Customer Reviews

First Stop in the New World

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As a Mexican and -foremost- a chilango, I bought this book to be able to look at my hometown from the vantage point of a liberal, bohemian American journalist. As an outsider, Lida talks about my everyday reality without the natives' bias (determined by the prejudices, beliefs, taboos and political correctness often found in natives). He writes what he sees, but his role is not only descriptive -he also tries to understand how and why Mexico City became what it is -why is there so much inequality? Why are there thousands of children in the streets, if the city's income per head -at 25,000 USD- is on par with that of the developed world? Why are nearly all models in Mexico foreign, especially blue-eyed and blonde? How do Mexicans respond to globalization, what are their patterns of consumerism, and how is culture changing? These are some of the questions Lida tries -indirectly or directly- to tackle.

I think Lida managed to capture most of the essence of life in Mexico City. The main themes of the city -Inequality, Consumerism, Social Status, Crime, Traffic, Sex, Politics and Corruption- are all represented. Yet there is one flaw: Lida gets too carried away with his discourse of chaos and fatality and ends up emphasizing too little why Mexico City is what it is, why it has attracted so many people for so long and keeps doing so. By reading the novel, you get the impression that in Mexico City either you are really really rich or poor (or outright marginal, lumpenproletariat). Not so. Lida forgets that nearly one-quarter of chilangos have a college degree or higher qualification, and that the National University (UNAM) is the best in Latin America [...] -and indeed the Spanish-speaking world- and that it is the city's main engine of social mobility. All my family has attended the National University, which is free and has 300,000 students at the moment (it's the largest university in the Americas). So I thought that was a rather significant omission from the book, since the UNAM is inextricably linked to the large middle-class of Mexico City.

Why Lida left the middle class out of his discourse is a matter of speculation. Again, he is right to highlight the terrible inequalities of the country, but he ought to have realized that at least half the inhabitants of Mexico City lead normal middle class lives: they own their houses or apartments, have one or more cars, have formal jobs and always eat. These people are the reason why Mexico City is liberal and progressive -we've had a left-wing local government for the past 12 years, which has legalized abortion and gay marriage. So not talking about the middle classes creates a gap in the narrative of the novel.

Now, there's also a couple of things that are highly dubious. For example, the claim that male adultery is near universal in Mexico City. Really? That's what Lida's feminist friends may have told him. I've lived and studied in England and the US and don't believe that Mexican men are more or less likely to cheat than British or American men. But I could be wrong, since no one really knows. The second point is that Mexicans lie all the time. I think what Lida really meant is that Mexican culture is obsessed with not disappointing people, so "NO" is a word you don't hear much. Yet people get the meaning, it's not actually a lie. For example, if you've been invited to a party and you know you won't go, you may say to the host "I may go later, I will try" instead of "NO I won't", yet the other person will know what you actually mean. So I was slightly disturbed by that statement about how Mexicans lie all the time. I'm fairly critical of my fellow countrymen -I do think they lack civic conscience and don't always recognize that corruption is wrong, for example -but I'm skeptical about the label of "liars" applied to all.

Anyway, that's just me being over-critical because overall the book is captivating, engaging and fun. It is a book that invites us to reflect about the past, present and future not just of Mexico City but urban societies in general. I would recommend this book to anyone who finds cities interesting, puzzling and mysterious, hostile yet irresistible.

Ever motivated by his affection for Mexico City, David Lida presents First Stop in the New World, about the people and places that have shaped his own conclusion on what it means to live in the labyrinth that is el Distrito Federal. First Stop is written in the style you would expect from someone with years of experience in journalism, with a witty and authentic voice that can inform us about Mexico City like any lifelong capitalino, and still remain refreshingly apolitical. He is not afraid of clarifying the truth behind the "Wal-mart next door to the Pyramids" rumor, or the exaggeration of the frequency of kidnappings. Want to know the truth behind these two sensational stories? Read this book to find out.

Lida's literary style comes through his investigative narrative, (and evokes his other career as a short story writer), filled with characters that are fodder for stories in their own right, as he admits. He recounts details as varied as Mexico City herself - how the the culture drives the sexuality of the inhabitants; how the city inspires ingenious ways for people to become entrepreneurs; and how the urban landscape even affects what people eat and how they eat. Lida is clearly in love with the city he calls home, and like a passionate lover, the City can sometimes hurt the one who loves her: readers will be jarred by Lida's composed, calm testimony about his ordeal as a victim of an "express kidnapping". It would have been easy for anyone to write about this with certain bitterness, but Lida did not let this experience keep him away from el D.F.

