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God's Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre
From the acclaimed author of Dispatches From Pluto and Deepest South of All , a harrowing travelogue into Mexico’s lawless Sierra Madre mountains.
Twenty miles south of the Arizona-Mexico border, the rugged, beautiful Sierra Madre mountains begin their dramatic ascent. Almost 900 miles long, the range climbs to nearly 11,000 feet and boasts several canyons deeper than the Grand Canyon. The rules of law and society have never taken hold in the Sierra Madre, which is home to bandits, drug smugglers, Mormons, cave-dwelling Tarahumara Indians, opium farmers, cowboys, and other assorted outcasts. Outsiders are not welcome; drugs are the primary source of income; murder is all but a regional pastime. The Mexican army occasionally goes in to burn marijuana and opium crops—the modern treasure of the Sierra Madre—but otherwise the government stays away. In its stead are the drug lords, who have made it one of the biggest drug-producing areas in the world.
Fifteen years ago, journalist Richard Grant developed what he calls "an unfortunate fascination" with this lawless place. Locals warned that he would meet his death there, but he didn't believe them—until his last trip. During his travels Grant visited a folk healer for his insomnia and was prescribed rattlesnake pills, attended bizarre religious rituals, consorted with cocaine-snorting policemen, taught English to Guarijio Indians, and dug for buried treasure. On his last visit, his reckless adventure spiraled into his own personal heart of darkness when cocaine-fueled Mexican hillbillies hunted him through the woods all night, bent on killing him for sport.
With gorgeous detail, fascinating insight, and an undercurrent of dark humor, God's Middle Finger brings to vivid life a truly unique and uncharted world.
Twenty miles south of the Arizona-Mexico border, the rugged, beautiful Sierra Madre mountains begin their dramatic ascent. Almost 900 miles long, the range climbs to nearly 11,000 feet and boasts several canyons deeper than the Grand Canyon. The rules of law and society have never taken hold in the Sierra Madre, which is home to bandits, drug smugglers, Mormons, cave-dwelling Tarahumara Indians, opium farmers, cowboys, and other assorted outcasts. Outsiders are not welcome; drugs are the primary source of income; murder is all but a regional pastime. The Mexican army occasionally goes in to burn marijuana and opium crops—the modern treasure of the Sierra Madre—but otherwise the government stays away. In its stead are the drug lords, who have made it one of the biggest drug-producing areas in the world.
Fifteen years ago, journalist Richard Grant developed what he calls "an unfortunate fascination" with this lawless place. Locals warned that he would meet his death there, but he didn't believe them—until his last trip. During his travels Grant visited a folk healer for his insomnia and was prescribed rattlesnake pills, attended bizarre religious rituals, consorted with cocaine-snorting policemen, taught English to Guarijio Indians, and dug for buried treasure. On his last visit, his reckless adventure spiraled into his own personal heart of darkness when cocaine-fueled Mexican hillbillies hunted him through the woods all night, bent on killing him for sport.
With gorgeous detail, fascinating insight, and an undercurrent of dark humor, God's Middle Finger brings to vivid life a truly unique and uncharted world.
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
About the author
Richard Grant
109 books199 followersRichard Grant is a freelance British travel writer based in Arizona. He was born in Malaysia, lived in Kuwait as a boy and then moved to London. He went to school in Hammersmith and received a history degree from University College, London. After graduation he worked as a security guard, a janitor, a house painter and a club DJ before moving to America where he lived a nomadic life in the American West, eventually settling in Tucson, Arizona, as a base from which to travel. He supported himself by writing articles for Men's Journal, Esquire and Details, among others.
His third book Crazy River: Exploration and Folly in East Africa (2011) is about Grant's travels in harrowing situations around East Africa, including an attempt at the first descent of the Malagarasi River in Tanzania.
His third book Crazy River: Exploration and Folly in East Africa (2011) is about Grant's travels in harrowing situations around East Africa, including an attempt at the first descent of the Malagarasi River in Tanzania.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 344 reviews
June 23, 2023
Update. My friend and I had taking that Train in 1987 and the robbery started in the mid 80s to the 90s.
