Navarrette: 'Midnight in Mexico' Reveals Hard Truths About Homeland Ruben Navarrette - San Diego Union-Tribune
go to original August 23, 2013

Midnight in Mexico: A Reporter's Journey Through a Country's Descent into Darkness by Alfredo Corchado Check it out on Amazon.com

Alfredo Corchado's book "Midnight in Mexico" is like a piñata. Wherever you crack it open, something good flies out.

A friend for more than a decade and former colleague at The Dallas Morning News, Corchado has penned a masterpiece. In these pages, you'll learn the history of drug trafficking in Mexico, get valuable insights from a reporter who covered four Mexican presidents, and explore the identity crisis of Mexican-Americans who are Mexicans in the United States but Americans in Mexico.

There is even high drama. Corchado is so good at digging up inconvenient truths about Mexico's drug war - which has led to more than 100,000 deaths in less than seven years - there were fears he might wind up with, as he wrote, "a bullet in my head."

Still, for me, the most important story in this book is the most personal one. "Midnight in Mexico" is primarily about a son's argument with his mother, who took him out of Mexico as a boy along with his siblings after one of his sisters died in a tragic accident. Before leaving her home country for the United States, his mother took her children to a spiritual cleansing, to wash off what she considered the evil essence of Mexico.

Corchado wasn't supposed to go back. His mother pleaded with him not to return. Yet, he did. And in our culture, when you disobey your mother, you're just asking for trouble.

Read the rest at Recordnet.com

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