Fire and Blood

Fire and Blood: A History of Mexico
 © 1973 T.R. Fehrenbach
675 pages

Fire and Blood is an epic history of Mexico, one that begins at the dawn of time and takes its time moving on.  Case in point: the 20th century is addressed in the last 10% of the book.   If nothing else, Fehrenbach should be lauded for a historical survey that focuses more on the past rather than the recently-expired present.  Fire and Blood is dauntingly comprehensive, taking no shortcuts; not only are the cultures of the Aztecs and Maya plumbed, but when the 16th century arrives Fehrenbach pauses to render a history of the Spanish empire, and readers are continually fed with changes on its evolution as they affect Mexico.  The arrival of the Spanish is a pivotal moment,  as they destroyed the old tribal order -- and imperial order, while easy to declare, was  harder to realize.  A dominant theme within the book is a search for Mexican identity, and it begins with the Spanish disruption.  Spanish authorities organized their new domain into a multitude of racial castes, with varying privileges and duties depending on whether one was a Spaniard born in Spain, a Spaniard born on the peninsula, or racially mixed in some way. Over time, and especially after the Spanish empire collapsed of its own corruption with Napoleonic assistance,  the mixed Spanish-and-Native population was dominant,  but even so Mexico still writhed trying to create social, economic, and political order for itself. Some wanted a republic, some a monarchy; some wanted to destroy the Church utterly, some to embrace it.  Struggles over land a la the brothers Gracchai also drove politics.  All this turmoil tended to produce autocratic leaders, not principled democrats,  and even once democracy had established itself one political party held sway.


Prose-wise, Fire and Blood is approachable history; the history itself, however, as the title indicates, is harsh, unforgiving, and often violent.  It took me several weeks to finish, with frequent breaks,  because the constant strife seemed relentless.  The content an style make this a valuable resource for those interested in learning about the roots of Mexican culture, however.

House of Rain

House of Rain: Tracking a Vanished Civilization Across the American Southwest
© 2007 Craig Childs
482 pages

Throughout the southwest United States and northern Mexico there are ruins from a people long gone, people remembered as the Anasazi. The name is not theirs; it was applied by the Apache later on, and has a mocking connotation - -the old ones, the rotten ones, the defunct ones. The ruins of cliffside dwellings, abandoned signal towers, and brightly colored ceramics reveal a technically accomplished people, one whose lore contained information gleaned from hundreds of years of close observations: their sites often incorporate features which mark astronomical events, events that no doubt played a part in their mythos. Who were these people, and why did they leave?

Well, they didn’t, says Craig Childs. Or at least, it’s inaccurate to say they planted their flag in New Mexico and Arizona and such places, and then for some reason decided to abandon their ancestral homes. In search of answers, Craig Child hiked and drove throughout the Southwest, venturing far off the beaten track by himself or with archaeology students, to study the land, the light, and these spaces which remain to absorb what understanding can be had. Many of the people he walked with were specialists in the region -- archaeoastronomers, say, or those who can identify the region that preserved wood or pottery came from by their chemistry,

Findings from archaeological digs indicate that this was a fluid population, one that frequently moved in response to environmental stresses. The rivers of this region are fickle, alternatively flooding and vanishing The transient ancients were following the water, and an interior nether-world of gods – a place beneath the soil where water was plentiful but released slowly in mountain streams or sudden springs -- appears to have been on their mind. Ritual appears to have had a role in their leaving, as well: some sites are thought to have been torched deliberately, by the inhabitants, rather than destroyed in war. Some of their locations appear to have been settled communities, while others were mere migrant camps that could not have supported a large population, but were used as a short-term residence. Eventually these people dispersed in their travels to become the various pueblo peoples, like the Hopi.