Chilling
While I was able to resist his book on the Mississippi Delta due to its negativity, I could not resist this one, nor could I put it down. I had been in the Sierra Madre Mountains of Mexico with my friend Julie. But we stayed where the tourists ventured, not knowing that there was any danger. But this was in the mid-80s, and maybe it was safe then. Yet, in the 90s there was trouble, if not before. The mountains, once Geronimo’s territory, has now been taken over by drug: marijuana and cocaine dealers. And these men kill anyone they desire, even for sport. They used to rop the Copper Canyon train, the one that Julie and I road on. On one such occasion, a woman was filming the robbery, thinking it was staged. She was murdered.
The book began with the author being in the Sierra Madre’s, chased by four men that he had met in a campground. It was dark, and he kept trying to find places to hide. When he heard footsteps close by it didn’t know if it was one of them or an animal. He growled, and the footsteps moved away. I had to read the rest of the book to find out what had happened.
This is not your easygoing travel story. Grant, the author, takes too many chances. I often wondered if he had a death wish. My other thought was that some would read this book as believe that it shows proof that the Mexican s are all bad. Most of the people were very kind and helpful. We had been invited into homes and fed. I have fond memories of my trips to Mexico in my VW bug or a rental car. And to our amazement, European women were traveling alone, mainly by bus, and well, so was an American woman whom I have stayed friends with all these years. And come to speak of it so did Julie when she returned a few times without me.
Chilling
While I was able to resist his book on the Mississippi Delta due to its negativity, I could not resist this one, nor could I put it down. I had been in the Sierra Madre Mountains of Mexico with my friend Julie. But we stayed where the tourists ventured, not knowing that there was any danger. But this was in the mid-80s, and maybe it was safe then. Yet, in the 90s there was trouble, if not before. The mountains, once Geronimo’s territory, has now been taken over by drug: marijuana and cocaine dealers. And these men kill anyone they desire, even for sport. They used to rop the Copper Canyon train, the one that Julie and I road on. On one such occasion, a woman was filming the robbery, thinking it was staged. She was murdered.
The book began with the author being in the Sierra Madre’s, chased by four men that he had met in a campground. It was dark, and he kept trying to find places to hide. When he heard footsteps close by it didn’t know if it was one of them or an animal. He growled, and the footsteps moved away. I had to read the rest of the book to find out what had happened.
This is not your easygoing travel story. Grant, the author, takes too many chances. I often wondered if he had a death wish. My other thought was that some would read this book as believe that it shows proof that the Mexican s are all bad. Most of the people were very kind and helpful. We had been invited into homes and fed. I have fond memories of my trips to Mexico in my VW bug or a rental car. And to our amazement, European women were traveling alone, mainly by bus, and well, so was an American woman whom I have stayed friends with all these years. And come to speak of it so did Julie when she returned a few times without me.
March 21, 2008
WOW! I really had no idea about the Sierra Madre, what it was like there and how lawless and crazy it really is.
This book was so good, I'm going to have to go out and read everything Richard Grant has written. I really couldn't put it down.
Every little detail of every little town he was in was truly fascinating (at least to me anyways). I want to hear more about the Sierra Madra; however, I think to get any deeper, you would probably have to die.
This book was so good, I'm going to have to go out and read everything Richard Grant has written. I really couldn't put it down.
Every little detail of every little town he was in was truly fascinating (at least to me anyways). I want to hear more about the Sierra Madra; however, I think to get any deeper, you would probably have to die.
October 2, 2008
Nancy Perl, Seattle's celebrity librarian, has a method for deciding when to abandon a book, and for someone like me that's a serious act, akin to betrayal, but here it is - up until the age of 50 you give the author 50 pages, and if (s)he hasn't gotten to you by then you can let the book go. For every year past 50, you give the author one less page, so by the time you reach 99, if the author hasn't grabbed you on page one, you can feel free to drop it, (it will probably slip out of your hand as your fifteenth nap of the day sets in anyway.) Today's my 62nd birthday, but even so, I gave Richard Grant 124 pages to grab me, and he didn't.
