Book Review – Masiosare, nuestro extraño enemigo

Masiosare, nuestro extraño enemigo (Masiosare, Our Strange Enemy) is the sequel to the fantastic book Los mitos que nos dieron traumas. This series of books are an attempt to try to describe the sociology and idiosyncrasy of the Mexican people and its culture. Unlike the first book, this sequel does not take a comedic approach when describing such complex topic. Instead, it is really a well crafted novel of Mexican history and economics.

Personally, I find it difficult to fully comprehend the political nature of The Mexican Revolution. This book does an excellent job describing this. It breaks down the war into different episodes. Were it might sound a little repetitive, albeit necessary to fully understand the entire political environment.
As I originally mentioned this book does not take a comedic approach, however some of the actual generic views and sociology of the Mexican people are flat out hilarious. For example taking the Mexican Revolution War as an example, in current Mexico all factions minus the original ruling dictatorial government are seen as heroes. Forget the fact that all factions turned on each other causing a full scale war over the entire country that lead to the deaths 1-2 million people. Yet, in current Mexico they’re all seen as heroes, and the war is seen as a revolution even though in fact it was civil war whose end goal was a political power grab.

This book takes a really strong approach against The Mexican Revolution War (ie civil war) and its profound negative long-term effects had, culturally, politically, and economically.

Overall, this book is well worth the read even if you don’t know or care about Mexican history and politics. If anything, you’ll want to read this book if only to learn why Mexicans hate each other, and why they hate foreigners even more.