‘Mexican Enough’ Peers into Mexico’s Soul

If you’re expecting to read the Mexico version of best-seller Eat, Pray, Love, Stephanie Elizondo Griest’s latest book Mexican Enough probably has more serious social commentary than you’ve bargained for.

But if you’re interested in some true tales that will illuminate many of the issues that are driving the recent upheaval in Mexico, this is the book for you.

As the title of her book suggests, it’s Griest’s mixed feelings about her Mexican heritage that compel her to visit the country. Raised in Texas, she has a Mexican mother and an anglo father. It’s her mother’s bloodlines  Griest tells us that has made her “Mexican enough” to qualify for the scholarships, grants, and writing fellowships she has received.

But her Mexican identity doesn’t extend far beyond application forms. Having been raised in the Texas suburbs, she’s yet to become fluent in Spanish or fully experience Mexican culture.

Intrepid Reporter or Activist. It’s this outsider status that explains why her travelogue reads more like that of an intrepid reporter or activist than a woman trying to discover herself.

She begins her journey in Queretaro, a state capital in central Mexico. While attending language school, she takes her friend’s place in an apartment with three  roommates–two of whom are gay. It’s from her gay roommates and their friends, that Griest says she learns her most interesting Spanish.

They also show her the current status of gays in Mexico. While they are the first generation to manage living “openly gay” in Mexico, they still struggle with hate crimes, police harrassment, and intolerance from family members.

While her roommates are entertaining, she tires of their main preoccupations of receiving visitors and keeping the apartment scrubbed clean. At the same time, Griest’s single-minded devotion to her work begins to grate on them.

Incomprehensible Work Ethic. Unable to find fulfulling work, the roommates don’t understand why she spends the whole day chasing stories and the whole night transcribing her notes. One roommate suggests she is predisposed to such things because she is fria (cold) and interested in collecting stories about other people’s hardships for her own profit.

From Queretaro Griest heads south to Chiapas, where she stays at a Zapatista village.  She arrives just after the rebel group has declared a red alert and foreigners are urged to stay away. But this doesn’t keep Griest from spending the night at the rebel group’s camp and sharing some fascinating insights about the Tzotziles–one of the main indigenous groups that live in Chiapas.

For example, she learns from someone who studies the Tzotziles that half of what they speak is poetry. Tzotzile women wear huipiles, which are colorful blouses that reveal details about the person who wears it, including where they are from, their marital status, and something about their personality.

Trouble in Oaxaca. The next stop is Oaxaca, where Griest finds the southern state’s most popular newspaper embroiled in a strike. But it isn’t the newspaper’s workers who are on strike. It’s thugs that have been paid by the politicians to sit outside the newspaper’s offices and harass journalists.

She returns to Oaxaca when the state’s annual teachers’ strike turns into full-scale riots that shuts down the area to tourists and eventually results in the governor’s resignation.

Mexican Enough concludes with a description of the massive protests in Mexico City in 2006 after Mexico’s president Felipe Calderon of the conservative PAN party was elected over Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the liberal PRD party by a raiser thin margin.

But these are the main sections of Mexican Enough.  Griest also offers insights into the effects of immigration in Mexico and the U.S., cultural milestones such as quinceaneras, and how in the face of so many hardships Mexican people manage to aguantar (endure).

She manages to do it all with an engaging writing style that makes each story seem more like a compelling anecdote told by a friend than a dry article in a political science periodical.

For an in-depth interview with Stephanie Elizondo Griest and a YouTube video of a speech she gave about her book at Google, click here.