What do you think?
Rate this book
El Monstruo: Dread and Redemption in Mexico City
John Ross has been living in the old colonial quarter of Mexico City for the last three decades, a rebel journalist covering Mexico and the region from the bottom up. He is filled with a gnawing sense that his beloved Mexico City’s days as the most gargantuan, chaotic, crime-ridden, toxically contaminated urban stain in the western world are doomed, and the monster he has grown to know and love through a quarter century of reporting on its foibles and tragedies and blight will be globalized into one more McCity.
El Monstruo is a defense of place and the history of that place. No one has told the gritty, vibrant histories of this city of 23 million faceless souls from the ground up, listened to the stories of those who have not been crushed, deconstructed the Monstruo’s very monstrousness, and lived to tell its secrets. In El Monstruo, Ross now does.
El Monstruo is a defense of place and the history of that place. No one has told the gritty, vibrant histories of this city of 23 million faceless souls from the ground up, listened to the stories of those who have not been crushed, deconstructed the Monstruo’s very monstrousness, and lived to tell its secrets. In El Monstruo, Ross now does.
- GenresNonfictionHistoryTravel
512 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2009
15 people are currently reading
301 people want to read
About the author
John Ross
384 books20 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. This is John^Ross.
Born in 1938. Grew up in Greenwich Village, New York City. Lived in California and Mexico. Worked as a free-lance journalist in Mexico. He wrote, "I have worked for many years as a freelance foreign correspondent, a job description that dignifies the trivia of political exile. Social strife in the Third World is a particular attraction. Which is to say, for a long time now I've been moving around Latin America looking for trouble." Died in Mexico in January 2011.
Born in 1938. Grew up in Greenwich Village, New York City. Lived in California and Mexico. Worked as a free-lance journalist in Mexico. He wrote, "I have worked for many years as a freelance foreign correspondent, a job description that dignifies the trivia of political exile. Social strife in the Third World is a particular attraction. Which is to say, for a long time now I've been moving around Latin America looking for trouble." Died in Mexico in January 2011.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
May 17, 2013
John Ross became a chilango when he moved into the Hotel Isabela right after the earthquake in 1985 and lived there until his death in 2011. El Monstruo is his history of Mexico City--mostly factual, full of curious detail, and morbidly funny. It was his last book, and the last time I saw him was when he was in Madison promoting it it--I made a poster for the event, depicting him as a cavalera looking down on el D.F.; not knowing he was so near his last breath. He was a tireless activist unafraid to put his body on the front lines of protest--his ravaged face told the stories of numerous beatings by police in San Francisco while helping lead a tenants rights movement, police in Mexico City for denouncing the government in public, illegal Israeli settlers in Palestine while picking olives. He authored ten books of fiction and non-fiction, including several on the Zapatista movement in modern-day Chiapas; ten chapbooks of poetry; and numerous articles and reports published in La Jornada. He read his poetry in jazz clubs in the Village between Charles Mingus sets. He got kicked out of Iraq after volunteering as a human shield--but refusing to be a shield at the buildings Saddam wanted shielded. He was the first conscientious objector sent to prison for refusing to serve in the Vietnam War. He helped bring to publication the bloggings of an Iraqi teenager who lived in Mosul during the American occupation in IraqiGirl: Diary of a Teenage Girl in Iraq. John was resolutely, as the warden of the prison where he served his term, someone who "never learned how to be a prisoner."
June 20, 2020
No longer using this website, but I'm leaving up old reviews. Fuck Jeff Bezos. Find me on LibraryThing: https://www.librarything.com/profile/...
An irreverent history of Mexico, but mostly it's capital city, from the Pleistocene to swine flu. Mexico City is an enormous and unwieldy mess. 20 million people, 15% unemployment, housing the richest man in the world and many of the world's poorest. Some of the worst air quality on the planet, and a constantly depleting water table. But Mexico City is also the national stage for Mexico the country, a city where leftist currents have taken hold from outside and from the inside. In fact, for the last decade, Mexico City has been the largest megalopoplis to be run by the electoral left for the last ten years.
