Yesterday's Train: A Rail Odyssey Through Mexican History

by Terry Pindell

Since 1988, Terry Pindell has been exploring North America, seeking integration of past and present, history and headlines. The result has been three highly acclaimed book spinning a beautiful web of culture, people, travel, and sociology. Now, in his fourth quest for the soul of the continent, Pindell brings us his fullest history and most expansive cultural portrait yet.

Yesterday's Train starts from a twisted tree at the shore near Veracruz--where according to local legend Cortes first chained his ships in 1519--a place where the earth itself seems in protest. From there, Pindell and collaborator Lourdes Ramirez Mallis travel to the stunning extremes of Mexico's landscape while casting back through its past. From ancient Toltec myth and Aztec ritual to the recent crisis in Chiapas and the halls of Mexico City power, they explore the strange contradictions of Mexico's character.

Journeying mostly by train, Pindell and Ramirez Mallis discover a country in conflict with the Western symbolism of their chosen mode of travel. That is Mexico's story today--a clash between the old Mexico and the new one its leaders and much of the rest of the world hope to create.

In Yesterday's Train , Terry Pindell brings us an odyssey through the most troubled part of the continent, witnessing for a year the roots of Meixco's current civil upheaval. And as always, he accomplishes more than a journey, traveling straight to the restive heart of a land and its people.

Genres: History, Travel, Nonfiction

377 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Bob Newman · Rating 3 out of 5]

trains can travel on only one track at a time

Journalists who cover Mexico ought to speak Spanish . Terry Pindell traveled around Mexico by rail (and other means of transport) for a considerable time. He obviously likes people and got along with everyone, yet I have to wonder if we are not reading these words courtesy of his companion, Lourdes Ramirez Mallis, who maybe should have written the book. This "train" travels on two tracks. The first is a potted Mexican history, which I thought was well-done, fair, and written with the average reader in mind. This was a plus. The history is interspersed with the detailed accounts of his travels from the US border to Guatemala and lots of points in between. We learn about the parlous state of many Mexican trains in the 1990s, the sights to be seen from the windows, a few people met on board, and the hotels, drinks, food, and street life of the various cities visited. Mexican opinions about the Zapatistas of Chiapas (very active at the time), about corruption, politics, and poverty are found throughout. I noted that he stayed in luxury hotels everywhere, at some pretty fancy resorts. I noted that he had some interest in crystals and he called the Maya and Zapotec "tribes". A praiseworthy attempt to sympathize with the plight of Mexico or to express his delight in its culture goes too far sometimes. He claims that English colonial policy was "genocide" but the Spanish one differed. Events in North America may be called "genocide", (though it was more the Anglo-Americans who did it later) but what about the English behavior in Asia and Africa? Did they enslave the population of India? Did they forcibly convert them? Did they knock down their temples and put churches on top? Did the population of the subcontinent drop by 90%? No, Mr. Pindell, I don't think that comment washes.

I thought the travel "track" lacked insight and was ridden with unnecessary personal details he should have left in his travel diary. YESTERDAY'S TRAIN turns out to be a metaphor for the PRI, the long-ruling main party of Mexico. The time had come for a change. They were "yesterday's train" and the country needed a new engineer, a new set of rails and a new direction. Would they get them? It's a good image. But if you want to know about Mexico's problems and current direction, you could read Mexican authors if you know Spanish, or read some foreign authors who have a deeper acquaintance with the country. This book is quite amateurish.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this book in 1997 as a gift for my father, who spent a year working in Mexico and whose second wife is from Chihuahua. He sent the book back to me this year, so I finally read it.

Terry Pindell’s writing is a hodgepodge of history, sociology, travelogue and current-events political commentary. The framing device is his travel around the country with his translator, professor Lourdes Ramírez Mallis, along Mexico’s railways. These lines have become less used over time, as they have been defunded during periods of austerity, and supplanted by highway and air travel. “Yesterday’s Train” is in some ways a metaphor for the patience needed to deal with unreliable schedules and unexpected encounters.

I’ve never been to Mexico, and reading this piqued my interest to be able to travel there someday. Ultimately the political commentary bogs down and becomes circular. The unrest in Chiapas may or may not still be going on, decades later. I strongly suspect that the landless indigenous people are as equally poor today. A lot of the distrust Mexicans feel about politicians could be written about the US too, 23 years later.

