There's a Word for It in Mexico

Rating:
Summary: There's a Word for This Book ...
Review: ... and the word is TERRIFIC! There really aren't any "indispensible" books, but this one comes close. It's the best treatment of Mexican culture/history that I've seen. It gives great insight into the Mexican people -- weaving their history, culture, and religious experience into a highly readable and fascinating account. For the traveller or scholar who wants to know more than how to get to the beach and how to order a Corona -- who wants to begin to understand and connect with the people -- this is your book.
There is a fair bit of repetition, but that is actually a PLUS and is obviously by design. Each word entry stands alone. The reader need not start and the beginning and read straight through, but can open to any page and read entries with complete understanding. In order to facilitate this, the authors obviously had to repeat some background from time to time.
If you find my copy that was left on a Continental flight from Houston to Puerto Vallarta in March ... enjoy. I hope you get as much from it as I did. (I'm ordering another. It's that good.))

Rating:
Summary: Best, by far, of the many Mexico culture books I've read
Review: I am headed off to Mexico to be a diplomat in the US embassy. On my bookshelf are some 25 books: language, travel, and culture. I have read them all. This is by far the best of the culture books. One reviewer said it offends. Well, I suppose that could be true in a few cases. I certainly do not want to helo institutionalize stereotypes. But based on a year of study, I think this book will be very valuable to you, particularly if you are headed to Mexico to do business. One of the best features is it's snippet style. You can pick it up, read a few hints, and put it down. Compared to CULTURE SHOCK, MEXICO, this book is fantastic. One of my language instructors is native Mexican. I have tested out several of the nuances from this book on him, and have not been steered wrong yet. Cheap at twice the price.

Rating:
Summary: Great Introduction to Mexican Culture
Review: I am so glad I have this book. I wish I had read it when first working at a Maquiladora in Tijuana from 1974 - 75, and from 1984 - 1994. Now that I am working in Mexico again, I am able to further understand, appreciate and benefit from the information in this book. For all those who work in Mexico, associate with Mexicans in the United States and care about how Norte Americanos are perceived, please do yourselves and our dear Mexicanos a sincere favor by reading this book.

Rating:
Summary: A fantastic book!
Review: I find it unfortunate that books such as these get any respect in terms of serving as a guide to a culture. This book is loaded with errors and unfounded stereotypes. I will list a few to give you an idea:

1) The author refers to the "Mexicans" and the "North Americans" as two separate groups of people. Mexicans are North Americans as are Canadians and people from the United States! (Did an editor look at this book?)

2)"Overt discrimination by Anglo-Americans is no longer a major concern of Mexicans..." One only needs to watch a news program in Mexico to see that this concern is very alive and real.

3) When the author makes claims about mestizos he writes, "Mexican social scientists now say..." Interestingly enough, he does not reference which social scientists and where they make their claim. But why would he? This book has no footnotes or bibliography! It is primarily based on the author's own impressions of Mexico and a few Mexicans that he happens to come by.

4)"Mistreatment of the Indians and mixed-blood by the Spanish for generation after generation created in them a latent blood-lust which was eventually to engulf Mexico and make it one of the world's most violent countries." "One of the world's most violent countries," this claim is based on what evidence? After all, north of Mexico's border whole populations of native people were decimated.

On this same page, the author goes on to quote numbers of killing in Columbia. Columbia is not Mexico, and the author makes no connection between the two countries other than they are both Latin American countries (he also does not cite where he is getting his numbers about killings in Columbia).

The author keeps returning to this theme of the "violent" nature of Mexicans, and basing its existence on his interpretation of the country's history. Yet he has no statistics to support his claim. For example, what are the numbers of shootings by handguns? (in a country where selling handguns is illegal). These subjective statements do not build a "Complete Guide to Mexican Thought and Culture." What they build is a narrow-minded view of Mexican culture.

5) "...Mexico will not begin to reach its full potential until Mexican women are free of most of the cultural and economic restraints of the past." This statement could be directed towards any country in the world, including the author's own. The author plays the "oppression" of the Mexican woman over and over again. However, there are no opinions from Mexican women and no research from Mexican women about Mexican women included in this book. He speaks for them (and shows his own patriarchal bias).

If you are looking for a book that will give you a patronizing cultural-imperialist view of Mexico, this is your book. If you want to continue the grievous misunderstandings that "Americans" and other foreigners perpetuate when they visit Mexico, then this is highly recommended. But if you want to actually learn about this country and culture, do not bother even opening the cover of this book.

P.S. As another reviewer said, "If Amazon made it possible, I'd give this book a negative star rating."

Rating:
Summary: flawed but extremely useful
Review: I read this book the way it was not intended to be read - straight through, rather than using it like a dictionary. It can get a bit repetitive as the author tries to fully explain how Mexico's history has caused their culture to react certain ways and to see things as they do. I must have read the sordid history of the Conquest of Mexico and its exlpoitation by both Church and Spain 25 times.

The cultural elements are well-explained, very informative and usually well-written. FREQUENT spelling errors mar the book as do occasional historical errors. His math facts concerning the growth of the Mestizo population in Mexico also conflict with one another, depending on the entry you read.

Was the book valuable? Yes, and not just to the traveller to Mexico. If you live near or work with Hispanics in the United States it will also be of considerable value.

Despite the flaws that I mentioned above, I am still giving this book 4 Stars.

A note for another reviewer of this book (Ktruse from the UK) - the reason that the author refers to Americans as North Americans in the book is that Mexicans call Americans "Norteamericanos". However, you do make a good point about the author not listing his sources for the book.

Rating:
Summary: A fantastic book!
Review: I recently moved to Southern CA, and many of my co-workers, neighbors and friends are from Mexico. I have found this book to be extremely helpful in understanding Mexican culture, which is very different from mine. In my opinion, this is a must-read for anyone studying Spanish, because it helps give a bit of background for each word covered- it goes way beyond what a Spanish-English dictionary would tell you!

Rating:
Summary: Great Introduction to Mexican Culture
Review: Most people do not realize that the country of Mexico is a very different place than the United States. Probably because the two countries are next to each other, those in the US think they pretty-much know how Mexico is and what's it's like. Basically, they cannot be further from the truth. Mexican culture and thought are very different on a very fundamental level, and Norte Americanos who travel to Mexico or deal with the Mexican people on a personal and/or business relationship need to know this.

This book is a great help in understanding these differences. Basically, if you do not want to stick out like a silly-looking gringo when you are there, you should read this book.

I wouldn't pay too much attention to that very strange negative review listed. There seems to be a hidden agenda there that doesn't have a whole lot to do with the contents of the book.

Rating:
Summary: useful but biased
Review: On a one year assignement in Guadalajara, Mexico, this book was one of the greatest prepatory tools I bought. Great two page descriptions of commonly used words that don't translate directly. I can't count the number of times I heard something during conversation and thought back to this book.

Rating:
Summary: too boring
Review: While I'd agree with the previous reviewers that the book contains bits of useful information on Mexican customs, I just couldn't bring myself to finish it. The style is humorless, politically correct, and almost entirely based on generalizations. To give you a taster of what you will encounter once and again, here is a quote:

"Like the peasants of China, whom the late Mao Zedong, founder of the People's Republic, compared to grass which is repeatedly mowed down only to spring up again, the poor peasant farmers of Mexico have been a permanent part of the rural landscape."