John Ross has a great sense of humor and a great sense of justice. He's not a stenographer: You wouldn't have bought this book if you hadn't known that John Ross wrote several books in awe of the Zapatistas and a book about the American dinosaur Left called Murdered by Capitalism. But it's his embracing the electoral left in Mexico (from Tata Cardenas to Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador) that most surprised me. He even goes out of his way to criticize those who excoriate the electoral left (Subcomandante Marcos, the Zapatista Other Campaign, anarchists and ultraleftist students). This is especially strange given his overwhelming support of these movements in other venues.
He also has his particular peeves about city life in the Monster that I didn't necessarily share, as I read the bulk of the book inside the city itself on a trip to visit old friends. I happen to agree with his annoyance with the organ grinders, but my girlfriend who bought me this book thinks that they are lovely! And it was strange to hear the relief in his written voice that the "ambulantes" or street sellers (who are among the poorest of the Mexico City residents, subsisting entirely on an informal economy) had been forcibly removed from the sidewalks in certain areas by the police under an electoral left mayor. We also disagree on Cafe La Blanca, where Sara and I went having both dessert one night with the author, and breakfast the next morning. We'd rather go to any of the Tacos Al Pastor holes in the wall than this massive diner with it's expensive and mediocre food. But if you live here for long enough, I can imagine wanting some kind of consistency, and I guess La Blanca can offer that...
Something else I remember clearly about the book is the near outright dismissal of the Mexican Revolution. Though he finds inspiration in the struggle of the Liberation Army of the South as lead by Emiliano Zapata, the revolution was a pit of misery and death for nearly all those involved. The only people who seem to want to remember it differently are the ones who, in the end, profited most from it: the one-party-mafia-state apparatus known as the Institutional Revolutionary Party, and the wealthy classes. The poor, on whose backs the revolution was fought, despite all their deaths, did not win this revolution.
Despite his annoyance with the ambulantes, his disdain for organ grinders, his bad taste in diners, and his tolerance for the electoral left, this book is worth reading. You will delight at the stories of Superbarrio, gasp at the stories of police corruption, and be touched by the stories of the regular people who live in Mexico City.
An irreverent history of Mexico, but mostly it's capital city, from the Pleistocene to swine flu. Mexico City is an enormous and unwieldy mess. 20 million people, 15% unemployment, housing the richest man in the world and many of the world's poorest. Some of the worst air quality on the planet, and a constantly depleting water table. But Mexico City is also the national stage for Mexico the country, a city where leftist currents have taken hold from outside and from the inside. In fact, for the last decade, Mexico City has been the largest megalopoplis to be run by the electoral left for the last ten years.
John Ross has a great sense of humor and a great sense of justice. He's not a stenographer: You wouldn't have bought this book if you hadn't known that John Ross wrote several books in awe of the Zapatistas and a book about the American dinosaur Left called Murdered by Capitalism. But it's his embracing the electoral left in Mexico (from Tata Cardenas to Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador) that most surprised me. He even goes out of his way to criticize those who excoriate the electoral left (Subcomandante Marcos, the Zapatista Other Campaign, anarchists and ultraleftist students). This is especially strange given his overwhelming support of these movements in other venues.
He also has his particular peeves about city life in the Monster that I didn't necessarily share, as I read the bulk of the book inside the city itself on a trip to visit old friends. I happen to agree with his annoyance with the organ grinders, but my girlfriend who bought me this book thinks that they are lovely! And it was strange to hear the relief in his written voice that the "ambulantes" or street sellers (who are among the poorest of the Mexico City residents, subsisting entirely on an informal economy) had been forcibly removed from the sidewalks in certain areas by the police under an electoral left mayor. We also disagree on Cafe La Blanca, where Sara and I went having both dessert one night with the author, and breakfast the next morning. We'd rather go to any of the Tacos Al Pastor holes in the wall than this massive diner with it's expensive and mediocre food. But if you live here for long enough, I can imagine wanting some kind of consistency, and I guess La Blanca can offer that...
