Books like Xuxub Must Die — picked by fans

In my opinion, Bill Taylor is the greatest living American historian of Mexico. He has written big books and small books, all brilliant, all canonical, and his latest is no exception. In this labor of love, he traces the lives of two charlatans wandering the Mexican countryside, living and suffering by their wits, usually impersonating priests. The stories, in themselves, go nowhere: our two lowlife protagonists bounce from town to town, jail to jail, and never learn a thing or reach an epiphany; but taken together they paint a picture of Spanish American society as exceptionally mobile, and dysfunctionally unstable. Marked by displacement, dislocation, and immigration, New Spain gave birth to the picaresque novel, rooted in an abiding sense that nothing was ever as it seemed. This is Taylor’s real reward: a glimpse at two unpolished, real-life pícaros in the historical record.

On May 20, 2004, a relatively “ordinary” teenager and two of his friends murdered his mother, his father, and his little sister. Unraveling the triple murder, investigative journalist Sandra Rodríguez Nieto paints a brilliant portrait of Ciudad Juárez in 2004 – a city just about to become the world’s murder capital. However, even before it became the central battleground for Mexico’s competing organized crime groups, Juárez fostered a milieu of violence, rooted in impunity. In beautiful prose, Rodríguez Nieto argues that Vicente and his friends were practically driven to murder by an overwhelming sense of impunity, which “taught us that any and every savage crime was fair game.” This book is not so much about the so-called “drug war” as it is about the social world it has come to inhabit.

This is not just the story of José de León Toral – the man who killed President Álvaro Obregón in 1928 – but the story of the world he inhabited. Often dismissed as a religious fanatic, Robert Weis seeks (in a sense) to redeem Toral by contextualizing him in a very peculiar postrevolutionary cultural milieu: Mexico City’s network of lay Catholics, forced underground by the revolutionary state. Weis masterfully reconstructs this clandestine ecosystem of private masses and informal convents, and their cat-and-mouse games with the agents of state repression. I love the layers of detail, the reconstructions of daily life, and the author’s compassion for his subjects. I was skeptical at first, but by the end I was convinced that Toral’s action was political, and not driven (just) by religious zealotry.

Maybe not the littlest story, but this is a classic. What begins as a pretty straightforward story of Spanish conquest and conversion takes an (even more) sinister turn in 1562, when Franciscan priests find bones and idols in a clandestine ceremonial center. What follows is a full-blown, informal Inquisition, in which Franciscan priests tortured thousands of innocent Maya, disabled thousands more, and burned 17 Maya codices, creating a “hall of mirrors” in which conquistadores were forced to beg priests to take mercy on the Indigenous peoples. Inga Clendinnen probes the psyche of the Inquisition’s mastermind, Bishop Diego de Landa – a man sent to Yucatán to protect the Maya – and draws some shocking and disturbing conclusions, not only about the man, but about impunity and corruption in the colonial project. I am convinced she is the only historian who could have written this book.

The Rynnie Roo books are always such fun, and this one is no different. This book takes the reader on an adventure as they explore the animals that live in the Yucatan jungles of Mexico. It includes some words from the Mayan language and even talks about the many, many dinosaur bones that have been found in the region as well as the types of dinosaurs that were common there.

I love the characters Jean Johnson has created for this series and the fact that she actually grew up in the Yucatan jungle. It’s always great fun to read this one to my students here in Mazatlán, Mexico. They love learning about the other side of their country.

I grew up, like many other Yucatecans, convinced by my family and friends that Yucatecan cuisine is one of the best in the world, and it took many years and an anthropology degree for me to see this as a form of ethnocentrism.

Ayora-Diaz examines and deconstructs this belief, deep-seated in Yucatecans' minds, through his sophisticated study of Yucatecan regionalism through the lens of food and gastronomy.

The author proposes that what is now understood and acknowledged as “Yucatecan food” has been created out of three converging threads: home kitchens, recipe books, and restaurants. Through food, Yucatecans have carved a regionalism almost in opposition to a “Mexican” identity.

Weaving theory, ethnography, and food anecdotes, this book will leave you hungry, wanting to try all the food in Yucatan.

Reed’s wonderful writing style and great turns of phrase make this an enjoyable read, while his attention to detail and excellent research make it requisite to understanding the long Caste War of the Maya after 1847. It is a critical antidote to works that pay too little attention to indigenous agents, to religious motivations, and to a long-simmering insurrection with vibrant cultural voices. Other works have taken this on since, but it remains a classic.

This nonfiction history of Mexico was compelling because it details everyday life in the occupied country. It also provided details of the US and Mexico before and after the Mexican War.

We get a clearer sense of what motivated soldiers on both sides to join in the largest territorial battle in North America. For Americans it was a great adventure, for Mexicans, the defense of their homeland. I also like the author's use of irony and humor, which gives the book a balance that more academic history cannot risk.

The colonial period of Mexico was a mystery to me, so I turned to the ultimate source, this book by Paz. Surprisingly, I found that I did not agree with all of Paz’s conclusions about Sor Juana and the time she lived. He wrote from a male perspective, a middle-aged scholarly male perspective. Sor Juana was a young woman, a distinguished scholar in her own right. Had she written such a history, it would be quite different.

Sadly, there is no such book written from a woman’s perspective, so I invite you to join me in discovering what nuggets of wisdom you can in this book, truly the ultimate deep dive into Sor Juana’s life and times. Yes, I relied a great deal on Paz’s research. You will find it fascinating too.

I was given this as a present and what a wonderful present it was. Deborah Turbeville is a wonderful photographer whose work I admire. Her fashion photography was innovative, imaginative and so creative.

This book, a visual diary of her house and time in Mexico is filled with her signature blurred images, from black and white portraits to colourful interiors. It goes against everything we learn in Interiors but it’s magical, evocative, and gothic.