As a chilangofile myself, I am happy to find that as joyously overwhelming as Mexico City is, Lida's book is not improvised like the very lives and urban sprawl he writes about; it is carefully composed with ringside accounts of someone who has been there, and stayed to tell the stories, without the insular judgment of an infrequent tourist "surviving among the natives." The book reads less like generic publications on Mexico and closer to literary journalism, which makes First Stop in the New World a book worth reading multiple times, both for its smooth prose and the startling metropolis it chronicles.

David Lida's vivid and fascinating word portraits provide a sense of intimate clarity for the myriad sights and scenes of La Capital. He has a real feel for the big picture of such an immense and tumultuous metropolis, as well as an adroitness for rendering closely observed D.F. moments and depicting the divers characters that inhabit its streets and colonias.

A hilarious yet poignant account of an afternoon spent in the company of a group of borrachos in a cantina is just one among several highlights, as is the chilling tale of his own kidnapping.

He presents a vision of Mexico City that is affectionate yet unsentimental. His love for the place is clear-eyed and his knowledge is hard-earned. He manages to cover it all: from Tepito to Polanco, from discussions of various art[s] scenes and popular culture to distinctive local religious practices and social/sexual mores, from Carlos Slim to faded night club singers. Lida is a true urban cicerone.

Chris Humphrey's "Moon Mexico City" and Jim Johnston's "Mexico City: An Opinionated Guide..." are both fine books and excellent aids for the English-speaking visitor trying to cope with Chilango-land. "First Stop in the New World..." is indispensable as a means of more deeply understanding it and will be a permanent addition to the city's literature.

I hope David Lida's book is the beginning of a new genre of literature about Mexico and other Latin American countries. For too long, the perception of Mexico in the U.S. has been shaped by news reports of crime and corruption. While conceding that these and other problems exist, Lida argues that the U.S. media's depiction of the country is sometimes "exaggerated and poorly researched."

Lida's main message is that the rich cultural elements of Mexico City make it a rewarding place to live for those who are willing to brave its many complications. In making his case, Lida does not down play the city's problems. Rather, he brings them into sharp focus. In doing so, he effectively conveys why Mexico City would be an interesting place to live or visit.

More than a "travel book", First Stop in the New World offers insights into the very character of Mexico City residents.

I've lived in Mexico City for over ten years and find David Lida's perspective on urban life to ring true. The book nicely combines investigative journalism with an entertaining, personal voice, giving it a 'you-are-there' feel.
Jim Johnston, author of 'Mexico City: an Opinionated Guide for the Curious Traveler'

Like other reviewers I love Mexico City and I am constantly asked, by friends trembling in fear, why I am going to the DF "again" and why I'm not terrified to go there.

From now on, I'm going to make them buy Lida's book and read it. He can say it better than I ever will. Then if they want to talk to me about Mexico City, we'll have some reality to talk about. Reading this book, I was deliriously happy. Lida gets it about Mexico City. His writing is clear, straight-ahead, and evocative. He offers a sense that rings true of life in the great, enlivening and fabulously weird and wonderful metropolis and especially the citizens of a city where you can find pyramids in someone's yard, and where my neighbors greet my xoloitzcuintli dog and then whisper to me (so the dog can't hear) "We used to eat them."

There is so much bad writing about Mexico, way too many misconceptions, and far too much narrow reporting of events and people who are at the extremes - movie stars, assassins, cartels, and Mexicans crossing the line into the lost (stolen?) provinces of California and Arizona. Lida tells us what the vast majority of defeños do and think and say. And eat.

Get this book, read it and join Lida in the 21st century.

In First Stop in the New World: Mexico City, the Capital of the 21st Century, David Lida rips and remixes the "hypermetropolis, the ur-urb of the American continent" into a fast-moving mashup.

