The Road to Mexico (Southwest Center Series) [Paperback]

Lawrence Taylor (Author), Maeve Hickey (Author)

Book Description

Series: Southwest Center Series | Publication Date: August 1, 1997

The road between Tucson, Arizona, and Magdalena de Kino, Sonora, runs straight and true. Slicing through miles of rolling desert and faraway blue mountains, it could be just another fast way to get from here to there. But if the traveler has a taste for adventure and time to spare, this road can be a rich and unforgettable ride. Equipped with camera, pen, and a lively curiosity, photographer Maeve Hickey and writer Lawrence J. Taylor set out to capture whatever might come their way on the road to Mexico. They roamed and rambled, they stayed well off the beaten track, and they talked to nearly everyone they met, from wisecracking waitresses to landed gentry to street urchins dressed in rags. Their book brings to life the calf ropers and casinos, the saints and sinners, the mariachis and miracles in a no-man's-land that sometimes seems to belong neither to the United States nor to Mexico. Following the footsteps of earlier travelers-traders, warriors, missionaries, and explorers-these modern pilgrims take a hands-on approach to their journey. Throughout, both writer and photographer convey the sizzle and spice of a land where Indian, Mexican, and Anglo worlds have collided, coexisted, and melted into each other for centuries. Their eye for the hidden telling detail carries the reader straight into the action, and their zest for excitement spurs any traveler to drop everything, grab a bag, and hit the road to Mexico.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Taylor, a teacher in Pennsylvania, brings newfound appreciation and enthusiasm to the Mexican-American border area with his Eastern perspective. He and photographer Hickey ably romanticize this arid yet culturally rich landscape. More than a travelog, their work touches on history and religion as well as current immigration concerns. The book reads like the late Charles Kurault's television broadcasts on his travels around North America, with chapters that give an authentic flavor to the areas of Tucson, Arizona, and Nogales, Sonora, Mexico: "El Mariachi," "Jimmy's Diner," "Ranches and Relics," "The Edge of the Res," "Mi Nueva Casa," and "Art and Quesadillas." Recommended for large public and all academic libraries in the Southwest.?Thomas K. Fry, Univ. of Denver
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Taylor, in the company of photographer Maeve Hickey, offers the vivid record of ``a series of encounters--amusing, painful, often strange, and nearly always unforeseen,'' along the road that crosses the Sonoran desert, linking Mexico and Arizona, a road much traveled, in both directions, through the centuries. Settled first by Indians, then by settlers pushing up from Mexico, then by Anglos, the border region has always nurtured a complex and colorful culture. Taylor (Anthropology/Lafayette Coll.) does a convincing job of catching that vigorous, distinctive culture in the voices and lives of a number of individuals. He interviews, among many others, a mural painter in Tucson (where some 200 murals have been painted on the walls of barrio buildings), a crusading Hispanic politician, an elder of the Tohono O'odham people (whose reservation is on the Mexican border), and an archaeologist fascinated by the densely interwoven cultures of the area. Through their words, and through Taylor's descriptions of the region (its ranches and missions, suburbs and reservations) and its many rituals (both Indian and Hispanic), a portrait of a vital, sun- scorched area, dense with history, emerges with great precision. (34 b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 178 pages
• Publisher: University of Arizona Press (August 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0816517258
• ISBN-13: 978-0816517251
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 7 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,931,283 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Delicious narrative and evocative photos. Wonderful!, January 29, 1998

By 

Ron Mader "Planeta.com Founder" (Mexico) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Road to Mexico (Southwest Center Series) (Paperback)

From El Planeta Platica Lawrence Taylor and Maeve Hickey's The Road to Mexico (University of Arizona Press, 1997) offers a delicious narrative and evocative photos on the blue highways stretching from Tucson, Arizona to Magdalena de Kino, Sonora. "The Old Nogales Highway is a road, like the fabled Route 66, shares in an American romance different from that of that of the interstate. Here, the up-to-date sits awkwardly, unstylishly cheek by jowl with the embarrassingly eccentric and the downright ugly." (p. 58) Proving that travel is best enjoyed when it's not rushed, the authors take time to talk to the people who live in the Sonoran Desert. Anthropologist Taylor quotes a wide range of people from American Automobile Association clerks "Lots of cars get stolen down there" to muralists to cattle ranchers. The book finds its voice in this regional chorus and turns its focus on picturesque characters, such as the U.S.-borne mariachi who won't cross the borderline: "Fernando was not about to risk the Mexico of his imagination, of his mariachi, by penetrating that border. He would consider flying over it, landing in the center of the nation, in the Guadalajara of Mariachi Vargas, but Fernando Sanchez was not going to take the road to Mexico." (p. 9)