True Tales from Another Mexico: The Lynch Mob, the Popsicle Kings, Chalino, and the Bronx

Sam Quinones

As journalist Sam Quinones convincingly demonstrates, much of Mexico was already changing before the July 2000 presidential elections which ousted the PRI and presented the world with President-elect Vincente Fox. Fox's victory marked the triumph of another Mexico, a vital, energetic, and creative Mexico tracked by Quinones for over six years.

"This side of Mexico gets very little press. . . . yet it is the best of the country. . . . people who have the spunk to imagine something else and instinctively flee the enfeebling embrace of PRI paternalism. . . . newly realistic telenovellas show the gray government censor that the country is too lively to abide his boss's dictates. . . . Some twelve million Mexicans reside year-round in the United States. . . . [so] the United States is now part of the Mexican reality and is where this other side of Mexico is often found, reinventing itself."--from the introduction.

Quinones merges keen observation with astute interviews and storytelling in his search for an authentic modern Mexico. He finds it in part in emigrants, people who use wits and imagination to strike out on their own. In poignant stories from north of the border--about Oaxacan basketball leagues in southern California and the late singing legend Chalino S�nchez whose songs of drug smugglers spurred the popularity of the narcocorrido--Quinones shows how another Mexico is reinventing itself in America today. But most of his stories are from deep inside Mexico itself. There a dynamic sector exists. It is made up of those who instinctively shunned the enfeebling embrace of the PRI's paternalism, including scrappy entrepreneurs such as the Popsicle Kings of Tocumbo and Indian migrant farmworkers who found a future in the desert of Baja California. Here, too, are true tales from ignored margins of society, including accounts of drag queens and lynchings. From the fringes of the country, Quinones suggests, emerge some of the most telling and central truths about modern Mexico and how it is changing.

"This book expands our knowledge of modern Mexico many times over. Quinones unearths a wealth of material that has in fact gone unnoticed or been hidden."--Professor Francisco Lomel�, University of California, Santa Barbara

Sam Quinones has been awarded a Maria Moors Cabot Prize for Outstanding Reporting on Latin America and the Caribbean, 2008, from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

" . . . these are stories of human resilience, told with irony and humor. . . . Quinones has found a treasure trove of anecdotes. . . . These stories are insightful and rich in detail." --Copley News Service

". . . a refreshing treatment of a country in which everything has been penetrated by the ruling party. . . . This is an excellent view of the informal economy and various means that are used to get around Mexico's relic-like system of social, economic, and political organization." --Library Journal

"Any reader interested in Mexican society of the last decade or so-those already fascinated with the country and the changes it is going through, interested non-specialist readers, or students-will take great pleasure in this book."--The Journal of San Diego History

"Mr. Quinones is a tireless reporter, fascinated by the stories that lie behind an ephemeral headline in the Mexican press. . . . He has a keen eye for Mexico's changing popular culture."--The Economist

"Quinones brilliantly portrays personalities and folkways that are familiar to Mexicans but almost unknown to outsiders. Quinones sees Mexico with a contagious delight and awe at the astoundingly creative ways in which Mexicans at all levels of society act out economically and culturally." --San Francisco Chronicle

"Quinones is not only an excellent journalist with a wonderful nose for a good story, he is a thoughtful, well-read man with a real ability to relate his stories to the larger picture. And in Mexico, as elsewhere, the larger picture is deeply rooted in the past."--The Journal of Arizona History

"Quinones offers an intersting series of post-NAFTA stories that defy simplistic first/third world dynamics; with its intimate portrayal of small communities' leaders and their dissidents, True Tales from Another Mexico portrays the country on its own terms."--Southwestern American Literature

"The book is a journalistic, ethnographic relevation of the forces shaping Mexican culture in the twenty-first century. It is an easy read that has as many flavors as the paleterias (ice cream shops) he writes about, with enough ingredients to enable the reader to fully savor the bitter and sweet sides of a growing and expanding Mexican identity and society."--Aztlán: UCLA Chacano Research Center

"This beautifully written collection of essays is a wonder and a delight. . . . Quinones has succeeded in finding ‘another Mexico.' Intimately tied to the United States, it is at times far from God, but as this splendid book shows, it is also in the midst of a transformation."--Wilson Quarterly

Sam Quinones lived in Mexico for ten years writing freelance for a variety of U.S. publications. In 1998 he was a recipient of the Alicia Patterson Fellowship. In 2001 he published a highly acclaimed collection of stories about contemporary Mexico, True Tales from Another Mexico: The Lynch Mob, the Popsicle Kings, Chalino, and the Bronx (UNM Press). He now lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Sheila, and daughter, Kate, and is a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times. He can be contacted through www.samquinones.com

6 x 9 344 pages 16 halftones