Yucatan Living

Intersections

The title of this blog is 'Intersections', which gives you a clue to what you might be reading about... or maybe not. After perusing weeks and weeks of posts, photos, links, sounds, I've decided this is a great title. Daniel Hernandez, the gifted writer of this blog who is the news assistant in the Mexico City bureau of the Los Angeles Times, writes about just about everything. Everything that comes through Mexico and intersects with everything else, including him and probably me and you too. In fact, we were pleased and surprised to find a recent blog post which was the English translation of an article he wrote for a Spanish-language publication 'Gatopardo' about visiting an old shoemaker in Ticul, Yucatan!

I was first attracted to Daniel by his book, Down and Delirious in Mexico City. I heard about the book a year or so ago, and never read it. Now, when I discovered his blog, I ordered the book on my Kindle and started reading... I find it fascinating. The book starts by recounting Daniel's first summer in Mexico City, an American-born Mexican who had before that never gone south of Tijuana. As an expatriate, I am able to relate so well to his first impressions of "real" Mexicans and of Mexico City. But beyond relating, I am amused, informed, educated and entertained by what he discovers from visiting and then eventually living there. As a Californian who has lived more years in Mexico than many Mexicans I meet in California, I have often wondered about the complications of their relationship to Mexico. Here is a book just about that!

So the book is good, and the blog is good too. Because with the blog, you never know what you are going to get. One day, it might be a report on the killing of a tourism official in Jalisco. Another time it is a first-person report about visiting the site of the blast at the Pemex tower. Another day, a video about youth culture in the middle of Mexico City, information on Afro-pop music, a discussion of race in Mexico, a little-known historic story or even an exposé of the upcoming Mexican version of the USA's TV show, Gossip Girl, and the controversy surrounding it. By the way, that article on Gossip Girl is fascinating. He writes about why it is set in Acapulco, how it will differ from the American version and what that says (or doesn't say) about Mexico's culture and class mentality. No subject is too far-ranging for this blog, and every subject is treated with insight and intelligence. Just check out this article in December 2012 that he wrote, summing up Calderon's presidency and its relationship and effect on the war on drugs in Mexico. Well written, hard hitting, interesting and thoughtful.

Bookmark this website and check it regularly... you will not be disappointed.

Daniel Hernandez is an investigative reporter and an accomplished writer. As an expatriate in Mexico, or a Mexico-phile, you are bound to enjoy his choice of writing subjects and as a literary person, you will enjoy his writing skills. We highly recommend his blog, Intersections, or his book, Down and Delirious in Mexico City (click to the right to buy the book and help support our website!).