The Late Great Mexican Border: Reports from a Disappearing Line

by Bobby Byrd, Susannah Mississippi Byrd (Editor)

Fasten your seat This book will take you on a bumpy ride through the painful human geography of the border.- Hispanic Magazin

"This book may be one of the best collections of border essays and insights I've read. The editors have wisely chosen to include some of the best writers from the region instead of the usual hash of academics. When I wasn't laughing, I was crying. How often can you really say that about a book?"- El Planeta Platica

"There probably isn't another press in the country that could pull together such a smart and heartfelt anthology as this. After all, they live in the thick of it."- The New Mexican

"An exceptional collection of essays that takes a long, hard look at the arbitrary line we call the Mexican border." Southwest Books Best Picks for '96- Arizona Daily Star

Contributors
Max Aguilera-Hellweg
Charles Bowden
Barbara Ferry
Guillermo Gómez-Peña
Teresa Leal
Linda Lynch
Rubén Martínez
Tom Miller
Gary Nabhan
Debbie Nathan
Dick Reavis
Luis Rodríguez
Richard Rodriguez
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Luis Alberto Urrea
Alan Weisman

Genres: Nonfiction, Anthologies

240 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1996

Reviews

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is useful, however humbling, to open books published some time ago if only to appreciate how little we saw of what was really happening and how little we understood what was to come. That is not in any way a criticism of this book, published in 1996 by Cinco Puntos, the valiant small press of El Paso. No one at that time knew then that a Mexican prisoner would escape to construct the most transnational of all cartels and ignite the bloodiest of underworld wars. “The Great Disappearing Mexican Border” is devoted to earlier, less sensational but nonetheless real tragedies. The only piece in the book on drug smuggling details the fate of the Raramuri (what the Tarahumara call themselves), the price in blood they paid for not tending a local druglord’s poppies. (The Chihuahuan Sierra Madre is ideal for growing them). Intimidation, corrupt police and violence are all documented here, but to a degree that only hints at the levels they would later reach. It is not the only essay on smuggling in this volume; the other shows how consumer goods used to be smuggled into Mexico by small planes landing at remote strips that must long ago have been ceded to the cartels. Some of the book’s pieces do have a musty feel, profiling activists for movements whose time has passed–against anti-immigrant measures in California or the defeated national radioactive waste depository in Texas. But many of the other essays feel fresh and unique: on the decline of an old Laredo business family, on a woman at a terrorist training camp, on the impact of the border wall on cacti, on cholera at the border. As many times as I have read accounts of migrants gambling their lives and often losing them under the brutal sun of the Arizona desert, they never fail to sadden, but even more devastating is a piece on children who live and die in the Tijuana garbage dump. And then there is a sidebar on one of my favorite of Mexico’s tribes: the Seri, a small group who have retreated to the aptly-named Infiernillo (Little Hell) Strait on the Gulf of California. Fierce in their day, the Seri discovered in the seventies that tourists would buy their hardwood carvings of sea animals and supported themselves that way—at least until non-Indian copyists pushed the Seri out of the market the tribe itself created.

[Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

The editors included a broader range of border-related topics than I would have thought possible, and two selections (Richard Rodriguez 'Pocho Pioneer' and Luis Alberto Urrea "None of Them Talk About Their Dreams') made me want to read more of their work. 'Cryptic Cacti on the Borderline' was an unexpected delight, a description of culturally-induced habitat diversity.

[Ernest Hogan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great writing and reporting about the Border. From the Nineties, but still ring true, only it's all gotten stranger and more dystopian.

[Wendy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a brilliant anthology -- sadly, out of print. The editors, a father and daughter, gathered many of the very best writers and thinkers along the US-Mexico border. A great way to discover some wonderful writers; this anthology includes some of my favorites: Chuck Bowden, Luis Alberto Urrea, Ruben Martinez and Guillermo Gomez Peña. Get a copy before they are all gone!

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intense, real and well-written by all in the anthology who know and mourn for the Mexico that could be and fight against those that continue to corrupt and decimate the people and the landscape for their own gains.