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Reviews
of Our Lost Border: Essays on Life amid
the Narco-Violence
Edited by Sarah
Cortez and Sergio Troncoso, Our Lost Border: Essays on Life amid the Narco-Violence, Arte Publico
Press, March 2013, ISBN-10:
1558857524, ISBN-13:
978-1558857520 (paper), $19.95.
·
Southwest
Book Award from the Border Regional Library Association
·
International
Latino Book Award for Best Latino-focused Nonfiction Book (Bilingual)
·
Finalist
for ForeWord Review’s Book of the Year Awards for
Adult Nonfiction Anthologies
This eye-opening collection of essays details struggles of Mexican and
American citizens affected by drug cartels along the Mexican-American border.
Editors Cortez (Walking Home) and
Troncoso (Crossing Borders: Personal
Essays) shift between the journalistic and the personal, depicting those
paralyzed by a systemic plague of violence. Oscillating between gruesome and
hopeful, the collection "was born of a vision to bear witness to how this
violence has shattered life on the border," yet is imbued with optimism.
The book's first half provides a backdrop for the "unacknowledged civil
war", illustrating quotidian terrors. Beginning with Nixon's 1971
declaration of war on drugs, cities along the border become a battleground for
warring factions, leaving behind a wash of maimed and murdered bodies, charred
vehicles, and facades so damaged by gunfire they crumble to reveal arches from
centuries past. Amid rampant violence, citizens begin to grow numb and the
notion of death gets sublimated. The book's latter half chronicles the
reclamation and recognition of this sense of loss, a reminder that hope is
attainable in a hopeless environment. Indeed, these essayists posit that
widespread hope for the region begins with the involvement of the individual:
"This should be our struggle."
---Publishers Weekly
Lurid
television, newspaper stories, and cliché-ridden movies about
Not a book
about Mexico or narco-trafficking per se, Our
Lost Border is meant, in the words of its editors, Chicano writers
Sarah Cortez and Sergio Troncoso, “to bear witness,” to share what it has been
like to live and travel in this region of Mexico’s many regions, and what has
been lost.
Snaking from
the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico, the 2,000 mile-long U.S,-Mexico border is
more than a fence or river or line on a map of arid wastelands; it is the home
of a third culture or, rather, conglomeration of unique and hybrid cultures
that are, in the words of the editors, “a living experience, at once both vital
and energizing, sometimes full of thorny contradictions, sometimes replete with
grace-filled opportunities.” In “A World Between Two Worlds,” Troncoso
asks, “what if in your lifetime you witness a culture and a way of life that
has been lost?” And with finesse of the accomplished novelist that he is,
Troncoso shows us how it was in his childhood, crossing easily from El Paso to
Ciudad Juárez: family suppers at Ciros
Taquería near the cathedral; visits to his godmother,
Doña Romita, who had a
stall in the mercado and who gave him an onyx
chess set; getting his hair cut by “Nati” at Los Hermanos Mesa… Then, suddenly, came the carjackings,
kidnappings, shootings, extortions. For Troncoso, as for so many others fronterizos, the loss can be measured not only in
numbers— homicides, restaurants closed, houses abandoned— but also
in the painful pinching off of opportunities to segue from one culture and
language with such ease, as when he was a child, for that had opened up his
sense of possibility, creativity, and clear-sightedness, allowed him develop a
practical fluidity, what he calls a “border mentality”— not to judge
people, not to accept the presumptions of the hinterlands, whether of the U.S.
or Mexico, but “to find out for yourself what would work and what would not.”
For many years
along the border, and in some parts of the interior, drug violence was a
long-festering problem. It began to veer out of control in the mid-1990s; by
the mid-2000s it had become acute, metastasizing beyond the drug trade itself
into kidnapping, extortion and other crimes. Short on money and training— in
part a result of a series of fiscal crises beginning in the early 1970s— the
police had proven ineffective, easily outgunned or bribed. Shortly after he
took office in late 2006, President Felipe Calderón
unleashed the armed forces in an all-out war against the cartels and that was
when the violence along the border erupted as the narco
gangs fought pitched battles not only against the army, marines, and federal
and local police, but also and especially, and in grotesquely gory incidents,
each other.