The book is no Travel Channel puff piece: in the chapter on crime, "Who's Afraid of Mexico City?" Lida describes his harrowing hours, in 1996, as the victim of what locals call a secuestro express (express kidnapping), in which a pair of goons held him and his then-wife at knifepoint on a cab ride from hell, trying his credit card at various ATMs:

"Two hours is a long time under such circumstances, and we were able to engage in a little Stockholm-syndrome dialogue. The Gorilla was the most voluble. Soon after the joyride began he informed us that what was happening was not his fault but the government's, for turning its back on its neediest citizens and forcing them to steal to survive. [My wife] was quick to point out that neither she nor I had any connection with the regime.
'Les tocó,' he said, in a perfect illustration of Mexican fatalism.
Your number came up."

Still, as Lida notes in the same chapter, American reporting on D.F. is "exaggerated and poorly researched, if not blatantly irresponsible," painting the city in tabloid-gothic tones as "a locale of impossible and insane danger--Mogadishu in Spanish." To be sure, the city's no Disneyland, but as Lida usefully reminds his American readers, you have a far greater chance of getting murdered in U.S. cities such as D.C., Detroit, and Philadelphia, to name just a few.

At times, First Stop feels like a videogame based on The Labyrinth of Solitude, Octavio Paz's poetic inquiry into the Meaning of Mexico. Or maybe a cross between Amores Perros and Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project, with a Mex-tech soundtrack. (The book's title riffs on Benjamin's description of Paris as the capital of the 19th century.) Lida writes in a gently cynical New York deadpan reminiscent of Luc Sante (with whom he's friends, by the way; they met while working at the Strand bookstore in the East Village). First Stop balances the author's Tom Waits-ian fascination with losers, hustlers, and unforgettable grotesques with a political conscience that never sleeps and a profound affection for the bulletproof chilango spirit of toughing things out, improvising on the fly.

Like a good and (in the best sense) garrulous friend, Lida wants to show us every nook and cranny in the city, his city--wants us to live it on the page as he does in everyday life. He introduces us to a "hyperrich" socialite, the "svelte and golden" former Miss Argentina, who confides to Lida, without a hint of irony, that despite her maids and mansions and millions she has come to realize that the Things of the Spirit matter more, far more, than mere material pleasures. "She is to entertaining what Fred Astaire was to dance: you never see her sweat," writes Lida. He chases that snapshot with a day in the life of a homeless girl "with the enormous eyes of a gazelle" who lives on the streets, sustained by toxic inhalants. (In Mexico City, the gap between rich and wretchedly poor is almost pre-Columbian. Just like Manhattan, in other words.)

He offers a hair-raising brain scan of the typical chilango motorist, in a city where driving combines the adrenaline buzz and white-knuckle terrors of speed trial and demo derby. "If someone turns his blinkers on, other drivers take it as a sign to speed up and detain his passage," notes Lida. "To avoid getting caught by the police going the wrong way down a one-way street, [drivers] will drive in reverse for two or three blocks."

He insists we accompany him to a lucha libre (masked wrestling) match, where "watching the crowd--entire shrieking families, the musclebound stud with the hopelessly bored girlfriend, the toothless grandmother who gets so carried away that she drops the cross-eyed baby--is often more fascinating than the spectacle of the matches."

He devotes an entire chapter to the Mysterium Tremendum of Mexican street food, pausing for a reverent moment to rhapsodize about puerco profundo, taco filling made of "hunks of pork shoulder or butt, mixed with the rest of the pig--liver, heart, snout, skin, even reproductive organs."

He rejoices in the seedy delights of cantinas, neighborhood bars where a drink comes, gratis, with little plates called botanas and where chilangos "drink exuberantly, enthusiastically, passionately--anything but prudently." Cantina waiters often behave like the proverbial Jewish mother, scolding clients for not eating enough: "During two and a half hours at a cantina called La Auténtica, a companion and I between us consumed--apart from an avalanche of tequila and beer--cream of chile soup, beef broth, steak tartare, chiles stuffed with cheese, and an enormous pork shank that, once picked clean of its meat, appeared to be a lost dinosaur bone. After coffee, I asked for the check. The waiter, a wounded expression on his face, asked, `So soon?'"

When I lectured in Mexico City in 2009, as part of the venerable Festival de Mexico en el Centro Historico, Lida was gracious enough to take me on a taco crawl through the streets of D.F., where we gorged ourselves on tacos of puerco profundo (slaughterhouse sweepings, by any other name, but delicious nonetheless--I loved the tacquero's droll touch of plopping a fist-sized pig's heart amid the scraps of mystery meat on the grille, to be cleavered into bite-sized pieces as needed); fried tacos with a schmear of pig's brains; tacos de carnitas (braised pork, so meltingly delicious it's almost erotic); and of course tacos al pastor.

