On the Plain of Snakes by Paul Theroux *** (of 4)

As he did in Dark Star Safari, Paul Theroux's north to south bus trip through Africa, On the Plain of Snakes recounts Theroux's north-to-south overland journey through Mexico. Now in his 80s and feeling disregarded by an American society that forsakes the elderly, Theroux headed to Mexico to write a travelogue in a country that reveres its older citizens. He drove his own car beginning from home in Massachusetts.

Racing to cross the border

Dodging Narco-warlords who control life along the US-Mexican border and coyotes who smuggle Mexicans into the United States, Theroux started his journey by skipping back and forth across the contended border from west to east before making a full plunge southward. On the US side he spoke with Mexican agricultural workers, most of them undocumented in the US laboring to tend and harvest our food supply. On the Mexican side of the fence, he met Mexicans working for a few dollars a day to manufacture the appliances and cars that NAFTA makes available for American consumers. What drives workers on both sides is a desperate need for income. 

Before he has barely placed both feet fully into Mexico, Theroux has made clear that the Mexican government is not fully in control of its country and that overwhelming poverty is an omnipresent narrative moving Mexicans northward. Immediately, as a reader, you must contend with forces that are so untenable that they uproot someone from a Mexican home to do work in our country that none of us would be willing to undertake.

What follows is a trip reminiscent of Heart of Darkness. As Theroux journeys southward not only does poverty grow greater, but so, too, does the proportion of Mexico's population become increasingly indigenous. Indigenous Mexicans soldier on, sometimes literally, as Mexico's government and narco-trafficers (often one and the same) marginalize, traffic, and massacre native peoples and communities. Slowly, as Theroux shines his car's headlamps into remote Indian villages the reasons why a young Mixtec might begin walking thousands of miles northward come into focus. Picking lettuce as an undocumented worker in America might provide a more promising future than struggling for survival in an infertile village utterly dismissed by Mexico's central government in the overwhelmingly large Mexico City.

Mixtec kitchen

Theroux's book is very long and highly opinionated, rights he has probably earned by a lifetime of successful travel writing. His skills are on full display. Try as I might I could not discover any seams as Theroux weaved history, literature, interview, personal anecdote, geography, meals taken, and friends made into a tapestry of exquisite color and intricacy.