Acknowledgments

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If I had not witnessed the exemplary rigor, hard work, and long hours that my daughters Catalina and Aída put into their high school and college study, I would probably have taken many more years to write this book. As it is, their love for knowledge made me realize that it was worth joining them in more than a few sleepless nights to produce something that one day might be of interest to other students. All of this, of course, was possible because Xóchitl Medina, my wife, a teachers’ teacher, taught us how to work hard and do things well. My conversations with the three of them about the stories in this book helped me improve it and see its relevance. Whether written close to or far away from them, every line that follows is owed to them.

I probably started this book, without knowing it, the first day of class at the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, in 1983. While I waited for a teacher to show up, I read André Gide’s tale of the mysterious case of a woman who had been locked in a dark room for twenty-five years; my sister had given me the book for my birthday. Thirty-two years later later I came across a quote from the same book in Sara Maza’s Violette Nozière: “The more we know of the circumstances, the deeper the mystery becomes, taking leave of the facts to settle in the personalities.”^* The coincidence speaks much about the reasons why I studied and wrote history in the intervening years, but also about the debts I have incurred in the meanwhile. The thirst to read broadly, but always returning to Jorge Luis Borges, I owe to my family, including my sister Cecilia, my brother Antonio, my mother Ana, and my late father Miguel Angel. I read Maza’s book because Kate Marshall, the University of California Press editor, sent it to me, as part of the guidance and impulse she gave to this project. I am also thankful for the work of Luis Herrán, Bradley Depew, Francisco Reinking, and Sue Carter. My collaboration with the coeditors of the series on the history of violence in Latina America to which this book belongs, Paul Gillingham and Federico Finchelstein, has also been an invaluable factor. Paul has been a source of energy and knowledge. His understanding of twentieth-century Mexico helped me sharpen my argument and place it in the right context. Federico was also central in the drive to finish this project, but also for my effort to conceptualize violence and politics. I am much obliged for their reading of the manuscript, which brought out ideas that had not been well formulated initially. My debt to the readers for the University of California Press is very deep: Mary Kay Vaughan, Elaine Carey, and Robert Buffington improved this book in decisive ways. Rob has read my last three books, so my gratitude to him is especially deep. Adela Pineda, Thomas Rath, and Benjamin T. Smith were extremely generous in reading, commenting on, and enhancing the manuscript. Ben’s generous erudition has enriched this book, which I can only hope will establish a dialogue with his forthcoming work on crime and the press.

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