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 […]
Continue ReadingHot on the lips of every American politician clamoring to seal America’s borders, immigration summons images of Ellis Island, undocumented workers, the nanny problem and political and economic refugees. Whether you’re sojourning in Mexico as a Mazatlan beachcomber, an aging boomer planning to hang out for a few years, or a 65 year old retiree, […]
Continue ReadingFrankly, most “how to live in Mexico” books — from Ken Luboff’s Live Well in Mexico: How to Relocate, Retire, and Increase Your Standard of Living, John Howells and Don Merwin’s Choose Mexico, 8th: Travel, Investment, and Living Opportunities for Every Budget, and Mexico “Mike” Nelson’s Live Better South of the Border — spout the same line. Even the most recent […]
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The town had been sort of a laughing stock, ignored by outsiders,one of those dusty lonely little burgs where no one seemed particularly interested in much beyond survival. Like sad and decrepit towns scattered across rural America – towns named Promise City, Gravity, and Dumas – its inhabitants bore looks of quiet desperation. Tzurumútaro was […]
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They call it “the place where the flowers bloom,” this steamy edge of subtropical landscape, as rich in history as it is in surprise and beauty where superlatives and contrasts abound. It was the early 80s, and Uruapan was merely a waystation on the road between Morelia and Ixtapa. It struck me as a nice […]
Continue ReadingI always knew I’d end up in Mexico, but I didn’t know where. Mexico City holds world-class fascination, but there’s a reason even the idle rich have second homes elsewhere. Chapala had just too many gringos, amenities be damned. San Miguel de Allende struck me as full of artistes etching, sculpting, and writing odes to […]
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A short kilometer from Santa Clara de Cobre, on the way to Ario de Rosales, a bust of a young Lazaro Cardenas nods toward Zirahuen. “I’m sort of proud of this road, now that it has been improved,” I remarked to Hank, my travelling companion of the day. He shot me one of those incredulous […]
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Lauded as the most Spanish of Mexican colonial cities, thanks to a century-old historical preservation code requiring all downtown buildings to maintain original facades, Morelia is the most comfortable Mexican city I know. English is widely understood (Michoacan’s leading export is its citizens), European style abounds, but the flavor of colonial Mexico has adapted to […]
Continue ReadingIn the early decades of the century past, my grandfather’s grandfather journeyed to the shores of a distant land called Florida to live out the rest of a life spent on Midwestern prairies. It was territory foreign, exciting and exotic back then. Today Florida just isn’t as exotic or appealing, and more and more Americans […]
Continue ReadingFew places in the world have the magic of Pátzcuaro. Surely the Purépecha Rey Curateme had to have known that back in 1324 when he founded the town. For many visitors, Pátzcuaro spells the Island of Janitzio, the Basilica, the two main plazas, a library with the great Juan O’Gorman mural, picturesque red-and-white tile-roofed buildings, […]
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