Some of the worst
fighting concentrated in the border state of Tamaulipas in its major city,
In “Selling Tita’s House,” Texas writer Mari Cristina Cigarroa recounts her family’s visits and Christmases to
her grandparents’ elegant and beloved mansion in
The strongest
and most shocking essay is journalist Diego Osorno’s
“The Battle for Ciudad Mier,” about a town shattered
in the war between the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel for Tampaulipas.
I have hope
for
---C. M. Mayo for Literal Magazine: Latin American Voices
According
to José Skinner, one of the contributors to Sarah Cortez and Sergio Troncoso's remarkable collection of laments for a lost way
of life along the frontera, the
Due to the
violence already committed against journalists on the border for years, the use
of an Orwellian euphemism such as “the exceptional social situation” is
understandable.
That and a whole
host of other flowery phrases have become the code under which people attempt
to publicly discuss such events as mass killings of undocumented migrants,
everyday extortion against business and property owners, kidnappings of the
wealthy, and wholesale takeovers of towns by drug cartel militias.
For that reason,
there was a great need for this book, and it should be noted that each of its
remarkable essays includes represents a significant act of courage on the part
of the authors, speaking truth to power.
Our Lost Border
creates a welcome opening for frank and insightful reporting, analysis and
reflection on a tragic situation still not comprehended well by many people on either
side of the U.S.-Mexico border.
The book benefits
greatly from the collaborative efforts of two highly qualified editors.
Cortez, a
Troncoso, who
hails from
Cortez and
Troncoso are to be credited for assembling an exceptional array of
contributors, encompassing professors, poets, students and journalists.
They each
eloquently and powerfully profile the border in both qualitative and
quantitative terms — clearly fueled by strong personal and professional
experiences.
In the book's
first section, “The Tortured Landscape,” Liliana V.
Blum, Lolita Bosch, Diego Osorno and María Socorro Tabuenca Córdoba
describe how the political and social territories they inhabit have been
challenged by waves of violence, and how they and their communities have
responded.
These essays,
presented in both their original Spanish texts and excellent English
translations, do an important job of educating readers about the history and
influence of the cartels, plus how people are organizing to bravely document
the narco-crimes and create a social movement against
them.
The book's second
section, “Personal Stories,” provides a platform for the authors to recount
their losses in the context of their lives as people from families who have
long inhabited both sides of the border.
There is some
exceptionally beautiful and poignant writing in this section.
In Maria Cristina
Cigarroa's “Selling Tita's
House,” she poetically describes the importance to her family of her
grandmother's home in Nuevo Laredo and its holiday rituals — and the painful
process of her grandmother's decision to sell her home and move to Laredo.
José Antonio
Rodriguez's “Sucking the Sweet” is an intensely packed, almost surrealistically
composed elegy to the contrasts in his life between his home in McAllen and his
birthplace in a tiny Mexican village taken over by narcotraficantes,
between the world of his waking dreams and the fears he and his family have
confronted now for years.
In their
respective essays, Cortez and Troncoso paint vivid portraits of the Laredo, Juárez and El Paso they have lost, in the most personal
terms — and express their outrage at the manner in which violence has become
commonplace, and so unchecked by government authority, in the places where they
have roots.
This book is
essential reading for anyone who cares deeply about the U.S.-Mexico border and
the future relations of our two countries.
It takes courage
to open its pages, but that is a necessary first step toward changing “the
exceptional situation” for the better.
---Ed Conroy for San
Antonio Express-News
Over the past
dozen years, our beloved frontera has gone
from a delightful pastiche of cultures and languages intermingling in
promising, positive ways (with undercurrents of dreams deferred) to a battle
zone where innocents die and too many young people aspire to narcohood. In the important new anthology Our
Lost Border: Essays on Life amid the Narco-Violence,
editors Sarah Cortez and Sergio Troncoso help us to understand how we got where
we are and just how much we have lost.
