John Ross (3) (1938–2011)

An irreverent history of Mexico, but mostly it's capital city, from the Pleistocene to swine flu. Mexico City is an enormous and unwieldy mess. 20 million people, 15% unemployment, housing the richest man in the world and many of the world's poorest. Some of the worst air quality on the planet, and a constantly depleting water table. But Mexico City is also the national stage for Mexico the country, a city where leftist currents have taken hold from outside and from the inside. In fact, for the last decade, Mexico City has been the largest megalopoplis to be run by the electoral left for the last ten years.

John Ross has a great sense of humor and a great sense of justice. He's not a stenographer: You wouldn't have bought this book if you hadn't known that John Ross wrote several books in awe of the Zapatistas and a book about the American dinosaur Left called Murdered by Capitalism. But it's his embracing the electoral left in Mexico (from Tata Cardenas to Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador) that most surprised me. He even goes out of his way to criticize those who excoriate the electoral left (Subcomandante Marcos, the Zapatista Other Campaign, anarchists and ultraleftist students). This is especially strange given his overwhelming support of these movements in other venues.

He also has his particular peeves about city life in the Monster that I didn't necessarily share, as I read the bulk of the book inside the city itself on a trip to visit old friends. I happen to agree with his annoyance with the organ grinders, but my girlfriend who bought me this book thinks that they are lovely! And it was strange to hear the relief in his written voice that the "ambulantes" or street sellers (who are among the poorest of the Mexico City residents, subsisting entirely on an informal economy) had been forcibly removed from the sidewalks in certain areas by the police under an electoral left mayor. We also disagree on Cafe La Blanca, where Sara and I went having both dessert one night with the author, and breakfast the next morning. We'd rather go to any of the Tacos Al Pastor holes in the wall than this massive diner with it's expensive and mediocre food. But if you live here for long enough, I can imagine wanting some kind of consistency, and I guess La Blanca can offer that...

Something else I remember clearly about the book is the near outright dismissal of the Mexican Revolution. Though he finds inspiration in the struggle of the Liberation Army of the South as lead by Emiliano Zapata, the revolution was a pit of misery and death for nearly all those involved. The only people who seem to want to remember it differently are the ones who, in the end, profited most from it: the one-party-mafia-state apparatus known as the Institutional Revolutionary Party, and the wealthy classes. The poor, on whose backs the revolution was fought, despite all their deaths, did not win this revolution.

Despite his annoyance with the ambulantes, his disdain for organ grinders, his bad taste in diners, and his tolerance for the electoral left, this book is worth reading. You will delight at the stories of Superbarrio, gasp at the stories of police corruption, and be touched by the stories of the regular people who live in Mexico City.… (mehr)

The long and the short of John Ross is that he got involved in everything that might be a threat to capitalism or was felt by capitalists to actually be a threat. Ross made a lot of enemies, both real and ideological. To wax into hipster usage: Any capitalist pig in America would have paid $50 or more to the person who brought them the stuffed and mounted head of John Ross.

This writer was so impressed by Ross's book, "El Monstruo," (a hipster's history of Mexico City) that I snooped around, found a phone number and called John Ross on the phone. Born in 1938, John was sick and dying by the time I got him on the wire in 1911. He seemed glad to hear from me (a big fan) or anybody else, most likely. Death -- I am told -- is a lonely experience prior to one's demise. What happens after is anybody's guess.

Living Americans who think themselves liberal could do a lot worse than spend the next couple of years reading John Ross. "Murdered by Capitalism, for example, is a tragicomic tale that chronicles the history of organized labor in America. If (in reading) it seems that every labor activist in American history was murdered or ruined by somebody or other -- well, the facts are all typical of the things they don't teach you in school while you're a kid. Ross threw in the funny stuff to cheer you up when you're tempted to cry about the murders.… (mehr)

It's the ultimate insider's guide, and it does help to have spent time in the city, particularly as a "political tourist," and to be as fascinated with it as Ross was, to enjoy this book. His jazzy, irreverent voice isn't your graduate history professor's, and that's a plus. To those of us who met or knew John Ross, local San Francisco legend that he was, just about every line puts him right back there in front of you. But every great city deserves a history like this--one that gives you not just the vital statistics and the goings-on at the top, but a sense of daily life down the years, sights, sounds and smells -- and its own John Ross to write it.… (mehr)