Customer Reviews

El Monstruo: Dread and Redemption in Mexico City

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

John Ross, the venerable veterano of US expatriate writers in Mexico City has written a very readable history of Mexico City -- "El Monstruo" -- from the pre-Columbian era to the present day. Ross himself has lived in El Centro -- the heart of the city -- since the earthquake of 1985 and in the past quarter-century has been an eyewitness to some very remarkable events. Among these have been two stolen presidential elections, a devastating earthquake, the awakening of civil society among the masses and other major and minor upheavals in the political sphere. He has witnessed the day-to-day struggle of the average person in the city and surrounding areas, knows them well and can discuss their situations with passion and empathy -- and with good humor all at once.

Some other reviewers have noted slight inaccuracies, but all told, and while I agree they exist and that his editor should have caught them, I don't think they take much away from this book. In his words, Ross takes you there -- whether it's in the midst of the Revolution of 1810, or the revolutionary chaos of first quarter of the 20th Century, to the immense protests in the Zocalo subsequent to the election fraud of the 2006 presidential election. He almost seems to have been an eyewitness to these events and it makes for page-turning reading.

One thing that Ross's book shows is the incredible, unrelenting violence in the city -- and the country at large -- resulting from extreme class inequalities and the corruption that these inequities have fomented. I find it remarkable that the Mexican people continue to persevere -- even when they know from bitter, first-hand experience that the deck is stacked against them. You gotta have a sense of humor to live in that giant city -- and a whole lotta soul, too.

And speaking of corruption? People in the US, who think that the government is broken and can't get anything done? That think our politicians are crooks will have their eyes opened wide to what corruption and injustice really look like. Ross gets into this aspect in great detail.

Also, Ross discusses the extreme environmental situation in the Mexico City metro area. This is a city that's probably the most dangerous to your health in the world in terms of environmental degradation. And there's the distinct possibility that this immense metro area of 30 million-plus people could actually run out of water -- adds to the living on the environmental edge aspects of this place.

I'd love to see a documentary film or PBS-type television series based on this book. A project such as this would really help folks on the US side to better understand how and why Mexico is what it is.

For all the above reasons and more, I recommend this book for anyone to read who wants/needs a basic, but never boring, background on the history and people of Mexico City. Use it as a point of departure for further research into the details of this amazing city. Five stars.

John Ross has written a terrific history of Mexico City. He intersperses his narrative of the past thousand years with vignettes of the people he's come to know at the Café Blanca, his kitchen and dining room in the gloriously seedy historic core of Mexico City where he has lived for more than 20 years. The book methodically covers the highlights of Aztec and Spanish development before the 20th Century, but hits its stride with the murderous debacle that was the Mexican Revolution, the Revolution's cultural success in the 1920s, and its redemption by Lazaro Cardenas, the first (and only) president to take it seriously. We are brought through the "miracle" of development through the middle of the 20th Century to the massacre at Tlatelolco on October 2, 1968, the eve of the Olympics, that began the slow death of the PRI, Mexico's ruling party. Ross steadily gains depth and color as he moves through events he witnessed himself, up to the present moment. The book has a deceptively transparent, conversational style; it shimmers with the experiences, conversations, and readings of a man saturated for decades in his subject. Anyone who is curious about Mexico City, or Mexico itself, which is hopelessly centralized and rooted in its Capital, would profit by reading this book.

This was John Ross' last book. As he reveals in the book, he was battling liver cancer as he finished the book, a cancer that would claim his life this past January.

The book is a massive undertaking as it tries to collect and synthesize the almost 700 year history of Mexico City. It is not a typical academically written history book, which has been laboriously fact checked and consists of mostly blandly presents facts. It's more of a narrative of the history of the city as he perceives it. Using both historical documents, books, newspapers and stories gathered from people he knows, Ross tried to make sense of a chaotic metropolis.

Does he mess up some facts? sure. Does he push his extreme left wing ideology into telling his story? guilty as charged. But what Ross does best is to tell you the story of the city in a very entertaining and picaresque way. Ross might not always get the facts straight, but you will get the gist of the story and be very entertained reading about this monstrous city.