House of Rain is neither a travel guide nor a comprehensive history, but rather an attempt to make sense of one through the other. The full story will never be known, though parts can be garnered by studying what was left behind and other pieces are locked away in the lore of native peoples who (for good reasons) do not wish to share their oral histories with outsiders – even outsiders as serious and respectful as Childs. Childs is a native son of the southwest who traveled extensively within it before writing this book, and the amount of contacts he nursed before engaging in this project reveals his sincere interest in the subject. House of Rain isn’t a novelty travel guide – “Ghost Towns of the Ancient West!” – but the chronicle of one man pursuing his passion, to learn as much as he could about those who lived in and loved the same landscape he did. Those who find the mountains and vistas of the Four Corners enchanting will appreciate this tour of a civilization that was.

The Black Ice

The Black Ice
© 1993 Michael Connelly
336 pages

A body discovered in a sleazy motel on Christmas Eve connects a handful of otherwise dead cases, and sets Detective Harry Bosch against his own department, culminating in the pursuit of a half-chance to Mexico.  The case was never supposed to be Bosch's;  when a cop suspected being bent showed up missing his face, all the department wanted to do was sweep the victim quietly under the rug. But Harry Bosch was the detective on duty when the call came in, and damned if he's going to be kicked to the side.  As is usual, the solitary brooder -- Bosch opens this novel like seemingly every other, sitting by himself and listening to jazz --  can't stop the feeling that there's more to the story, can't stop looking even when everyone else is telling him to drop it.  Several unsolved cases, suddenly parts of a puzzle that he can see the outlines of as he digs, point to a drug lord in Mexico who is pushing a new product in Los Angeles. That's where Bosch ultimately goes, teaming up with a Mexican officer who is an outsider in his own apartment, and their joint investigation leads to fireworks in the Sonoran dark.  While I haven't read a Bosch novel since 201l,  the character is just as compelling as he first was:  a child of the street turned cop thereof,  forever butting heads with the politicos who run things as he pursues justice on nothing more than his gut instincts, black coffee, and the help of rare friends -- usually women.  Characterization is strong here, both as Connelly is developing Bosch (this is the 2nd Bosch novel) further, and giving him interesting enemies, allies, and hybrid creatures to wrangle with.  Interestingly, early on Bosch encounters Mickey Haller -- of Lincoln Lawyer fame, but not made a lead character until that novel's debut in 2005. 

The Irish Soldiers of Mexico

The Irish Soldiers of Mexico
© 1997 Michael Hogan
298 pages

And it was there in the pueblos and the hillsides
That I saw the mistake I had made
Part of a conquering army, with the morals of a bayonet brigade
And amidst all these poor dying Catholics --
Screaming children, the burning stench of it all --
Myself and two hundred Irishmen decided to rise to the call
From Dublin City to San Diego,  we witnessed freedom denied
So we formed the St. Patrick Battalion and we fought on the Mexican side.
("The St. Patrick's Battalion", David Rovics)

One discovers the oddest stories through music.  Take this, for instance -- the story of a few hundred Irish immigrants to the United States, who shortly after participating in the invasion of Mexico, decided to defend it instead. They fought valiantly in five battles, flying the green flag of St. Patrick,  and their survivors continued to serve Mexico even after the war as a check against brigandry.  To the United States, they are an embarrassment best forgotten, a blotch on the United States' first military adventure outside of strict self-defense. To Mexico, they are red-headed heroes: they are the San Patricos.  The Irish Soldiers of Mexico  makes the best of scarce resources and supplies generous background information to give the fighting Irish their deserved laurels.