God's Middle Finger is predictable adventure journalism wherein the author, the "hero," for whatever reason - thrills, understanding, curiosity, man-hood - travels into one of the world's less pleasant places, survives, and comes out to tell us all about it. In the best of the genre we really do get to go on the hero's journey, and as the author learns something about his/her self we learn something about ourselves, and our world. Not so much with God's Middle Finger. The locale is interesting, but only nominally, the characters suffer a fatal sameness, and the situations (at least until page 124, and I suspect throughout) aren't all that enlightening. Mr. Grant goes into the Sierra Madre, meets some dicey characters, and then moves on - over and over again. I don't see how it was worth his time, it's not worth mine.
God's Middle Finger is predictable adventure journalism wherein the author, the "hero," for whatever reason - thrills, understanding, curiosity, man-hood - travels into one of the world's less pleasant places, survives, and comes out to tell us all about it. In the best of the genre we really do get to go on the hero's journey, and as the author learns something about his/her self we learn something about ourselves, and our world. Not so much with God's Middle Finger. The locale is interesting, but only nominally, the characters suffer a fatal sameness, and the situations (at least until page 124, and I suspect throughout) aren't all that enlightening. Mr. Grant goes into the Sierra Madre, meets some dicey characters, and then moves on - over and over again. I don't see how it was worth his time, it's not worth mine.
January 3, 2012
December 31, 2011 My recent reading about the border reminded me of this book, which tells about what happens in Mexico long before the drugs get anywhere near the border.
The author had a fascination with the lawless and very dangerous Sierra Madre region of northern Mexico. This area is ruled by competing narcotraficantes(drug traffickers) who produce staggering amounts of marijuana, opium, and cocaine. Law enforcement is so corrupt that there's no way to stop the problem.
Grant rather foolishly spent several weeks exploring this area alone in a pickup truck. He tried to make friends with locals where possible so he could get the truth about what goes on in all these little towns where drugs and alcohol and Mexican machismo are the ruling factors.
There's some pretty interesting and funny stuff in the first part of the book, but as it progresses, it's just one violent, drug-ridden little town after another. He does provide some alarming statistics, though. The rates of murder and rape are astounding. One hundred reported murders per month in Northern Mexico, and who knows how many unreported.
The author was repeatedly warned that the danger was very real, but continued to push his luck until he found himself literally being hunted for sport by a couple of drug-addled Mexican men. This finally cured him of his curiosity and he hightailed it for the U.S. border, cutting short his original plans.
The biggest eye opener for me was the realization that if the U.S. were ever to legalize drugs, the Mexican economy would collapse. The majority of the drugs produced in the Sierra Madre are for illegal export to the U.S., where their big money comes from. A 2001 study showed that if the drug business was wiped out, Mexico's economy would shrink by sixty-three percent.
The author had a fascination with the lawless and very dangerous Sierra Madre region of northern Mexico. This area is ruled by competing narcotraficantes(drug traffickers) who produce staggering amounts of marijuana, opium, and cocaine. Law enforcement is so corrupt that there's no way to stop the problem.
Grant rather foolishly spent several weeks exploring this area alone in a pickup truck. He tried to make friends with locals where possible so he could get the truth about what goes on in all these little towns where drugs and alcohol and Mexican machismo are the ruling factors.
There's some pretty interesting and funny stuff in the first part of the book, but as it progresses, it's just one violent, drug-ridden little town after another. He does provide some alarming statistics, though. The rates of murder and rape are astounding. One hundred reported murders per month in Northern Mexico, and who knows how many unreported.
The author was repeatedly warned that the danger was very real, but continued to push his luck until he found himself literally being hunted for sport by a couple of drug-addled Mexican men. This finally cured him of his curiosity and he hightailed it for the U.S. border, cutting short his original plans.
