Mexico Books

The spirit of Tio Fernando by Janice Levy is a book about the Day of the Dead.
Fernando wakes up and today is the Day of the Dead and they are going to see the spirit of Tio Fernando. Fernando`s mother set all Tio Fernando `s favorite foods on the table. She also put out some pictures of Tio Fernando. After Fernando`s mother gave him some pesos to go buy things that Tio Fernando liked also to remember him. Fernando went to the market and saw Senor Romero and then Senor Romero gave Fernando a skull with his name on it. Fernando saw Senora Magdalia and Senora Magdlia gave him a little ghost and Senor Magdalia tells Fernando how he will meet Tio Fernando's spirit and how he will feel good inside. After Fernando went home they went to the cemetery to Tio Fernando's cross and put marigolds there. Fernando's mother sang Tio Fernando's favorite songs. Fernando heard a heart beating but maybe it was only Fernando. Fernando feels something in his body. Then they stayed at the cemetery for the Day of the Dead.

The lesson I learned from the book was that your loved ones will always be beside you. In one part of the book I found they tell Tio Fernando's spirit to join them. Even if Tio Fernando is dead he knows he isn't forgotten. Fernando feels his uncle in his body and by the sounds too. Fernando remembers Tio Fernando by the pictures and by the second toe of his right foot. I like the way this book tells you about the Day of the Dead and that your loved ones will always be beside you.

By Graciela

El Espiritu de Tio Fernando is an excellent book describing the mexican celebration of Days of the Dead. The book follows a young boy and his mother as they remember his uncle who has died within the last year. The book is simple yet includes many aspects of the celebration. The illustrations are wonderfully detailed so as to show the emotions of each part of the celebration. The text is in both English and Spanish allowing all children to enjoy it equally.

This book features beautiful colorful illustrations and a very cute story, full of accurate cultural details. To be enjoyed by children and adults alike, it also is a great way to "teach" your kids about death, or to help them deal with mourning, whether or not you are hispanic.

" 'I can't do it anymore,' he [Buyer's then husband] says. 'Not the physical work. I could still cripple by with that. It's just the mental work, the worry, and the stress. I just can't do it anymore.'

" 'I know' is all I can think to say. When he adds nothing further, I say, 'I'll help you. Whatever you need to do.'

"I do not try to hug him or touch him or console him. I know better. He prefers being alone with his own suffering."

Ranch life is dirt, labor, wind, drought, deaths, births, wants, sacrifices, uncertainty, exhaustion. Why choose it? Because it is also stars, peace, calves, kittens, satisfaction, love, spring--"a meadowlark trills notes as sweet and soft as homemade ice cream. The song breaks my heart and then mends it back."

Read SPRING'S EDGE. Experience the poetry of ranch existence.

Laurie Wagner Buyer's memoir about one key spring when her life and marriage were on a precipice and yet the calves kept being born and the snow kept falling is beautiful and affecting. Her powerful feel for the legacy of the past, her keen observation about the color of the sky or the dimension of the stars, and even her desire to create art by keeping notebooks full of the details of days that seem never to change, yet must; all this adds up to a book you won't want to put down. This would be a perfect book club selection--plenty of material to discuss, cry over, and rejoice in. University of New Mexico Press should be commended for bringing this book to life.

Sometimes a story wraps itself around you and won't let you go. For me, Laurie Wagner Buyer's memoir, Spring's Edge, is one of those stories. Her book offers a rare insight into her life as a rancher's wife, a way of living that is at once remarkably sturdy and frighteningly fragile.

Buyer and her husband Mick--he in his mid-sixties, she some twenty years younger--raised cattle on six hundred acres in the mountains of Colorado. It's a tough life, made more difficult for Buyer by the realization that her husband is fast reaching the point where he can no longer manage the physical work. Since he intends to leave the ranch to the children of his first marriage, she has essentially no stake in the ranch to which she has contributed so much. What will she do--what will they do--when her husband can no longer live the life on the land that keeps him going? What will happen to their marriage if their work on the ranch no longer holds it together? On top of this, Buyer's father develops cancer. It is a situation that would bring most of us--those used to more comfortable, more predictable circumstances--to the brink.

