One book that I really want to read but can’t find anywhere are the memoirs of the San Luis Potosí cacique Gonzalo Santos. Krauze mentions it a lot in biography of power. I had a chance to buy it in a market several years ago and was short on cash and decided to buy lunch instead, figuring I’d get it the next time around. Despite years of searching, I’ve had no luck. Anyone read that one?

I’m happy to see at least one history on your list. Mexican political discourse is laden with historical arguments, and draws its conclusions and assumptions from the nation’s very long history. Krauze’s “Biography of Power” is the only one on your list that attempts to define contemporary Mexican politics and policy in terms of the nation’s long history. Even though I found it extremely useful in putting together my own modest Mexican history, it has to be read with the understanding that it was a polemical document, meant to argue (in typically Mexican form, by historical reasoning)that a Fox victory in 2000 was not only essential, but inevitable.

Unfortunately, we English-speakers DON’T take the long view, and tend to interpret Mexican events with the assumption that “our way” is the correct, progressive one. Sam Dillon and David Lida both wrote very good books, and enlightening in their ways, but likely to misguide us, if we use them as a basis for making critical judgments about Mexican events.

With that in mind, here’s a few books I have found helpful to shaping my thinking about contemporary Mexican political culture. All in English:

Elena Poniatowska’s “Massacre in Mexico”

John Womack’s “Rebellion in Chiapas” and “Zapata and the Mexican Revoution”

Will Fowler’s “Santa Anna of Mexico”

Jasper Ridley’s “Maximilian & Juarez” (a maddeningly “politically incorrect” book, full of racial and cultural stereotypes, but an excellent introduction to the ‘first world’ perception of Mexico).

John Eisenhower’s “So Far From God” and “Intervention!”