conventional author interview. Salazar will be discussing a memoir about migration, citizenship and the relationship between two countries with a journalist who spent decades reporting on many of those same questions from the ground.
The event is free and open to the public. Books & Books advises that an RSVP provides general admission but does not guarantee seating, and recommends arriving early. Copies of “Borderlands” will be available for purchase.
If you go…
Ken Salazar in conversation with Maria Elena Salinas
Tuesday, Sept. 1, 7 p.m.
Books & Books, 265 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables
Free and open to the public
RSVP: booksandbooks.com