The biggest eye opener for me was the realization that if the U.S. were ever to legalize drugs, the Mexican economy would collapse. The majority of the drugs produced in the Sierra Madre are for illegal export to the U.S., where their big money comes from. A 2001 study showed that if the drug business was wiped out, Mexico's economy would shrink by sixty-three percent.
May 25, 2008
You know that a) this is going be good and b) this is going to be different than anything you've ever read when the opening chapter finds the author being pursued by 2 crazy men with guns in the middle of the night out in the wilds of Durango, Mexico. Naturally, after you read that chapter, with a cliffhanger for an ending, you have to wonder how he got into this predicament and you're hooked. This book just didn't let up. Grant decides that he wants to traverse the Sierra Madre Occidental, a mountain range just south of the border between Arizona & Mexico. The Sierra Madre goes south from there , for about 900 or so miles -- with canyons that are deeper than our Grand Canyon, with mines, caves, cliffs, potholed roads, little towns, drug farms and a variety of people. He begins his trip with a friend telling him not to do it but this doesn't stop Grant. Everywhere he goes he makes a new contact to help him into the areas where gringos should not be travelling alone -- often dangerous, often a bit hostile, filled with testosterone that leaks from the aura of Mexican male machismo. It's the kind of Wild West lawlessness and total anarchy that intrigues him and he finds what he's looking for everywhere he goes. At first the author really got into his journey, but after some bandit encounters, policemen trying to set him up while they share cocaine with him, the negative treatment of women by said macho men, and a brush with death, the author has had enough. But the getting there, for the reader, is a fun and wild ride that I won't soon forget. What a great book! Along with his own travels and travails, he's thrown in historical accounts of the area, biographical info about those who've lived and traveled there, and some interesting facts about the pointless war on drugs fought by the US that we're never going to win because of the huge drug economy stemming from the Sierra Madre. Incredibly interesting -- you won't want to put the book down.
Very highly recommended. I would think that most people would enjoy this book, especially people who like a sort of gonzo-feel to their reading.
Very highly recommended. I would think that most people would enjoy this book, especially people who like a sort of gonzo-feel to their reading.
January 27, 2009
I have to admit that I knew nothing about the Sierra Madre before I started reading this book. And now that I've finished, I understand more about the reasons behind why many Mexicans flee to the USA. The author of this book is a writer from London who charmed his way through the Sierra Madre in order to write about it. He said that he "began to enjoy that edgy, adrenaline-hyped feeling that comes with pushing your luck in a place you don't belong, getting by on your wits and charm and trying to make sense of it all at the same time." This book is the story of the author's travels including digging for gold, picking up hitchhikers for safety, and lots of beer.
When Cortez first returned from conquering Mexico, the king asked him to describe the newly-conquered land. He's said to have wadded up a piece of paper and thrown it on the table to show the mountains of the Sierra Madre which dominate the geography of the western side of the country. These mountains would be nearly impossible to police even if the police weren't corrupt and ready to take bribes.
For most part, the Sierra Madre is a lawless place full of drugs and murder. The author says that Mexico now has "a hillbilly vendetta culture that [is:] up to its eyeballs in the world's most murderous business enterprise: illegal narcotics." The murder rate has increased as the drug money has given people money to buy trucks, guns, alcohol, and cocaine. The average person in the Sierra Madre has had upward of 20 friends killed for no good reason. One in 6 of the inhabitants of the region are female because the males have either been killed in drunken brawls or for fun or they've gone to the USA to seek their fortunes with illegal jobs rather than through farming and selling drugs. While $10 billion of Mexico's yearly income comes from Mexicans working in the USA to support their family back in Mexico, $50 billion comes from selling illegal drugs in the USA.
According to Grant, the Sierra Madre is a place where women expect their men to cheat on them but would be killed for doing likewise. Rape is commonplace and many rapists marry their young victims. It's also a place where drunken,cocaine-dazed narcos sometimes tend toward bi-sexuality if they can find a partner. And cross-dressing cowboys become legends in their own right.
