Suggested Reading/Viewing for US-Mexico Border Posts The reading/viewing resources listed below have hugely informed my experience living in Ciudad Juarez, working on the visa line, and traveling in Mexico. While here, I read dozens of books, hundreds of print/online articles, and saw a ton of movies/documentaries, but the ones below the “best of the best”. Books: I left out the obvious ones like Murder City, The Last Narco, Daughters of Juarez, and Amexica: War Along the Border Line, among plenty more. Like many of you, I read them as I was arriving in Juarez, but they miss the mark. They emphasize death and destruction but with no analysis and, at best, fragmentary info. This Love is Not for Cowards: Soccer and Salvation in Ciudad Juarez (Robert Andrew Powell). Amazon description: More than 10 people are murdered every day in Ciudad Juárez, the city hardest hit in Mexico’s drug war. And yet more than a million people still live there. They even love their impoverished city, proudly repeating its mantra: "Amor por Juárez." Nothing exemplifies the spirit and hope of Juarenses more than the Indios, the city's beloved but hard-luck soccer team. Sport may seem a meager distraction, but to many it's a lifeline. It drew charismatic American midfielder Marco Vidal back from Dallas to achieve the athletic dreams of his Mexican father. Team owner Francisco Ibarra and Mayor José Reyes Ferriz both thrive on soccer. So does the dubiously named crew of Indios fans, El Kartel. In this honest, unflinching, and powerful book, Robert Andrew Powell chronicles a season of soccer in this treacherous city just across the Rio Grande, and the moments of pain, longing, and redemption along the way. The Devil’s Highway (Luis Alberto Urroa). Amazon description: In May 2001, 26 Mexican men scrambled across the border and into an area of the Arizona desert known as the Devil's Highway. Only 12 made it safely across. In this true story, Urrea tracks the paths those men took from their home state of Veracruz all the way norte. Their enemies were many: the U.S. Border Patrol ("La Migra"); gung-ho gringo vigilantes bent on taking the law into their own hands; the Mexican Federales; rattlesnakes; severe hypothermia and the remorseless sun, a "110 degree nightmare" that dried their bodies and pounded their brains. 1 Down by the River (Charles Bowden). Amazon description: Lionel Bruno Jordan was murdered on January 20, 1995, in an El Paso parking lot. Down by the River is the true narrative of how a murder led one American family into the world of drugs and cartels and how it all but destroyed them. It is the story of how one Mexican drug leader outfought and outthought the U.S. government, of how major financial institutions were fattened on the drug industry, and how the governments of the U.S. and Mexico buried everything that happened. All this happens down by the river, where the public fictions finally end and the facts read like fiction. This is a remarkable American story about drugs, money, murder, and family. Border: The US-Mexico Line (Leon Metz). No description available in Amazon, but the book provides border history beginning in Mexico’s pre- independence era and goes through Ronald Reagan’s Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) or 1986-87. The US-Mexico Border into the Twenty-First Century (Paul Ganster and David Lorey). Amazon description: Systematically exploring the dynamic interface between Mexico and the United States, this comprehensive survey considers the historical development, current politics, society, economy, and daily life of the border region. Now fully updated and revised, the book traces the economic cycles and social movements from the 1880s through the beginning of the twenty-first century that created the modern border region, showing how the border shares characteristics of both nations while maintaining an internal coherence that transcends its divisive international boundary. The authors conclude with an in-depth analysis of the key issues of the contemporary borderlands: industrial development and maquiladoras, NAFTA, rapid urbanization, border culture, demographic and migration issues, the environmental crisis, the border Native Americans, U.S. and Mexican cooperation and conflict at the border, drug trafficking, and the security crisis brought by the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Super-Athletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen (Christopher McDougal). Amazon description: Isolated by Mexico's deadly Copper Canyons, the blissful Tarahumara Indians have honed the ability to run hundreds of miles without rest or injury. In a riveting narrative, award-winning journalist and often-injured 2 runner Christopher McDougall sets out to discover their secrets. In the process, he takes his readers from science labs at Harvard to the sun-baked valleys and freezing peaks across North America, where ever-growing numbers of ultra-runners are pushing their bodies to the limit, and, finally, to