After an exciting week visiting a close friend, meeting new ones, and immersing myself fully in the rich cultural experience that is Oaxaca, I was headed home to celebrate Christmas with my family and friends in Chiapas. My husband was back in the States on business, so I had taken this special trip to Oaxaca […]
Continue ReadingYou would think that by now, well into my third year of living in Chiapas, I would have learned that familiar U.S. customs — especially ones which make me feel as though I have slipped into a comfortable old bathrobe — do not always transfer gracefully into my new country. But without the benefit of an established […]
Continue ReadingI have spent the early morning hours of this cool, beautiful summer morning surfing the Internet for international news and letters from friends in distant places. With my laptop clicking and whirring — and my modem giving me the occasional seductive wink — I make final revisions to a manuscript scheduled for publication on “Mexico […]
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We sit crushed together, moist and miserable, in the back of the battered old VW van as we do every day about this time. Interesting odors assail our noses. We would rather not know what it is we are smelling. The mid-afternoon heat is beyond depressing; it is defeating. Eleven of us wait to go […]
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The first traces of an awakening sun touch the morning horizon, brushing aside the night’s long shadows. On the streets of Ixtapalapa, a working class neighborhood 30 minutes by cab from the center of Mexico City, young men – some in the dress of the Jerusalem of 2000 years ago – shuffle by hurriedly. Many […]
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As a child, I had heard some stories about my ancestors, in particular, about clashes between Pancho Villa and a distant relative, something about someone “being strung up by their thumbs”. However, as a young boy, growing up in San Diego, California, the stories didn’t mean anything to me, and they were stored deep within […]
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Cogan’s Reviews With these two thrillers we find ourselves in the world of hard-boiled private eyes – a la Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler – but with a difference. Both stories are squarely set in Mexico. Murdoch Hughes has created a private eye, Rick Gage, who has given up his former career as a detective […]
Continue ReadingSome of the longest lasting and most useful lessons in life come at the worst of times and in the most dreadful of ways. It’s because life is so unpredictable, I suppose. We become all the better for it. The anguish suffered from a painful experience must really stimulate those nerve connections in the old […]
Continue ReadingPara Julie Black © 1999 Todos Derechos Reservados. No me considero de esas personas muy místicas y psíquicas, bien versada en la jerga de lo sobrenatural. Pero tampoco soy escéptica. Solo puedo aceptar lo que me sucede en el mundo y guardar algunas cosas como recuerdos inexplicables. Así es el caso con el fantasma de […]
Continue Reading– an excerpt from the book: “Agave Marias – border crossers, boundary breakers.” by various authors. My reprobate pilot is a doctor. His own health problems prompted early retirement to Mexico. When he couldn’t pass a health exam for a new flying license, he changed a 3 to an 8 on the expiration date of […]
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