The area has it's own religious superstitions which are interwoven with ideas brought in by Christian missionaries. Most of the religion is somehow connected to beer and violence. Some of the Tarahumara religious Easter rituals the author describes are beyond bizarre. A statue of Judas is paraded around with a bladder full of beer and a protruding male body part. A grandmother chases around her grandson with a corn cob. The Virgin Mary's statue is covered so that she can't see the murder of her son. God and Satan duke it out in a drinking bout. In fact, the title of the book comes from one of the statues of God that the Tarahumaras have in which all but the middle finger of God has been broken off.
All my naivete about Mexico has been completely erased with this book such that I may never want to go back. While I'm sure not all of Mexico is so bad, I'd not want to push my luck. And I think the author's curiosity about the Sierra Madre was quite satisfied after being chased through the mountains by homicidal drunks as his journey came to an end. My only complaint about this book would be that I wish the author had included photographs. The book itself was highly readable and entertaining.
When Cortez first returned from conquering Mexico, the king asked him to describe the newly-conquered land. He's said to have wadded up a piece of paper and thrown it on the table to show the mountains of the Sierra Madre which dominate the geography of the western side of the country. These mountains would be nearly impossible to police even if the police weren't corrupt and ready to take bribes.
For most part, the Sierra Madre is a lawless place full of drugs and murder. The author says that Mexico now has "a hillbilly vendetta culture that [is:] up to its eyeballs in the world's most murderous business enterprise: illegal narcotics." The murder rate has increased as the drug money has given people money to buy trucks, guns, alcohol, and cocaine. The average person in the Sierra Madre has had upward of 20 friends killed for no good reason. One in 6 of the inhabitants of the region are female because the males have either been killed in drunken brawls or for fun or they've gone to the USA to seek their fortunes with illegal jobs rather than through farming and selling drugs. While $10 billion of Mexico's yearly income comes from Mexicans working in the USA to support their family back in Mexico, $50 billion comes from selling illegal drugs in the USA.
According to Grant, the Sierra Madre is a place where women expect their men to cheat on them but would be killed for doing likewise. Rape is commonplace and many rapists marry their young victims. It's also a place where drunken,cocaine-dazed narcos sometimes tend toward bi-sexuality if they can find a partner. And cross-dressing cowboys become legends in their own right.
The area has it's own religious superstitions which are interwoven with ideas brought in by Christian missionaries. Most of the religion is somehow connected to beer and violence. Some of the Tarahumara religious Easter rituals the author describes are beyond bizarre. A statue of Judas is paraded around with a bladder full of beer and a protruding male body part. A grandmother chases around her grandson with a corn cob. The Virgin Mary's statue is covered so that she can't see the murder of her son. God and Satan duke it out in a drinking bout. In fact, the title of the book comes from one of the statues of God that the Tarahumaras have in which all but the middle finger of God has been broken off.
All my naivete about Mexico has been completely erased with this book such that I may never want to go back. While I'm sure not all of Mexico is so bad, I'd not want to push my luck. And I think the author's curiosity about the Sierra Madre was quite satisfied after being chased through the mountains by homicidal drunks as his journey came to an end. My only complaint about this book would be that I wish the author had included photographs. The book itself was highly readable and entertaining.
April 10, 2008
This is an engrossing, depressing gross-out of a book, and my feelings about it are wildly dissonant. In brief, it relates the author's travels in Mexico's Sierra Madre mountain range, an extremely large, rugged, and dangerous place, much of it bereft of any rule of law (unless the convenience of drug lords can be called that). The people who live there have such punishing lives that their grasp of reality has been twisted out of true and much of their magical thinking abets their misery. Everyone has a gun, everyone gets drunk as often as they can. Consequently, murders (and there are many of them) are frequently random or occur because of a trivial (or even imagined) slight. Although the landscape can be beautiful at a distance, close up it is polluted, the land punished by being over-farmed, over-grazed, and savagely deforested. A superficial glance shows that this is an awful place, and a closer glance reveals that things are even worse.