Hogan grounds the decision of the Irish to bolt in both race and religion. Prior to the waves of European immigration in the late 19th century, the early Republic shared England's pride in its Anglo-Saxon heritage, complete with varying degrees of disdain or contempt for non-Saxons. Prejudice against the Irish was as pronounced as it might be against blacks or Native Americans, at least until so many Irish came over that they begin blending in.   The early Republic was also expressedly  Protestant in its religion,  viewing the Catholic church as Old World and un-American as it was possible to be. Even Maryland, established as a Catholic sanctuary and home to the largest landowner of the founders, Charles Carroll, was quickly taken over by Protestantism.   The abuse incurred by the Irish for both their Celtic blood and their Catholic region kept a barrier up between them and the affection they might have had for their adopted country, and made them sympathetic to the plight of Mexico -- what was Ireland, but a poor nation of Catholics, dominated by Anglo-Saxon Protestants who regarded its inhabitants as fit only for serfs?   The abhorrent behavior exhibited by the invading US Army -- the same abhorrent behavior exhibited by virtually every invading army anywhere,  in which men are replaced by uniformed chimpanzees bent on looting, raping, and burning --  coupled with the seemingly deliberate attack on Mexican churches forced the Irish to make a decision. Who would they keep faith with? Their paymasters, or the people of Mexico, whose plight was so much like the Irish?

Although this book concerns a military battalion, it is not principally military history; what we know  based on  terse US records and  Mexican records (reduced by fire, unfortunately) is that the San Patricios were particularly noted for their work on the cannons. In one battle, after Mexican troops had exhausted their ammunition, the Irish fought to the last, recovering their compadres' retreat.  Those San Patricios who were captured were put to death in a gruesome manner -- not shot as soldiers, but incompetently hung after standing at attention for four hours, or beaten with the lash in excess of the Articles of War.  Half the book's volume is given over to notes, and much of its content proper explores the racial and religion aspects of the Irish stand. While this information is slight, this is an often-overlooked chapter in the Mexican war, one that Irish Americans in particular should note with interest.

Related:
Green, Blue, and Grey: The Irish in the American Civil War, Cal McCarthy

The Mexican Frontier

The Mexican Frontier 1821 - 1846: The American Southwest Under Mexico
©  1982 David Weber (University of New Mexico Press)
440 pages

In 1821, the people of Mexico declared their independence from Spain, recognizing that its Napoleonic straits meant that the mother empire had little future left, either at home or abroad.  Once the bid for independence had achieved its aims, the 'Mexican empire' spanned everything from Oregon down to South America.  Within thirty years, however, the United States had invaded Mexico, seized its capital, and forced the purchase of nearly forty percent of  its northern land.  Sneaky Americanses!  Wicked! Tricksy! False!

Well, not really.  It wasn't David Weber's intention, but having read this history of the Mexican frontier I'm considerably less condemnatory about the treaty of Guadalupe-Hildalgo. Not about the war, of course,  but the treaty itself seems to have only hastened the inevitable break-off of the great northern expanses from Mexico proper. Weber's history begins with  Mexican independence, then details the decline of institutions in the north as the contest for power in central Mexico continued; with a consequentially distinct frontier culture emerging, one that would constantly struggle for its own autonomy. Central to this history is understanding that young Mexico went through several constitutions in those early years,  constantly struggling to find its way. The breaking-away of the north from central Mexico was partially grounded in dispute over which constitution was legitimate: the more republican 1824 constitution, or the more authoritarian 1832 constitution imposed by the ilk of Santa Ana.

The fractures were only made possible by the precipitous decline of institutions in the north that would have tied states and territories like Texas, New Mexico, and the Californias more firmly to the government in Mexico City. The Franciscan missions, for instance, vanished with the Spanish -- in part because they were supported primarily by Spain, in part because many monks were Spaniards more faithful to their patria than their parish,  and in part because  Mexico wanted them out of the way. The missions had all the best land and labor, and if they could be dispatched with, then settlers could move in and hire the newly-emancipated Indians as workers.   Although Mexico officially secularized the clergy -- replaced the Franciscans with state-paid priests --  it did this so slowly that  the Church effectively disappeared in the frontier, and with it marriages and schools and other civil functions that the state was slow in restoring.

