Synopses & Reviews
In the last six years, more than eighty thousand people have been killed in the Mexican drug war, and drug trafficking there is a multibillion-dollar business. In a country where the powerful are rarely scrutinized, noted Mexican American journalist Alfredo Corchado refuses to shrink from reporting on government corruption, murders in Juarez, or the ruthless drug cartels of Mexico. A paramilitary group spun off from the Gulf cartel, the Zetas, controls key drug routes in the north of the country. In 2007, Corchado received a tip that he could be their next target and he had twenty four hours to find out if the threat was true.
Rather than leave his country, Corchado went out into the Mexican countryside to trace investigate the threat. As he frantically contacted his sources, Corchado suspected the threat was his punishment for returning to Mexico against his mother's wishes. His parents had fled north after the death of their young daughter, and raised their children in California where they labored as migrant workers. Corchado returned to Mexico as a journalist in 1994, convinced that Mexico would one day foster political accountability and leave behind the pervasive corruption that has plagued its people for decades.
But in this land of extremes, the gap of inequality and injustice remains wide. Even after the 2000 election that put Mexico's opposition party in power for the first time, the opportunities of democracy did not materialize. The powerful PRI had worked with the cartels, taking a piece of their profit in exchange for a more peaceful, and more controlled, drug trade. But the party's long-awaited defeat created a vacuum of power in Mexico City, and in the cartel-controlled states that border the United States. The cartels went to war with one another in the mid-2000s, during the war to regain control of the country instituted by President Felipe Calderón, and only the violence flourished. The work Corchado lives for could have killed him, but he wasn't ready to leave Mexico not then, maybe never. Midnight in Mexico is the story of one man's quest to report the truth of his country as he raced to save his own life.
Review
"Electrifying…the portrait that Corcahdo paints is all the more heartrending for Mexico's extraordinary promise....Security and the drug war that are Mexico's biggest worries…watching Corchado struggle in the crucible, trying to do the right thing by his two homelands, one can't help being reminded…the dawn that will follow this 'midnight in Mexico' will come only if we take some of the responsibility. The health of this neighbor is integral to our own." Washington Post
Review
"Corchado looks at Mexico's darkest hour. And doesn't blink." Alan Cheuse, Dallas Morning News
Review
"A riveting account that features many of the places and personalities that have been central to Mexico's recent nightmare….Corchado is a dogged and savvy journalist who manages to be everywhere a good reported should be….A unique binational perspective on the two countries he calls home, expressing admiration for the determination of U.S. and Mexican officials to fight a shared problem by taking on shared responsibility." San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"[Corchado's] solid research and detailed understanding of the forces at work there make the book an important one for anyone who cares about Mexico, and his personal struggle with his homeland make it a raw, compelling read." Miami Herald
Review
"The secret revealed at [Midnight in Mexico's] conclusion is more compelling than Citizen Kane's 'Rosebud'… I won't spoil the ending here, but you will shiver when you get there, and you may even weep. Either way, you will understand Corchado's need to stay in Mexico and his need to bring us stories that we need to read." Texas Observer
Review
"Having lived and reported through four presidencies….His own story is emblematic….People are willing to do anything about Latin America other than read about it, or so it's been said. This is one book about Latin America that merits attention." Kirkus
Review
"This book is about the blood-drenched borderlands that divide Alfredo Corchado's two countries, Mexico and the United States, which still dominate his own life. Told against the backdrop of the horrifically violent drug wars that have turned much of Mexico into a charnel land, Corchado shares his own story and that of his family with a moving degree of honesty and acuity. Corchado's love for his immigrant family and pride in what they have achieved is palpable, yet weighted down by a sense of what they, and Mexico, may have lost forever in the exchange. In many ways, Midnight in Mexico stands as a raw, real-life parable for the paradoxes of the Mexican-American experience, and it is both a riveting and gut-wrenching read." Jon Lee Anderson, author of Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life and The Fall of Baghdad
Synopsis
A crusading Mexican-American journalist searches for justice and hope in an increasingly violent Mexico.
In the last decade, more than 100,000 people have been killed or disappeared in the Mexican drug war, and drug trafficking there is a multibillion-dollar business. In a country where the powerful are rarely scrutinized, noted Mexican-American journalist Alfredo Corchado refuses to shrink from reporting on government corruption, murders in Juárez, or the ruthless drug cartels of Mexico. One night, Corchado received a tip that he could be the next target of the Zetas, a violent paramilitary group and that he had twenty-four hours to find out if the threat was true. Midnight in Mexico is the story of one mans quest to report the truth of his country as he races to save his own life.
About the Author
Alfredo Corchadois a Nieman, Woodrow Wilson, and Rockefeller fellow and the Mexico bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News. In 2000, he was the first reporter granted an interview with then newly-elected president Vicente Fox. He lives in Mexico City.