Mexico

"Juarez had lived and died. Yet was it a country with free speech, and the guarantee of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? A country of brilliantly muralled schools, and where even each little cold mountain village had its stone open-air stage, and the land was owned by its people free to express their native genius? A country of model farms: of hope? It was a country of slavery, where human beings were sold like cattle, and its native peoples, the Yaquis, the Papagos, the Tomasachics, exterminated through deportation, or reduced to worse than peonage, their lands in thrall or the hands of foreigners. ... All this spelt Porfirio Diaz: rurales everywhere, jefes politicos, and murder, the extirpation of liberal political institutions, the army an engine of massacre, and instrument of exile. ... Yet the banality stood: that the past was irrevocably past. And conscience had been given man to regret it only in so far as that might change the future. For man, every man, even as Mexico, must ceaselessly struggle up-ward."

"Sufragio efectivo, no reelección. / Effective suffrage, no re-election."

"I studied art there in the late 1950s for two semesters before I started to write. I was in Mexico City...It was an important experience in my life...For the first time...I saw that art could make strong political and social statements. It didn't have to be only poster art or cheap propaganda; it didn't have to be slogans, it could be very deep, it could be adapted to everyday life, to everything you do in your life."

"We are dependent on the Mexicans trusting us."

"You know how Mexicans are: If they go high, we go underneath, with tunnels."

"The Mexicans are a different cup of tea. They have a heritage. At the present time they steal, they're dishonest, but they do have some concept of family life. They don't live like a bunch of dogs."

"I found this joy in Mexico. And it was pagan and human. It was in the sun, in the light, in the colors, in the voices, in their smiles, and in their fiestas. Poverty could not destroy it, invasions, revolutions, tyranny could not destroy it. It is a gift of dark people, those for whom the real life begins at night deep within themselves and where everything flowers."

"The Mexican towns we had visited, were in no manner of life different upon this frontier from those of central Mexico The impression had been of a fixed stagnancy amounting to a slow national decay; the cause, a religious enslavement of the mind, preventing educa-tion, communication, and growth, giving rise to bigotry, hypocrisy, political and social tyranny, bad faith, priestly spoliation, and, worst of all, utter degradation of labor."

"Mexico is a country that has a lot of energy potential. We not only have oil; we also have shale gas. But we cannot expect that a Mexican state company is the only one that can exploit the resources. Resources will continue belonging to Mexicans. They are the patrimony of the nation. But the Mexican state must find more efficient ways to exploit those resources."

"We are a sovereign nation, and we will act as such. The exercise of sovereignty implies that, in the process of negotiation, our only interest is that of Mexico and those of Mexicans."

"This is damn good! Say, this is the best beer I've ever had. Actually, I'm just glad to be alive right now. I was up a few towns away... you know Saragosa? I was visiting a bar there, not unlike this one. They serve beer... not quite as good as this, but close. And I saw something you wouldn't believe. I'm sitting there see, small table all by myself at this bar. It's full of real lowlifes. I mean, not like this place here. No, I mean bad. Like they were up to no good. Anyway, I'm by myself... I like it that way. Meanwhile, things are going on... under the table kinds of things. Not too obvious but, not too secret either. So, I'm sitting there. And in walks the biggest Mexican I have ever seen. Big as shit. Just walks right in like he owns the place. And nobody knew quite what to make of him... or quite what to think. There he was and in he walked. He was dark too. I don't mean dark-skinned. No, this was different. It was if he was always walking in a shadow. I mean every step he took toward the light, just when you thought his face was about to be revealed... it wasn't. It was as if the lights dimmed, just for him."

": And another thing, your beer tastes like piss. : We know. : Because we piss in it! : And that's not all!"

"Are you a Mexi-can or a Mexi-can't?"