But the Buyers soldier on, doing every day what must be done to keep the ranch going, the new calves alive, their fragile relationship in one piece. Buyer's journal of four difficult months in 1997 is a quietly compelling story of a doomed marriage and a ranch life under pressure from rising land taxes and encroaching developments. "We're on top of the mountain looking down at the wreckage of the times," she writes. "Age, inability, financial impossibilities, an anti-ag attitude in the community..." As local ranchers sell out, hay prices rise, and local agricultural businesses fail, the people who stay on the land demonstrate a tenacious heroism, although they pay a very high personal price.

Through all these challenges, it is the land itself that sustains and endures. Buyer's lyrical descriptions of the earth's coming alive with spring are full of hope and promise. "More snow, some rain, lots of sun, and our world will dance a greening jig," she writes. Later: "Snipe song ripples through the sky. Spring comes again fresh-faced and welcoming." Still later: "I sense the atmosphere hanging on life's balanced scale, ready to tip into full spring with the weight of one more robin, one more blooming pasqueflower."

But while winter is long ("A remember-winter wind cartwheels off the peaks with chilled intent"), the people are strong, and Buyer revels in their strengths. Her husband is "a man born to the land, bonded to earth by his birthright and by his stubborn, even zealous, dedication to a way of life." Her friend Gail loses her front teeth when she's helping check cows for pregnancy: "The fiftieth cow flung her massive head and hit Gail smack in the face. Teeth and hat went flying...[S]he grabbed her hat, stuffed a couple of tissues in her mouth, and went back to work because there were still ten cows to go." It is as if these men and women both draw their strength from the land and develop it in opposition to the land's brutal hardships.

A prizewinning poet, Buyer tells her story skillfully, working from journal notes (sixteen legal tablets) gathered, assembled, and polished. She focuses on the present, but also gives us intriguing glimpses of a puzzling past, enough to give us a sense of the development of this marriage but not enough to answer all our questions. (A remark on her website, that she "came west from Chicago as a mail order bride," compounds the mystery.) The book's epilogue, written some ten years after the events documented in the journal, brings the reader up to date with events in the Buyers' lives.

Spring's Edge tells a remarkable story. I won't forget it, and I don't think you will, either.

by Susan Wittig Albert
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women

STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS is a fine addition to Havill's excellent Posadas County series. While it certainly can be enjoyed on its own, readers who seek out the other novels will be amply rewarded, especially if they read them in order of publication. The richness of character and setting builds throughout the series. I eagerly await more from this author.

I have read each and every one of Steven Havill's books in the Posadas County series, and will read every one he publishes in the future. They are very comforting, with stories that not only surround a mystery or two, but also the lives of the continuing characters. I've gotten to know these people. They are like old friends, and I love reading about them. Steven Havill is one of the most under-recognized authors I know of, a secret for those who love good books and seek them out. Thanks to Amazon.com, I will never miss out on any of Havill's work.

On Christmas Eve in Posadas, New Mexico, Chief of Police Eduardo Martinez suffers a heart attack while confronting car thieves in a motel parking lot; the stories from the two witnesses seem off kilter. The next morning Sheriff Robert Torrez still in recovery from on the job injuries suffers from what appears to be a pulmonary embolism. That afternoon the fiancé of one of his deputies is murdered. Finally that evening someone viciously assaults former sheriff Bill Gastner who is brutally attacked that night.

Under-sheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman is left in charge to learn who brutally attacked her mentor Gastner, killed the fiancée, and to capture the car thieves. At the same time she feels overwhelmed and her spouse feels the same way as a doctor at the hospital with an abundance of law enforcement officials filling the beds albeit Robert's is in Albuquerque.

In her latest police procedural Estelle feels overwhelmed with the recent medical track record of law enforcement as she and her shrinking staff struggle with a difficult caseload including murder, car jacking, and keeping score of how everyone is doing. She also has some issues at home, but that quickly takes a back seat to police matters. STATUE OF LIMITATIONS is a fabulous police thriller that fans of the series will immensely enjoy and newcomers will seek Steven F. Havill's résumé.

Harriet Klausner

It's surprising to see how actual the architecture in Mexico is nowadays.

Excellent, Norten is really building a new trend in architecture: the creation of spaces full of pleasure: light, functionality, metal and glass combined to greatness.

It's surprising to see how actual the architecture in Mexico is nowadays.