All this takes place in an area that is only a short drive from the USA and some of it happens just outside the view of visiting tourists. The narco lords have begun investing in hotels and resorts to encourage tourism and consequently brutally murder bandits who prey on the guests. Of course, this doesn't stop them from going about their regular and highly profitable drug businesses. (Reading this book, I discovered how necessary drug dealing is to the economy of Mexico, and, consequently, why the American war on drugs hasn't a hope.)
This is, in short, a painful book to read, and while the author acknowledges this, his personal quest to get himself into increasingly dangerous situations (until, at last, after he is hunted at night through a forest by drunken killers with an assortment of deadly weapons, he has his fill). This attitude might be the only one possible for a clear-eyed, deadly pessimistic, but not inhumane narrative such as this to get written, but I ended up liking the author less and less as I continued reading. The book's other flaw is that inhabitants of the Sierra Madre, many of them indigenous, are hardly forthcoming, and a person would have to live among them for months, possibly years, to get to know them. So, since this author was just passing through, too much of what he writes about is his failures to get to know them. There's too much of this and it is wearying.
Even so it was an eye-opening and gut-twisting read.
All this takes place in an area that is only a short drive from the USA and some of it happens just outside the view of visiting tourists. The narco lords have begun investing in hotels and resorts to encourage tourism and consequently brutally murder bandits who prey on the guests. Of course, this doesn't stop them from going about their regular and highly profitable drug businesses. (Reading this book, I discovered how necessary drug dealing is to the economy of Mexico, and, consequently, why the American war on drugs hasn't a hope.)
This is, in short, a painful book to read, and while the author acknowledges this, his personal quest to get himself into increasingly dangerous situations (until, at last, after he is hunted at night through a forest by drunken killers with an assortment of deadly weapons, he has his fill). This attitude might be the only one possible for a clear-eyed, deadly pessimistic, but not inhumane narrative such as this to get written, but I ended up liking the author less and less as I continued reading. The book's other flaw is that inhabitants of the Sierra Madre, many of them indigenous, are hardly forthcoming, and a person would have to live among them for months, possibly years, to get to know them. So, since this author was just passing through, too much of what he writes about is his failures to get to know them. There's too much of this and it is wearying.
Even so it was an eye-opening and gut-twisting read.
August 14, 2013
Fascinating, disturbing, vivid....appreciated this first-hand perspective of this complicated region. North Americans should have an understanding of what is so near.
May 26, 2010
This is a horrible, horrible place. Richard Grant seems like an asshole, but at least he likes puppies, which is more than you can say about anyone who lives in this horrible, horrible place. Everyone who thinks pot is just a harmless drug should read this book and get to know the horrible, horrible puppy-haters who are growing your weed. Do you want dead puppies on your conscience, pothead? Didn't think so...
June 30, 2008
I am not really sure what the author intended with this book. It winds itself up nicely but never seems to go anywhere? The history of the SM is an interesting one. It's obviously a hard life and one that the addition of a corrupt society overrun with drug lords doesn't make any easier.
The author tries to investigate the SM region of Mexico and in doing so takes his life in his own hands. Some of the characters he meet along the way are interesting but the book seems rushed and incomplete. I feel for the inhabitants of the region who have to turn to growing drugs in order to make a living. They have no other choice but even this is proves futile as the drug lords usually take over the crops and leave them with nothing.
At times the book in interesting but I still can't see the point the author was trying to make?
The author tries to investigate the SM region of Mexico and in doing so takes his life in his own hands. Some of the characters he meet along the way are interesting but the book seems rushed and incomplete. I feel for the inhabitants of the region who have to turn to growing drugs in order to make a living. They have no other choice but even this is proves futile as the drug lords usually take over the crops and leave them with nothing.
At times the book in interesting but I still can't see the point the author was trying to make?
August 21, 2021
This is an incredible, often astonishing account of one reporter's descent into the heart of drug cartel darkness -- the Sierra Madre of Sinaloa. You fear for Richard Grant as he good-naturedly penetrates/stumbles into the drug-ruled world of these mountains.
