- Certainly the
press, other governments and tourists are most aware of the
official, elite, corrupt Mexico; the Mexico that won’t allow a poor
man a chance; the Mexico behind the sunglasses. I’ve even been told
by people, including Mexicans, that this is Mexican culture. But I
know that’s not true. There is another
Mexico.
— Sam
Quinones,
True Tales from Another
Mexico
Journalist Sam
Quinones has a theory. Seventy-one years of one-party rule by the
PRI, he argues, have all but flogged the life out of Mexico’s
political establishment. Only unofficial Mexico, filled with
stubborn innovators and risk-takers, holds real hope for change.
True Tales from Another Mexico is about these
cultural rebels. A new wave of telenovelas – soap operas – has
brushed off longstanding state controls and portrays the real
problems of modern Mexican life. A loosely organized chain of
Mexican ice-cream shops has outcompeted Baskin-Robbins. A community
of Oaxacan farmworkers in Baja California has successfully pushed
for better living conditions.
Quinones’ story
isn’t always hopeful, and not all of his characters are heroes: The
small lowland town of Huejutla expressed its frustration with a
corrupt judicial system by lynching two traveling salesmen. The
Zamora, Michoacan, imitators of the Los Angeles gang, West Side
Kansas Street, show that the noxious boredom of gang life knows no
boundaries. Yet all of his pieces illuminate fascinating corners of
Mexican culture, complex stories unknown to most of us in El
Norte.
An afterword discusses last summer’s
election of Vincente Fox and life in post-PRI Mexico. Quinones is
elated, and hopes that Mexico will eventually see the end of its
long diaspora. All that’s needed, he says, is for Mexicans to have
“the simple hunch that things are getting better, and that the
government is at least theirs.”
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The other Mexico.
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