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The Road to Mexico
reviewed by Ron Mader

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Lawrence Taylor and Maeve Hickey's The Road to Mexico (University of Arizona Press, 1997) offers a delicious narrative and evocative photos on the blue highways stretching from Tucson, Arizona to Magdalena de Kino, Sonora.

"The Old Nogales Highway is a road, like the fabled Route 66, shares in an American romance different from that of that of the interstate. Here, the up-to-date sits awkwardly, unstylishly cheek by jowl with the embarrassingly eccentric and the downright ugly." (p. 58)

Proving that travel is best enjoyed when it's not rushed, the authors take time to talk to the people who live in the Sonoran Desert. Anthropologist Taylor quotes a wide range of people from American Automobile Association clerks "Lots of cars get stolen down there" to muralists to cattle ranchers. The book finds its voice in this regional chorus and turns its focus on picturesque characters, such as the U.S.-borne mariachi who won't cross the borderline:

"Fernando was not about to risk the Mexico of his imagination, of his mariachi, by penetrating that border. He would consider flying over it, landing in the center of the nation, in the Guadalajara of Mariachi Vargas, but Fernando Sanchez was not going to take the road to Mexico." (p. 9)

The authors travel south on Interstate 19, taking in bizarre roadside attractions, such as the building resembling a cow skull in Amado, Arizona. "The skull is actually the facade of a simple rectangular building within which a seemingly endless series of commercial aspirations have sputtered," Taylor writes.

There are other attractions - the Tohono O'odham Desert Diamond Casino on the eastern edge of the San Xavier Reservation and the out-of-place assortment of golf courses in the middle of the desert, the train tracks that don't meet up at the border and Luis Donaldo Colosio's grave in Magdalena.

Hickey's black and white photos successfully complement the text. The visual representation is neither stereotypical or outlandish. The cow skull building is shown here (it actually is the source of the title of the book), along with revelers, street scenes and saguaros.

Aimed at a U.S. audience, The Road to Mexico does not mince words about U.S. border policy:

"Not that the U.S. government has anything like a consistent attitude toward the border... Our government's capitalist concern with the free flow of commodities is balanced - or undermined - by a sporadic desire, usually in response to a political campaign, to prevent other sorts of free-market flow: undocumented workers and drugs. So even as the Department of Transportation reduces border red tape for Mexican truckers (though some are turned back when they show up at the checkpoint with orange crates in place of driver's seats), the customs officials are urged to stop more of the drug traffic, and the Border Patrol plays war games in the national forest. One's sense of the border depends on how he or she looks at it. The experience of "crossing" changes with time and place, and with the company one keeps." (p. 101)

The best news is saved for the end - the authors are at work on another book of essays and photos from the borderlands. But don't wait, you can begin your trip today.

Order The Road to Mexico from your local bookseller or from Amazon.com by clicking here.

The Road to Mexico reviewed by Ron Mader

The Road to Mexico
reviewed by Ron Mader