": El, you really must try this. It's a puerco pibil. It's a slow roasted pork—nothing fancy, just happens to be my favorite—and I order it, with a tequila and lime, in every dive I go to in this country and honestly, that is the best it's ever been, anywhere. In fact, it's too good. It is so good that when I finish with it, I'll pay my check, walk straight into the kitchen, and shoot the cook, because that's what I do: I restore the balance to this country. And that is what I would like from you right now. Help me keep the balance by pulling the trigger. : You want me to shoot the cook? : No, I'll shoot the cook; my car's parked out back anyway. You will kill Marquez. Do you remember General Marquez? He's been paid by the Barillo Cartel to kill the President in an attempted coup d'etat. : Attempted? : No, no, no, the President will be killed, because he's that piece of good pork that needs to get balanced out. I said 'attempted' because we don't want Marquez taking power. I need you, to put the hurting, so to speak, on Marquez after he's killed the President. Savvy?"

"If the United States submits to a division now, it will not stop, but will go on until we reap the fate of Mexico, which is eternal war."

"I don't hang out with Mexicans. Mexicans got twenty thousand dollar stereos, lots of guns and every time I go into a liquor store with one, I'm afraid we're going to rob the place. Mexicans are scary motherfuckers."

"I left, out of Tucson, with no destination in mind. I was runnin' from trouble and the jail-term the Judge had in mind. And the border meant freedom, a new life, romance, And that's why I thought I should go, And start my life over on the seashores of old Mexico."

": Where are you taking us? : Mexico. : What's in Mexico? : Mexicans."

"Sweet Rosemary, and 100 proof liquor, and rice and beans."

"Mexico's most powerful drug trafficker, Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman, had escaped again from one of that country’s maximum-security prisons. No one in this deeply sourced group was surprised. Nor were they particularly interested in the logistical details of the escape, although they clearly didn’t believe the version they’d heard from the Mexican government. They were convinced it was all a deal cut at some link in the system’s chain. Our breakfast minister even thought that Chapo had likely walked out the front door of the jail, and that the whole tunnel-and-motorcycle story had been staged to make the feat sound so ingenious that the government couldn’t have foreseen it, much less stopped it. Such an outlandish notion may not be surprising to anyone who knows anything about Mexico. But as someone who lived there for 10 years, and reported on the country almost twice that long, what surprised me were the men’s theories on why anyone in the Mexican government would have been interested in such a deal. Perhaps, I wondered aloud, Chapo had possessed information that could have incriminated senior Mexican officials in the drug trade and, rather than try him, they had agreed to turn a blind eye to his escape? The heads around the table shook back and forth."

"Sinaloa became the McDonald's of the drug trade. Customers could find its products, cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines, everywhere. Operations ran so smoothly that after Chapo's arrest in February 2014, many experts predicted that they’d continue to hum along without him. However, hopes ran high in the United States and Mexico that Chapo's arrest would herald a new era of trust between the two governments. The arrest was seen as a sign that Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto was serious about ending a long history of government corruption, and that Washington, after some skepticism, could trust him. Chapo's latest spectacular escape seems to have put an end to any such illusions. "I think the relationship has been set back ten years", the American agent observed. He said he had received calls from colleagues across the United States who seemed disgusted with Mexican officials. "If we can't trust them to keep Chapo in jail", he wondered, "then how can we trust them on anything?""

"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people. But I speak to border guards and they tell us what we're getting. And it only makes common sense. It only makes common sense. They're sending us not the right people."

"Mexico is going to be the new China because what they're doing to us is unbelievable, although they did catch El Chapo. Good? Good? They did catch El Chapo, that's good. I mean I don't know, he better not escape a third time, you know? Those tunnels, bing, boom, right under the toilet, bing boom, right up. It's pretty amazing when you think about it, right? But anyway. I have an idea: Put him on the fourth floor this time, right? No more, no more first floors."

"Donald was to my grandfather what the border wall as been for Donald: a vanity project funded at the expense of more worthy pursuits."

"There [in the US] they'll deport you. In Mexico they'll probably let you go, but they'll beat you up and steal everything you've got first."

"You boys like Mexico?"