Conversations with Moctezuma: Ancient Shadows Over Modern Life in Mexico

Reavis, senior editor of Texas Monthly, who lived in Mexico for a year, interprets the Mexican character in terms of the people's fatalism, their emphasis on family and local affairs, their perceived resistance to technology and the West's credo of personal success. His most telling observations in this rambling, forthright travelogue emerge through firsthand reportage as he covers an anti-nuke protest at a power plant, visits a village occupied by peasant guerrillas, tracks down Mayan ruins in the Yucatan, follows the 1988 presidential election marked by murders, mayhem and accusations of fraud. The shifting tapestry includes incisive commentary on Mexico's ``marginalized'' semi-employed, corruption, squatter towns and folk medicine, and Mexican Catholics' synthesis of pagan and Christian beliefs. (Feb.)