a climactic race in the Copper Canyons that pits America’s best ultra-runners against the tribe. McDougall’s incredible story will not only engage your mind but inspire your body when you realize that you, indeed all of us, were born to run. God’s Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre (Richard Grant). Amazon description: 20 miles south of the Arizona-Mexico border, the rugged, beautiful Sierra Madre mountains begin their dramatic ascent. Almost 900 miles long, the range climbs to nearly 11,000 feet and boasts several canyons deeper than the Grand Canyon. The rules of law and society have never taken hold in the Sierra Madre, which is home to bandits, drug smugglers, cave-dwelling Tarahumara, opium farmers, and cowboys. Outsiders are not welcome; drugs are the primary source of income; murder is all but a regional pastime. Fifteen years ago, journalist Richard Grant developed what he calls "an unfortunate fascination" with this lawless place. With gorgeous detail, fascinating insight, and an undercurrent of dark humor, God's Middle Finger brings to vivid life a truly unique and uncharted world. El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency (Ioan Grillo). Amazon description: The world has watched, stunned, the bloodshed in Mexico. 40,000 murdered since 2006; police chiefs shot within hours of taking office; mass graves comparable to those of civil wars; car bombs shattering storefronts; headless corpses heaped in town squares. Who are these mysterious figures who threaten Mexico's democracy? What is El Narco? The conflict spawned by El Narco has given rise to paramilitary death squads battling from Guatemala to the Texas border (and sometimes beyond). In this "propulsive ... high-octane" book (Publishers Weekly), Ioan Grillo draws the first definitive portrait of Mexico's cartels and how they have radically transformed in the past decade. Mañana Forever? Mexico and the Mexicans (Jorge Castañeda). Amazon description: Why are Mexicans so successful in individual sports, but deficient in team play? Why do Mexicans dislike living in skyscrapers? Why do Mexicans love to see themselves as victims, but also love victims? And why, though the Mexican people traditionally avoid conflict, is there so much violence in a country where many leaders 3 have died by assassination? In this shrewd and fascinating book, the renowned scholar and former foreign minister Jorge Castañeda sheds much light on the puzzling paradoxes of his native country. Mañana Forever is a compelling portrait of a nation at a crossroads. Perpetuating Power: How Mexican Presidents Were Chosen (Jorge Castañeda). Amazon description: The widely acclaimed explication of Mexican politics from "one of the most insightful Mexican intellectuals" (The New York Times Book Review). Jorge Castañeda, Mexico's former foreign minister, has been both an insider and an outsider in Mexico's political system. In Perpetuating Power, he lays bare the often mystifying workings of power in Mexico, offering readers what the New York Times Book Review called "an unusually revealing explication of the inner workings of three decades of presidential succession." Opening Mexico: The Making of a Democracy (Julia Preston and Samuel Dillon). Amazon description: Opening Mexico is a narrative history of the citizens' movement which dismantled the one-party state that dominated Mexico in the 20th century, and replaced it with a lively democracy. Told through the stories of Mexicans who helped make the transformation, the book gives new and gripping behind- the-scenes accounts of major episodes in Mexico's recent politics. The narrative focuses largely on the 1997 gubernatorial elections in the state of Chihuahua, which the PRI lost to the PAN and which marked the first major election the PRI lost in over 70 years. Triumphs and Tragedy: A History of the Mexican People (Ramon Eduardo Ruiz). Amazon description: A narrative study of Mexico's tumultuous origin and development--from its Olmec, Aztec and Mayan heritage to its present-day incarnation as an independent, but struggling, modern country. Winner of a Commonwealth gold medal for Nonfiction and lauded as one of the five best history books of the year by the Los Angeles Times, this epic history of Mexico tells the story of that country's tumultuous origin and development, from its Olmec, Aztec, and Mayan heritage to its present-day incarnation as a dependent, struggling and economically unstable modern country. The history of Mexico, writes Ramón Eduardo Ruiz, one 4 of our most distinguished Mexicanists, is one long tragedy intermittently punctuated by triumph. The Life and Times of Mexico (Earl Shorris). Amazon description: The Life and Times of Mexico is a grand narrative driven by 3,000 years of history: the Indian world, the Spanish invasion, Independence, the 1910 Revolution, the tragic lives of workers in assembly plants along the border, and the experiences of millions of Mexicans who live in the United States.