By Julie Black © 1999 All Rights Reserved. Oh, Mexico, he thought to himself, the azure sky that meets the silhouette of red tiled roofs, central patios overflowing with tin-can flowers, the sweet melodic song of canaries busily chirping to the laughter of children’s voices. He could recall the smell of his mother’s kitchen as […]
Continue ReadingCROSSING OVER: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail, by Rubén Martínez. Metropolitan, 330 p., $26. (October 2001) Amazon Books Great books are the hardest kind to review. There’s just too much temptation to toss out the usual lauds and accolades which make for fine back cover blurbs. And then there’s the trap of comparison […]
Continue Reading( En Español: La Caridad Empieza En Casa) Weeks ago, the world was shocked by the news arriving from Acteal, Chiapas. More than forty persons, including women and children, were brutally shot to death while praying for peace for their land. The perpetrators of this massacre were gunmen organized and armed by groups that oppose the […]
Continue Reading(In English: Charity Begins At Home) Hace unas semanas, el mundo se estremeció con las noticias provenientes de Acteal, Chiapas. Más de cuarenta personas, mujeres y niños incluidos, fueron brutalmente asesinadas mientras rezaban por la paz en sus comunidades. Los autores de esta masacre fueron elementos armados por grupos que se oponen al Ejército Zapatista […]
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Cogan’s Reviews Although it’s about Mexico, this one starts off in Ecuador in the 1960s where the author was doing doctoral fieldwork for a dissertation on haciendas in that country. His work took him to a remote research station on the side of a mountain seventy miles from electricity, running water, telephones, etc. One day […]
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Cogan’s Reviews This is the story of a group of men who have become known as the Yuma 14. They are the fourteen illegal immigrants who died attempting to cross the Arizona border in May, 2001. And what a terrible and upsetting story it is. Unknown numbers of these illegal immigrants die every year making […]
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Chapala, el mayor lago natural de México está muriendo. En este tiempo el lago juega un papel vital en un gigantesco ecosistema, la cuenca hidrológica del río Lerma – lago Chapala, que incluye a más de 8 millones de personas, 3,500 de industrias diversas, 750,000 hectáreas de tierras de riego y 14 ciudades con poblaciones […]
Continue ReadingThe financial impacts of poor water quality on Mexico are nothing short of staggering. In any discussion about visiting Mexico, somebody always pipes up with the comment “Don’t drink the water.” If I had a dollar for every time I have been given this advice, I would be a wealthy man indeed. Nonetheless, the comment […]
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Often, when we think of starving children, we’re thinking about Central Africa or parts of India or even remote areas of South America. But Mexico has its share of the poor, as close by as the Chapala area. Some children are, in fact, so impoverished as to border on that critical brink of lack of […]
Continue ReadingBy common consent, the history of blacks in Mexico is a long one. The first black slave to set foot in Mexico is thought to have been Juan Cortés. He accompanied the conquistadors in 1519. It has been claimed that some natives thought he must be a god, since they had never seen a black […]
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