Another primary institutional failure was that of the military; because central Mexico's government was so unstable, its  army stayed close to home, either to stave off further intrigues or participate in some. The array of presidios that once guarded the northern frontier, with its independent attachments of cavalry,  was poorly maintained; the soldiers were so scantily paid and armed that not only did civilians have to raise their own militias to defend themselves against Apache raids, but when the militias were on the attack, the presidio cavalry sometimes raided the homes they were supposedly protecting.   In addition, the Mexican government's economic policies -- forcing trade goods in and out of the interior to circulate first through far-distant Vera Cruz -- made supplies rare and expensive. The sheer distances between the frontier and Mexico city added to the eroding attachments between a place like California and Mexico;  the ruling city seemed to be as far away and imperious as Spain. Little wonder that in the 1830s, Texas declared and fought for its independence;  California declared independence but accepted a compromise that allowed it more autonomy; and New Mexico rolled with rebellion several times.

Because of Mexico's instability,  the failure of institutional ties to form or hold, and the sheer distance between cities like  Santa Fe and Mexico City,  the northern expanse of Mexico was increasingly oriented along another axis: it looked east, to America, for cheap, ready, supplies, and  eager settlers and tradesmen. That commercial and cultural Americanization of Mexico's north made it increasingly America's west -- hence why I suspect now that the treaty which ended the United States' unjust invasion of Mexico only hastened the inevitable.  At the risk of condoning Polk, the American federal system finally allowed for the 'home rule' that the restive north fought for in the 1830s.  Had Mexico not struggled so much to create  a stable government early on, it might have held on to much of what the treaty lost -- but it is a difficult thing to create civil society from scratch, let alone when a nation is being constantly invaded by invading Comanche.

Related:
The Spanish Frontier in North America, David Weber

El Narco

El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency
© 2012 Ioan Grillo
336 pages

El Paso, Texas, can boast one of the lowest metropolitan crime rates in the United States. Immediately opposite it on the Rio Grande, however,  Ciudad Juarez, has until recently been regarded as North America's murder capital.  Juarenses are not exceptionally violent people. but their city is one of the battlegrounds in a decade-long melee for money.  El Narco, the product of a journalist who has reported on Mexico for years, covers the origins and growth of drug-trafficking  gangs in this country so far from God and so close to the United States.   Grillo's review of the guerra contra los drogas  reveals how far-reaching the cartel wars are, not only creating a horrific bodycount, but eroding the legitimacy of government and civil order, and creating subcultures obsessed with death.

In the beginning, Mexico's narcotics farmers were surprisingly like Appalachian hill people,   who found corn liquor a lot is easier to make money off of than corn. Like America's hill people, they were organized by familial clans and sometimes competed for territory.  Prohibition in both the United States and Mexico led, in due time, to organized groups superseding the clans in many respects, but not until the end of Mexico's one-party state did the cartels run wild.   From 1929 to 1994, the 'institutional revolutionary party' held complete command in Mexico, with control so complete  that Grillo maintains throughout the book that Mexican democracy only began in 1994.  When they finally ceded power, however, their systems for maintaining order -- corrupt as they were -- disappeared with them, and ever since Mexico's leaders have been trying to fill the vacuum.

I don't live anywhere near the US-Mexican border, but in an age of global news it's hard to miss occasional stories of massacres. The most bloody violence pools around the main routes northward, as Mexico's gangs are not only moving their own goods but transporting merchandise from South America.  Because the industry is so lucrative, it's highly attractive to men and women from economically depressed areas, despite the violence. Gangland allure works its usual magic,  as disadvantaged people are drawn to the spectre of wealth, influence, and the aura of being a tough guy.  That aura is aggrandized by the Mexican tradition of corridos,  ballads that tell stories and celebrate or mourn the lives of their subjects.   Cartel smugglers and gunmen have become the heroes of a growing  library of narcocorridos,  celebrated as poor men who have made it rich by defying the man.  Considering how much of Mexico's local and state governments in the contested areas are compromised by the cartels -- sometimes local police work directly for the gangs --  one wonders how much of the man there is to defy.   Certainly the federal government and army are doing their best, but the narcos are creating their own variants of Mexican culture: one  cartel seems to have its own cult,  and another psuedo-catholic cult is centered on the worship of a female Death Angel.  As the cartels branch out into other areas of crime, like extorting protection money and kidnapping for ransom, Grillo warns that what Mexico is facing is less than a prolonged spat of gang fighting, and more like a Syrianesque insurgency.

