100 books like Ambivalent Conquests

In this masterpiece of historical narrative, Paul Sullivan investigates the 1875 sacking of a sugar plantation (called Xuxub) and the murder of its American manager by Maya rebels. Located on the geographical frontier between “Ladino” and Maya society, Xuxub became a microcosm of all of the conflicts that haunted Mexico as it entered its “Guilded Age”: inter-elite rivalries, international competition in the wake of the U.S.-Mexico War, and the overwhelming fear that the nation’s Indigenous population would rise up against encroaching liberal capitalism. It all comes together in a murder mystery, written more like true crime than an academic text, right down to the final poetic twist. This is an immensely enjoyable read, so much so that I have read it no fewer than fifteen times. 

In my opinion, Bill Taylor is the greatest living American historian of Mexico. He has written big books and small books, all brilliant, all canonical, and his latest is no exception. In this labor of love, he traces the lives of two charlatans wandering the Mexican countryside, living and suffering by their wits, usually impersonating priests. The stories, in themselves, go nowhere: our two lowlife protagonists bounce from town to town, jail to jail, and never learn a thing or reach an epiphany; but taken together they paint a picture of Spanish American society as exceptionally mobile, and dysfunctionally unstable. Marked by displacement, dislocation, and immigration, New Spain gave birth to the picaresque novel, rooted in an abiding sense that nothing was ever as it seemed. This is Taylor’s real reward: a glimpse at two unpolished, real-life pícaros in the historical record.

On May 20, 2004, a relatively “ordinary” teenager and two of his friends murdered his mother, his father, and his little sister. Unraveling the triple murder, investigative journalist Sandra Rodríguez Nieto paints a brilliant portrait of Ciudad Juárez in 2004 – a city just about to become the world’s murder capital. However, even before it became the central battleground for Mexico’s competing organized crime groups, Juárez fostered a milieu of violence, rooted in impunity. In beautiful prose, Rodríguez Nieto argues that Vicente and his friends were practically driven to murder by an overwhelming sense of impunity, which “taught us that any and every savage crime was fair game.” This book is not so much about the so-called “drug war” as it is about the social world it has come to inhabit.

This is not just the story of José de León Toral – the man who killed President Álvaro Obregón in 1928 – but the story of the world he inhabited. Often dismissed as a religious fanatic, Robert Weis seeks (in a sense) to redeem Toral by contextualizing him in a very peculiar postrevolutionary cultural milieu: Mexico City’s network of lay Catholics, forced underground by the revolutionary state. Weis masterfully reconstructs this clandestine ecosystem of private masses and informal convents, and their cat-and-mouse games with the agents of state repression. I love the layers of detail, the reconstructions of daily life, and the author’s compassion for his subjects. I was skeptical at first, but by the end I was convinced that Toral’s action was political, and not driven (just) by religious zealotry.

I grew up, like many other Yucatecans, convinced by my family and friends that Yucatecan cuisine is one of the best in the world, and it took many years and an anthropology degree for me to see this as a form of ethnocentrism.

Ayora-Diaz examines and deconstructs this belief, deep-seated in Yucatecans' minds, through his sophisticated study of Yucatecan regionalism through the lens of food and gastronomy.

The author proposes that what is now understood and acknowledged as “Yucatecan food” has been created out of three converging threads: home kitchens, recipe books, and restaurants. Through food, Yucatecans have carved a regionalism almost in opposition to a “Mexican” identity.

Weaving theory, ethnography, and food anecdotes, this book will leave you hungry, wanting to try all the food in Yucatan.

Reed’s wonderful writing style and great turns of phrase make this an enjoyable read, while his attention to detail and excellent research make it requisite to understanding the long Caste War of the Maya after 1847. It is a critical antidote to works that pay too little attention to indigenous agents, to religious motivations, and to a long-simmering insurrection with vibrant cultural voices. Other works have taken this on since, but it remains a classic.

Many Aztecs studied with Franciscan friars. Later, they helped the friars write books about Christianity and compose plays for their people to present on holidays.

They took European ideas and reinterpreted them for a Native audience. For instance, Hephaistos, a Greek god who was a bit of a loser, is given the name Tizoc, a former Aztec emperor who was also a bit of a loser. It is fascinating to watch people digesting a whole new way of thinking.

Best of all, some of the plays were meant to be funny!

This book is one of my all-time favorites. The Death of Artemio Cruz is a historical novel by one of the most acclaimed literary figures of the Spanish language, Carlos Fuentes. It is a captivating narrative of intertwined memories experienced by Cruz while on his deathbed; this novel is a harsh condemnation of the post-revolutionary political class. It shows the path of idealist revolutionaries becoming corrupt politicians once in power. While a work of fiction, the book describes real corrupt and abusive attitudes and straight-out crimes committed by numerous revolutionary leaders turned politicians. There were many Artemio Cruz among the revolution leaders, which helps explain why the revolution failed to achieve real social change. 

As a reader I simply couldn’t have one book without the other. Detective Cruz is the first female detective in Acapulco and fights for every inch of respect in a police department rife with corruption and misogyny in a country where Mexicans don’t trust the police, feeling that no one cares. But Det. Cruz cares. The recurring theme of so many girls gone missing is her passion which occasionally rises up during other investigations throughout the series. As a writer I enjoyed suspense and danger. Carmen Amato makes you feel the heat and taste the food of Acapulco. Best ever female cop protagonist.

I read The Old Gringo in college before I had any inkling that I would one day be a not-too-old gringa making her home in San Miguel de Allende.

Fuentes imagines meaningful final days for Ambrose Bierce, an American journalist who in 1913 headed off into Mexico at the age of 71, never to be heard from again. I love this book for the way Fuentes captures and probes profound differences and lingering mistrust between our cultures as well as the universal human struggles for meaning, opportunity, security, and belonging.

While Fuentes’ old gringo, we are told, came to die a worthy soldier’s death in Mexico, the gringos of my generation are here to live fully and well.