This very handsomely printed volume by Aperture of Tina Modotti presents an eclectic collection of her photographs, mostly taken in the mid-to-late 1920s in Mexico. Italian-born, Modotti emigrated to the United States, and then to Mexico, during which time she had an extended affair with famed photographer Edward Weston, for whom Modotti also modeled for his nude studies. Partially through Weston's influence, model and actress Tina turned her talents to photography, and the world has been better for it.

Because of her contact with other artists in Mexico, including Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, Modotti's photographic interests spread far afield. Thus, while her work lacks the singular vision of Weston's, her shrugging the cloak of purism revealed instead a versatile photographer and artist. Personally, I find her work more enjoyable than Weston's, though her career was much more short-lived.

Unfortunately for the world, political unrest and circumstances forced her to flee to Soviet Russia. An avowed communist, Modotti spent her time after 1931 helping political dissidents throughout Europe and later aided the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. Because the rigid Stalinist regime had no use for her highly-stylized photography, she put her camera down upon arriving in Russia and never picked it up again.

In 1939, she slipped back into Mexico, from which she had been forcibly exiled, but in early 1942, died of a purported heart attack, just as she was planning to resume her photography.

Many of Modotti's photographs would be regarded as "derivative" by some of today's more cynical critics. Examples include plates of Jean Charlot, 1924 (reminiscent of August Sander), Roses, 1925 (see painter Georgia O'Keefe), Police puppets, 1929 (Man Ray), Mella's typewriter, 1928 (Albert Renger-Patzsch), and Wine Glasses, 1925 (Laszlo Moholy-Nagy). Modotti's photographs themselves are nonetheless strikingly graphic and uniformly excellent.

Other photographs in this book, particularly here women of Tehuantepec bear her stamp alone, and her photographs of Mexican laborers and sundry elements of the social landscape, such as photographs of telephone wires and posters predate work in a similar vein by Walker Evans. Clearly, Modotti was quite an influence on the quintessential American photographer.

If only Modotti had been a greedy capitalist instead of a selfless communist, then she would have left so much more material for posterity. As it stands, though, her body of work is a testament to a great creative mind.

I really enjoyed this lovely book of Tina Modotti's photographs. I thought the selection was quite unigue, not the usual ones I've seen reproduced in other books. In fact several of the photos I'd never seen before. Also the essay helped me put her work in context by showing how she developed as a photographer. To my mind she certainly was a master of photography, as well as a fascinating woman. A good book, at a great price!

Tina Modotti was not only a good photographer, she was a GREAT one! I don't think we would even know who she was today if it wasn't for her wonderful photographs. I loved this little book and it's a perfect companion to Margaret Hooks' excellent biography: Tina Modotti, Photographer and revolutionary. All Tina fans should have this!

If you are new to the writings of Victor Sanchez, then this is an ideal place to start.

Although the second book by Victor, following on from The Teachings of Don Carlos, it gives background and spirit to where Victor experienced and learned what he teaches, and therefore this provides an ideal starting place where you can get a sense of the mood and ethos behind the techniques and tools of the first book.

While the largest portion of the book is Victor's personal story of journeying to Humun' Kulluaby and the ascent of and ritual on La' Unarre, there are many insights and a couple of related conversations and stories regarding various things including the views of the Wirrarika on missionaries who have tried to "convert" and "save" them, through to some views "anti-anthropology" and explanations of what indigenous cultures, such as the Wirrarika, actually believe regarding multiple Gods and the Great Spirit.

The comments Victor makes about Western culture "putting ourselves at the center of everything" and viewing the "worship of nature" as primitive are I feel important concepts to reflect on (for those of us with a Western heritage) as it is indeed arrogance of this kind which I believe is a limiting factor for us in our own personal evolution.

A fragment of a conversation between Victor and a Wirrarika marakame relating a conversation he had with a pastor who insisted that the tales of Christ and the bible 'made sense' compared with the very organic beliefs of the Indians, to me sums up their wisdom. "But nobody tells me about Tatei Urianaka (the Earth), I see her every day! And every day I receive her fruits, corn, water, and beans. I can touch, walk, and live on her! And Tau (the Sun). Daily I receive his heat and his nierika (light, knowledge, vision, teaching). I don't have to do anything but look up and there he is." This, to me, is the beauty of a system which embraces the natural world (rather than 'separating' it). Learning is direct and experiential, through observation and interaction.

Overall this is a powerful and moving tale of a magical journey. Reading of Victor Sanchez's experiences provides inspiration for anyone who truly wants to discover and follow their own magical path.