As Grillo documents, Mexico has tried valiantly to crush the narcos through sheer force,  targeting leaders and using the movement of money to trap them.  Grillo believes that prohibition ultimately creates the financial incentive fueling these gangs, but there's little grounds for hope that drug prohibition in the US will end anytime soon: while many states are giving up on marijuana, the present attorney general is an implacable supporter of the drug war police state.  And even if a miracle happened, how long would it take for Mexico to recover from this poison that has been seeping into its soil for twenty years?

Disturbing but gripping reading.

Drone

Drone
©  2013
432 pages

In El Paso, Texas, the raging narco-wars between drug trafficking gangs in Mexico has bled over into American streets -- claiming the life of the American president's son.  Having run on a platform of balancing the budget and reversing foreign-policy foul-ups that have lost countless American lives and money overseas, President Meyers nevertheless realizes something has to be done. After diplomatic and above-board covert ops fail to produce results, she turns to an ex-CIA spook named Pearce, who is now the head of a private military contractor that specializes in combat drones. His deadly campaign against one drug cartel will stir up a hornet's nest of woes, because several factions within Mexico are being manipulated by an Iranian who is involved in a multinational conspiracy.  More an intelligent technothriller than a Duke Nukem action-American novel, Drone offers speculation as to how drones might be employed -- and legally justified -- in the near future.  Drones are depicted here not just providing recon and a platform to launch missiles, but sniping targets using facial-recognition software.  Maden's presidential figure is an interesting character, a populist who achieved office by running against her own party and vowing to end endless foreign wars;  she struggles to keep her desire for justice and order in line with a firm commitment to Constitutional government.  A downside of the novel, but a necessary part of its drama, was the domestic chaos that erupts from Meyer's  new policies toward Mexico. After the narco-gangs strike back and the border is functionally militarized,  the media casts Meyers as an anti-Mexican tyrant, creating 'a day without immigrant' labor strikes, etc.  Maden has a good mind for the diverse kind of political chaos imaginable in the United States today, but -- alas for those of us who read this presently -- that sort of chaos is going on now, so it's not enjoyable in the least to read about.   Everyone in this novel has a little schmutz on their face, including the principled executive who can only take the least-worst option of a list of bad choices.

Timeless Mexico

Timeless Mexico
436 pages
© 1944 Hudson Strode

My knowledge of Mexico consists of a few events with a great many spaces in between: Aztecs, Cortes, independence, war with Texas, Pancho Villa, the PRI, and cartel warfare encapsulate my paltry knowledge. I read Timeless Mexico as a beginning effort to remedy that, knowing of course that a work published in 1944 would be severely dated. Hudson Strode's Timeless Mexico covers the country from prehistoric speculation until 1944, with an almost exclusive focus on politics.

Strode is obviously sympathetic to the Mexican people, or at least the peasantry, and often reflects the sentiment he quotes directly: all those who love Mexico must always have their hearts broken. It's easy to see why, because the narrative has one dictator after another -- sometimes elected, sometimes installed by a coup. (Santa Anna is like the Black Death, seemingly impossible to get rid of permanently.) Strode is obviously partial to some of them, hailing their best intentions; the other side's fellows with good intentions are of course wicked. We can't begrudge anyone for trying to improve their country, of course -- promoting schools, roads, hospitals, that sort of thing. I had no idea that revolutionary politics came so early to Mexico, or that its prescriptive nature was embraced so widely. I couldn't muster up a lot of love for any of the politicos here, what with their seizing property left and right and ordering people around. It's all well and good to build schools, but to force people to attend the government's schools exclusively, with no private or parochical institutions allowed to teach, is quite another. Still, the politics here are fundamentally agrarian, not communist; men like Lázaro Cárdenas were closer to the Gracchai brothers than Lenin. Their economic plans involved breaking up plantations and distributing the land to the peasantry, given to them to be held privately and perpetually. The government confiscation wasn't always outright theft; when the oil industry was nationalized, for instance, the oil companies were paid for the equipment. (Not at the asking price, but still.) That agrarian distribution was the only nod I saw to people being put in command of their own lives; most of the politics insists of mobs supporting one caudillo or another, then waiting on The Man to do something.

