Destination: Mexico
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In True Tales from Another Mexico (2001), US journalist Sam Quiñones uncovers countless weird and little-known facets of Mexican life and death – drug traffickers to cult religions, cross-dressers to rural lynchings. It is well-told and endlessly surprising.
Travels to Oaxaca with a group of pteridologists (fern fanatics) provide scientist Oliver Sacks with food for many quirky, amusing observations, not only of a scientific nature but also on his botanist companions, in Oaxaca Journal (2002).
British writer Isabella Tree takes peyote with the Huicholes and meets the matriarchs of Juchitán in Sliced Iguana: Travels in Unknown Mexico (2001), a warm, perceptive account of Mexico and its indigenous cultures.
Ronald Wright offers an insightful understanding of the cultures of southeast Mexico, Belize and Guatemala in Time Among the Maya (1989), an investigation of the Maya concept of time and their tragic modern history.
In the 1930s, a time of conflict between Catholics and an atheistic state, Graham Greene wandered down eastern Mexico to Chiapas. The Lawless Roads (1939) traces his journey and gives Greene’s insights into what makes Mexicans tick.
Elijah Wald’s fascinating Narcocorrido (2001) is both a travel narrative and an investigation of a popular Mexican song genre built around the travails of ordinary folk involved in drug-running on Mexico’s northern border.
There’s a Word for It in Mexico by Boyé Lafayette De Mente (1998) is less literature than cultural primer in the form of brief, snippet-like essays on 139 key Mexican concepts – simpático, siesta, tu/usted and others less expected. The concept of igualdad (equality), he writes, ‘has never been part of the Mexican experience.’
Beyond the Deep: The Deadly Descent into the World’s Most Treacherous Cave by William Stone and Barbara am Ende tells the hair-raising tale of the deepest-ever Western Hemisphere cave dive in the Sótano de San Agustín sinkhole near Huautla, Oaxaca in 1994.
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