Something else I remember clearly about the book is the near outright dismissal of the Mexican Revolution. Though he finds inspiration in the struggle of the Liberation Army of the South as lead by Emiliano Zapata, the revolution was a pit of misery and death for nearly all those involved. The only people who seem to want to remember it differently are the ones who, in the end, profited most from it: the one-party-mafia-state apparatus known as the Institutional Revolutionary Party, and the wealthy classes. The poor, on whose backs the revolution was fought, despite all their deaths, did not win this revolution.
Despite his annoyance with the ambulantes, his disdain for organ grinders, his bad taste in diners, and his tolerance for the electoral left, this book is worth reading. You will delight at the stories of Superbarrio, gasp at the stories of police corruption, and be touched by the stories of the regular people who live in Mexico City.
January 9, 2011
As history--cock-eyed; as journalism--sloppy; as memoir--smug and self-congratulatory; as left-wing propaganda--shrill, superficial, and inconsistent; as a chronicle of recent events in a city which is so easy to despise, of which I have some very fond memories even so, and which is home to a number of people for whom I have a genuine and strong affection--not all that bad, actually.
November 17, 2009
The best book about El DeFectuoso by the best gringo writer living there.
John Ross has done it again -- weaving history, poetry, Mexican picardia, political intrigue and cultural comedy into one big burrito of a book.
John Ross has done it again -- weaving history, poetry, Mexican picardia, political intrigue and cultural comedy into one big burrito of a book.
February 25, 2013
I am fortunate to have met John Ross less than a year before he died in 2011 at a book talk for El Monstruo in Chicago. He used a cane as a result of injuries he sustained at the hands of Israeli settlers while supporting Palestinian farmers. Ross is the kind of champion of the stories of ordinary people surviving in the face of unbelievable odds. Like the struggle of the Palestinians, Ross writes of Mexico City residents’ daily fight to survive. He writes an epic “history from below” of Mexico City, “The Monster,” by interspersing conversations with acquaintances who are homeless, café owners, pot dealers, and street vendors with an impressive array of traditional historical sources. He explains that “it is my neighbors who have persevered here in El Centro down the years who have most vitally informed this manuscript, rolled back the dark corners of what came before, and solved some of the mysteries the past invokes” (457-458).
Despite Ross’ best efforts, his message of resilience is at times threatened by a creeping sense of hopelessness, caused by the overwhelming forces against progress that he catalogs. Nonetheless, he is clear that this book is a defense of place, and it is an impressive one. With a keen sense of dark humor and a steadfastly subversive spirit Ross recounts the environmental threat and rampant crime of El Monstruo and the corrupt political class that exacerbates this precarious place. I appreciate his use of hyperbole, because there’s no way of conveying the intensity of the place without it. The severity of political party animosity is scandalous, and Ross thankfully chooses mockery instead of gravity to explain it, making the guilty actors out to be telenovela characters, and making this book eminently readable. The principal threat to its readability is the difficult task of keeping track of the numerous actors he covers (there’s no shortage of corrupt politicians to lance!). The most recent history (he begins the book with pre-colonial history) is the most riveting, because it is Mexican history that he has lived since he moved there in 1985: from Carlos Slim’s land grabs in the historic district to the popular occupation of the Federal Plaza in support of OBrador’s bid for presidency; from the rise of the Zapatistas to the Monster City’s unwelcome visit from Giuliani.
Despite Ross’ best efforts, his message of resilience is at times threatened by a creeping sense of hopelessness, caused by the overwhelming forces against progress that he catalogs. Nonetheless, he is clear that this book is a defense of place, and it is an impressive one. With a keen sense of dark humor and a steadfastly subversive spirit Ross recounts the environmental threat and rampant crime of El Monstruo and the corrupt political class that exacerbates this precarious place. I appreciate his use of hyperbole, because there’s no way of conveying the intensity of the place without it. The severity of political party animosity is scandalous, and Ross thankfully chooses mockery instead of gravity to explain it, making the guilty actors out to be telenovela characters, and making this book eminently readable. The principal threat to its readability is the difficult task of keeping track of the numerous actors he covers (there’s no shortage of corrupt politicians to lance!). The most recent history (he begins the book with pre-colonial history) is the most riveting, because it is Mexican history that he has lived since he moved there in 1985: from Carlos Slim’s land grabs in the historic district to the popular occupation of the Federal Plaza in support of OBrador’s bid for presidency; from the rise of the Zapatistas to the Monster City’s unwelcome visit from Giuliani.