Pre-Colombian with an o not u

For many of us looking for answers that doctrined religions cannot quite give us, Victor Sanchez has exposed a world where faith meets reality. Through his own research and paticipation, Sanchez experiences a spiritual domain that continues to exist admist the colonization and materialism now precedent around the world. Not restricted to boundaries of religion, Sanchez takes the reader through first hand understanding of what is possible when your allow and train your mind to believe in "separate realities." In a Carlos Casteneda like approach, Sanchez writes of his experiences with a group of Native Americans in rural Mexico, who have sustained their belief system and way of life before and after Spanish colonzation. Sanchez spent 15 years with these people and is sharing the world that these people "see." Those who have been exposed to Castaneda's work would find equal enjoyment with this book and have another supporting perspective of human capabilities with spirit and energy. Sanchez provides an answer to what is real to our eyes, may be only what we've been told and trained them to see. How easy is it to believe something you can't see, and if you do, should it be excused as hallucination or paganism. To the growing number of people not completely happy with formal religion, here is a glimsp of ancient wisdom that offers a possibility of human existence on a separate reality, one that is real.

This is an enchanting book, about a miraculous world, made accessible to the rest of us because of the author's delightful, cultured and very refined style. Her life is inspiring but also disquieting. She seems to find magic in the ordinary as well as the extraordinary and this is a challence to all of us.

A wistful book, an exciting book, very revealing of Mexico, with adventures known to few. A "poppy hunt" to track opium dealers in the mountains, the JFK Assassination, a coming of age in a unique country. Beautifully written, different, readable, thought-provoking. Here is someone who is not only concerned for the future of mankind and the planet but who is willing to commit to a code of conduct. I loved this book and highly recommend it.

If you are planning to visit Mexico,and would like to understand the unique Mexican Temperament....this book is a must read..well written by a gutsy lady

I read "The Trial of Davy Crockett" by Fletcher Rhoden last week. From the moment I picked it up I couldn't put it down, and now that I've finished reading it I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. It's an extremely well-written and carefully-crafted piece, and the author obviously took great pains with his research. I'm interested in Texas history, but I'm certainly not an aficionado of the genre. What really fascinated me was the humanistic approach that Rhoden took with the meeting of these two larger-than-life historical characters, Davy Crockett and Generalissimo Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, at the battle for the Alamo. It somehow combined the fanciful, what-if philosophy of "The Last Temptation of Christ" with the delicious possibilities presented in the best episodes of "Meeting of Minds or Steve Martin's wonderful play, "Picasso at the Lapin Agile". I recommend this book to anyone interested in American history, but more importantly, to anyone who enjoys a chance to listen in on what might have transpired beween great men with great thoughts had they had the opportunity to really get into each other's heads.

The Trial of Davy Crockett offers more than simply a must for Texas history buffs. In this novella, based in fact, author Fletcher Rhoden examines a dynamic character in Santa Anna and in so doing allows the reader a compelling account of Mexican history at a time when that country was shrinking under American expansionism. A subject all too often ignored by many American historians. The character of Davy Crockett does not wane in the shadow of Santa Anna. Written in a style so unique and intelligent, the reader cannot help but to keep turning the page. Santa Anna has become a sort of ogre in American eyes because of the slaughter at the Alamo and the brutality of the massacre at Goliad. The author's presentation of this dynamic historical period through the eyes of Santa Anna, definately gives the reader a thought provoking view of Latino History.

The Trial Of Davy Crockett is a speculative fiction novella. Author Fletcher Rhoden questions whether Davy Crockett was truly killed during the battle for the Alamo - or whether he was captured and executed by the Mexicans. The Trial Of Davy Crockett presents a hypothetical dialogue between Crockett and Generalissimo Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, which collide in an articulate, wry, thought-provoking, and no-holds-barred verbal conflict regarding the Texian Revolution and America's unrestrained expansionism. Neither Crockett or Santa Anna is stereotyped in the roles of hero or villain; their opposing points of view are given a clear and fair hearing, for all to see and judge for themselves. Based entirely on the facts of the revolution, The Trial Of Davy Crockett is a "must" for Texas history buffs and not to be missed.

If the narcotics trade was a constant irritant to U.S.-Mexican relations during President "Clinton's tenure, the migration issue flared up with a vengeance after the elections of George W. Bush and Vicente Fox in 2000. At first, the news was relatively hopeful: Both men insisted they were committed to finding a more humane and rational way of regulating the flow of Mexican workers into the United States. But as Davidow explains, there was never much potential for reaching a solution, particularly after White House political director Karl Rove decided that an immigration accord might alienate voters as the country approached midterm elections in 2002. "

- Washington Post

Review of

The U.S. and Mexico: The Bear and the Porcupine
by Jeffrey Davidow

Davidow, U.S. ambassador to Mexico from 1998 to 2002, witnessed the end of 71 years of one-party rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party and the successful election of opposition candidate Vicente Fox to the presidency in 2000. This at times indiscreet memoir provides not only fascinating vignettes of the principal actors in Mexico City, but also sharp profiles of leading U.S. politicians and diplomats as they .dealt with the always prickly issues on the U.S.-Mexican agenda, from the border and corruption to U.S. insensltivity to Mexico's concerns and Mexican hypersensitivity to perceived slights. On occasion, Davidow evidently saw himself as the bear, unable to avoid the spines of the Mexican press and politicians. (He describes one former foreign minister as "like an irascible professor who has no patience for those who do not appreciate his insights.")

Among Davidow's many notable contributions in this book is an outstanding brief analysis of migration-the role of Mexican immigrants in the United States, the reasons why this population increased so dramatically during the 1990s, and the failure, despite an enormous increase in resources and personnel on the U.S. side, to halt these flows. He also gives an insightful account of the circumstances that led to Fox's victory (and the reasons why Mexicans' high hopes have not been fulfilled) and provides fascinating insider detail on the failed attempt by Fox to bring about a comprehensive migration agreement with the United States-which, Davidow writes, had much less to do with September 11 than previously thought. This vivid account of a vital international relationship, by an ambassador so recently returned from his post, must be unique in its candor. Predictably, it is already being widely discussed in Mexico, where it appeared in Spanish translation, and it deserves an equally wide reading in the United States.

Foreign Affairs, Volume 83, no. 3

Foreign Affairs, Volume 83, no. 3

Review of

The U.S. and Mexico: The Bear and the Porcupine
by Jeffrey Davidow

Davidow, U.S. ambassador to Mexico from 1998 to 2002, witnessed the end of 71 years of one-party rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party and the successful election of opposition candidate Vicente Fox to the presidency in 2000. This at times indiscreet memoir provides not only fascinating vignettes of the principal actors in Mexico City, but also sharp profiles of leading U.S. politicians and diplomats as they .dealt with the always prickly issues on the U.S.-Mexican agenda, from the border and corruption to U.S. insensltivity to Mexico's concerns and Mexican hypersensitivity to perceived slights. On occasion, Davidow evidently saw himself as the bear, unable to avoid the spines of the Mexican press and politicians. (He describes one former foreign minister as "like an irascible professor who has no patience for those who do not appreciate his insights.")

Among Davidow's many notable contributions in this book is an outstanding brief analysis of migration-the role of Mexican immigrants in the United States, the reasons why this population increased so dramatically during the 1990s, and the failure, despite an enormous increase in resources and personnel on the U.S. side, to halt these flows. He also gives an insightful account of the circumstances that led to Fox's victory (and the reasons why Mexicans' high hopes have not been fulfilled) and provides fascinating insider detail on the failed attempt by Fox to bring about a comprehensive migration agreement with the United States-which, Davidow writes, had much less to do with September 11 than previously thought. This vivid account of a vital international relationship, by an ambassador so recently returned from his post, must be unique in its candor. Predictably, it is already being widely discussed in Mexico, where it appeared in Spanish translation, and it deserves an equally wide reading in the United States.

This book was truely a pleasure to read. Not only is it well organized and clearly written but the author shows how under-rated the revolutionary situation in latin america is. Do yourself a favor and read this.

This book provides an excellent analytical account of guerrilla groups in Colombia, Mexico and Peru. It relies on the works of classic strategists and some post-modern thinkers. It is very accessible yet profound.

A sweeping account of the origins, ideology, and strategy of the most important guerilla organizations in the Americas today. Rochlin draws on neo-Gramscian and post-Modern insights to explain both the structural causes of poverty in Latin America and the epistemic aspect of socio-political instability. He carries out this discussion so as to relate the development of guerilla movements to the absence of ideological hegemony and conflicting systems of thought within particular countries. All-in-all, an excellent, insightful, yet ACCESSIBLE read.