El Monstruo
Dread and Redemption in Mexico City
John Ross
November 2009
ISBN: 1568584245
John Ross—poet, journalist, and globetrotting troublemaker—has lived in what the Aztec-Mexicas described as "the umbilicus of the universe" since the great Mexico City earthquake of 1985 crushed out as many as 30,000 lives. Over the years, he has watched the city—El Monstruo—pick itself up, bury its dead, and come battling back. But he is filled with a gnawing unease that Mexico City's days as the most gargantuan, chaotic, crime-ridden, toxically contaminated urban stain in the Western world is doomed, that the monster he has grown to know and love through a quarter of a century of reporting on its foibles and tragedies and festering blight will be globalized into one more McCity.
Covering 4,000,000,000 years of history from the primal broth that first spewed out the monster to the Aztec-Mexica oblivion through centuries of rapine and revolution all the way to the Great Swine Flu Panic of 2009, El Monstruo is a phantasmagoric retelling of the story of Mexico City, with which Ross's own history has become hopelessly entwined.
In the tradition of Suketu Mehta's Maximum City, Roberto Bolano's The Savage Detectives and Joseph Mitchell's Up At The Old Hotel, Ross's El Monstruo is a unique exploration of the mother of all mega-cities. Never before has anyone told from ground level the gritty, vibrant histories of this left city of 23 million faceless, fearless souls, listened to the stories of those who have not been crushed by the Monster, deconstructed the Monstruo's very monstrousness and lived to tell its secrets.
What readers are saying
"El Monstruo: Dread and Redemption in Mexico City, is an impassioned and melancholy history of Mexico's most complex, boisterous and exhilarating city...Ross' prose style imparts the coiled rage of Howard Zinn; the hallucinogenic sensibility of a beat poet; and the punchy rhythms of a tabloid scribe."
—Scott Sherman, Truthdig
"John Ross is the personification of the peoples' reporter, a troubadour for justice who has chosen to cast his lot of conscience with those who have the will to live and the heart to resist against all odds. Simply put, John Ross is the Robin Hood of journalism."
—Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army
"Monstrously entertaining and tenderhearted."
"...a brave, stirring love letter, cautionary tale and travelogue."
—Kirkus Reviews (STARRED REVIEW)
“Vividly impressionistic survey of a fascinating urban panorama,
El Monstruo makes for addictive reading.”
—Fort Worth Star-Telegram
“El Monstruo is a valentine to place and useful chronicle of an epoch that has seen Mexico’s people find their voice…
Ross’ quarter-century as witness does us the invaluable service of putting events to come in a context to understand them.”
—Denver Post
About the Authors
John Ross is the author of the acclaimed memoir Murdered by Capitalism, which was praised by Thomas Pynchon and chosen as a San Francisco Chronicle Book of the Year. Based in Mexico City for the last two decades, Ross's reporting has appeared in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, The Nation, Texas Observer, and Counterpunch, to name a few. He is the winner of an Upton Sinclair Award and an American Book Award. His books include Rebellion from the Roots, The Annexation of Mexico and the novel Tonatiuh's People.
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