Cesar CantuYou’re traveling to Mexico to do business. What should you read to get a better grasp on the country?
At NSAM, we believe in the usefulness of great business writing. Nevertheless, we are also aware that a country is much more than the metrics that traditionally engage business folk. And if you’re traveling to Mexico, you’ll want to know much more than the growth rate of GDP over the past decade.
Below you’ll find a list of books (all of them available in English editions) that we consider crucial for the understanding of Mexican history, culture and society.
These books are more than mere conversation fodder for your business brunch. They’ll allow you to navigate the country and interact with its people –in and outside of the meeting room– in a manner more nurturing to your intellect and vision of the world.
Mexican Postcards (Carlos Monsiváis, 1997)
Mosnsiváis is Mexico’s most popular intellectual of the past five decades. His writings mix high-brow, academic sensibilities with a love for Mexican popular culture, providing a colorful yet insightful look at Mexican society, culture, history, mass media, politics and daily life in general from the late 1960s to the early 2000s.
Mexican Postcards is the first time Monsisváis work has been translated into English. The book collects his essays on topics as diverse as Mexican movie stars, life in the US-Mexico border, Mexican literature, the history of boleros, Latino hip hop and much more.
So much has been written about Mexico by economists, political analysts and cultural critics. Monsisváis encapsulates all of those perspectives and presents them in engaging, witty and vivid prose. His insights are unique to a man that has been wholeheartedly experiencing his country for decades. You won’t find them anywhere else.
The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico (Miguel León-Portilla, 1959)
A unique historical relation of the Conquest of Mexico. In this book, historian Miguel León-Portilla compiles and comments a set of accounts –most of them written originally in Nahuatl– of life in the Aztec Empire before the Conquest, the arrival and march of the Spaniards through Mexico, the fall of city of Tenochtitlan and its immediate aftermath.
Broken Spears is, to this day, one of the few books which recounts the Spanish Conquest of Mexico as experienced by the natives who saw their world crushed under the boots of European conquistadores. (The original Spanish title of the book is, actually, “A Vision of the Defeated”). León-Portilla makes use of Nahuatl documents, translated accounts and ancient codices to revive a cosmovision that has been lost almost in its entirety.
The book also serves as a comment on the complicated historical legacy of the Mexican people. While the Conquest created a new identity which (violently) mixed Spanish and native Mexican elements, indigenous communities still exist in the country, and some of them have never fully embraced the Mexican national identity.
The Plain in Flames (Juan Rulfo, 1953)
Juan Rulfo is easily among the top 5 authors in all of Mexican literature. Most literary critics and connoisseurs would recommend his novel Pedro Páramo, which tells the tale of a literal ghost town in rural Mexico. We’re convinced, however, that his short story collection, The Plain in Flames, provides a more comprehensive picture of Mexican society as endured by its most unfortunate and vulnerable members, which to this day account for a considerable portion of the country’s inhabitants.
The Plain in Flames collects stories of people living in small and rural towns of Mexico between the late 1910s and the early 1930s. The book is decidedly dark and even hopeless in its portrayal of Mexican society, with tales of peasants and ranchers dealing with the injustices of a highly classist social hierarchy, the brutality of the Mexican Revolution, an apathetic government and life among people who have turned as violent as their environment. However, it also carries an undercurrent of dark humor, achieved through Rulfo’s wit and his ability to capture local flavor in the page.
Mexico saw much social, political and economic progress throughout the 20th century, but many of the demons depicted by Rulfo in his stories keep gnawing at the country’s ankles.
Tear this Heart Out (Ángeles Mastretta, 1985)
Tear this Heart Out can be described as a romance novel posing as a post-revolutionary tale with a feminist bent. It tells the story of a woman (Catalina Guzmán) who was kidnapped in her teenage years and forced into marriage to a Mexican caudillo. Most of the novel covers Catalina’s life as the wife of a brutish man with a military background and strong political connections during 1930s Mexico.
In spite of its setting, Tear my Heart Out is fairly modern in its depiction of Catalina. She’s highly intelligent, resourceful and strong-headed, managing to remain somewhat free even under the oppressive heel of her husband. The book reads at times like a telenovela due to the contrast between Catalina’s difficult home life and her romantic escapades.
Mastretta’s novel is more than a thrilling romance with a feminist splash. It helps readers identify and understand the societal attitudes that have been oppressing women in Mexico for centuries, some of which are still in place. It also provides intriguing comments on how Mexican society and politics in the 1930s reflect almost a century later.