While I don't embrace his politics or his view on some of the events, what impressed me the most about this book is Ross' love for the city. Despite knowing it was slowly poisoning him, constantly disappointing him with it's corruption and crime, and even trying to kill him, (courtesy of one of Mexico City's many speed demon drivers) John Ross manages to convey his love and devotion for the place.

I highly recommend this book, specially if you have ever lived in Mexico City. It's a great telling of the story of the city, while trying to make sense of the history of the place.

and I read it straight through, but the author confuses a populist approach and opinion with carelessness about the facts. The book is sprinkled with old canards repeated as fact, ranging from things as simple as the origins of the word "gringo" to statements like "Pancho Villa sodomized nuns." Is that last one fact? Old propaganda from the Cristero war? There is no way to tell, since the author writes it as a declarative sentence and does not provide sources for anything. So I am still looking for a popular history of Mexico City to add to the cronicas of Carlos Monsivais and the portraits of the city in Paco Ignacio Taibo II's books.

This book is filled from beginning to end with fascinating, frightening, awe inspiring, awful, glorious, and gory history of the monster city that is Mexico City. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of Mexico City and it's people. What ever you thought you knew about this place will change forever. Great writing. No one in this enormous place is safe from the intense, relentless and comic investigative eye of John Ross. Churning up history and laying out all the pieces for us to see ...whether we want to or not!

John Ross died in Patzquaro, near Morelia in January of this year. He did not particularly care for what was happening in America and had a jaundiced view of how power sorted itself out in Mexico. His politics alienated many folks on the right and enamoured him with many folks on the left and many ordinary people out there in the countryside. Regardless of all of that, he was also a damn good writer. I felt that I had come to know the man after reading his book. He wrote in a deeply personal way and this book is no exception. The book is hardly objective but written to reflect the sentiments of the obscure and forgotten peoples that make up most of Mexico. Mexico is after all a rich country filled with poor people. Ross clearly has much sympathy for these people and lived among their quiet and often not so quiet suffering.

The book begins grandly enough, with a broad description of the geographical development of the place where Mexico City is located. I found that the geology of Mexico City helped shape much of its politics and social development. I saw the epochs flow and remarkably came to understand the difference between Mexican Independence and the Mexican Revolution.
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The book is peopled by the usual rogues gallery, the Cortez, Montezuma, Dias, Panchos and a not inconsiderable number of lefties. But it is his description of the ordinary peoples that resonate and much of the book is given over to their voices and ordinary passions, loves, desires, evils and purity.

That I liked the book is clear as is the admiration I hold for Ross.

Ross's Monstruo is a fascinating easy read..But--

Basic inaccuracies such as describing Victoriano Huerta's death may cause readers to question how well researched the rest of the book actually is. Ross describes Huerta as dying "in the Ft. Hood stockade while under arrest in El Paso" (to paraphrase).

Huerta actually did die in El Paso while under arrest. However, he was living comfortably in a private home under 'house arrest'...And, Ft. Bliss is in El Paso, Ft. Hood is not.

As appealing as El Monstruo is, such gaffs make the reader wonder how accurately researched it is throughout...

However, still recommended for a most colorful writing style.

John Ross has given us Mexico City from his brilliant perspective, warped though it may be.

Just what I expected. Brand new in perfect condition and delivered quickly. No complaints.

Yes, John Ross has lived in Mexico City longer than I, born and raised there, have been alive. However, his account, lively as it is, is marred by innacuracies and plain lies typical of self-hating white liberals. To wit: He says that the death of millions of indians from diseases brought by the Spanish is even worst than the Holocaust. Rubbish. Back then nobody new that these diseases where carried by germs and how they were transmitted. The Spanish, unknown to them, carried the guilty bacteria/germs. The holocaust, of course, was something done on purpose by the Nazis. Second, he claims that two early independence leaders where black. Simply nonsense. There's some claims that they had some black ancestry. That, however, doesn't make them black. He's misty eyed about the zapatistas, the so-called indian rebels, but fails to acknowledge that their leader, Comandante Zero, was a green-eyed whitey!!