True Tales from Another Mexico: The Lynch Mob, the Popsicle Kings, Chalino, and the Bronx

Chalino Sanchez was a migrant worker who became a underground singer of narcocorridos -- ballads about drug smugglers - until his murder, which remains unsolved. Then he became a legend.
Two traveling salesmen plied their wares in a sweltering small town. The next day they were hanging from the town's bandstand lynched by a mob, a thousand strong.Hailed as a cult classic, True Tales From Another Mexico takes us to a colony of drag queens -- jotos -- preparing for Mexico's oldest gay beauty contest.We see how a bunch of humble rancheros invented the Michoacana popsicle, and a business model that poor people used to grow rich.We follow a Oaxacan Indian basketball team in Los Angeles as its coach fights to restore the purity of his sport, besmirched in America.Aristeo Prado was a gunfighter and robber -- a valiente trying to escape his past -- when he was ambushed on a noontime street and died going for his gun.Telenovelas, once a propaganda vehicle of Mexico's one-party state, flourished with political change and touched topics -- corruption, drug trafficking and poverty -- that once were prohibited.In Nueva Jerusalen, a theocratic village run by an excommunicated Catholic priest, residents receive voting instructions from the Virgin of Guadalupe.We enter the Bronx - the rude boys in the PRI wing of Mexico's Congress -- as they struggle with the meaning of rebellion.Some of these stories are strange and exotic. More often, though, they are from mainstream though ignored parts of Mexican life. From the fringes of the country, Quinones suggests, emerge some of the most telling and central truths about modern Mexico and how it is changing.True Tales from Another Mexico are the stories of people whose stories never get told.
“This is a scrappy, lively, solid work of reportage about the real modern Mexico. It's insightful, crammed with information, and a terrific read.” —Alma Guillermoprieto, author, The Heart That Bleeds: Latin America Now, and Latin American writer for The New Yorker