Tom Haines Goes to Mexico

The Boston Globe published the first installment yesterday of a two-part series about Mexico by Tom Haines. He covers a lot of ground and writes evocatively of the uneasy relationship between Mexico and the United States.

One country was born from England, the other from Spain. Each brutalized its indigenous people. The United States isolated those who remained; Mexico included them, if barely. A war ended in 1848 with a new border, one of the longest in the world.

Markets opened. Dollars go south. Millions of Mexicans come north to work and live. They make up roughly one-third of all immigrants to the United States. A new culture digs deeper in Los Angeles and San Antonio, but also in Seattle and Des Moines. In East Boston, they hail from Jalisco. In New Hampshire, from Zacatecas.

Our future, however distant, is one.

Haines was recently named the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalist of the Year by the Society of American Travel Writers. He’s one of the few—if not the only—travel writers with a newspaper Web page showcasing his work.

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