Part I of the
collection (The Tortured Landscape) consists of essays that trace the origin
and spread of recent border violence. In “The Widest of Borders,” Liliana Blum shatters myths (e.g., Mexican drugs are
exclusively consumed by Americans) and demonstrates that there is blame enough
for multiple parties. Lolita Bosch, in “The War, Us, the Peace,” explores the
impact that racism, classicism and lack of opportunity have had on
In Part II (The
Personal Stories), authors share the devastating impact the Mexican cartel wars
have had on a once vibrant way of life. Nearly every one of these pieces contrasts
the writers’ experiences growing up, crisscrossing a blurry border whose colors
and people shaded into each other, with a present reality that breaks abruptly
with those memories. From abandoning beloved trips into the old country to
selling off family property in Mexico, from musical genres twisted by a rough
and gaudy new cultural trend to empty streets of once teeming towns, from young
boys with AK-47s to bridges that loom ominously, the heart-breaking images of
these bittersweet memoirs moved me deeply.
Two of the more
impactful essays were by the editors themselves. Sarah Cortez, a former
law-enforcement officer, powerfully proclaims herself part of a group of
individuals “who stand against the wholesale execution of decent human beings
by thugs for illegal gain, sanctioned by a government too weak or too dirty to
act.” Sergio Troncoso closes the collection with a poignant sentiment: “It was
a better life than what we have today, and we understand that fact mostly in
retrospect, as we often do, when we lose what we value before we had a chance
to appreciate what it meant.”
Informative and
stirring, Our Lost Border is an invaluable tool for engaging in the
sorts of conversations and behavior that will allow us to turn the tide of
violence along the border. A must-read for those who dream of a return to the
border that was.
---David Bowles for
The
Our Lost Border: Essays on Life Amid the Narco-Violence
(Arte Público Press) is a bold collection of essays
dealing with these fundamental questions, an exploration of border violence and
the effect it has had on our shared consciousness and culture….
In the
brilliant and unflappable "The Battle for Ciudad Mier"
("La Batalla de Ciudad Mier"),
Diego Osorno describes not only the violence and
brutality of the narco war as it descended upon the
small town of
Sergio Troncoso's final essay, "A World Between Two
Worlds," culminates Our Lost Border
with illuminating insight. Here, he recalls his family's exodus from
He also tells
the story of Chavita, a "cousin" who saw
the possibilities of Juárez and worked to create a
vibrant music festival -- only to be forced to quit when approached by narcos wanting their cut, them threatening his family if he
refused to pay. He has since fled.
Troncoso
laments the loss of what he describes as the region's "unity":
"So the Juárez/El Paso area before the recent drug violence was not
a bilingual, bi-national, bicultural
The essays in Our Lost Border reveal just how much the
narco war has cost us, how we've become suspicious
and fearful and, worst of all, acclimated to violence. By losing our border, we
may have permanently lost everything we once were.
---Matt Mendez for
The
What has been
lost is not a political boundary line between the United States and Mexico, but
a 60-mile-wide cultural area above and below that the line; the issues raised
by the voices here reflect how and why that border has become a zone of
fear, violence and bloody murder.
Cortez (Walking
Home: Growing Up Hispanic in Houston, 2010, etc.) and Troncoso (Crossing
Borders: Personal Essays, 2011, etc.) are writers and academics now living
in
A tough but
eye-opening read.
---Kirkus Reviews
Read Troncoso’s essay about
editing Our Lost Border on his blog, Chico Lingo: The
Making of an Anthology: Our Lost Border.
Short stories: Angie Luna, The Snake, A Rock Trying to be a
Stone, and Espíritu Santo.
Essays: Imagine
Ysleta, A Day
Without Ideas, Fresh
Challah, and Why Should Latinos
Write Their Own Stories?