Massacre in Mexico (Elena Poniatowska, 1971)
Poniatowska’s Massacre in Mexico is the best-known account of one of the darkest episodes in modern Mexican history: the Massacre of Tlatelolco.
The book gathers and presents testimonies of people who lived through Mexico’s Student Movement of 1968, as well as narrations of what happened in October 2 of that year, when the Mexican military shot at a crowd of protesters –most of them college and highschool students– gathered in Mexico City’s Three Cultures Square, killing at least 300.
Massacre in Mexico is one of the most important documents for the understanding not only of the crimes of Tlatelolco, but of contemporary Mexican politics. Many of the country’s current political figures trace back their ideological awakenings to the Student Movement of ‘68, and much of the population’s distrust of the military, the police and the government in general stems from decades of disinformation campaigns that tried to keep the truth of that day under wraps.
Miracle of Mexico (Alfonso Reyes, 2019)
Thought not as well known in the English-speaking world, Alfonso Reyes stands as one of Mexico’s most important and prolific intellectuals. Narrator, poet, dramatist, literary critic, cultural commentator, essayist and diplomat, Reyes was Mexico’s Renaissance man during the first half of the 20th century. Some of the people who met him during his diplomatic travels referred to him as “a collection of writers.”
Miracle of Mexico is one of the only books of Reyes available in English. It collects –in a bilingual edition– over 200 pages of Reyes’ poetry, showcasing both his love for Mexico and his deep, deep knowledge of the classics. In this volume you’ll find odes to Mexican cities, objects and characters, as well as evocations and comments on Greco-Roman mythology, ancient history and literary theory.
Reyes embodied a vision of Mexico –and Latin America– as a rightful heir of European culture; a blend of the best of Western Civilization over the millenia, poured onto the more vibrant and colorful soil of the Americas. That vision has been lost for the most part among Mexican artistic and intellectual circles, but it can still be perceived in the architectural, pictoric and literary legacy of the country. Reyes is a crucial read for anyone wishing to understand that legacy.
Hurricane Season (Fernanda Melchor, 2017)
Fernanda Melchor’s writing is among the most powerful and evocative in contemporary Mexican literature, and Hurricane Season is the best sample of her abilities.
This short novel begins like a murder mystery: a woman known as La Bruja (“The Witch”) is found dead in a river in the outskirts of a small Mexican town. The story quickly transforms, however, into a study of how violence is embedded in the relationships between the town’s inhabitants: family members, neighbors, schoolmates, friends, lovers and strangers harm each other in terrible ways, all due to the implied influence of their environment.
Hurricane Season carries on with the tradition crystalized by Juan Rulfo. It forces the reader to confront the brutality that exists in Mexico’s most inconspicuous and deceivingly tranquil corners, bringing to mind questions of how much things have truly changed for the country in a century.
Drug Cartels Do Not Exist (Oswaldo Zavala, 2018)
A truly controversial book. In it, college professor and former journalist Oswaldo Zavala puts forth a thesis which contradicts one of the core tenets of US-Mexico security studies and relations: the existence of drug cartels.
This book’s main idea can be (unfairly) summarized as follows: drug cartels are actually far from what’s depicted in mass media, academic studies, security briefings and diplomatic papers. They’re smaller, less powerful and not as all-encompassing; more akin to disjointed bands of drug smugglers operating under strict cooperation with Mexican and US authorities. Drug cartels, in that sense, are a well crafted and heavily publicized myth.
Whether you agree or not with Zavala’s thesis is besides the point of this recommendation. This book’s true value resides on what it tells about the complex and at times murky security relations between Mexico and the US, the cross-border politics of drug trafficking, the failings of Mexican and international media at reporting on the country’s drug war and, most importantly, how little is actually known by the public about the true nature of violent crime in Mexico.
The Mongolian Conspiracy (Rafael Bernal, 1969)
The Mongolian Conspiracy is one of the earlier and best examples of Mexican noir. The crime novel turned out to be a useful tool for depicting a country ripe with political corruption, violent crime and social unrest.
The novel tells the story of a hitman turned detective (Filiberto García) who’s tasked by Mexico City’s police chief to investigate a rumored assassination attempt on the Mexican and/or US presidents during a visit to the capital. Filiberto’s investigation leads him in a journey through Mexico City’s criminal underworld, where he encounters Chinese gangsters, FBI agents and KGB spies.
The Mongolian Conspiracy is a snappy and darky humorous portrayal of the paranoia suffered by Mexican society during the height of the Cold War, when the country felt constantly asphyxiated by the pressures coming from Russia and the US. Bernal’s depiction of Mexico is that of a country trying to find its place in a new world of cloak-and-dagger intrigue.
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