I asked Lida what it is, exactly, that draws a certain sort of norteamericano--Ambrose Bierce, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, him--to Mexico? Obviously, there's a powerful, mythic pull that makes some gabachos want to cut to the beating heart of an alien culture. Because, just as obviously, they don't feel it's alien. In such instances, Mexico is a Rorschach blot; our attraction to it says as much about ourselves as it does about the country.

"Foreigners find whatever they're looking for here," Lida told me, "and sort of mold Mexico to suit their obsessions or preconceived ideas. Mexico spoke to a need in me that being in America didn't fulfill. Its contradictions and sometimes downright hypocrisies, and its cynicism, answered to a world view I was developing when I first came to live here in 1990. I'm from New York, which as you know is traditionally a geographical and cultural extreme of the U.S. And I'm Jewish. So I always felt a bit removed from my cultural identity as an American. When I saw a picture of fat blonde people lined up at Disneyland, I didn't feel like one of them. I always had the impression that the world was a dark and dangerous place and if one wasn't in dark and dangerous circumstances it was a stroke of luck. In Mexico, that's more obvious. Many Mexicans wear this on their sleeve. It corresponded to my world view.

"On one hand, I've `become Mexican' inasmuch as a way of thinking here has permeated my perception of the world. On the other hand, I never felt so American as I have after living in Mexico so long, because that's how the Mexicans perceive me, whatever my own perception of myself is. Who are we, after all? The person we perceive ourselves to be, or the person the world sees us as?"

By the end of the book, the incredible things described don't seem so impossible. The author has a great style and knows something of interest when it crosses his path. I wish there were just a little more about Mexico City in context to the rest of the country. Keep in mind you're reading about Mexico City, not Mexico per se.
But just a great read.

Imagine seeing a major, foreign capital city through the eyes of an American writer who has lived there for 18 years and who is completely at home in the culture. Now imagine that the place is New York City, Washington DC, Los Angeles, and San Francisco all rolled tightly into one frenetic place. That's David Lida's Mexico City, and it is indeed a dynamic, crazy, and often wacky town.

Lida's book gives us a series of tasty vignettes of Mexico City life, from glimpses into the sex lives of capitalinos, as the inhabitants are known, to Catholicism's latest saint (unofficial), Santa Muerte, the Jesus of Iztapalapa, a tough outer district of the city. Lida also touches on Lucha, Mexico's own version of WWF, Condesa, the city's trendiest neighborhood and its trendy denizens, the art scene, life working for a U.S. multinational in Mexico City, and how completely plastered with drink you can be and still be served in the many cantinas there. The book offers in all 34 chapters, each detailing a slice of life in the Mexican capital.

Mr. Lida possesses a terrific eye for detail, as when he notes in a chapter about getting around in the city by cab, "...to protect themselves, tax drivers tend to hang rosaries and emblems of the Virgin of Guadalupe over the rearview mirrors. They will often cross themselves when they pass churches, sometimes two or three times in succession. But they rarely fasten their seat belts, which they perceive as curious, but useless appendages, like tonsils."

As someone who has my own love affair with Mexico City (though I live in Boston), I found the book hard to put down. Even though I spend about 25 days a year there, speak Spanish fluently, and have Mexican friends, I learned a lot of new things about the city.

Even if you aren't particularly interested in Mexico, this book provides an interesting view into human nature in a place unconstrained by political correctness, by an American author who also writes for Mexico's equivalent of The New Yorker. I'd highly recommend it.

Though the book's thesis--that DF is a model for the kinds of mega-cities that will be at the center of the coming century--seems like an after thought, First Stop's profiles and snapshots capture all sides of this complicated, intoxicating city. (For New Yorkers, think of a collection of the best New York Times City Section stories). From the pink mohawk-sporting luchador to the newspaper vendor saving up to build a mini-mart in his home state of Yucatan; from the radio sex show host advising her callers on proper behavior (i.e., avoid your cousins and mothers-in-law) to the city's Rodeo Drive, Lida succinctly captures just how complicated and intoxicating Mexico's capital is.