June 25, 2010
They chopped heads then, they chop heads now, they'll chop heads tomorrow.
June 3, 2015
Ex-beat does Mexico. The book wanders as did Ross in his life. Book is bloated, but readable, because of its topic. I almost trust what Ross says. He tried. That's good enough for me.
June 26, 2019
An interesting book, and if you are as in-love with Mexico City as I am, it is indeed indespensible. However, as for a non-fiction book about the city, there is much to be taken with a grain of salt and more than a couple eye-rolls. Still, I have read many American-in-Mexico memoirs trying to take on DF and they all suck, so this is the only American I have read who gets it right.
John Ross takes in Mexico City, a city where he lived from the 1980s until his death in 2011, and indeed he knows the city very well. He mixes fact with romantic nostalgia to bring the Monstrous City to life. And while he completes a 500+ year creation of the city, much of it leans heavily to his leftist ideologies of castigating foreign intervention (rightly so) while forgiving many of the more grevious left-ish faults of the city. However, nothing in the work is blatently false or a purposeful lie other than to keep the mythology working. I wouldn't call this a history of Mexico City because occasionally some of what Ross writes about is wrapped up in rumor or myth, but it's still clearly a non-fiction work.
It's length is a little bit much, so unless you are really looking for a monstrous account of my favorite city, el Defectoso DF, I would suggest a lighter and more historical based work. But if you really want to hear all the stories about Dr. Atl and the little Frieda Kahlo love triangles, I do have to say, I enjoyed this work. Plus he loathes Díaz Ordaz and Echeverría for all the reasons I do, so I have to give him that!
John Ross takes in Mexico City, a city where he lived from the 1980s until his death in 2011, and indeed he knows the city very well. He mixes fact with romantic nostalgia to bring the Monstrous City to life. And while he completes a 500+ year creation of the city, much of it leans heavily to his leftist ideologies of castigating foreign intervention (rightly so) while forgiving many of the more grevious left-ish faults of the city. However, nothing in the work is blatently false or a purposeful lie other than to keep the mythology working. I wouldn't call this a history of Mexico City because occasionally some of what Ross writes about is wrapped up in rumor or myth, but it's still clearly a non-fiction work.
It's length is a little bit much, so unless you are really looking for a monstrous account of my favorite city, el Defectoso DF, I would suggest a lighter and more historical based work. But if you really want to hear all the stories about Dr. Atl and the little Frieda Kahlo love triangles, I do have to say, I enjoyed this work. Plus he loathes Díaz Ordaz and Echeverría for all the reasons I do, so I have to give him that!
April 19, 2018
Of all the 1289435983745 books I think I've read on Mexico since I first went there last year, I think this is my favorite. Many of the facts were things I already knew or vaguely remembered, but there was much more to this book in terms of political scandals and cultural figures, which made me feel like I was somehow more situated in the inner circle after reading it.
Read
December 14, 2020Pretty esoteric on a lot of topics, but interesting beginnings for so many Mexican names in the news.
November 17, 2009
El Monstruo [The Monster:] by John Ross is a compelling story and page-turner. El Monstruo is none other than Mexico City, Tenochtitlan and her environs by other names, that keeps rising from the ruins of those who have come from the outside and conquerored -- or so they believe -- Mexico City, a sinking and stinking globolopolis.
John Ross situates himself among those (mainly white) American writers that trekked to Mexico to write, in some self-delusionary cases, the "great American novel." Ross is one of the "younger" Beat poets and writers who went to Mexico for the first time in 1956. In his great introduction, he describes the "creepy" hotel that he calls home, filled with stacks of unmanagable newspaper clippings and piles of books that, like most of us, he can never find the book he's looking for and ends up going to buy a used copy when he needs to read it.
Lawrence, Kerouac, Jack Cassidy (the driver of on the road), and a whole slew of other Beat and non-Beat writers and poets found their mark in Mexico City.
