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Midnight in Mexico: A Reporter's Journey Through a Country's Descent into Darkness
In the last six years, more than eighty thousand people have been killed in the Mexican drug war, and drug trafficking there is a multibillion-dollar business. In a country where the powerful are rarely scrutinized, noted Mexican American journalist Alfredo Corchado refuses to shrink from reporting on government corruption, murders in Juarez, or the ruthless drug cartels of Mexico. A paramilitary group spun off from the Gulf cartel, the Zetas, controls key drug routes in the north of the country. In 2007, Corchado received a tip that he could be their next target—and he had twenty four hours to find out if the threat was true.
Rather than leave his country, Corchado went out into the Mexican countryside to trace investigate the threat. As he frantically contacted his sources, Corchado suspected the threat was his punishment for returning to Mexico against his mother’s wishes. His parents had fled north after the death of their young daughter, and raised their children in California where they labored as migrant workers. Corchado returned to Mexico as a journalist in 1994, convinced that Mexico would one day foster political accountability and leave behind the pervasive corruption that has plagued its people for decades.
But in this land of extremes, the gap of inequality—and injustice—remains wide. Even after the 2000 election that put Mexico’s opposition party in power for the first time, the opportunities of democracy did not materialize. The powerful PRI had worked with the cartels, taking a piece of their profit in exchange for a more peaceful, and more controlled, drug trade. But the party’s long-awaited defeat created a vacuum of power in Mexico City, and in the cartel-controlled states that border the United States. The cartels went to war with one another in the mid-2000s, during the war to regain control of the country instituted by President Felipe Calderón, and only the violence flourished. The work Corchado lives for could have killed him, but he wasn't ready to leave Mexico—not then, maybe never. Midnight in Mexico is the story of one man’s quest to report the truth of his country—as he raced to save his own life.
Rather than leave his country, Corchado went out into the Mexican countryside to trace investigate the threat. As he frantically contacted his sources, Corchado suspected the threat was his punishment for returning to Mexico against his mother’s wishes. His parents had fled north after the death of their young daughter, and raised their children in California where they labored as migrant workers. Corchado returned to Mexico as a journalist in 1994, convinced that Mexico would one day foster political accountability and leave behind the pervasive corruption that has plagued its people for decades.
But in this land of extremes, the gap of inequality—and injustice—remains wide. Even after the 2000 election that put Mexico’s opposition party in power for the first time, the opportunities of democracy did not materialize. The powerful PRI had worked with the cartels, taking a piece of their profit in exchange for a more peaceful, and more controlled, drug trade. But the party’s long-awaited defeat created a vacuum of power in Mexico City, and in the cartel-controlled states that border the United States. The cartels went to war with one another in the mid-2000s, during the war to regain control of the country instituted by President Felipe Calderón, and only the violence flourished. The work Corchado lives for could have killed him, but he wasn't ready to leave Mexico—not then, maybe never. Midnight in Mexico is the story of one man’s quest to report the truth of his country—as he raced to save his own life.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published May 30, 2013
About the author
Alfredo Corchado
10 books66 followersAlfredo Corchado is the Mexico Bureau Chief of the Dallas Morning News. He was a Nieman Fellow ‘09, a Wilson Fellow and a Rockefeller Fellow. Corchado has received Columbia University’s Maria Moors Cabot Award for his reporting and the Elijah Parish Award for Courage from Colby College. He lives in Mexico City.
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March 27, 2024
Midway through this somber and well-crafted book, I felt an acute sense of despair regarding the current prospects for the nation of Mexico and its people. And I’m not even from Mexico! How, I wondered, must people who are Mexican citizens, or are of Mexican heritage, feel when they read this?
In his 2013 book Midnight in Mexico, Alfredo Corchado, a Durango-born journalist who has written for U.S. newspapers from El Paso to Dallas, recounts in an effective and uncompromising manner the travails of his experience covering the drug wars in contemporary Mexico; and his account of A Reporter’s Journey Through a Country’s Descent Into Darkness (the book’s subtitle) begins on an attention-getting note, when Corchado learns, in 2007, that his name is on a drug gang’s death list.
He has been threatened, we learn, by the Zetas, the paramilitary wing of the Gulf drug cartel that is otherwise busy battling a rival organization, the Sinaloa cartel. “Zetas,” Corchado tells us, “were often Mexican military personnel who had been trained by the U.S. military to fight the cartels” (p. 6) – but now they are fighting for the cartels. It is a good example of the kind of distressing details that pervade this book.
Learning of the death threats against him, Corchado reflects grimly that “Some estimates have it that fewer than 5 percent of all homicide investigations in Mexico are ever solved” (p. 11). His status as a U.S. citizen does not make him feel any safer. He reflects on how more than 2,000 Mexicans were murdered in 2007, with unsavory stories about the victims being circulated after their deaths. “In Mexico, they kill you twice: First, with a bullet, an ax to your head, or a bath full of acid. Then they spread rumors about you” (p. 19). The threats to Corchado’s life, and his determination to continue pursuing stories in Mexico, create strains on his relationship with his wife Angela.
Corchado wants to stay in Mexico, pursuing his stories, in spite of the threats against his life. His wife wants him to get out, and their disagreement on this topic strains their relationship. As Angela puts it, “You have stopped being a reporter….You’re part of the story now. You’re so close now that you can’t even divide the lines, and that’s putting you and everyone close to you in danger. I can’t believe you can be so selfish” (pp. 57-58).
These elements of Midnight in Mexico seemed downright cinematic, and indeed I could not help wondering what a Nuevo Cine Mexicano film director like Alfonso Cuarón, or Guillermo Del Toro, or Alejandro Iñárritu, might do with the story.
I was struck by the way in which Corchado associated the cartels, as “modern-day conquerors”, with two of the great traumas of Mexico’s history: the dispossession of the land from Mexico’s Indigenous people by the conquistadores in the 16th century, and the taking of one million square miles of Mexican territory by the United States, through war and treaty, in the 19th century. Those parallels would resonate with Corchado’s readers in Mexico, and I would imagine that the leaders of the cartels did not, or would not, appreciate being associated with people like Hernando Cortes or James K. Polk.
Midnight in Mexico also works well as an explanation of the history of the drug trade in Mexico. The history, as Corchado explains it, goes a long way back, and Mexico and the U.S.A. are interlinked in that history:
Mexico’s first great drug traffickers came mostly from the same town, or near it: Badiraguato, a tiny enclave in the fertile hills of Sinaloa’s Sierra Madre, where tomatoes, soybeans, sesame seeds, wheat, cotton, marijuana, and opium poppies grew in abundance….Commercial production of opium gained momentum in the 1940’s, when the U.S. military needed morphine for its soldiers during World War II. The business was so important that Mexico, under pressure from the United States, sent soldiers to the hills to protect poppy plants – even though growing opium was illegal in Mexico. Mexican politicians looked the other way as smugglers lined their pockets with cash. (p. 38)
Midnight in Mexico goes back and forth in time between the present and the past, including some moving reflections on Corchado’s childhood in Durango; but for the benefit of readers who may not be fully familiar with the nuances of recent Mexican history, I am going to try to arrange things more chronologically, to provide as clear a sense as possible of change and continuity with regard to the drug trade within Mexico.
In that regard, we go back first to the year 1994. As Corchado tells it, the presidential administration of Ernesto Zedillo administration responded to drug-cartel violence with a campaign to fire corrupt cops and replace them with military on the streets. Cartel violence was reduced, but there was an upsurge in other crimes like kidnapping for ransom. Corchado himself describes surviving a kidnapping attempt in those times:
One afternoon I got into a VW Beetle street cab, gave the writer the address, and then realized we were going the wrong way, heading south on Revolución and not toward Coyoacán.
“Señor, I think we’re -- ”
Shut up, the driver barked.
I looked behind me and saw another car with three men tailing us. I was being kidnapped. At the busy corner of Revolución and La Paz the driver slowed down, and I shoved open the door and jumped out. The driver swung a crowbar and partially hit my back. I stumbled and hit the curb. Both cars sped off as some onlookers ran to help me and others started yelling after the drivers. I thanked them, stretched my back, patted off the dust from the ground, and walked home. Surely, democracy would overcome this, too. (p. 103)
Six years later, in the year 2000, the long single-party rule of Mexico’s Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) came to an end; and the end of PRI rule had some unintended consequences. While it represented a move forward in terms of Mexican democracy,
Political decentralization also created a power vacuum. The cartels were ready to prey on the delicate fledgling institutions that were now exposed in the new democracy. Criminal files disappeared, investigators were killed, and witnesses vanished, with near-total impunity for those responsible. Almost overnight, the so-called rule of law fell to Mexico’s modern-day conquerors: the drug cartels. (p. 7)
By the 2007-08 period – the time in which Corchado received his first death threat – drug-related violence had taken a new and particularly troubling turn, especially around the city of Ciudad Juárez. Located across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, Ciudad Juárez is a major city of 2.5 million people, a center of industry and export; but by the mid-2000’s, Juárez had become notorious for unsolved murders, particularly of young women. Parts of the city, as crime rose to hitherto unimagined proportions, came to be deserted; one could walk an empty street and feel as if one was in an end-of-the-world apocalypse movie like 28 Days Later (2002) or I Am Legend (2007).
