100 books like Graciela Iturbide's Mexico

Gertrude (Trudi) Blom (1901-1993) was a Swiss journalist, photographer, and environmental activist who went to the rain forest of Chiapas, the Mexican state bordering Guatemala, to work with the Lacandon people, a community of indigenous Mayas. 

Blom was there for almost forty years, between 1941 and 1979, documenting the lives and culture of the Lacandons. Her photographs show an intense love for a vanishing culture and landscape—the lush natural environment of the Lacandons as well as their activities: agriculture, hunting, religious customs, and family structures.

Blom’s late photos document the increasing pressure on their ecosystem, and thus their way of life. These photographs inspired me to learn more about the rich cultures of Mexico’s indigenous people, and to do what we can to protect their fragile environments.

The Mexican Revolution was photographed by many photographers, foreigners as well as Mexicans, whose photographs were collected by news agencies and distributed immediately in newspapers, sometimes even as the fighting was going on. Their photos record defining moments in Mexico’s history, and offer portraits of its participants: soldiers and camp followers (women and children), as well as iconic leaders Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata, among others. 

I love this book because it is written by a woman who lived her whole life in Mexico, experienced events of the Revolution, and knew many of its participants. Her personal account is accompanied by 184 photos that enhance her text and make events and people come alive.

The importance of this Revolution cannot be exaggerated. It engulfed much of Mexico for at least two decades (1910-1930), and claimed between 2 and 3.5 million lives. Troops advanced on horseback and trains, in dusty fields… show more.

Having read The Winds that Swept Mexico and seen the amazing photographs in that book, you’ll want to know more about the photographers who risked their lives to accompany Mexican troops in battle and in haphazard camps waiting for something to happen.

This book includes many photographs, but focusses on the history of the Revolution as shown in those photographs, and the processes of photography itself:  how photographers worked in the early twentieth century in the midst of war, and how their photographs were collected and published as the Revolution raged on.

John Mraz is an excellent “visual historian.” I admire the way he explains how photographers got their “shots” of mounted revolutionaries and battles and camp followers—the sweethearts and wives and children who followed the troops, cooked for them, and sometimes tended to their wounds.

Mraz also explains how their photographs became instant propaganda for particular leaders and causes—and… show more.

Photographs pretend to replicate the real, as do literary fictions, and yet both media also create their own “realities”.

This book explores how photographs, placed in fictional narratives, can distort and deceive characters (and the reader) or, to the contrary, illustrate and illuminate the story. Photographs in the hands of writers can create alternative “realities” within the fictional world or reveal the truth! 

A primary example of the use of photography in fiction is the Argentine writer Julio Cortázar’s famous story “Blow up,” which was made into a movie—now a classic—directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. In Dan Russek’s book, we see a number of such “mixed media” fictions.

I love Latin American photography, and I love seeing how Latin American novelists engage this powerful medium for their own literary purposes.

I like biographies that approach a subject from a different angle and this book does that by focusing on the animals that influenced Frida Kahlo. By witnessing Frida’s relationships with her pets—a parrot, eagle, fawn, cat, dogs, turkeys, monkeys—kids will get to know Frida and learn how she became one of the world’s most beloved artists despite several challenges. The back matter explains that the artist often included her pets in her work. So when readers of this biography encounter one of Kahlo’s animalito paintings (perhaps in a museum or in another book), they will delight in recognizing Frida’s furry and feathered friends. A wonderful way to introduce kids to an artist’s work!

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.

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. 

I could have picked almost any of Bowden’s books on the border, for example, the excellent Murder City, but I’m choosing Laboratory of the Future as it’s the first piece of his writing I came across. Bowden, who lived on both sides of the US/Mexican border for many years, was intimate with his subject, and the brutal power of his journalistic writing puts most novelists to shame. He is not afraid to question us or confront us, or hide his anger, but it is never unwarranted. In this book, he, and the thirteen Mexican photographers whose frequently shocking images accompany the text, paints a grim picture of the nature of ultra-capitalism when allowed to run free just south of the border – it is, he says, an experiment: it is the laboratory of our future.

I love this book because Lawrence is one of the great travel writers. His highly individual style of writing, so full of energy and life, makes Mexico in the 1920s come alive. In the marvellous opening chapter you are with him in his Mexican garden, seeing what he sees, smelling what he smells, hearing what he hears. Very few travel writers have this gift and it’s hard to believe that this book is nearly 100 years old when it is as fresh as the day it was written.

Another deeply insightful book from Paul Theroux, On the Plain of Snakes explores the cultural richness and sometimes dangerous aspects of Mexico. With a forward style and charisma, he comes face to face with narcos, police, corruption, migrants, and the sometimes frightening indigenous culture. His writings are not just all darkness and gloom. He goes to great lengths to describe the importance of family in a country with virtually no social network. He talks with the educated, the poverty-stricken, and even meets the leader of the Zapatistas.  After reading On the Plain of Snakes' you will develop a new appreciation for our Mexican neighbors, particularly concerning migration and the border control issues that have dominated the US for too many years. This is a long arduous trip which Theroux makes thoroughly enjoyable.