Book Review:Wakeup Call From Mexico, 'Spiraling Toward Chaos
Book Review: Spiraling Toward Chaos
By Fred Elbel
Volume 20, Number 2 (Winter 2009-2010)
Issue theme: "Timeout! The case for a moratorium on legal immigration."
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Wakeup Call From Mexico
An Historical and Contemporary Understanding of Mexico’s Pandemic Violence, Drug War, Kidnappings, and Illegal Immigration; How to Safeguard America as America Spirals Toward Chaos
By Wilson Beck
Mucho Press
Occasionally, a book is published which, while providing a myriad of details on a subject matter, also conveys the complete gestalt — the big picture. Wakeup Call From Mexico is such a book. Immensely readable, this book describes Mexico’s violent history, its class-based society, its ineffective and corrupt political system, and the serious threat that Mexico as a nearly failed state poses to the United States. The historical perspective alone makes this book required reading for all concerned with U.S.-Mexico relations and unending illegal immigration across the unsecured U.S.-Mexico border.
The author, Wilson Beck, possesses substantial credibility as one who has spent more than forty years in Mexico as his second home. As a true Mexicophile, he has studied Mexico’s history, people and cultural differences that have now taken it to the brink of catastrophe. Mexico Lindo (beautiful Mexico) has become Mexico Pilogrosso (dangerous Mexico). An examination of Mexico’s enthralling history reveals why.
Mexico’s Golden Age
When Cortéz landed in 1519 and claimed the region for Spain, there were between 10 and 30 million inhabitants in Mexico, yet when the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock in 1620, there were probably fewer than 5 million inhabitants in the region known today as the U.S. The floating gardens of Tenochititlán (Mexico City) were surrounded by a million people while the largest European cities supported about 300,000. Beck states quite succinctly that “Pre-Columbian civilization in the U.S. was rudimentary to that of Mexico.â€