¡Viva Mexico!: Book Review of Down and Delirious in Mexico City, by Daniel Hernandez

Daniel Hernández is an LA Times correspondent covering Mexico.

Matt Sledge: Real Strange Mexicans: Down and Delirious in Mexico City, by Daniel Hernandez: "Daniel Hernandez's Down and Delirious in Mexico City charts the progress of a dark-skinned Chicano from San Diego who is Mexican enough to merit a passport, but who is also much more at ease, at least at first, on the UC Berkeley campus. After graduation, he determines to head south to reclaim his heritage, not to to the Tijuana borderland so close to San Diego but to the country's bewildering capital.

There is something realer about Mexico City, the DF, something that can't be captured in a weekend trip to relatives down I-5. Add to this noble instinct the fact that Mexico City is also quite sexy, the home to an emerging world of high fashion and high glamor and high-grade cocaine. Mexico City is safer than Washington, D.C., at least on paper, but Hernandez has in mind a life there that pushes boundaries.

He first came to Mexico City in 2002, and since 2006 he has been blogging about it on Intersections, as well as writing about it for the Los Angeles Times. If you like the blog, you'll also like the book."