So it is the description of the varied landscapes — Copper Canyon mountain vistas, charming smaller cities and the jungle fecundity of Chiapas — plus the interactions with people he meets along the way, which interest me more than any of the election coverage.

[Christopher May · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like he did with his two previous North American rail narratives, Pindell once again weaves a tale of people and places that is both informative and captivating. I began this book with only the most rudimentary understanding of Mexican history and politics. Learning about both was fascinating but fraught with melancholy. What a story of a nation and its search for identity! As always, Pindell peppers his text with colorful characters and the pragmatic philosophy of those who travel by train. If there's a downside to this book, it's that currently there are no more rail adventure books by Pindell available. I can only hope that wanderlust sets in and he tackles another continent via rail travel soon. Highly recommended!

[Todd Stockslager · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review title: The PTA tour guide to Mexico and its histoy
Planes, trains, and automobiles (and buses) take Pindell and translator/traveling companion Lourdes Ramirez Mallis on a coast to coat and north to south tour of Mexico. This book is a companion (disclaimer: I haven't read the others) to his previous trips across Canada and the United States in similar style.

Pindell provides a useful thumbnail of Mexican history, geography, and culture, alternating between descriptions of the current-day trip and historical events that occurred along the way. Because of the vast scale, difficult geography, and piecemeal condition of Mexican passenger rail service (it sounds like something akin to the worst of American passenger trains in the immediate pre-Amtrak years), the trip is actually several trips over several months, punctuated by flights to remote starting points and back home to the US, and bus trips connecting lines and regions. I was surprised at the the duration of the rail trips, being cursed with the American ignorance of foreign geography and assuming that since Mexico looks so much smaller than the US on a map that it must be take just a couple of hours in any direction of the compass to cover the landscape.

I was disappointed that Pindell sometimes seemed to fall prone to the tourist's romanticisation of environments and people which seem strange to them. I wasn't expecting that from an author working on his third book in the genre. Also, because the book is now 15 years old, the current events of the time are outdated and of little interest today to anyone other than experts in Mexican political history. However, the general trends toward violence and disintegration of the political system that Pindell noted then have been both confirmed and accelerated in the years since. Mexico today in many places is indeed no country for old men.

If you are a Mexican political history expert, or have an interest in train tourism, Yesterday's train is worth catching. If not, you can catch the next one.

[Steven Howes · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book; but because of Mexico's extremely complex history, I may have to re-read it in order to fully, or at least, better understand it. One needs to understand Mexico's past if he or she is to be able to understand our neighbor to the south and all the issues it seems to generate. Mexico's evolution is quite different from that of Canada (the subject of another of the author's books) and the railways played a much different role in its history.

I think most Americans tend to look down upon the Mexicans as an impoverished people who are nothing more than a source of cheap labor or the reason behind some of our economic problems. To a degree that may be true but the people themselves are, for the most part, culturally rich and seem to enjoy life in spite of their many hardships.

A passage from the preface serves to sum things up. "But Mexico preserves something that people in more materially wealthy societies have lost. On each homecoming to the United States during these travels, Dr. Mallis and I were overwhelmed by a sense of sterility and blandness in American life. And on each return to Mexico we were exhilarated by the colors, smells, sounds, rhythms, and richness of a world and way of life where humanity is not stifled. There are different forms of poverty in the twentieth century human condition. We came to hope that Mexico's push to join the modern world would not lead it to trade one form of deprivation for another."

I hope to visit the real Mexico someday.

[Felisa Rosa · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this book, a middle-aged American man travels around Mexico by train and ruminates on Mexican history and the soul of Mexico. The problem with the book is that the author, Terry Pindell, is too comfortable to have any real adventures. He always stays at luxury hotels, and he cheats and takes planes and luxury liners when trains are late or don't offer proper nighttime accommodations. And although he traverses most of Mexico, he keeps coming and going, returning to the states and flying back in, so his story lacks the humorous pathos that is born of a long journey. That said, Pindell is a good writer and his descriptions of Mexico are evocative and interesting. He provides a solid overview of Mexican history: If you are looking to brush up your existent knowledge of the country's history, this is good but not revelatory read. If you don't know much about Mexican history, but are interested, this is a non-threatening and entertaining place to start.