At the time when this violence was engulfing Mexico in general and Ciudad Juárez specifically, Corchado had applied for a fellowship at Harvard – “the farthest away I could think to go, geographically and mentally. Angela, meanwhile, had become increasingly committed to reporting on the bloodshed in Juárez. The city, plunged into a war among rival cartels and the government, was unraveling before us. Now she was the one who refused to leave the story” (p. 201).
Seeing the aftermath of a murder while traveling by taxi through Juárez, Corchado found himself “hoping to tune out the carnage I had just seen. The bodies were piling up in Juárez every day – ten, twelve, twenty a day. It was only April and hundreds had been killed so far that year. Nausea overcame me as I thought about it” (pp. 204-05).
As Midnight in Mexico takes the reader into the present day, things look no more hopeful, as Corchado sets forth the way in which the prospect of vast profits keeps the drug trade, and its associated violence, going:
Today, the Sinaloa cartel can buy a kilo of Colombian or Peruvian cocaine for around $2,000. The kilo finds its way to the El Dorado of cocaine markets, the United States, by overwhelming weak, corrupt authorities and judicial institutions and leaving behind a path of death and destruction. In Mexico, that kilo fetches more than $10,000; when it crosses into the United States, its value triples to about $30,000, depending on the city. Once broken up for retail distribution, that same kilo sells for upward of $100,000. The drug trade creates at least half a million jobs. (p. 43).
Looking back at what he has witnessed and chronicled, Corchado does not see much hope for a solution in Mexico’s political process, observing that throughout Mexican history “The political and religious men who have governed the country have swallowed the rivers, eaten the forests, destroyed the coastline, and robbed the country of its oil, crying nationalism if anyone got in their way. Mexico has been mocked by its history every step of the way” (p. 22). With regard to increasing democratization in a Mexico that is no longer under one-party rule, Corchado is no more hopeful:
Mexico’s “democracy” belongs to the politicians, intellectuals, idealists, to the elite and the opportunists, but their vision for Mexico does not always involve consulting the majority of people who live day to day. There is no local ownership. For Mexicans, the higher one’s income, the more deeply a person believes in democracy, at least on paper. (p. 75)
The U.S. investigator who warned Corchado about the death threat reminds Corchado, and the reader, of the socioeconomic factors that fuel the drug trade and its associated violence: “You have to remember that the people the cartels are recruiting are those who are most pissed off at everyone. The people without a job, without an education, without a future….Haven’t you seen the messages in banners they put up? They can’t even spell” (p. 78). The reader wonders: what can be done, that has not yet been done, about problems related to joblessness, hopelessness, and gaps in educational opportunity in contemporary Mexico?
I found Midnight in Mexico to be a harrowing reading experience. Reading Corchado’s book made me think back to visiting Mexico City a couple of years ago. CDMX is truly one of the great cities of the world – filled with extraordinary museums, rich culture, and friendly and welcoming people. I loved my time in Mexico City.
At the same time, I remember reading the U.S. State Department warnings that CDMX was one of the few places where Americans could travel in Mexico with reasonable safety. I recall the travel warnings against visiting places like Nuevo Laredo – cities of Mexico to which I had travelled in the past. I remember seeing a political candidacy poster adorned with the phrase La paz es primera (“Peace comes first”). And I worry about the future of our sister republic to the south.
If Corchado’s Midnight in Mexico gets more people, both within and outside Mexico, thinking about the problems that the book describes, and then gets people of good will working together to address those problems meaningfully, then this book will have performed a great service indeed.
In his 2013 book Midnight in Mexico, Alfredo Corchado, a Durango-born journalist who has written for U.S. newspapers from El Paso to Dallas, recounts in an effective and uncompromising manner the travails of his experience covering the drug wars in contemporary Mexico; and his account of A Reporter’s Journey Through a Country’s Descent Into Darkness (the book’s subtitle) begins on an attention-getting note, when Corchado learns, in 2007, that his name is on a drug gang’s death list.
He has been threatened, we learn, by the Zetas, the paramilitary wing of the Gulf drug cartel that is otherwise busy battling a rival organization, the Sinaloa cartel. “Zetas,” Corchado tells us, “were often Mexican military personnel who had been trained by the U.S. military to fight the cartels” (p. 6) – but now they are fighting for the cartels. It is a good example of the kind of distressing details that pervade this book.
Learning of the death threats against him, Corchado reflects grimly that “Some estimates have it that fewer than 5 percent of all homicide investigations in Mexico are ever solved” (p. 11). His status as a U.S. citizen does not make him feel any safer. He reflects on how more than 2,000 Mexicans were murdered in 2007, with unsavory stories about the victims being circulated after their deaths. “In Mexico, they kill you twice: First, with a bullet, an ax to your head, or a bath full of acid. Then they spread rumors about you” (p. 19). The threats to Corchado’s life, and his determination to continue pursuing stories in Mexico, create strains on his relationship with his wife Angela.
Corchado wants to stay in Mexico, pursuing his stories, in spite of the threats against his life. His wife wants him to get out, and their disagreement on this topic strains their relationship. As Angela puts it, “You have stopped being a reporter….You’re part of the story now. You’re so close now that you can’t even divide the lines, and that’s putting you and everyone close to you in danger. I can’t believe you can be so selfish” (pp. 57-58).
These elements of Midnight in Mexico seemed downright cinematic, and indeed I could not help wondering what a Nuevo Cine Mexicano film director like Alfonso Cuarón, or Guillermo Del Toro, or Alejandro Iñárritu, might do with the story.
I was struck by the way in which Corchado associated the cartels, as “modern-day conquerors”, with two of the great traumas of Mexico’s history: the dispossession of the land from Mexico’s Indigenous people by the conquistadores in the 16th century, and the taking of one million square miles of Mexican territory by the United States, through war and treaty, in the 19th century. Those parallels would resonate with Corchado’s readers in Mexico, and I would imagine that the leaders of the cartels did not, or would not, appreciate being associated with people like Hernando Cortes or James K. Polk.
Midnight in Mexico also works well as an explanation of the history of the drug trade in Mexico. The history, as Corchado explains it, goes a long way back, and Mexico and the U.S.A. are interlinked in that history:
Mexico’s first great drug traffickers came mostly from the same town, or near it: Badiraguato, a tiny enclave in the fertile hills of Sinaloa’s Sierra Madre, where tomatoes, soybeans, sesame seeds, wheat, cotton, marijuana, and opium poppies grew in abundance….Commercial production of opium gained momentum in the 1940’s, when the U.S. military needed morphine for its soldiers during World War II. The business was so important that Mexico, under pressure from the United States, sent soldiers to the hills to protect poppy plants – even though growing opium was illegal in Mexico. Mexican politicians looked the other way as smugglers lined their pockets with cash. (p. 38)
Midnight in Mexico goes back and forth in time between the present and the past, including some moving reflections on Corchado’s childhood in Durango; but for the benefit of readers who may not be fully familiar with the nuances of recent Mexican history, I am going to try to arrange things more chronologically, to provide as clear a sense as possible of change and continuity with regard to the drug trade within Mexico.
In that regard, we go back first to the year 1994. As Corchado tells it, the presidential administration of Ernesto Zedillo administration responded to drug-cartel violence with a campaign to fire corrupt cops and replace them with military on the streets. Cartel violence was reduced, but there was an upsurge in other crimes like kidnapping for ransom. Corchado himself describes surviving a kidnapping attempt in those times:
One afternoon I got into a VW Beetle street cab, gave the writer the address, and then realized we were going the wrong way, heading south on Revolución and not toward Coyoacán.
“Señor, I think we’re -- ”
Shut up, the driver barked.
I looked behind me and saw another car with three men tailing us. I was being kidnapped. At the busy corner of Revolución and La Paz the driver slowed down, and I shoved open the door and jumped out. The driver swung a crowbar and partially hit my back. I stumbled and hit the curb. Both cars sped off as some onlookers ran to help me and others started yelling after the drivers. I thanked them, stretched my back, patted off the dust from the ground, and walked home. Surely, democracy would overcome this, too. (p. 103)
Six years later, in the year 2000, the long single-party rule of Mexico’s Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) came to an end; and the end of PRI rule had some unintended consequences. While it represented a move forward in terms of Mexican democracy,
Political decentralization also created a power vacuum. The cartels were ready to prey on the delicate fledgling institutions that were now exposed in the new democracy. Criminal files disappeared, investigators were killed, and witnesses vanished, with near-total impunity for those responsible. Almost overnight, the so-called rule of law fell to Mexico’s modern-day conquerors: the drug cartels. (p. 7)
By the 2007-08 period – the time in which Corchado received his first death threat – drug-related violence had taken a new and particularly troubling turn, especially around the city of Ciudad Juárez. Located across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, Ciudad Juárez is a major city of 2.5 million people, a center of industry and export; but by the mid-2000’s, Juárez had become notorious for unsolved murders, particularly of young women. Parts of the city, as crime rose to hitherto unimagined proportions, came to be deserted; one could walk an empty street and feel as if one was in an end-of-the-world apocalypse movie like 28 Days Later (2002) or I Am Legend (2007).
At the time when this violence was engulfing Mexico in general and Ciudad Juárez specifically, Corchado had applied for a fellowship at Harvard – “the farthest away I could think to go, geographically and mentally. Angela, meanwhile, had become increasingly committed to reporting on the bloodshed in Juárez. The city, plunged into a war among rival cartels and the government, was unraveling before us. Now she was the one who refused to leave the story” (p. 201).
Seeing the aftermath of a murder while traveling by taxi through Juárez, Corchado found himself “hoping to tune out the carnage I had just seen. The bodies were piling up in Juárez every day – ten, twelve, twenty a day. It was only April and hundreds had been killed so far that year. Nausea overcame me as I thought about it” (pp. 204-05).
As Midnight in Mexico takes the reader into the present day, things look no more hopeful, as Corchado sets forth the way in which the prospect of vast profits keeps the drug trade, and its associated violence, going:
Today, the Sinaloa cartel can buy a kilo of Colombian or Peruvian cocaine for around $2,000. The kilo finds its way to the El Dorado of cocaine markets, the United States, by overwhelming weak, corrupt authorities and judicial institutions and leaving behind a path of death and destruction. In Mexico, that kilo fetches more than $10,000; when it crosses into the United States, its value triples to about $30,000, depending on the city. Once broken up for retail distribution, that same kilo sells for upward of $100,000. The drug trade creates at least half a million jobs. (p. 43).
Looking back at what he has witnessed and chronicled, Corchado does not see much hope for a solution in Mexico’s political process, observing that throughout Mexican history “The political and religious men who have governed the country have swallowed the rivers, eaten the forests, destroyed the coastline, and robbed the country of its oil, crying nationalism if anyone got in their way. Mexico has been mocked by its history every step of the way” (p. 22). With regard to increasing democratization in a Mexico that is no longer under one-party rule, Corchado is no more hopeful:
Mexico’s “democracy” belongs to the politicians, intellectuals, idealists, to the elite and the opportunists, but their vision for Mexico does not always involve consulting the majority of people who live day to day. There is no local ownership. For Mexicans, the higher one’s income, the more deeply a person believes in democracy, at least on paper. (p. 75)
The U.S. investigator who warned Corchado about the death threat reminds Corchado, and the reader, of the socioeconomic factors that fuel the drug trade and its associated violence: “You have to remember that the people the cartels are recruiting are those who are most pissed off at everyone. The people without a job, without an education, without a future….Haven’t you seen the messages in banners they put up? They can’t even spell” (p. 78). The reader wonders: what can be done, that has not yet been done, about problems related to joblessness, hopelessness, and gaps in educational opportunity in contemporary Mexico?
I found Midnight in Mexico to be a harrowing reading experience. Reading Corchado’s book made me think back to visiting Mexico City a couple of years ago. CDMX is truly one of the great cities of the world – filled with extraordinary museums, rich culture, and friendly and welcoming people. I loved my time in Mexico City.
At the same time, I remember reading the U.S. State Department warnings that CDMX was one of the few places where Americans could travel in Mexico with reasonable safety. I recall the travel warnings against visiting places like Nuevo Laredo – cities of Mexico to which I had travelled in the past. I remember seeing a political candidacy poster adorned with the phrase La paz es primera (“Peace comes first”). And I worry about the future of our sister republic to the south.
If Corchado’s Midnight in Mexico gets more people, both within and outside Mexico, thinking about the problems that the book describes, and then gets people of good will working together to address those problems meaningfully, then this book will have performed a great service indeed.
March 17, 2016
After reading several press reviews, I approached Alfredo Corchado’s Midnight in Mexico with interest. Expecting an insightful exposé of Mexico’s troubles and a frightening recitation of Corchado’s experiences as an international journalist, I found instead an account by a journalist who was either extraordinarily naïve or attempting to create a television thriller script out of very little material. If an experienced investigative journalist goes to present day Mexico and reports on corrupt government officials and their ties to brutal drug cartels, is it surprising that he would become a target of threats and intimidation? In fact, Corchado was the victim of no overt retaliation, but received threatening telephone calls and encountered a minor incident of intimidation in a restaurant in Texas. Although he knew police officials, politicians and federal agents on both sides of the border, when he was mildly intimidated in the restaurant in Texas, all he wanted to do is call his girlfriend who was 700 miles away. Why? What could she do? When he wrote a sensational print story and his girlfriend did a TV report implicating the military, government officials, intelligence officers and the drug cartels in a gruesome video-recorded interrogation and multiple murders, they were subsequently threatened. She said with amazement: “What did we get ourselves into?” As Corchado admitted, Mexico is lawless. The justice system does not function. The government is riddled with large-scale corruption and the drug cartels are brutal to the point of insanity. My question was: What did Corchado and his girlfriend think would happen?
The most enlightening chapters were those on the history of the drug cartels and the attempts at cooperative operations by the Calderon and G.W. Bush administrations. The rest of the book, based on Corchado’s own story, is weak. For a seasoned international investigative reporter, Mr. Corchado seems too emotional and too often paralyzed by fear. Maybe as a Mexican government official recommended to him – he should stick to tourism stories.
The most enlightening chapters were those on the history of the drug cartels and the attempts at cooperative operations by the Calderon and G.W. Bush administrations. The rest of the book, based on Corchado’s own story, is weak. For a seasoned international investigative reporter, Mr. Corchado seems too emotional and too often paralyzed by fear. Maybe as a Mexican government official recommended to him – he should stick to tourism stories.
May 30, 2014
This book about Mexico is written by one of the bravest U.S. men alive practicing journalism. Many of his Mexican colleagues who just as bravely reported on their own country have been killed.
This book is required reading for people who want to understand the now-systemic intertwining of drug cartels with Mexican policing and government. Anyone seeking to better understand Mexico should put this book at the top of her or his TBR list.
Kudos to the Dallas Morning News for its support of Corchado.
This book is required reading for people who want to understand the now-systemic intertwining of drug cartels with Mexican policing and government. Anyone seeking to better understand Mexico should put this book at the top of her or his TBR list.
Kudos to the Dallas Morning News for its support of Corchado.
November 9, 2019
A good autobiographical examination of a journalists life covering organized crime in Mexico. Not a great source for data, statistics, or examples. My expectation was that this book would provide more concrete information on the operation of the major cartels. Instead, it gives a general history of the organized crime and economics in Mexico by interspersing historical paragraphs into Mr. Corchado's memoir.
September 10, 2013
Who, in Mr. Corchado's journey from rural childhood to privileged member of the international press, gave him the notion that devoting an entire book to his feelings would be a good idea? Stylistically, he occasionally paints a vivid picture of the world outside himself, but structurally, this memoir zigs and zags self-indulgently and incoherently in space and time, reminding me somewhat of the later work of the equally self-indulgent American journalist Charles Bowden.
This just goes to prove that people rise to positions of power and influence by whole-heartedly adopting the dominant paradigms of society: belief in one's "country," belief in European-derived large-scale institutions like "the press." Nations like Mexico and the U.S. were invented by the European elites who divided up the world for their own imperial benefit during the past few centuries. The press has always functioned as a form of social control, to keep people engaged in the business of those elites, whether pro or con. All of Mr. Corchado's hand-wringing about his "betrayed country" is a waste of his energy and our time. The less we identify with manipulative abstractions like nations, countries, or homelands, the better we can tend to our own communities and adapt to changing conditions.
This just goes to prove that people rise to positions of power and influence by whole-heartedly adopting the dominant paradigms of society: belief in one's "country," belief in European-derived large-scale institutions like "the press." Nations like Mexico and the U.S. were invented by the European elites who divided up the world for their own imperial benefit during the past few centuries. The press has always functioned as a form of social control, to keep people engaged in the business of those elites, whether pro or con. All of Mr. Corchado's hand-wringing about his "betrayed country" is a waste of his energy and our time. The less we identify with manipulative abstractions like nations, countries, or homelands, the better we can tend to our own communities and adapt to changing conditions.
December 18, 2013
Made it 100 pages into part 3. I would condense as: American Journalist of Mexican birth, reporting on the drug wars in Mexico, hears rumors he's on a hit list. Contacts source who verifies he may be on a hit list. Calls other sources who can't confirm he's on hit list but recommend he leave Mexico pronto. Plans to leave after hearing from one more source that it's highly likely after reporting on drug trafficking in Mexico, he's on someone's hit list. On a scale of 1-5, he's x-z. Or not. Also there are lots of cartels that wage wars for power in Mexico. NAFTA hasn't helped, new democratic elections haven't helped, and the government is corrupt. Not the book I was hoping to read to learn more about our southern neighbors.
June 2, 2017
Gave it five stars, I have to admit, partially because I found myself having spent time in most of the major placenames from the book--during the same time periods in some cases.
So not only was it well written, it was a splash of nostalgia, for though Mexico is still right down the road from where I live the frontera has unfortunately been off limits for me since Feb. 2010, the last time I drove across into Coahuila.
You'll sink right into Corchado's journey, and you'll have a good understanding of Mexico's condition.
As the author writes early on, the book is not an exhaustive history of politics and historical figures--and it's a good thing. It is mostly a personal book. The history lessons needed to display his story come simply.
One day, maybe the borderlands will be accessible again. So close to us, yet we miss Mexico.
So not only was it well written, it was a splash of nostalgia, for though Mexico is still right down the road from where I live the frontera has unfortunately been off limits for me since Feb. 2010, the last time I drove across into Coahuila.
You'll sink right into Corchado's journey, and you'll have a good understanding of Mexico's condition.
As the author writes early on, the book is not an exhaustive history of politics and historical figures--and it's a good thing. It is mostly a personal book. The history lessons needed to display his story come simply.
One day, maybe the borderlands will be accessible again. So close to us, yet we miss Mexico.
January 22, 2019
The negative reviews for this one confuse me, perhaps because this book is being mislabeled as a research-heavy narco encyclopedia. This is more of a memoir than a collection of journalism, and the writing is a little melodramatic at times, but I can't think of subject matter more suited to it than the drug wars along the US-Mexico border. Corchado's writing of Mexican-American/mexicamericano identity, history, and culture against the backdrop of the military/political tensions that have spiked along the Rio Grande since the beginning of the century is a breath of fresh air in the current climate. I lived in border regions for years and I can remember a lot of what was mentioned in the book, but from a different vantage point, and it's eye-opening to read about it from someone who was on the front lines. We too easily forget our history on that border and it's fatal to all involved.
January 18, 2021
A younger me once asked, “Why won’t Mexicans just fix their country?” Older and wiser me knows it’s probably the same reasons Americans don’t fix ours. History, money, power, politics, corruption, inequity, poverty, lack of resources, competing interests, factions. Throw in drug cartels, magnify everything by a thousand, and you’ve got Mexico, a land essentially held hostage by geography. The better question is, “CAN Mexicans fix their country?”
I read fifty pages before giving up. I’m in over my head with this topic. It’s like walking into class for the first time on final exam day. The names, groups, events, and relationships are a twisted ball of yarn I can’t unravel. I need a “Mexico For Dummies.”
Not only am I intellectually unprepared for this subject, I’m emotionally unequipped. I can’t, or don’t want to, imagine living paralyzed by such threat of violence and lack of opportunity.
Although I didn’t finish, I gave the book a rating based on organization and clarity thus far. Also, I couldn’t tell if the author was telling his personal story as a reporter or the story of Mexico’s troubles or both. Either way, his intentions are fine. But there was no clear focus, and such a messy topic desperately needs one.
I read fifty pages before giving up. I’m in over my head with this topic. It’s like walking into class for the first time on final exam day. The names, groups, events, and relationships are a twisted ball of yarn I can’t unravel. I need a “Mexico For Dummies.”
Not only am I intellectually unprepared for this subject, I’m emotionally unequipped. I can’t, or don’t want to, imagine living paralyzed by such threat of violence and lack of opportunity.
Although I didn’t finish, I gave the book a rating based on organization and clarity thus far. Also, I couldn’t tell if the author was telling his personal story as a reporter or the story of Mexico’s troubles or both. Either way, his intentions are fine. But there was no clear focus, and such a messy topic desperately needs one.
December 3, 2020
This one was not what I expected... I came across it by chance and put it on my list, as I am always interested in reading about modern Mexico. From its title, I was expecting a fast-paced engaging read about the turbulent situation south of the US border...
Author Alfredo Corchado Jiménez is an award-winning Mexican-American journalist and author who has covered Mexico for many years, and is currently the Mexico City bureau chief of The Dallas Morning News. He specializes in covering the drug wars and the U.S.-Mexico border, writing stories on topics such as drug cartels and organized crime, corruption among police and government officials, and the spread of drug cartels into U.S. cities, according to his Wikipedia page.
Alfredo Corchado :
Despite its intriguing subtitle - "A Reporter's Journey Through a Country's Descent Into the Darkness"- the writing here was way more flat and dry than a book about the SNAFU that is modern-day Mexico has any right to be. The book also lacks cohesion, and the writing jumps around quite a bit; from death threats the author got, to his relationship with his mother, to the macro-political climate of Mexico, to local politicians, to NAFTA, and more.
Although the material covered here is super-interesting, the delivery of it left much to be desired for me... I don't think that Corchado succeeded in producing a very readable book with this one. Too bad, as I had high hopes for this.
2.5 stars.
Author Alfredo Corchado Jiménez is an award-winning Mexican-American journalist and author who has covered Mexico for many years, and is currently the Mexico City bureau chief of The Dallas Morning News. He specializes in covering the drug wars and the U.S.-Mexico border, writing stories on topics such as drug cartels and organized crime, corruption among police and government officials, and the spread of drug cartels into U.S. cities, according to his Wikipedia page.
Alfredo Corchado :
Despite its intriguing subtitle - "A Reporter's Journey Through a Country's Descent Into the Darkness"- the writing here was way more flat and dry than a book about the SNAFU that is modern-day Mexico has any right to be. The book also lacks cohesion, and the writing jumps around quite a bit; from death threats the author got, to his relationship with his mother, to the macro-political climate of Mexico, to local politicians, to NAFTA, and more.
Although the material covered here is super-interesting, the delivery of it left much to be desired for me... I don't think that Corchado succeeded in producing a very readable book with this one. Too bad, as I had high hopes for this.
2.5 stars.
December 14, 2015
I liked this book. I knew a little bit about Mexico and the drug cartels from news stories over the past few years, but this book pretty much gives us the "why" as to the rise of the cartels, issues within the Mexican government and the role the United States (government and citizens) has played in both. It is a non-fiction book but an easier read than most because the author gives us his life story set within Mexico's history. There are a lot of people mentioned in this book and at times it is hard to keep up with them all.
August 3, 2013
Worth reading, especially if you're watching "The Bridge" on TV.
April 14, 2018
Scary. Scary. Scary.
More than 250 large American cities where Mexican drug cartels operate.
People being threatened and killed by these drug cartels in the northern parts of border states and beyond, not just in border cities.
Mexicans swarming into the US fleeing from lives with too much change... where they are no longer able to make a living in traditional ways, and more than 10% of the population are permanently categorized as non-employed and non-student, but who are instead a part of a drug cartel.
Drug cartel wars in which body counts are in the thousands along the border, with unbelievable gruesome torture (which the author was unable to describe graphically)
Too many tunnels for smuggling to count between Mexico and the US, and more sophisticated than many government tunnels today. In today's technology, you can see underwater ancient cities and old cities buried under jungles. It is hard to believe that these tunnels have not already been discovered and are allowed to operate because of corruption.
More than 170 government border and protection agents being convicted of accepting money from cartels in one year... how many others were not caught?
Corrupt policemen and a "justice" system dependent on bribes... which you pay instantly or go to jail.
And even more corrupt politicians at all levels of the government including the federal level.
This is scary enough, but you might think you do not need to travel to Mexico. But when you consider NAFTA and realize that Mexico with all its corruption and poverty could become essentially a part of the US and Canada, then the situation becomes even more scary.
At this point in the review, I would like to state that I am not an American citizen or resident. I am a Canadian who speaks only one language. So I am speaking with the viewpoint of an outsider.
Recently my husband and I traveled from Big Bend National Park along the border to San Diego, including driving through one area in which some border patrol agents were ambushed and killed by a drug cartel. We probably have seen more of this area of the US than most Americans. We also live in a border city in Canada separated from the US by a river. During this trip, we saw the differences between our border cities and those in Mexico which have been taken over by drug cartels and abandoned by many Mexicans.
We were stopped by border patrol agents at roadblocks a few times. We occasionally like to camp in national or state forests because of the seclusion. We no longer camp in these forests or even in national parks because so many of them even in BC, Canada, have been taken over by drug cartels for grow ops. Signs warned people about being careful while camping in any parks within 40 miles of the border. We did not camp at all.
Things have changed drastically in 40 years.
We spent a day in San Diego near the border sight seeing and shopping in a nice mall. During the day, I heard English only when clerks spoke to me. All the conversation in the checkout lanes, in the announcements, and among the customers was in Spanish. Legal Mexican immigrants and American families with Mexican roots number more than 10% of the US population, and it is increasing. This is significant enough to swing most elections.
We could not sign up for any daily bus tours to take us into Tijuana. There was not enough demand for these trips.
I realize that the way this is written, someone might think that I am equating drug traffickers and legal Mexican immigrant families. I am not. I am simply showing that the culture along the border is different now. In my opinion, the US needs skilled, hard working immigrants. This is a totally different issue from the terror that seems to be spreading along the border into the US. We have traveled recently to both north western and north eastern Mexico and we found our trips inland to be very discouraging. Because of these experiences, it was easier to understand the economic and family conditions that he described because we have seen some of them.
Alfredo Corchado is a Mexican American who has chosen to return to Mexico and live there permanently despite the threats against his life for his investigative reporting of drug cartels.
He is sensitive, he loves Mexico and wants to see it come to its potential despite the continual setbacks that have driven many Mexicans out of Mexico. He is not sensational in his writing. His life has been dedicated to Mexico and wanting it to get out of the control of corrupt politicians and drug cartels. He is not trying to persuade; he is only recounting his story.
He has more bravery and dedication than most people in the world.
This book is scary; the author is inspiring.
More than 250 large American cities where Mexican drug cartels operate.
People being threatened and killed by these drug cartels in the northern parts of border states and beyond, not just in border cities.
Mexicans swarming into the US fleeing from lives with too much change... where they are no longer able to make a living in traditional ways, and more than 10% of the population are permanently categorized as non-employed and non-student, but who are instead a part of a drug cartel.
Drug cartel wars in which body counts are in the thousands along the border, with unbelievable gruesome torture (which the author was unable to describe graphically)
Too many tunnels for smuggling to count between Mexico and the US, and more sophisticated than many government tunnels today. In today's technology, you can see underwater ancient cities and old cities buried under jungles. It is hard to believe that these tunnels have not already been discovered and are allowed to operate because of corruption.
More than 170 government border and protection agents being convicted of accepting money from cartels in one year... how many others were not caught?
Corrupt policemen and a "justice" system dependent on bribes... which you pay instantly or go to jail.
And even more corrupt politicians at all levels of the government including the federal level.
This is scary enough, but you might think you do not need to travel to Mexico. But when you consider NAFTA and realize that Mexico with all its corruption and poverty could become essentially a part of the US and Canada, then the situation becomes even more scary.
At this point in the review, I would like to state that I am not an American citizen or resident. I am a Canadian who speaks only one language. So I am speaking with the viewpoint of an outsider.
Recently my husband and I traveled from Big Bend National Park along the border to San Diego, including driving through one area in which some border patrol agents were ambushed and killed by a drug cartel. We probably have seen more of this area of the US than most Americans. We also live in a border city in Canada separated from the US by a river. During this trip, we saw the differences between our border cities and those in Mexico which have been taken over by drug cartels and abandoned by many Mexicans.
We were stopped by border patrol agents at roadblocks a few times. We occasionally like to camp in national or state forests because of the seclusion. We no longer camp in these forests or even in national parks because so many of them even in BC, Canada, have been taken over by drug cartels for grow ops. Signs warned people about being careful while camping in any parks within 40 miles of the border. We did not camp at all.
Things have changed drastically in 40 years.
We spent a day in San Diego near the border sight seeing and shopping in a nice mall. During the day, I heard English only when clerks spoke to me. All the conversation in the checkout lanes, in the announcements, and among the customers was in Spanish. Legal Mexican immigrants and American families with Mexican roots number more than 10% of the US population, and it is increasing. This is significant enough to swing most elections.
We could not sign up for any daily bus tours to take us into Tijuana. There was not enough demand for these trips.
I realize that the way this is written, someone might think that I am equating drug traffickers and legal Mexican immigrant families. I am not. I am simply showing that the culture along the border is different now. In my opinion, the US needs skilled, hard working immigrants. This is a totally different issue from the terror that seems to be spreading along the border into the US. We have traveled recently to both north western and north eastern Mexico and we found our trips inland to be very discouraging. Because of these experiences, it was easier to understand the economic and family conditions that he described because we have seen some of them.
Alfredo Corchado is a Mexican American who has chosen to return to Mexico and live there permanently despite the threats against his life for his investigative reporting of drug cartels.
He is sensitive, he loves Mexico and wants to see it come to its potential despite the continual setbacks that have driven many Mexicans out of Mexico. He is not sensational in his writing. His life has been dedicated to Mexico and wanting it to get out of the control of corrupt politicians and drug cartels. He is not trying to persuade; he is only recounting his story.
He has more bravery and dedication than most people in the world.
This book is scary; the author is inspiring.
June 8, 2014
About 100 pages in and I had to call it quits. Was looking for a book about the problems facing Mexico and some insight into how it came to be this way but what I got instead was a book about this one time (in band camp) the author thought he might be the target of a cartel assassination. The author's attempt to build suspense around this yet to be confirmed tip was both unnecessary and unsuccessful in my opinion. Just wanted to learn something not listen to this guy go on and on about his family and how he just HAS to get to the bottom of this possible threat on his life. A threat that in the first pages of the book has the author wondering if he'll be killed leaving his apartment but shortly after (with the hit still unconfirmed) he manages to find the time to take a relaxing nap on the beaches of San Pancho. Because who doesn't think to take a nap on the beach after they've just been threatened by one of the most ruthless criminal organizations in the world, in the home country of said TCO no less. Plus I'm pretty sure if you are writing a book about the incident several years later, the threat from the cartels must not have been that serious but whatever.
Oh well, guess I'll be sure to read the dust jacket description more closely from here on.
Oh well, guess I'll be sure to read the dust jacket description more closely from here on.
January 25, 2014
Alfredo Corchado has straddled the border between Mexico and the United States all his life. He was born in Mexico to a poor family, that later migrated to Texas where they ran a small restaurant. Alfredo became a journalist, based in Mexico City. He was happy with his life there until one day a drug cartel threatened his life and he was forced to become an exile once again. At this point we are given brief history of Mexican politics and the domination by its ruling party, the PRI. When the PRI was finally defeated at the polls after more than 70 years in power, Alfredo and many others who love Mexico looked forward to the democratic institiutions that they hoped would flourish. Alas. The drug cartels took over much of the government. Their violence is legendary. This author loves the country of his birth and regrets that it has never been able to offer a solid, prosperous and safe middle class existance to most of its citizens.
November 15, 2019
3.0⭐ Somewhat dramatic account of a reporter's work in Mexico during the bloody height of the war against the cartels. The best parts were his descriptions of his family, their struggles to make it in America and his interactions with ordinary people. I also liked the background he provided on the history of the cartels and their symbiotic interactions with the government, police, etc and could have done with more of that.
The story of his scoop about the Mexican government negotiating with the cartels, which supposedly made him a target, seemed a bit overblown. In fairness, I wasn't there and Corchado was operating at a level, and in a period, where a bit of paranoia was probably a good thing. It's an easy read, though it wouldn't inspire me to read more from this author.
The story of his scoop about the Mexican government negotiating with the cartels, which supposedly made him a target, seemed a bit overblown. In fairness, I wasn't there and Corchado was operating at a level, and in a period, where a bit of paranoia was probably a good thing. It's an easy read, though it wouldn't inspire me to read more from this author.
August 9, 2013
Mr. Corchado blends his own life's story with that of Mexico's political and economic history and provides an eye-witness account of the changes brought about by the PRI's lost election and the rise of the drug cartels. Having lived and worked in Mexico City, this book proved very insightful to me about what the situation was like after I left in 1994. I have seen how the deterioration of security has affected both friends and family following the change in administrations, and can only be hopeful--just like Mr. Corcahdo--that the future will be better.
July 28, 2013
I read a lot about Mexico and was hoping for some fresh perspective from a Mexican journalist. But he doesn't deliver. For someone who had not been keeping up on Mexican drug cartels and politics this book could be enlightening, but otherwise it's all warmed-over info told by someone who's not particularly interesting. He says in the acknowledgments that he had to learn how to write something besides journalism to write this book; he should have practiced more because this book falls short. Sorry; I had high hopes ...
December 4, 2013
I've read many books about modern Mexico, but I think that this one has been the best yet. While there isn't a ton of new information in it, the way Corchado weaves in his and his family's story helps to contextualize the significance of many key events in the past 50 years of Mexican history in a way most books of this ilk are unable to.
August 3, 2016
Very disappointed with this.
The dust jacket suggested investigative journalism.
What I found was a poorly written memoir from the author's personal point of view. Had a lot of re-created conversations with other journalists, friends, his girlfriend... in restaurants. Found it to be superficial from the get-go. Started to speed-read. Much more of a personal story than journalism.
The dust jacket suggested investigative journalism.
What I found was a poorly written memoir from the author's personal point of view. Had a lot of re-created conversations with other journalists, friends, his girlfriend... in restaurants. Found it to be superficial from the get-go. Started to speed-read. Much more of a personal story than journalism.
March 8, 2014
I thoroughly love this book! I recommend it to anybody interested in the current state of Mexico as related to its history. Corchado's manner of connecting himself personally to historical events as a photojournalist and as a Mexican-American, makes his book humane and insightful.
November 17, 2021
Alfredo Corchado is a good writer. He has the ability to paint a vivid picture, especially of the inner workings of some people’s mindset, experiences, etc. However that doesn’t make his book any more compelling.
I was expecting this book to be about one journalist’s journey throughout the cartels of Mexico and all the major events he’s been a witness to. But, it’s just about the various interviews he’s done. It’s also a book about how he longs for the Mexico of his dreams.
Regardless of all that, it really is not an interesting listen. At least, not to me.
One annoying thing he did was pad the word count with various things in Spanish and then immediately translating them. But it isn’t like he did it all the time; mostly when something dangerous was happening or whatever.
In addition, the narrator, Timothy Andres Pabon, doesn’t seem to have the right voice for this story. For some reason, he sounded as if he was hesitant telling the story. I don’t know how to describe it. But it just didn’t seem like the right fit.
To sum it up: not the worst nonfiction I have listened to, but it’s far and away from the best.
I was expecting this book to be about one journalist’s journey throughout the cartels of Mexico and all the major events he’s been a witness to. But, it’s just about the various interviews he’s done. It’s also a book about how he longs for the Mexico of his dreams.
Regardless of all that, it really is not an interesting listen. At least, not to me.
One annoying thing he did was pad the word count with various things in Spanish and then immediately translating them. But it isn’t like he did it all the time; mostly when something dangerous was happening or whatever.
In addition, the narrator, Timothy Andres Pabon, doesn’t seem to have the right voice for this story. For some reason, he sounded as if he was hesitant telling the story. I don’t know how to describe it. But it just didn’t seem like the right fit.
To sum it up: not the worst nonfiction I have listened to, but it’s far and away from the best.
July 26, 2021
I learned a lot but it was a little hard for me to follow all the key players at times. This may be due to my own distractions. I think learning about Mexico is very important so it did fill my cup in that way.
May 16, 2022
Very engaging audiobook!
December 13, 2023
Gringos soured on their north-of-the-border politics would do well to read books like this and remember journalism's heroic potential.
January 20, 2021
Alfredo Corchado is a justly admired Mexican-American journalist known for his on-the-ground coverage of Mexican drug cartels and his insider analysis of the ever-tense US/Mexico relationship. But having just slogged my way through the last few pages of Midnight in Mexico, I find myself nagged by one question in particular: if this is an accurate representation of his thought process, how in the hell did he survive down there?
Though it is marketed as an exploration of Mexican cartel culture, Midnight in Mexico is more aptly thought of as a writer's account of his personal journey from childhood poverty to a career in journalism, interwoven with sporadic cartel encounters, ruminations on cultural identity, and a bird's eye assessment of Mexico's shaky transition from a corrupt and crime-riddled autocracy to a corrupt and crime-riddled democracy. The reader will catch on to what the book is and what it isn't by the third or fourth chapter. At that point, she will shrug and buckle up for the ride—which turns out to be an unnervingly dull one, in spite of the apocalyptic scenery, and in spite of (or perhaps because of) the driver's habit of getting us hopelessly lost by taking us on all sorts of detours along the way. This—beyond the book's shortcomings with respect to its content, its style, and its tone—is perhaps its most fatal flaw: we are quickly disoriented by a rapid-fire sequence of puzzling flashbacks, and still more puzzling flashbacks within those puzzling flashbacks, such that after a while we are no longer sure whether we are in 1910, 1997, 2007, or the present—or when the present even is.
Throughout the book, Corchado expresses astonishment in the face of facts of Mexican life that are familiar to even the most rank outsider: that cartels engage in wanton acts of gratuitous brutality, and that those cartels are often in cahoots with the very police sent to bust their chops. One would expect that a decade on the Mexican cartel beat would have cured him of such babe-in-the-woods wonder—hell, a few episodes of Breaking Bad did as much for me. But even in the author's interactions with the book's sprawling cast of dubious characters, he seems a step or two behind, a bit overmatched, as though he doesn't really know his way around—which is especially strange, because we know that is not the case.
In the opening pages, the author reels us in with his account of being pursued by the cartels after having made their private dealings public. The author receives a few threatening phone calls and draws menacing stares from anonymous men on the streets; they may be narcos, or they may just be unpleasant-looking civilians having a bad day. No matter: we are led to believe that the author is in grave danger. We expect him to flee the country or, if he is as dogged a reporter as we think he is, to lay low until the heat is off him, and then to go right back to chasing down the story. Instead, the author grabs a burger and a Coca-Cola and sprawls out on the beach. He takes a nap. Eventually, a thunderstorm wakes him up and drives him indoors. He sits down, grabs another bite to eat, and winks at a couple of lovers who are dancing to the music on the jukebox. It takes us a moment to remember that he is supposed to be on the run from Mexican drug cartels who are out to kill him and dismember his corpse.
Again: if this is an accurate recounting of events, how in the hell did he survive down there?
Almost 200 pages later, the author picks this narrative thread back up; by then (after several temporally dislocated encounters that, like the first one, turn out to be nothingburgers) we're left to wonder, probably unjustly, whether he was ever in very much danger to begin with.
Early on in the book, when he's on the run from yet another band of Mexican strangers of notionally ill intent, the author mentions seeking refuge at a nonfiction writing seminar in the United States. Given the quality of writing in this memoir, one wonders whether he attended the seminar after all. The text is peppered with the sort of adverbs—I stared silently, she shouted angrily—that Intro to Creative Writing students must foreswear using under penalty of death. We are introduced to so many rogue journalists and shady informants that they all start to blend together. It is no doubt disorienting to navigate one's way around a hostile environment full of shadowy contacts, and an environment where nobody can be trusted—but it need not be so disorienting for one's readers.
At one point, the author (drinking yet again at a bar when he's supposed to be on the run) bumps into some ostensibly dangerous characters. One of them shoots a finger gun at him in passing. The author takes this to be a threat. (The reader, by then, suspects it may just have been a greeting.) Despite feeling himself in mortal danger, the author elects to remain at the bar. He then interfaces with another unsavory type who notifies him that visitors to Ciudad Juárez sometimes wind up decapitated and dissolved in vats of acid—gruesome, yes, but also pretty much the first bullet point on the Ciudad Juárez travel brochure. Astonished by this tidbit, the author becomes convinced that this man, as well as Señor Finger Guns, are part of the selfsame cartel that has put a bounty on his head. He intimates as much to his buddy and they leave the bar together. Then they go right back into the bar. Despite tempting fate any number of times, the whole affair ends anticlimactically. The author sallies forth to a restaurant first thing in the morning and we are left with no real reason to think that the gents at the bar were narcos in the first place.
Somewhere in the fog, the author relates an anecdote in which he discovers that one of his maids has been stealing canned food from his cupboard. He confronts the servant at her home and calls her out on it. Deeply ashamed, she apologizes for the whole thing and vows never to do it again. The author shrugs and walks off. At first, I found this story merely obnoxious: a well-to-do journalist tells off his hard-luck lower-class hired help—not a good look. But then it occurred to me that I wasn't at all sure that this is what happened. The story is told in such a clumsy way that it is unclear what moral lesson, if any, one should take from it. It is unclear as to what actually occurred.
The dialogue is Spanish-intensive, which is not always a hurdle: Cormac McCarthy is a master of this, deploying Spanish in such a way that the reader knows exactly what is being said even if she doesn't understand a word of it. We need not hold Corchado or anyone else to McCarthian standards, but the Spanish here feels gratuitous, and it is a constant distraction. Full conversations play out like one of those bilingual books for young language learners, with the hovering interpreter chiming in every few seconds to let us know what has just been said. One is left with the impression that the book might well have been fifty pages shorter if no Spanish had been used at all and, lovely language though it is, Midnight in Mexico would have been a much better book without it.
The book abounds with superfluous details that, like all superfluous details, distract us from the story rather than pulling us deeper into it. We are subjected to a gallery of specific meals in the author's life. Burgers with jalapenos crop up so often that they might well be considered one of the book's protagonists. Every other page, attention is drawn to the author's impeccable taste in music—he is always cranking the stereo or the iPod up to "full blast"; one worries for this young man's eardrums—and he is proud, early on in the book, to proclaim his love for Coldplay, which kind of negates the whole "impeccable taste in music" thing. In an especially vapid flashback, the author hearkens back to his days as an aspiring rock musician. Given his influences, it is not hard to see why that career path didn't quite open up for him.
Mexico is a hard country and, in picking up this book, I expected to encounter a journalist who possessed the requisite hardness to cover its darkest and most depraved excesses. This is not to say that Mexico can't be approached with compassion, with tenderness, or with levity; Mexico contains all of those things, too. But this is a confused book written by an author who seems, in turn, to be confused (or at least astounded) by many of the events swirling around him. I don't doubt that Corchado's life was in danger at several junctures of his career, nor do I doubt that he is a man of great courage. But these are not the impressions we are left with. We are given an image of Corchado as a timid young reporter from a high school paper, or an imaginative little kid lost in the woods, spying illusory ghosts and goblins in the contours of every shadow that lurks in the offing. Corchado is clearly neither of these things, which is part of what makes Midnight in Mexico such a mystifying and ultimately frustrating read.
There is a much better book lurking inside of the scattershot story we are presented with here, but I suspect that I may have to turn to a different author in order to read it.
Though it is marketed as an exploration of Mexican cartel culture, Midnight in Mexico is more aptly thought of as a writer's account of his personal journey from childhood poverty to a career in journalism, interwoven with sporadic cartel encounters, ruminations on cultural identity, and a bird's eye assessment of Mexico's shaky transition from a corrupt and crime-riddled autocracy to a corrupt and crime-riddled democracy. The reader will catch on to what the book is and what it isn't by the third or fourth chapter. At that point, she will shrug and buckle up for the ride—which turns out to be an unnervingly dull one, in spite of the apocalyptic scenery, and in spite of (or perhaps because of) the driver's habit of getting us hopelessly lost by taking us on all sorts of detours along the way. This—beyond the book's shortcomings with respect to its content, its style, and its tone—is perhaps its most fatal flaw: we are quickly disoriented by a rapid-fire sequence of puzzling flashbacks, and still more puzzling flashbacks within those puzzling flashbacks, such that after a while we are no longer sure whether we are in 1910, 1997, 2007, or the present—or when the present even is.
Throughout the book, Corchado expresses astonishment in the face of facts of Mexican life that are familiar to even the most rank outsider: that cartels engage in wanton acts of gratuitous brutality, and that those cartels are often in cahoots with the very police sent to bust their chops. One would expect that a decade on the Mexican cartel beat would have cured him of such babe-in-the-woods wonder—hell, a few episodes of Breaking Bad did as much for me. But even in the author's interactions with the book's sprawling cast of dubious characters, he seems a step or two behind, a bit overmatched, as though he doesn't really know his way around—which is especially strange, because we know that is not the case.
In the opening pages, the author reels us in with his account of being pursued by the cartels after having made their private dealings public. The author receives a few threatening phone calls and draws menacing stares from anonymous men on the streets; they may be narcos, or they may just be unpleasant-looking civilians having a bad day. No matter: we are led to believe that the author is in grave danger. We expect him to flee the country or, if he is as dogged a reporter as we think he is, to lay low until the heat is off him, and then to go right back to chasing down the story. Instead, the author grabs a burger and a Coca-Cola and sprawls out on the beach. He takes a nap. Eventually, a thunderstorm wakes him up and drives him indoors. He sits down, grabs another bite to eat, and winks at a couple of lovers who are dancing to the music on the jukebox. It takes us a moment to remember that he is supposed to be on the run from Mexican drug cartels who are out to kill him and dismember his corpse.
Again: if this is an accurate recounting of events, how in the hell did he survive down there?
Almost 200 pages later, the author picks this narrative thread back up; by then (after several temporally dislocated encounters that, like the first one, turn out to be nothingburgers) we're left to wonder, probably unjustly, whether he was ever in very much danger to begin with.
Early on in the book, when he's on the run from yet another band of Mexican strangers of notionally ill intent, the author mentions seeking refuge at a nonfiction writing seminar in the United States. Given the quality of writing in this memoir, one wonders whether he attended the seminar after all. The text is peppered with the sort of adverbs—I stared silently, she shouted angrily—that Intro to Creative Writing students must foreswear using under penalty of death. We are introduced to so many rogue journalists and shady informants that they all start to blend together. It is no doubt disorienting to navigate one's way around a hostile environment full of shadowy contacts, and an environment where nobody can be trusted—but it need not be so disorienting for one's readers.
At one point, the author (drinking yet again at a bar when he's supposed to be on the run) bumps into some ostensibly dangerous characters. One of them shoots a finger gun at him in passing. The author takes this to be a threat. (The reader, by then, suspects it may just have been a greeting.) Despite feeling himself in mortal danger, the author elects to remain at the bar. He then interfaces with another unsavory type who notifies him that visitors to Ciudad Juárez sometimes wind up decapitated and dissolved in vats of acid—gruesome, yes, but also pretty much the first bullet point on the Ciudad Juárez travel brochure. Astonished by this tidbit, the author becomes convinced that this man, as well as Señor Finger Guns, are part of the selfsame cartel that has put a bounty on his head. He intimates as much to his buddy and they leave the bar together. Then they go right back into the bar. Despite tempting fate any number of times, the whole affair ends anticlimactically. The author sallies forth to a restaurant first thing in the morning and we are left with no real reason to think that the gents at the bar were narcos in the first place.
Somewhere in the fog, the author relates an anecdote in which he discovers that one of his maids has been stealing canned food from his cupboard. He confronts the servant at her home and calls her out on it. Deeply ashamed, she apologizes for the whole thing and vows never to do it again. The author shrugs and walks off. At first, I found this story merely obnoxious: a well-to-do journalist tells off his hard-luck lower-class hired help—not a good look. But then it occurred to me that I wasn't at all sure that this is what happened. The story is told in such a clumsy way that it is unclear what moral lesson, if any, one should take from it. It is unclear as to what actually occurred.
The dialogue is Spanish-intensive, which is not always a hurdle: Cormac McCarthy is a master of this, deploying Spanish in such a way that the reader knows exactly what is being said even if she doesn't understand a word of it. We need not hold Corchado or anyone else to McCarthian standards, but the Spanish here feels gratuitous, and it is a constant distraction. Full conversations play out like one of those bilingual books for young language learners, with the hovering interpreter chiming in every few seconds to let us know what has just been said. One is left with the impression that the book might well have been fifty pages shorter if no Spanish had been used at all and, lovely language though it is, Midnight in Mexico would have been a much better book without it.
The book abounds with superfluous details that, like all superfluous details, distract us from the story rather than pulling us deeper into it. We are subjected to a gallery of specific meals in the author's life. Burgers with jalapenos crop up so often that they might well be considered one of the book's protagonists. Every other page, attention is drawn to the author's impeccable taste in music—he is always cranking the stereo or the iPod up to "full blast"; one worries for this young man's eardrums—and he is proud, early on in the book, to proclaim his love for Coldplay, which kind of negates the whole "impeccable taste in music" thing. In an especially vapid flashback, the author hearkens back to his days as an aspiring rock musician. Given his influences, it is not hard to see why that career path didn't quite open up for him.
Mexico is a hard country and, in picking up this book, I expected to encounter a journalist who possessed the requisite hardness to cover its darkest and most depraved excesses. This is not to say that Mexico can't be approached with compassion, with tenderness, or with levity; Mexico contains all of those things, too. But this is a confused book written by an author who seems, in turn, to be confused (or at least astounded) by many of the events swirling around him. I don't doubt that Corchado's life was in danger at several junctures of his career, nor do I doubt that he is a man of great courage. But these are not the impressions we are left with. We are given an image of Corchado as a timid young reporter from a high school paper, or an imaginative little kid lost in the woods, spying illusory ghosts and goblins in the contours of every shadow that lurks in the offing. Corchado is clearly neither of these things, which is part of what makes Midnight in Mexico such a mystifying and ultimately frustrating read.
There is a much better book lurking inside of the scattershot story we are presented with here, but I suspect that I may have to turn to a different author in order to read it.
July 2, 2013
Alfredo Corchad’s story is a personal one. As he documents Mexico as a reporter for the Dallas Morning News, he is also Mexican with American roots. He has hope for a Mexico that can rise above the violence and destruction from the drug cartels. It is only until he becomes part of that story does his perspective change and generate this book. After reporting on a peace pact between the cartels and the government, Corchad receives a death threat by one of the Mexican Cartels and forced to leave the country. His story is intended to document both the belief of Mexicans for a better future and how that hope is crushed by corrupt governments and drug cartels.
The best part of Corchad’s story is the perspective from Mexico. In the United States, we hear about the violence fleetingly on the news. It’s a far different experience living in Mexico where not only is your own life under threat, but those of your loved ones. If you open a business, you have to pay protection money. The money and power held by these cartels makes it where there is violence just for sport. As evidenced by the killing of women near the El Paso border. There is definitely a marriage here between Corhcad’s reporting and Roberto Bolano’s 2666.
When the Mexican government finally does wage war on the cartels, the bloodbath only gets worse. On top of that, the bad economy creates a new generation of young men who can’t find work and can’t afford to go to school. They are a ripe target for new recruits who can make a lot of money with the cartels. The violent end of those stories is documented only too well in this book. Corchad has to navigate contacts both to get the story and save his own skin. Corchad also provides a thorough backstory on the cartels from how they are formed to who the leaders are now. It’s this dedication to get so deep as to be part of the story that really makes the book so engaging. It’s also his hope that perseveres despite the violence.
Favorite parts:
"In Mexico, they kill you twice: first with a bullet, an ax to your head, or a bath full of acid. Then they spread rumors about you. P. 19
Mexico's "democracy" belongs to the politicians, intellectuals, idealists, to the elite and the opportunists, but their vision for Mexico does not always involve consulting the majority of people who live day to day. There is no local ownership. For Mexicans, the higher one's income, the more deeply a person believes in democracy, at least on paper. Mexicans like the taco woman base their lives on Mexico's giant informal market, obeying only the laws that are convenient to obey and taking life as it comes, because mañana, quien sabe—tomorrow, who knows? P. 76
"In the United States people die either from a disease--a heart attack, cancer...or a car accident. Here you die one minute to the next, and knowing that makes you want to live life fuller...You're reminded daily of your mortality... p. 254
"What is my search for home if not a futile desire for resurrection, a renewal of a wounded spirit, a sentimental attempt to give meaning to not one but two lives, reconciliation with the past? p. 261
The best part of Corchad’s story is the perspective from Mexico. In the United States, we hear about the violence fleetingly on the news. It’s a far different experience living in Mexico where not only is your own life under threat, but those of your loved ones. If you open a business, you have to pay protection money. The money and power held by these cartels makes it where there is violence just for sport. As evidenced by the killing of women near the El Paso border. There is definitely a marriage here between Corhcad’s reporting and Roberto Bolano’s 2666.
When the Mexican government finally does wage war on the cartels, the bloodbath only gets worse. On top of that, the bad economy creates a new generation of young men who can’t find work and can’t afford to go to school. They are a ripe target for new recruits who can make a lot of money with the cartels. The violent end of those stories is documented only too well in this book. Corchad has to navigate contacts both to get the story and save his own skin. Corchad also provides a thorough backstory on the cartels from how they are formed to who the leaders are now. It’s this dedication to get so deep as to be part of the story that really makes the book so engaging. It’s also his hope that perseveres despite the violence.
Favorite parts:
"In Mexico, they kill you twice: first with a bullet, an ax to your head, or a bath full of acid. Then they spread rumors about you. P. 19
Mexico's "democracy" belongs to the politicians, intellectuals, idealists, to the elite and the opportunists, but their vision for Mexico does not always involve consulting the majority of people who live day to day. There is no local ownership. For Mexicans, the higher one's income, the more deeply a person believes in democracy, at least on paper. Mexicans like the taco woman base their lives on Mexico's giant informal market, obeying only the laws that are convenient to obey and taking life as it comes, because mañana, quien sabe—tomorrow, who knows? P. 76
"In the United States people die either from a disease--a heart attack, cancer...or a car accident. Here you die one minute to the next, and knowing that makes you want to live life fuller...You're reminded daily of your mortality... p. 254
"What is my search for home if not a futile desire for resurrection, a renewal of a wounded spirit, a sentimental attempt to give meaning to not one but two lives, reconciliation with the past? p. 261
April 23, 2015
This dazzling memoir begins with a bang. Corchado, the Mexico Bureau Chief of the Dallas Morning News, is about to go to dinner with his beloved partner, Angela, and friends when he gets a phone call from one of his sources. An American journalist in Mexico will be assassinated within twenty-four hours. No one knows the identity of the journalist or even if the rumor is true. But we do know that Corchado has recently been publishing exposés of people in high places, and it’s a fair bet that his head is on the block.
This is the stuff of thrillers (the rights to Midnight in Mexico have already been snapped up by Hollywood). One imagines Tom Cruise escaping via the rooftops. But Corchado does no such thing. He finds himself caught in a Hamlet-like dilemma. Stick or twist? Run or wait?
What follows is a combination of adventure story, personal memoir, a history of Mexico’s recent past, and a dissection of the drug trade that has devastated families and communities while perversely providing a living for the poor and downtrodden.
The book is packed with details about how journalists get close to their sources while somehow avoiding being assassinated. Corchado navigates the system through a combination of luck, bloody-mindedness and sheer chutzpah. At one stage he is kidnapped by a taxi driver. He looks through the back window and sees a car full of hoodlums following them. When the taxi slows down at a busy junction, he jumps out, gets swallowed up in a crowd, and walks home.
Quite apart from the derring-do and the historical background, the book is very well-written. Of the images he uses to describe Mexico’s corruption by the drug trade, one stands out: the problem isn’t a tumor that can be removed; it’s a cancer that has spread to every cell of the body.
While the book is a pleasure to read, occasionally the dialogue doesn’t ring true. Characters rattle something off in Spanish and then provide an immediate English translation, which isn’t how code-switching works. Also, one wonders how the author can remember people’s exact words years later. Surely he wasn’t taking notes when his life was in danger? My only other caveat is the number of names. I sometimes got overwhelmed and found myself leafing backwards to work out who’s who. But maybe the point is, it doesn’t matter who’s who because you can trust no one.
There is a heartbreaking chapter near the end – Corchado’s “rosebud” moment – which provides the fons et origo of his compassion and his sense of mission. And in the end, despite the endemic corruption, the mendacity of those in power, and the sheer bloodsoaked brutality of the cartels, Corchado somehow remains optimistic. Time and again he affirms his love of Mexico and his hope for what the future will bring. It may be midnight in Mexico, but a new dawn must come soon.
This is the stuff of thrillers (the rights to Midnight in Mexico have already been snapped up by Hollywood). One imagines Tom Cruise escaping via the rooftops. But Corchado does no such thing. He finds himself caught in a Hamlet-like dilemma. Stick or twist? Run or wait?
What follows is a combination of adventure story, personal memoir, a history of Mexico’s recent past, and a dissection of the drug trade that has devastated families and communities while perversely providing a living for the poor and downtrodden.
The book is packed with details about how journalists get close to their sources while somehow avoiding being assassinated. Corchado navigates the system through a combination of luck, bloody-mindedness and sheer chutzpah. At one stage he is kidnapped by a taxi driver. He looks through the back window and sees a car full of hoodlums following them. When the taxi slows down at a busy junction, he jumps out, gets swallowed up in a crowd, and walks home.
Quite apart from the derring-do and the historical background, the book is very well-written. Of the images he uses to describe Mexico’s corruption by the drug trade, one stands out: the problem isn’t a tumor that can be removed; it’s a cancer that has spread to every cell of the body.
While the book is a pleasure to read, occasionally the dialogue doesn’t ring true. Characters rattle something off in Spanish and then provide an immediate English translation, which isn’t how code-switching works. Also, one wonders how the author can remember people’s exact words years later. Surely he wasn’t taking notes when his life was in danger? My only other caveat is the number of names. I sometimes got overwhelmed and found myself leafing backwards to work out who’s who. But maybe the point is, it doesn’t matter who’s who because you can trust no one.
There is a heartbreaking chapter near the end – Corchado’s “rosebud” moment – which provides the fons et origo of his compassion and his sense of mission. And in the end, despite the endemic corruption, the mendacity of those in power, and the sheer bloodsoaked brutality of the cartels, Corchado somehow remains optimistic. Time and again he affirms his love of Mexico and his hope for what the future will bring. It may be midnight in Mexico, but a new dawn must come soon.
April 2, 2020
Written by a newspaper guy and it shows. The style might work in short pieces, but as a book trying to tell a big story, it doesn't. It just doesn't know what it wants to be, or when it wants to be.
March 8, 2016
With Midnight in Mexico, Alfredo Corchado has composed a compelling narrative that is part memoir, part history, part sociology, and part psychology. An accomplished newspaper reporter, the foreign correspondent in Mexico for The Dallas Morning News, Corchado uses his own life—and a death threat upon it—as the framework to tell us about the drug cartel wars in Mexico. His tale reads like a novel, probably because it is all too true, and we who haven’t experienced this sort of thing have a hard time believing that such things take place in the world—and certainly not in a country right at our back door. The corruption, murder, and torture that Corchado reports is very real, and we feel his fear while trying to unravel the mystery of who is trying to kill him. But we also feel his anguish. A Mexican native who grew up in the US, Corchado is drawn back to his homeland, and despite the evils there, the threats there, he finds it hard to leave. This is a man who dearly loves Mexico. So this book is not only a true crime thriller but is also a love story, a tale of a man in love with a country. A man who doesn’t quite understand its attraction, but he loves it, nevertheless. Midnight in Mexico is not a dry, sociological analysis of Mexico’s problems; it is a heartfelt look at a country that has heart and should be great, but isn’t.
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