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True Tales From Another Mexico
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Newspapers trumpeted Vicente Fox's election as Mexico's president with the headlines "Ya Cambio" - Change Has Come. Fox ousted Mexico's ruling party, the PRI, and ended its 71 years in power. But as Sam Quinones convincingly shows in this book, much of Mexico was changing before the July 2000 presidential elections. Fox's victory marked the triumph of another Mexico, a vital, energetic, and creative Mexico, tracked by Quinones for over six years and perceptively presented in this book.
"The press, other governments and tourists are most aware of the official, elite, corrupt Mexico; the Mexico that won't allow a poor man a chance; the Mexico behind the sunglasses. I've even been told by people, including Mexicans, that this _is_ Mexican culture. But I know that's not true. There is another side of Mexico."
Here are its stories - stories from the Mexico that exists far from the headlines, beyond Cancun and tequila, mariachi bands and Carlos and Charlie's. Some of the tales Quinones brings us are strange and exotic; but more often they are from mainstream though ignored parts of Mexican life.
Chalino Sanchez was a migrant worker who became a underground singer of narcocorridos -- ballads about drug smugglers - until his murder, which remains unsolved. Two traveling salesmen trundled through a sweltering small town one day, plying their wares. The next day they were hanging from the town's bandstand lynch by a mob, a thousand strong.
"True Tales From Another Mexico" takes us to the Bronx - the rude boys of Mexico's Congress. It immerses us in the world of Oaxacan farmworkers in Baja California. We see how a bunch of illiterate rancheros invented the Michoacana ice cream stores and turned it into the most successful small-business in Mexico. We visit the cult of Nueva Jerusalen, a theocratic village run by a charismatic excommunicated Catholic priest, where residents receive voting instructions from the Virgin of Guadalupe.
These are the stories of people whose stories never get told.
"This is a scrappy, lively, solid work of reportage about the real modern Mexico. It's insightful, crammed with information and a terrific read."
_Alma Guillermoprieto, Latin American writer, the New Yorker_
"This book expands our knowledge of modern Mexico many times over. Quinones unearths a wealth of material that has in fact gone unnoticed or been hidden."
_Prof. Francisco Lomeli, University of California, Santa Barbara._
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