Immigrant cooking in Mexico: The Afromestizos of Veracruz

This month we’ll continue to take a look at the cooking of the immigrants who contributed to the modern Mexican culinary repertoire. Unlike other groups discussed previously — including the Mennonites of Chihuahua, the Italians of Chipilo and the Lebanese of Puebla — this group undoubtedly did not come willingly. Their arrival was a product […]

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Immigrant cooking in Mexico: The Mennonite kitchens of Chihuahua

In recent years, immigration has become a topic of intense focus, not only in the United States and Mexico, but worldwide. Although generally seen as a political question, there is no doubt that the movement of immigrants also falls into the cultural realm, of which cuisine is a significant part. Much of the history of […]

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The Tortilla Curtain by T. Coraghessan Boyle

Cogan’s Reviews This isn’t a book about Mexico. Rather, it’s about Mexicans in California right now. It explores the issue of illegal immigration by examining the lives of four characters – two very well-off Californians, Delaney Mossbacher, a nature writer, and his real estate agent wife, Kyra, and a Mexican couple, Cándido Rincón, and his […]

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Mexifornia, a State of Becoming by Victor Davis Hanson

Cogan’s Reviews “Mexifornia,” to quote the author, “is about the nature of a new California and what it means for America – a reflection upon the strange society that is emerging as the result of a demographic and a cultural revolution like no other in our times.” Thus Victor Davis Hanson opens his close examination […]

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Crossing Over: A Mexican Family On The Migrant Trail

CROSSING 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 […]

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Jews in Mexico, a struggle for survival: Part Three – Survivors

The very word has connotations of persecution, repression, hardship and escape. It also describes people with courage, stamina, the ability to adapt and almost always a moral strength and conviction that sets them apart from those who succumbed. Perhaps 90 % of all Mexican Jews are the descendants of ancestors who came to the New […]

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Jews in Mexico, a struggle for survival: Part Two

The vast majority of the approximately 50,000 Mexican citizens who practice Judaism via organized congregations are descendents of people who, from 1881 to 1939, found life-saving refuge in this country. Unlike the ancestors of many who migrated to the U.S. to avoid military service or seek better economic opportunity, most who came to Mexico were […]

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Jews in Mexico, a struggle for survival: Part One

The survival of Judaism in Mexico is a tale of tenacity and tolerance. The story begins in Spain with the “Conversos”, Jews who had converted to Christianity, always under duress. It starts in 600 AD, the Visigoth king, Reccard, forcibly baptized 90,000 of his Jewish subjects and expelled those who would not accept Christianity. Some […]

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