This is one of the really superior anthologies of articles and stories about Mexico. It's made up of some 48 items about the country taken from a wide variety of sources. And they're almost all interesting. The topics cover the gamut of attractions and delights from a dissertation on mariachis to Carlos Fuentes' essay on Mexico City's main square. read more

Here's a most unusual collection of photographs and Mexico Connect is delighted to bring them to you. They are all, despite the title, photos taken in San Miguel de Allende where photographer Carol Stein visited last year. All of them exhibit odd and striking views of the town as well as the unusual abstract approach that Ms. Stein brings to her work. read more

Back in 1940, just before Pearl Harbour, John Steinbeck and his marine biologist friend, Ed Rickets, chartered a fishing boat, the Western Flyer, in Monterey, California, and sailed down the coast around the Baja into the Sea of Cortez. Their six-week mission was to collect specimens of marine life in the area. They jointly wrote a book about the voyage, largely about marine biology, which was published in 1941. A decade later, Steinbeck himself wrote this more personal book. The result is a mixture of travel writing, journalism, diary-keeping, philosophy, meditation and, yes, there's a lot of stuff about the marine life of the area. After all, the author was something of an authority in that field. read more

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 the dangerous crossing on foot over one of the most inhospitable stretches of terrain in the world. But the Yuma 14 constituted the largest known number of such immigrants to die at one time. read more

Imagine a language course that starts off with the instructor giving a monologue that lasts all of sixty minutes, delivered almost entirely in Spanish. What our teacher, Hugo, gave us on that first day was a rundown, delivered at a normal conversational pace, on what we could expect in the next month. There were very few English words used, other than those we obviously didn’t understand. The only saving grace for us was that Hugo repeated his message constantly in several different ways. read more

"My editor wanted me to write about life here in the region where we live. At that time, San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato and Querétero ranked a page or two each in the guide books, day stops or overnighters on a tour of the ‘silver cities,’ the subject of an occasional tourist piece in a Sunday travel section, the ‘charming little town hidden away in the Mexican mountains.’ Don’t put a gloss on it, the editor said. Tell what life is really like, the good and the bad. Tell the truth a good fiction writer knows.” read more

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 while riding his horse along the side of a gorge, with the bottom of a canyon almost a thousand feet below him, the horse stumbled and fell. On its way over the edge it rolled over Stuart and disappeared, leaving him badly crippled. He was rescued and eventually found his way to Guaymas, on the coast of the Sea of Cortez, in Mexico, where his fiancé, Iliana, lived. Thus begins the story of his recuperation and, at the same time, the exploration of Mexican society and customs which is described here. read more

This is a reminiscence by Ms. Dandh about how she and her husband, Ken, retired and left their home in Massachusets and came and settled in Guadalajara. It's a month-by-month account of their first year of living in Mexico, getting to know the people and the place. read more

Here's a rather unusual approach to learning Spanish. It's not intended for beginners but rather for people who have already spent some time studying the language and want to go further, especially in the direction of becoming more adept at conversation. What Brad Kim has done here is to give us a collection of everyday expressions, exactly like the expressions we use when we speak English, which will enhance conversational skills. Start using a few and you'll sound more down-to-earth and impressive to your listeners. read more

The story line concerns a young Mexican girl, Teresa Mendoza, 23 years old, who is in love with a Chicano Cessna pilot who flies cocaine and hashish from Colombia to locations in Texas. It's a dangerous trade to be in and Teresa's lover, Güero Dávila, is well aware of the risks, not only from drug enforcement agents but also from rival narcotraficantes. With the former, the risks are imprisonment. With the latter, the penalty is death should one lose a shipment or not play the game the way the bosses want it played. read more

Here's a guidebook with a very definite difference. It doesn't just set out in the usual way to give you a rundown on the community and make suggestions on what to do and where to go. Rather, Joseph Harmes, has put together a rather incredible list of 'bests' - some 126 pages of them in fact - to be found in San Miguel de Allende. These range, alphabetically, from Best Art Displays to where to find the Best Yogurt. In between you can mull over several hundred "bests", from Best Views to Best Dance Classes; from Best Tennis Courts to Best Places to Take Out-of-Towners; from Best Parks to Best Hidden Attractions; from Best Tortillas to Best Ways to Avoid Travellers Diarrhea… and so on. read more