At times scary, at times funny, this adventure is always well written and very entertaining.
It's so beguiling it made me want to go there!
May 1, 2013
God's Middle Finger belongs to the class of books I find most valuable: books that have pushed my self to the point where determining an angle to approach them becomes an exercise in recognizing my limitations.
To attempt an objective report on the words between the covers: Richard Grant, a white native of England has written about his travels in and attempts to explore the communities of Mexico's Sierra Madre mountains. This includes descriptions of the food, clothing, livelihoods, attitudes and norms of the people he met. And finally, the exploration he did sought more to survey and traverse the geography than to explore or seek human power structures- a choice motivated by self-preservation.
The difficult and reward of reading the book doesn't come from detached observation, though. That comes from the struggle inherent in integrating even any basic portion of the context of the adventure into my view of how the world works.
For example, fundamental assumptions like my right to exist and identity don't seem to translate. I'm a citizen of the united states that carries cards with numbers corresponding to entries in government databases, credentialed by educational institutions, supported by my relationship with businesses. None of that would hold any meaning whatsoever to the natives, outlaws, farmers and 'police' of the mountains, where a person's very right to exist seems tenuous in the best circumstances and wholly contingent on the approval and goodwill of current residents of whatever village or area the traveler enters. By that I mean Mr. Grant would not visit new areas until he knew residents to name-drop and had a 'friend' to guide him, because to do otherwise would be to risk being killed as an unknown person.
If that setting wasn't foreign enough, a place so remote that people will rob trucks for soda, where people have to grow or kill their own food, where generational feuds have wiped out families, tribes, and entire villages, drugs have been introduced. And not just the razor wire of power structures that surround something so valuable that can be produced so cheaply in an environment bereft of the social defenses created by education or functional government. The drugs themselves are freely consumed, with cocaine playing the same role as hard liquor in our society, while complimenting the sense of machismo American culture lacks, a force that says fuck or be fucked, twisting the world to the point where a refusal to drop everything and drink to unconsciousness with armed strangers is a grave insult inviting murder if handled poorly.
I don't know where to go from there. You probably have trouble imagining it— I still do and I read the whole book.
To attempt an objective report on the words between the covers: Richard Grant, a white native of England has written about his travels in and attempts to explore the communities of Mexico's Sierra Madre mountains. This includes descriptions of the food, clothing, livelihoods, attitudes and norms of the people he met. And finally, the exploration he did sought more to survey and traverse the geography than to explore or seek human power structures- a choice motivated by self-preservation.
The difficult and reward of reading the book doesn't come from detached observation, though. That comes from the struggle inherent in integrating even any basic portion of the context of the adventure into my view of how the world works.
For example, fundamental assumptions like my right to exist and identity don't seem to translate. I'm a citizen of the united states that carries cards with numbers corresponding to entries in government databases, credentialed by educational institutions, supported by my relationship with businesses. None of that would hold any meaning whatsoever to the natives, outlaws, farmers and 'police' of the mountains, where a person's very right to exist seems tenuous in the best circumstances and wholly contingent on the approval and goodwill of current residents of whatever village or area the traveler enters. By that I mean Mr. Grant would not visit new areas until he knew residents to name-drop and had a 'friend' to guide him, because to do otherwise would be to risk being killed as an unknown person.
If that setting wasn't foreign enough, a place so remote that people will rob trucks for soda, where people have to grow or kill their own food, where generational feuds have wiped out families, tribes, and entire villages, drugs have been introduced. And not just the razor wire of power structures that surround something so valuable that can be produced so cheaply in an environment bereft of the social defenses created by education or functional government. The drugs themselves are freely consumed, with cocaine playing the same role as hard liquor in our society, while complimenting the sense of machismo American culture lacks, a force that says fuck or be fucked, twisting the world to the point where a refusal to drop everything and drink to unconsciousness with armed strangers is a grave insult inviting murder if handled poorly.
