For anyone who has ever raised a glass of tequila in Guadalajara or at lakeside,  or gazed across the UNESCO-protected agave fields of the Valle de Tequila, the name José Cuervo will be unequivocally familiar. 

In 2007, when Fouad Lakhdar came to Mexico to sell handcrafted Moroccan products, he thought it would be for six months. But he dove into life here, eventually starting a restaurant, becoming president of his local business association, getting a home mortgage, getting married to a Mexican woman, earning several advanced degrees in addition to the bachelor’s degree in philosophy he already had, becoming a registered translator (of classical and Moroccan Arabic) and a lawyer specializing in human rights, and, along the way, becoming a Mexican citizen.

“The Michael Hogan Reader” by Michael Hogan. US$14.95. San Diego: Egret Books.  

Reviewed by ColinCarberry

Hot off the presses is “Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village,” the latest literary oeuvre penned by author and historian Tony Burton.

It is not always easy to find an alternative take on historical events that is also wise.

“Lost Children Archive”—a book centering on the fate of unaccompanied young people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border and set within a fractured family’s rather grim and tense road trip from New York to the U.S. Southwest—stands out now that yet another surge of such minors is in progress.