April 20, 2004
Dictatorship & Democracy
From Amazon's book description..."Opening Mexico is a narrative history of the citizens' movement which dismantled the kleptocratic one-party state that dominated Mexico in the twentieth century, and replaced it with a lively democracy. Told through the stories of Mexicans who helped make the transformation, the book gives new and gripping behind-the-scenes accounts of major episodes in Mexico's recent politics."
"Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party, led by presidents who ruled like Mesoamerican monarchs, came to be called "the perfect dictatorship." But a 1968 massacre of student protesters by government snipers ignited the desire for democratic change in a generation of Mexicans. Opening Mexico recounts the democratic revolution that unfolded over the following three decades. It portrays clean-vote crusaders, labor organizers, human rights monitors, investigative journalists, Indian guerrillas, and dissident political leaders, such as President Ernesto Zedillo-Mexico's Gorbachev. It traces the rise of Vicente Fox, who toppled the authoritarian system in a peaceful election in July 2000."
"Opening Mexico dramatizes how Mexican politics works in smoke-filled rooms, and profiles many leaders of the country's elite. It is the best book to date about the modern history of the United States' southern neighbor-and is a tale rich in implications for the spread of democracy worldwide."
November 17, 2003
A Mexican Adventure
A Mexican Adventure
Because certain blog readers have recently castigated me for my failure to blog in a long time, I am going to give you a brief review of my Mexican Adventure over Covenant's Fall Break and the following week.
At an extremely wee hour of the morning on October 24, I hastily crammed the last "necessary" items into my roller bag and my backpack and streaked, bleary-eyed, to the St. Louis airport in Ben Shoemaker's (aka "Shoe's") monstrous Grand Marquis. I arrived in time to make the flight for which I had "flight listed" (I was using a "buddy pass" courtesy of my ASA pilot brother - thanks brother!), but since the four numbers I provided to the person at the flight desk were of no use (they needed one that I had stored as an image on my laptop), I was sufficiently delayed as to have to wait for the next flight an hour later. This was actually a good thing given that I needed to eat breakfast and I was planning on spending the whole day in the Atlanta airport anyway before meeting up with my MTW cohorts and heading south. After making it through security sometime later (and having been selected to go through the more thorough security check - this always seems to be happening to me!), I got on my plane and happily headed to Atlanta. On my way to Atlanta, I made two new friends, one of whom was a soldier heading back to Iraq, and the other an IT guy who had spent some time studying at a Christian college in the Ozarks. In Atlanta, I hung out in the international concourse for a long, long time - finally, however, I was on an AeroMexico plane to the Distrito Federal with Andy Coburn, MTW's Director of International University Ministries, and Joe Creech, MK (Missionary Kid) and senior at Auburn University. The flight was quite nice, although one of the stewardesses became a little bit impatient with Andy's attempts to get a Dos Equis, and after several hours in the air, we came into a damp and dark Mexico City, where we were met by Joe Harrell and company and finally made it to the Harrell's house to bed down for the night. There's more to tell for day one, but this is taking too long! So, I must leave you know, dear readers, with promises to return with more installments presently.