| Beach Reading - A Glimpse in "Another Mexico" |
by Jesse Johnson
True Tales from Another Mexico
Past the thumping bars and moon-sliver beaches, in the smallest hillside villages and in its biggest cities, Mexico is full of stories that the average tourist would probably never hear. In True Tales from Another Mexico (University of New Mexico Press, 2001), American journalist Sam Quinones brings some of these stories to light. He reveals in a careful, caring, sometimes skeptical voice a dynamic, variegated Mexican people. Each story is a richly colored snapshot, a tale worth telling on its own. But taken together, this collection weaves a coherent tapestry of contemporary Mexican culture, “about its complexity and how it is changing.”
I caught wind of this book after hearing Quinones talk about it on the radio. As it turned out, he was giving a talk that night at a bookstore in Seattle. The stories he told—it was a storytelling session, not a lecture—reeled me into the worlds the book examines. Worlds which include Mexico’s pervasive transvestite culture; L.A.’s Oaxacan basketball league; and “The Bronx,” a whole band of PRI congressman whose function it was to heckle speakers from opposing parties. But to name just these few is to only graze the surface of what Quinones dives much deeper into.
Among the things I like best about True Tales is that it sheds some light on 20th-century Mexican politics and the marks it has left on Mexican culture. Quinones autopsies the PRI (the Independent Revolutionary Party), the so-called “most successful” authoritarian ruling party ever, which ruled from 1929-2000. He examines the conditions that, in July of 2000, finally led to the end of its reign with the election of Vicente Fox. Understanding the nature of the PRI’s regime—its tendency toward bureaucracy and co-optation—helps understand what the dynamic elements of Mexico’s people have been up against, and how truly remarkable an event like Fox’s election was.
Inside Mexico: Living, Traveling, and Doing Business in a Changing Society...
An essay entitled “The Popsicle Kings of Tocumbo” relates an excellent example of how the forward-thinking, creative, enterprising Mexican has worked around the one-party bureaucracy. It traces the story of how Agustin Andrade and Ignacio Alcázar, two men from the small town of Tocumbo in Michoacán, began the legacy of the La Michoacana popsicle shops that pepper towns across Mexico (Zihuatanejo has at least two of them). It is a story of how enterprising Mexicans could overcome difficult economic circumstances without emigrating to the United States or succumbing to the drug trade. In a similar vein, “San Quintín” tells of how scores of indigenous Oaxacans have transplanted themselves to Baja California, overcoming the stifling lack of opportunity in their home pueblos, as well as harsh discrimination (and the chemicals crop dusters scatter without heed for workers) in their new home.
Though both of these examples demonstrate how Mexicans have worked to change within their own country, Quinones also looks at Mexican emigration to the United States. Indeed, understanding this drive to leave was one of his stated motivations for writing True Tales —who goes, who stays, and why. He highlights the idea that, while most Mexicans go the United States in search of expanded opportunity, many do not see it as an escape, or as a permanent move. Thousands of beautiful homes adorn pueblos across Mexico, worked on and occupied only in the winter when their owners return from work in the United States, monuments to their success and indicators that they have every intention of returning.
Though thought-provoking and thoroughly interesting, True Tales is not picture-perfect. In some of the essays, Quinones’ narrative thread gets tangled up on itself. Moreover, the political slant he pastes to almost every story feels at times like a friendly dog that won’t leave you alone: at first enjoyable, but ultimately too overbearing for its own good. And, as with all essay collections, some are more captivating than others.
Nonetheless, if you feel you’ve read enough sand-coated, water-warped romance and mystery novels for awhile, True Tales provides an engaging alternative. From the worldwide success of the Mexican telenovela, to the demise of two traveling salesmen lynched in a small pueblo, “another Mexico” awaits you.
You may visit Sam Quinones’ web site at www. samquinones.com
Jesse Johnson, a recent graduate of UC Berkeley, is at the moment a professional wanderer.
February 2002
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