True Tales from Another Mexico
by Sam Quinones
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Book Summary Information
Author: Sam QuinonesEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2001-08
ISBN: 0826322964
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Book Reviews of True Tales from Another Mexico
Book Review: Not the tourist destination, not the paradise for expats
Summary: 5 Stars
Another reviewer pointed out that Quinones' accounts are "researched", and this is true; he's done what he needed to do to find his facts. But I would add that the overwhelming note, for me, is that the man has "been there". I heard about "True Tales" from a reviewer of Elijah Wald's "Narcocorrido", and would now agree with that reviewer that the Quinones piece on Chalino Sanchez tells us a lot more about his world than Wald's book, valuable but a bit touristy, a bit arch, and a bit academic. There is an immediacy in these chapters by Quinones, of grittiness, suffering, delusion, terror, helplessness, of all the qualities of the many Mexicans Quinones met and listened to. His description of the lynching is the most direct, realistic and frightening I've ever read; this can happen anywhere, anytime. These stories are unadorned realities of Mexico and the Border, and the entire world as well.
As Edward Abbey said, of the same country, "this is the real world, muchachos, and you are in it."
Summary of True Tales from Another Mexico
Chalino Sanchez was a migrant worker who became a underground singer of narcocorridos -- ballads about drug smugglers - until his murder, which remains unsolved. Then he became a legend.Two traveling salesmen plied their wares in a sweltering small town. The next day they were hanging from the town's bandstand lynched by a mob, a thousand strong.
Hailed as a cult classic, True Tales From Another Mexico takes us to a colony of drag queens -- jotos -- preparing for Mexico's oldest gay beauty contest.
We see how a bunch of humble rancheros invented the Michoacana popsicle, and a business model that poor people used to grow rich.
We follow a Oaxacan Indian basketball team in Los Angeles as its coach fights to restore the purity of his sport, besmirched in America.
Aristeo Prado was a gunfighter and robber -- a valiente trying to escape his past -- when he was ambushed on a noontime street and died going for his gun.
Telenovelas, once a propaganda vehicle of Mexico's one-party state, flourished with political change and touched topics -- corruption, drug trafficking and poverty -- that once were prohibited.
In Nueva Jerusalen, a theocratic village run by an excommunicated Catholic priest, residents receive voting instructions from the Virgin of Guadalupe.
We enter the Bronx - the rude boys in the PRI wing of Mexico's Congress -- as they struggle with the meaning of rebellion.
Some of these stories are strange and exotic. More often, though, they are from mainstream though ignored parts of Mexican life.
True Tales from Another Mexico are the stories of people whose stories never get told.
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