Ross's recounting of the founding of Mexico City, from the oozing of primordial slime and geologic formation to the waves of Indigenous communities that planted their visions and ways, to the onslaught of European invaders and their diseases and military and religious conquests, Mexico City emerges as a palimpsest of horrifying and bloody struggles over hundreds of years.
John Ross situates himself among those (mainly white) American writers that trekked to Mexico to write, in some self-delusionary cases, the "great American novel." Ross is one of the "younger" Beat poets and writers who went to Mexico for the first time in 1956. In his great introduction, he describes the "creepy" hotel that he calls home, filled with stacks of unmanagable newspaper clippings and piles of books that, like most of us, he can never find the book he's looking for and ends up going to buy a used copy when he needs to read it.
Lawrence, Kerouac, Jack Cassidy (the driver of on the road), and a whole slew of other Beat and non-Beat writers and poets found their mark in Mexico City.
Ross's recounting of the founding of Mexico City, from the oozing of primordial slime and geologic formation to the waves of Indigenous communities that planted their visions and ways, to the onslaught of European invaders and their diseases and military and religious conquests, Mexico City emerges as a palimpsest of horrifying and bloody struggles over hundreds of years.
November 3, 2010
I have mixed feelings about this book. I love Ross' writing style and I like how well he understands the history and the politics of this amazing city. I deplore the fact that he doesn't address the beauty of that culture: the music, the joyousness that the Mexican people can find even in the midst of tragedy, the food, the color, poetry, literature and comedy. Part political gossip (and pretty juicy at that) and part history of wars and intrigues, the book left me struggling to finish it. And I actually didn't finish it - I had had enough. He has some wonderful humor in there from time to time, but mostly it is pretty dismal. I hope my sister, who is more political than I am, enjoys it because I sent it off to her. Maybe she will read it all the way to the end.
July 28, 2012
This is as sprawling a book as the city this great writer describes. Prepare to get lost in the murky and complicated world of Mexican affairs from the beginnings of Mexico City in 1325 to the modern mess of corruption, poverty and crime. I had reasons other than pleasure for reading this and so took more time than normal, a neccessity given the names, parties, dates and events that are littered throughout every page. This is a passionate, almost epic work and the diligence shown by the author in his research becomes a burden for the reader, who really needs a better steer when it comes to chronology and more than just namedropping of the dramatis persona. Ross just packs it all in, rolls out fascinating stories with the turn of every page. It was worth the effort.
June 6, 2011
It's the ultimate insider's guide, and it does help to have spent time in the city, particularly as a "political tourist," and to be as fascinated with it as Ross was, to enjoy this book. His jazzy, irreverent voice isn't your graduate history professor's, and that's a plus. To those of us who met or knew John Ross, local San Francisco legend that he was, just about every line puts him right back there in front of you. But every great city deserves a history like this--one that gives you not just the vital statistics and the goings-on at the top, but a sense of daily life down the years, sights, sounds and smells -- and its own John Ross to write it.
September 3, 2010
This book reads like a cliffs notes version of the history of Mexico through the lens of Mexico city. John Ross covers sooo much - It's the books strength and its weakness. I just wish he had spent some more time on some of these stories to fill them out. Even if it had pushed the page count over 500, it would have been worth it!
February 15, 2010
El Monstruo is an irreverent and well-written history of Mexico City by an American author who has lived there since 1985. John Ross has both a strong love for its vitality and a realistic perspective on its failings. I recommend this book for anyone who wants a new look at Mexican history.
July 20, 2010
An interesting and eccentric history of Mexico City, from the point of view of an American expatriate. Reminded me of reading Mike Royko's writings about Chicago. I didn't QUITE finish it before sending it off to my mom for her birthday (don't tell her!)
February 9, 2010
Review to come...
December 31, 2010
read it
February 27, 2011
A sprawling narrative detailing the crushing history of Mexico City. I loved that the author's voice was so present - the opposite of an attempt to objectively tell the story.
Read
October 21, 2012If you only read one book on the history of Mexico...this is the one!
March 8, 2019
Depressing but very informative.
February 22, 2014
This beautiful and damning, hilarious and infuriating paean to and indictment of Mexico City is the best history I've read on any subject ever.
May 11, 2014
The entire book is like reading a love poem to Mexico City.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews