Here is the full reference card for this book...
If you'd rather place an order by talking to one of our cheerful order desk clerks, please call 1-888-232-4444 (USA and Canada only) or 250-383-6864. From Europe, ring our UK order desk clerk at local rate number 0845 230 9601 (UK only) or 44 (0)1865 722 113.
Mexican Mornings: Essays South of the Border
by Michael Hogan; co-published with Intercambio Press
191 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #01-0331; ISBN 1-55212-929-2; US$20.50, C$24.95, EUR16.30, £11.30
Essays on contemporary Mexico including travel, natural wonders, political and economic trends, contemporary art, literature and music.
Read more!
About the book About the author Reviews Sample excerpt Catalogue info
About the Book
INTRODUCTION
There is a part of Mexico, the west-central area encompassing the state of Jalisco and its capital, Guadalajara, which is the cradle of many significant cultural traditions that most of us associate with that great country: mariachi music, tequila and charreada (rodeos) to name a few. Perhaps that is why the state's current government chose the slogan "Jalisco IS Mexico" to represent it before the world. And Jalisco is Michael Hogan's intellectual inspiration for this bird's eye view of Mexico and elsewhere.
Hogan writes with deep affection for his adopted country, mixed with an insider's keen interest about things Mexican. He adroitly highlights the best, and sometimes the worst, of life in this setting. The inexhaustible patience and forgiveness of the Mexican character is portrayed in many of his narratives, in which life is lived largely in the slow lane but with a degree of dignity and grace that might help explain why so many North Americans choose to call Mexico home.
This collection of essays is the first published non-fiction work by the author since his widely-acclaimed Irish Soldiers of Mexico, which was the basis for two documentaries and Orion's 1999 feature film, "One Man's Hero," starring Tom Berenger. A synopsis of that important, nearly forgotten piece of history is contained in this volume as "The Soldiers of St. Patrick."
The range of these essays takes us from Hogan's Catholic boyhood in Newport, Rhode Island to mid-life academia in Central Mexico, a world that is vastly different - or is it? The strength of a grandmother's love and a father's role in vanquishing monsters from a daughter's imagination could, and do, take place anywhere. But the insightful connection between the ancient Greek's philosophy of the man/woman relationship and Mexican "machismo," the reflection against history's mirror of the 1995 Chiapas "revolution," and the street-level view of the effect on Mexican society of NAFTA and Mexico's economic dependence on foreign investment, could only come from the Mexican heartland - and from a writer who is a serious observer of his environment and a perennial student of life.
Come ride with us on the Bus From Hell to see Cuban dictator Fidel Castro; and laugh at the drunken Santa Claus whose sleigh is damaged at the high school Christmas party. Then feel the beat of the music as the Tigres del Norte give an all-night concert in Guadalajara's immense Río Nilo stadium; squint through the eyepiece of a welder's helmet during a solar eclipse; and squirm with uneasiness during a depression-producing six-day, six-night rainstorm.
Perhaps the strongest messages of this collection are those extolling the thoughts of Mexican diplomat and poet Octavio Paz, in helping understand ourselves; and those of environmentalist and writer Ed Abbey who tried to show all of us, of all nationalities, that if we want to save this world FOR ourselves, we first have to save it FROM ourselves.
So follow Hogan as he examines his subjects-from the lowest crawling insects that influence life in Jalisco as it is today, to the two-legged creatures of power that would change it forever. I promise you won't regret it.
Danny Root
Former U.S. Consul General
Guadalajara, Mexico
About the Author
Michael Hogan is the author of twelve books, including the best-selling Irish Soldiers of Mexico which inspired the1998 MGM release One Man's Hero with Tom Berenger. His essays and articles on Latin America have appeared in numerous periodicals and he has been awarded the gold medal of the Mexican Geographical Society for "unique contributions to Mexican history and culture." Hogan's poetry has also illuminated the landscape of Latin America, and his recent book Imperfect Geographies received the 2000 Benjamin Franklin Award in the United States.
Hogan is a permanent resident of Mexico and teaches at the prestigious American School of Guadalajara where he has been head of the Humanities Department since 1990.
Click here to visit the author's web site, Michael Hogan
Reviews
If Montaigne was father of the essay (he coined the term, which means "attempt" in French), he was paterfamilias to a disparate brood. There is the relatively unstructured mode, told in anecdotal style, rich in humor, and expressing the whimsies and prejudices of the author. Eminent practitioners of this form were Lamb, E.B. White, Clifton Fadiman and Montaigne himself. By contrast, Francis Bacon's essays, wholly serious and prepared in a terse, didactic style, have been described as a "tissue of maxims." Representing a compromise between the above are such essayists as Emerson, Goldsmith, Addison and Dr. Johnson, who wrote social criticism but in a manner that endeavored to skate around excessive solemnity. In "Mexican Mornings," a 25-essay collection, Michael Hogan shows himself as a writer of astonishing versatility who succeeds in connecting with of all of Montaigne's "children." Hogan, head of the Humanities Department at Guadalajara's American School, is the author of 12 books. Best known is "Irish Soldiers of Mexico," about the ill-fated San Patricio Battalion, made up of mainly Irish-descended soldiers who deserted from the profoundly anti-Catholic U.S. Army and fought on the Mexican side during the Mexican-American War. "Irish Soldiers" inspired the 1998 MGM film, "One Man's Hero," starring Tom Berenger.
'Permission to speak'
Despite the title, not all the essays are about Mexico. A poignant personal recollection is "Permission to Speak," an account of how the author overcame a stammer that severely handicapped him in childhood. His chief benefactor was Brother Felix, one of the French Christian Brothers on the faculty of De La Salle Academy, a Catholic institution in Hogan's native Newport Rhode Island. Brother Felix told the unhappy adolescent that he himself had been plagued by a stammer in his youth but had cured it by singing. Taking his mentor's advice, Hogan joined the Glee Club, sang solos in the school talent show and high masses in the local Catholic Church. The musical cure proved so successful that by junior year Hogan had won speech contests across the state, participated in a nationally televised debate contest and given extemporaneous talks at Toastmasters, before student legislatures and at a model U.N. in New York.
Octavio Paz
Hogan is also a poet and a recent volume of his offerings, "Imperfect Geographies," received the 2000 Benjamin Franklin Award in the United States. In this mode, Hogan devotes an essay to Octavio Paz, reminding us how Paz - active and successful in other fields - began his career as a poet and published "Luna Silvestre," his first book of verse, before his 20th birthday. In the Paz essay, Hogan mentions how the Mexican Nobel Laureate came to New York at age 30 on a Guggenheim fellowship where he studied the work of Ezra Pound, along with that of T. S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens. By way of personal comment, I have to say that mention of Pound strikes a raw nerve. Hogan refers to Pound's influence on Paz and, quite correctly, to the subtlety and intricacy of Pound's verse. Yet, as a non-poet, I can't help conjure up images of the traitor who got on Rome radio during World War II, spouting anti-Semitic diatribes and urging U.S. troops in North Africa to desert - a contingent that included his own son. (Pound, in another broadcast, was insensitive enough to send a friendly greeting to Williams - an act that caused his fellow poet to be hounded by the FBI. Williams never forgave Pound.)
Returning to Paz, Hogan is certainly on target when he writes that the Noble winner, at the end of his life, would have been less impressed by official eulogies and analyses of his political beliefs than by "how the startling beauty of his poetry reached and snapped to attention the bored girl in the last row and made her sit up and pay attention with wonder at the magic of language."
Probably the most serious and "Baconic" of Hogan's essays comes in the form of a review. Subject is an article titled "Liberation and Development: A Latin American Perspective" and later renamed "Savage Capitalism." The author, Father James Fogarty, worked as a missionary in the barrios of Mexico and is obviously a cleric in the "liberation theology" tradition. Going back to the troubles that assailed Mexico at the end of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari's term, Hogan calls attention to the fact that Salinas created 22 new billionaires but since 1994 "the poor have gotten poorer and funds intended for social services have been diverted to repay outstanding loans. Hogan adds that globalization, NAFTA and unrestrained unleashing of market forces have brought "social unrest, increased unemployment ... and an unprecedented disparity of classes." He concludes that critics "of the traditional role of the Catholic Church" like Fogarty are being heard "in the hills of Guerrero, the jungles of Chiapas and the barrios of Mexico City." On a lighter note, Hogan is both witty and entertaining when he writes about Mexico's insects ("The Crawling Things of Paradise"), a barrio dance band "Los Tigres del Norte" and the so-titled "Street People of Jalisco."
Ideology
My sole reservation about this well-crafted, lucidly written work is ideological rather than literary. In a piece on Fidel Castro's visit to Guadalajara, Hogan acknowledges the Cuban dictator's faults but still seems to arrive at the conclusion that the "Maximum Leader" is more sinned against than sinning. I dissent from this view and see the transition from Batista to Castro as a microcosmic tropical version of a change from, say, Chiang Kai-shek to Stalin - a corrupt and incompetent warlord replaced by a sponsor of the gulag with an appalling human rights record. During the Gorbachev era, last years of the Soviet empire, Castro banned several Soviet publications on grounds that they deviated from the Marxist-Leninist true faith.
As noted, this cavil is purely political and in no way dims my admiration for Michael Hogan's mastery of language or the acuity of his insights in other areas he covers.
"Mexican Mornings" is available at Sandi Bookstore in Guadalajara and soon at The Bookstore in Ajijic, Chapala and Puerto Vallarta.
- Jim Tuck, The Guadalajara Reporter
---------------------------------- This is Dr. Michael Hogan's latest book, a collection of essays written over the past decade while the author has lived and taught in Guadalajara, Mexico. This is quite possibly his best book, displaying a wide range of topics and an incredible maturity and intelligence that only comes when one's perspectives have been expanded. In one essay, "Letter to a Troubled Student," he deals with the Zapatista uprising of Chiapas, Mexico, telling his student that it is not scary that a group of Indians are taking on the Mexican government, but that, in any war, the truth is always the first victim. To him, and to a lot of us, that is truly scary. Through this essay, marked for its open-mindedness and its intelligence, Hogan is able to explain how his fears transcend the egocentric level, acheiving a greater understanding and universality. This is the modus operandi for the rest of the book, which is a collection of essays written in Mexico over a period of the past ten years. They relate the expatriate experience, but they differ from other expatriate books because these essays are observations told through the eyes of a person who is committed to the lifelong quest of knowledge, a person who is committed to learning about his surroundings. All the essays are examples of a deep thought process, and one gets the realization that the author is just as much the teacher as he is the student.
One of the best examples of this, and also one of the defining elements of the book itself is the obvious influence that Mexican Poet Octavio Paz had and still has on Hogan's life. Paz's presence is everywhere in the book; the musicality of his poetry helping Hogan the young boy overcome his stuttering problem, the incisive nature of his essays helping Hogan the teacher in teaching the Odyssey to his ninth graders, the profound depth of his social critiques helping Hogan the human being understand humanity and the Mexican better.
This book is a deep, insightful study into the psychology of the expatriate. In my opinion it is a peer to that other great book about the human condition, "The Labyrinth of Solitude." It is also the only expatriate book that is fully able to document the reasons why a person chooses to leave his home country. It interacts with the reader on many levels, displaying intelligence, while appealing to the poets, the teachers, the scholars, the human beings in all of us. It also displays a deep love for a country that is not the native land for the author, nor for many expatriates. And it is this love that makes the book, and the essays within so compelling. I am reminded at this point, while searching for the place to end my review, of some lyrics from the song "Atlanta" by the Stone Temple Pilots. "Visions of Mexico seduce me, It goes to my head so carefully."The Expatriate, November 26, 2001
Reviewer: Chris Hazard from Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico
---------------------------------- "Hogan writes with deep affection for his adopted country, mixed with an insider's keen interest about things Mexican: He adroitly highlights the best, and sometimes the worst, of life in this setting. The inexhaustible patience and forgiveness of the Mexican character is portrayed in many of his narratives, in which life is lived in the slow lane but with a degree of dignity and grace that might explain why so many North Americans choose to call Mexico home."
- Danny Root, former U.S. Consul General, Guadalajara, Mexico.
---------------------------------- "This is as eclectic a collection of essays as I've ever encountered - boyhood reminiscences, the San Patricios, horrifying depredations of rats, natural themes, global capitalism, liberation theology, you name it. Yet Hogan brings it off successfully and you never get the impression that he spreads himself too thin. What holds these themes together is the author's sensitivity to multiculturalism, his astonishingly wide range of interests, and a spirit which is tolerant, humanistic and at the same time pragmatic."
- Jim Tuck, author of The Holy War In Los Altos: Mexico's Cristero Rebellion"Hogan's work is compelling, fascinating. His books should be required reading for serious American students who aspire to be educated in a multicultural world."
- William Geogiades, Executive Director, Office of International Education, University of Houston.
---------------------------------- "Hogan is a master craftsman, quiet, gentle, with a positive, uplifting humor."
- Katherine Ames, Library Journal.
Sample Excerpt
JUDAS BURNING
Here in Guadalajara the roses bloom all year, even in the dry season when the dust tastes of burning carcasses and excrement. Purple jacaranda blossoms appear in the trees, and bougainvillea covers the broken glass of the high walls of the wealthy houses in Colonia Seattle. What we depend upon is not illusion but the generous paradox of dry arroyos and night-blooming acacia, the fresh fruit and flowers sold by local women, the blanketed Indians in the tropical heat, a place where Christ bleeds darkly and the Virgin is bright with victory candles.
I have left Barrio Padre for the long walk up the cobblestone streets to the Basilica. It is not exactly a holiday or a fiesta. It is merely Thursday of Holy Week and yet the square is crowded with Huichol Indians dressed in blues, oranges, startling pinks and purples. There are stands selling roasted corn on the cob, hot corn tortillas, baked empañadas filled with strawberry, or the tuna fruit of the cactus. I have come here thinking of attending Mass (there is one every hour) and yet the Basilica is packed at ten o'clock and again at eleven after I've made my leisurely circuit of the square.
There are Judas dolls for sale, ugly little things with straw bodies. Their faces remind me of Miss Piggy, although none are as cute. There is something unholy about these dolls, like those used in witchcraft or voodoo.
A priest has come out of the side door of the Basilica and the crowd gathers around him as he reads from the Bible. The noise of the hawkers and buyers, children and dogs, has quieted mysteriously. One has the feeling of being in two worlds here. The ancient Basilica with its wooden floors and bleeding Christ, its crumbling wall and footworn stone steps seems to belong to another Church more ancient and terrible than that indicated by the modern sculpture in front which depicts mild Pope John visiting Mexico and blessing Zapopan.
Someone begins shaking seeds in a hollow gourd and others join in with wooden rattles (which are for sale) as the priest read from the Bible. "Because Judas knew the place, and brought a band of men and officers from the chief priests, with lanterns, torches and weapons..."
And now Judas comes, carried by two Huicholes with bleached white cotton pants held up by ropes for belts, their naked chests gleaming wetly bronze in the noonday sun. Their Judas is a straw man in a costume of colored feathers with a gruesome pig's face. He looks through the trees for the Savior. He looks through the crowd and the people raise their hands to block his view. To the side of the crowd are some white and red oleander bushes. This is where the figure of Christ has been hidden all along.
More Huichol men stand in front of the bushes very quietly. They could be anywhere. Outside an adobe hut in Puebla, in front of a liquor store in Tucson. They look like they have been here in this spot forever. They do not wish to attract attention. They are as part of the landscape. Horseman, pass by! But it is precisely this spot that Judas approaches. He is interested in what is behind those bushes. The sound of the seeds in the gourd and the sound of the rattles increase in volume.
The ugly pigfaced Judas is carried through the poisonous oleander bushes to where the statue of Christ is hidden. The priest intones: "He has given them the sign that whosoever he shall kiss, that is the Savior." And the straw effigy of Judas is borne by the two barechested Indians to the Christ statue. The priest reads on: "And Jesus says to the soldiers, 'Whom do you seek?' They reply, 'Jesus of Nazareth.' And the Savior says, 'I am He whom thou seeketh.'"
Then the effigy of Judas is carried to a side street. It is strung up with the help of some young boys and suspended from an ash tree. And, if Jesus is to have his hand-painted sign "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews" at the hour of his crucifixion, Judas also will be acknowledged. Hastily-written signs appear on his chest and back: "Foreign Debt," names of dishonest politicians, "Yanquis Asesinos." Judas is more than a symbol. He is the embodiment of all the betrayals suffered and those still to be suffered. A young woman hangs a sign with the name of a lover who abandoned her. On a whitewashed wall nearby are faded red letters: "PUTO BUSH CREE QUE UN LITRO DE GASOLINA VALE UN MUNDO DE SANGRE." A not-so-subtle reference to the Gulf War which was not so popular here as it appeared to be further North.
Then someone approaches with a burning stick soaked in kerosene and proceeds to set fire to the effigy of Judas. It burns for a moment or two and then explodes with a startling POOM! scattering cloth, straw and colored paper over the crowd.
Then children with their doll-sized Judases dance around. And young men holding other Judases on long poles stuffed with fireworks set them on fire. The crowd shouts and chants, the seeds in the gourds rattle like evil snakes, and everywhere the dogs are barking and howling.
Frances Calderón de la Barca, witnessing a scene similar to this in Mexico City in the last century, was appalled at the "ugly misshapen monsters" representing Judas which filled the Semana Santa streets. "Poor Judas," she wrote. "Did he ever dream then that in the lapse of ages his effigies should be held up to the desecration of an unknown people in an undiscovered country beyond the sea. A secret bargain, perhaps made whisperingly in a darkened chamber with fierce Jewish rulers; but now shouted forth in the ears of the descendants of Montezuma and Cortés."
I am reminded of another Holy Week when, broke and living in a cheap hotel in San Francisco, I read the Chekhov story in which a young man hears again the story of Simon Peter's denial of Christ during a reading of the Passion at his local church. So moved is he that he relates it to a peasant woman he meets in the village on his way home. And, as he retells the story with "the enthusiasm of one who has understood it clearly for the first time," the peasant woman begins to weep. The young man weeps as well.
The young man is struck suddenly by the durability of the story and its accessibility. It has moved both him, an educated youth, and this unlettered peasant. Separated from each other by an enormous gulf, distanced by culture and the ages from the Jewish fisherman, they are still able to weep in empathy for Peter as he denies knowledge of his Lord not once, but "three times before the cock crowed."
What grief he must have felt, this Simon! What remorse must have filled his heart; how heavy and empty his life must have seemed then. He, like Judas, had clearly betrayed his master ("I do not know the man!").
So, why is Simon, now Peter, the "rock" of the Church, while Judas is a figure of universal condemnation? One a saint and the other buried in unhallowed ground? Why is one enshrined and the other vilified if they both committed the same crime: betrayal of a friend and teacher?
Peter, hearing the cock crow, "went out and wept bitterly." Judas "repented himself and...cast down the thirty pieces of silver saying, 'I have sinned in that I have betrayed innocent blood.'" Clearly they both felt remorse. Clearly they both acknowledged their crimes and repented. Moreover, Judas actually went and made amends, returning the money he had received.
If there is any difference in these men it would seem only to have been Judas' despair. For Simon lived with his shame, his remorse, hoping against hope. Judas, on the other hand, "having cast down the silver pieces, departed, and went and hanged himself."
One of my favorite stories is when Christ returns from the dead and appears to the Apostles. He called Peter to him. "Simon," he says, "lovest thou Me?" "Yea, Lord," says Peter. "You know I love You." Jesus says, "Feed my sheep. A second time Jesus asks, "Lovest thou Me?" Again Peter replies, "You know I do, Lord." "Feed my sheep," says Jesus.
A third time Jesus asks, "Simon, lovest thou Me." "Yea, Lord," says Peter, who by now must have gotten the point. "You know I love You." Jesus says to him, "Feed my lambs."
Denied by his friend three times in succession, Jesus forgives him three times, contingent on an affirmation of love also made three consecutive times. Some divine humor there! But also an echo of his own teaching to forgive "even unto seventy times seven times."
Then finally he says to Simon: "I say unto thee thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church." A pun on petrus (more humor) and another echo, for Jesus had promised earlier that in his kingdom "the last shall be first." Peter thus receives an unearned promotion from the ranks of the twelve apostles. Unearned grace. Unearned forgiveness. Exactly what Judas in his materialistic mind-set refused. Return of the thirty pieces of silver, yes. But he followed that by a negation of hope. Refusing to believe in forgiveness, he took his life.
Peter gave nothing but his persistent "Yea!" in the face of Jesus's questions. But these "yeas" were extensions of the earlier affirmation when, full of remorse, self-pity, self-hatred and angst, he did not give in to despair but held on when there was little to hope for except "the belief in things unseen," the power of love which would eventually redeem him.
When Judas is taken in effigy from the Zapopan plaza, he is more than a symbol. He is the dry straw of all the betrayals we have suffered which clogs the drainage of our hearts, which fills our mouth with the taste of rancid wine and the dust of tombs. All the betrayals, the bitterness, the resentments which must be burned away if we are ever truly to live again, ever to be reborn.
A few months ago Texas executed still another convicted felon. After the execution reporters asked the mother of the murder's victim if, now that the man was dead, she could forgive him. "Never," she said. I will never forgive him as long as I live." I wish she could have been here today.
The sibilant strains of the Miserere in the evening echo among the emptying fruit stands and the stalls of the vendors. I buy a cup of cut melon and begin walking home. There has not been a single church bell rung in all of Mexico today. And there will not be until Easter morning. It had not occurred to me how much I would miss that. The deep and unutterable sadness of someone used to being lulled to sleep by the sound of foghorns or the lapping of waves now alone in the silent night of the high plateau of Jalisco. Hard to believe that the Resurrection is less than three days away. A small taste perhaps of what Judas felt.
