When Alfredo Corchado moved to Philadelphia in 1987, he felt like he was the only Mexican in the city. But in a restaurant called Tequilas, he connected with two other Mexicans and a Mexican-American who also felt isolated. Over the next three decades, the four friends continued to gather to share their Mexican roots and their love for tequila. One was a radical activist, another a restaurant entrepreneur, the third a lawyer and politician. Alfredo, meanwhile, was a young reporter for the Wall Street Journal. Patrias fuses the political and the personal. It tells the story of the last great Mexican migration through the eyes of four friends at a time when the Mexican population in the United States was 700,000 people during the 1970s to more than 35 million people today. It is the history of the United States in a painful political and economic transition.