Timeless Mexico is heavily weighted toward 'current events', which for the author was the 1940s and World War 2. Although Mexico's history with the allied powers had been antagonistic (their all being former colonial-imperial powers in Mexico or its backyard), and despite Mexico's close business ties with Germany, once Japan attacked the United States, America found an immediate ally in its southern neighbor. Given Mexico's political makeup -- a persistently victorious left front that was anti-stalinist on the whole, but which might have a few fans of Murderin' Joe, and the left's opponents, who preferred throwing in with the Nazis -- and its past as being given to violent pendulum revolutions, who could say what might become of it during the conflict? Strode reccommends Mexican history to Americans on the merits of closeness, but World War 2 made that meager division of the Rio Grande much more important.

Although Timeless Mexico isn't quite timeless itself, being dated by a good seventy years at this point, its political coverage is extensive, includes societal change as a matter of course, and is written with devotion to the people. I'll be following this with more up to date books, but found Strode's narrative an affectionate and detailed introduction.

Send More Idiots

Send More Idiots
© 2014  Tony Perez-Giese
324 pages

"What do you think of El Paso?"

"It's an armpit."

"I live here, and I don't even take offense to that."

Jon Lennox' kid brother just disappeared in Mexico. He didn't run off  with a woman, though, he disappeared in a place where the streets are paved with gunshells and which the neighbors call "Murder City",  Juarez.   Everyone else has written Chris off as another cartel casualty, even though he was a real estate broker unconnected to the drug trade, but Jon  can't let it rest.  Setting up shop in a seedy hotel in El Paso, he tries to make connections in the area that will help him discover what became of his brother.  His allies will include a telephone line-woman whose favorite word is "Cállate!", a disgraced cop, and an Iraq war vet on disability who still lingers in the Fort Bliss area to stay close to his brothers-in-arms.  In pursuit of a man's rescue, or just a strike back against the leading cartel, the three stumble into unspoken agreements between the American DEA and the lead gunman in Juarez, resulting in several shootouts and a climax at a Star Trek convention.

Send More Idiots is the opposite of bland, beginning in action and never resting. The moments between periods of active danger are filled with heated debate and discussion, as Jon tries to work out his next move and everyone tells him he's a lunatic who is going to get himself killed.  His allies are no less dangerous:  the cop has his own private revenge motive, the vet's improvised weaponry has a tendency to electrocute the user, and the linewoman's cousin is sleeping with the mob. The characters all have a vibrancy to them -- they're audacious, desperate, and completely entertaining. No less lively is the background of El Paso-Juarez,  both gritty in their ways. The narrative frame is also unusual, the story is being delivered by...the missing person. He's not very active, but every so  often he refers to 'my brother' Jon, and we're reminded, yep - -the object of Jon's search is the one telling the story, so something is up.  The characters suspect that something's up with Jon, too: instead of leaving it to the private investigators and police authorities, he's actively going into narco clubs looking for el jefe. It's as if he wants to get into trouble, and many of those who know him suspect that this episode for him is a once-in-a-lifetime chance for adventure, an opportunity to stop being the responsible-but miserable lawyer, an obedient husband-and-son, and do something outstanding and courageous.

Send More Idiots is one of the faster-paced novels I've read this year, full of comic action. Definitely one to remember..

Comments welcome, but I'm on an adventure of my own until October!