This Is Mexico is a collection of essays on the often magical and mysterious—and sometimes heartrending—workings of everyday life in Mexico, written from the perspective of an American expatriate. By turns humorous and poignant, Merchasin provides an informed look at Mexican culture and history, exploring everything from healthcare, Mexican-style, to religious rituals; from the educational role of the telenovela to the cultural subtleties of the Spanish language. Written with a clear eye for details, a warm heart for Mexico, and a lively sense of humor, This Is Mexico is an insider's look at the joys, sorrows, and challenges of life in this complex country.

In a lighthearted, uplifting, yet practical account, Golson details the year he and his wife spent building their dream house in Mexico for this first fun and informative chronicle of the new trend of retiring south of the border. Photos.

Mi patria desconocida: es mensaje de amor, amistad, una aventura que tiene mucho humor y diversion, con un lenguaje simple. Disfrutalo. De repente se transportaron a un mundo de placer y ya no lo pudieron evitar, ya que los dos lo deseaban, consumar su amor en una entrega total de dos almas y dos cuerpos que se aman. El exquisito embeleso los llevo a un extasis de amor, desconocido, pero placentero para los dos. En el rostro de Mary se veia un color hermoso y resplandeciente. Pedro la acariciaba como queriendo detener el tiempo, que ese momento sublime se quedara ahi entre ellos, para siempre y por toda una eternidad. --No Javi, yo tengo mas de lo que necesito, el dinero no es las vida. Con el abrazo que me dieron ayer, me basto para sentirme bien pagado, les aseguro que yo los quiero igual. --Asi se habla Pachito --dijo David emocionado--, la amistad entre los hombres es lo que mas cuenta en las vida. La amistad no tiene credos, limites, ni nacionalidades, cuando nace una amistad no importa de donde seas, que creas, o que posicion tienes, a una amistad sincera no le importa si eres rico o pobre, siempre perdura toda una vida.

Most policymakers see counterinsurgency and counternarcotics policy as two sides of the same coin. Stop the flow of drug money, the logic goes, and the insurgency will wither away. But the conventional wisdom is dangerously wrongheaded, as Vanda Felbab-Brown argues in Shooting Up. Counternarcotics campaigns, particularly those focused on eradication, typically fail to bankrupt belligerent groups that rely on the drug trade for financing. Worse, they actually strengthen insurgents by increasing their legitimacy and popular support. Felbab-Brown, a leading expert on drug interdiction efforts and counterinsurgency, draws on interviews and fieldwork in some of the world's most dangerous regions to explain how belligerent groups have become involved in drug trafficking and related activities, including kidnapping, extortion, and smuggling. Shooting Up shows vividly how powerful guerrilla and terrorist organizations — including Peru's Shining Path, the FARC and the paramilitaries in Colombia, and the Taliban in Afghanistan — have learned to exploit illicit markets. In addition, the author explores the interaction between insurgent groups and illicit economies in frequently overlooked settings, such as Northern Ireland, Turkey, and Burma. While aggressive efforts to suppress the drug trade typically backfire, Shooting Up shows that a laissez-faire policy toward illicit crop cultivation can reduce support for the belligerents and, critically, increase cooperation with government intelligence gathering. When combined with interdiction targeting major traffickers, this strategy gives policymakers a better chance of winning both the war against the insurgents and the war on drugs.

Using ethnographic data from several immigrant farmworker communities in Florida, Schmidt unravels the embedded structural inequalities of U.S. society and the ideological discourses that mask them. This book is a timely and increasingly necessary look at one of the most invisible populations in the U.S., one that has been systematically ignored and continuously misrepresented.