The action never stops at the border. There is no other place like it on the globe. The international boundary stretches for almost two thousand miles, from the Pacific Ocean through the mountains, the deserts, the valleys of the Rio Grande to the Gulf of Mexico. The region is a vast world unto itself. And the westernmost, fourteen-mile strip between San Diego and Tijuana, the border's biggest and richest cities, is the most intense microcosm of that world. The U.S. Border Patrol records half a million yearly arrests of illegal immigrants here, accounting for almost half of all its arrests. read more

In recent weeks I've had occasion to reflect once again on the generosity and thoughtfulness of Mexicans. For the very first time in my life - at my ripe old age - I had occasion to go into hospital. And I'll never forget the wonderful generosity and concern of my Mexican neighbors. read more

This useful volume is back in a new and updated edition and it’s still as essential as ever. Whether you’re making a brief visit as a tourist, or escaping the northern winter for a few months or checking out the area more extensively as a place to spend one’s retirement years, this is one item you should have in your survival kit. It’s a nice blend of guidebook, travelogue and history text with lots of local color and some ecological notes sprinkled throughout. read more

Here's an interesting and entertaining collection of essays, mainly about Mexico, like "The Crawling Things of Paradise", a small tribute to all the crawling, flying, buzzing, poisonous, and non-poisonous insects to be found in the state of Jalisco. In the essay "Connections: Odysseus and the Gran Chingón" we find a quite learned investigation into the prevalence of machismo in Latin American society. On the more sober side there are copious references throughout - both critical and positive - to the Mexican natural environment, the economy and the Mexican character. read more

This was not to be your usual sight-seeing trip, moving from one convenient accommodation to another. Their desire was to be isolated from civilization and to live as simply as possible. An element of self discovery was also a definite part of the program. Thus it was that they found themselves a week or two later on an empty beach on the remote west coast of the Baja constructing a tiny hut that was to be their home for an indefinite period. Pacific breakers pounded the beach a few steps away. The specific area where they set up camp was between El Rosario and Guerrero Negro where a number of tiny fishing villages were located. read more

Here's a story that takes in a complete life, from childhood well into adulthood, and from rags to riches. It's a story that is of interest to we residents in the Lake Chapala area as it starts out in Ajijic and covers a fair number of years there - or should I say here. On page one we encounter ten-year-old Francisco Obregón, a homeless barefoot orphan outside the Old Posada on the Ajijic waterfront. It's 1940 and Francisco is hustling for odd jobs and tips. It's the only way he can manage to survive. read more

Most of us think of the Baja Peninsula as a vast, sprawling, empty, underpopulated space on the Pacific Coast with hundreds of miles of desolate beaches. To a great extent, that's what it is. What Ms. Mayo gives us in Miraculous Air is a beautifully researched account of the history, geography, ecology, oceanography, the folklore, the wildlife and the incredible fishing in this vast area. We read of cave paintings of people who lived in the area some 10,800 years ago. And along the way, we meet a few quite interesting and memorable people. read more

This is the story about Jeanine Lee Kitchel and her husband, Paul, who made their first trip to the Yucatan Peninsula in 1985 and fell in love instantly with the place. They had visited various parts of Mexico before that and were quite taken with the country. But the Yucatan beaches were of a different order. It seems that almost from the very start they determined that they would like to build a house and live there. read more

"Zacatecas is the town everyone wants to go back to," a friend said to me when I mentioned that we were going there. It is a charming, colonial city, and a fairly well-to-do university town with nice hotels, friendly, well-dressed people and some good attractions. In fact, on that first day, we liked it so much we decided to stay another night read more

Author Oster's portraits make this an excellent account of a timeless and yet changing Mexico. His approach is to focus on twenty varied individuals and use them as a reason to discuss the larger issues they represent. read more