I don't know where to go from there. You probably have trouble imagining it— I still do and I read the whole book.
March 21, 2010
The one-phrase rundown: this book was on sale for nine bucks and that’s a travesty.
I blasted through Grant’s travelogue quickly, finding his observations oddly reminiscent of my own. I squandered some particularly mis-spent youth on the Texas/Mexico border, watching the Sierra Madre oriental (east of Grant’s travels) hover in the hazy distance (west Texas – where mountains float and rainbows wait). I interacted with some unsavory characters and I wondered if everything I heard about the Madre’s hinterlands were true. How many gringos go blundering around the Copper Canyon country every year? Could narcos really be growing and moving so much stuff in broad daylight, with complete impunity? Looks like they were back then and things have gotten worse, if nothing else.
Grant went where many would like to go, but are either (a) afraid, like me, or (b) too smart. Many of his observations about the most inexplicable, saddening and maddening facets of the Mexican psyche were spot-on. For the life of me, I can’t imagine how he survived, but I’m glad he did. I suppose being willing to snort pico and drink until everyone else passed out, not to mention the muy importante folks he had either the luck or foresight to meet, didn’t hurt.
I particularly liked Grant’s comments on the apparent confusion and disarray of daily Mexican life. For me, one of the most compelling passages, aside from his ridiculous daily adventures, was his honest realization about the reality of what he was really doing. While drinking home-made booze with an old Tarahumara man in the backwoods of the Sierra Madre, far from consumerism and commercialism, Grant was standing on soil which has supported the likes of Poncho Villa and Apache holdouts like Geronimo. Indeed, the Sierra Madre landscape has not just stymied, but violently repelled every attempt at domestication, and Grant was seeking the thrill of being immersed in that lawlessness. But why? In his own words, he was getting his kicks – which is to say, curing his unbearable, completely safe and comfortable British boredom – in a place full of poverty and suffering, environmental and cultural destruction, orphans and widows from a slow-motion massacre. Rarely do adventure athletes, armed conflict-seeking journalists, or extreme risk junkies admit why they feel the need to risk life and limb.
The talking heads in the US foreign policy establishment are currently debating whether Mexico is a failed state, given the increasingly public clashes between the government and the narcos. Some of the kindest people I’ve ever known were Mexican, and I hope that, when the dust settles, the leaders of their country won’t be funded by the pot and coke addicts of the United States.
I blasted through Grant’s travelogue quickly, finding his observations oddly reminiscent of my own. I squandered some particularly mis-spent youth on the Texas/Mexico border, watching the Sierra Madre oriental (east of Grant’s travels) hover in the hazy distance (west Texas – where mountains float and rainbows wait). I interacted with some unsavory characters and I wondered if everything I heard about the Madre’s hinterlands were true. How many gringos go blundering around the Copper Canyon country every year? Could narcos really be growing and moving so much stuff in broad daylight, with complete impunity? Looks like they were back then and things have gotten worse, if nothing else.
Grant went where many would like to go, but are either (a) afraid, like me, or (b) too smart. Many of his observations about the most inexplicable, saddening and maddening facets of the Mexican psyche were spot-on. For the life of me, I can’t imagine how he survived, but I’m glad he did. I suppose being willing to snort pico and drink until everyone else passed out, not to mention the muy importante folks he had either the luck or foresight to meet, didn’t hurt.
I particularly liked Grant’s comments on the apparent confusion and disarray of daily Mexican life. For me, one of the most compelling passages, aside from his ridiculous daily adventures, was his honest realization about the reality of what he was really doing. While drinking home-made booze with an old Tarahumara man in the backwoods of the Sierra Madre, far from consumerism and commercialism, Grant was standing on soil which has supported the likes of Poncho Villa and Apache holdouts like Geronimo. Indeed, the Sierra Madre landscape has not just stymied, but violently repelled every attempt at domestication, and Grant was seeking the thrill of being immersed in that lawlessness. But why? In his own words, he was getting his kicks – which is to say, curing his unbearable, completely safe and comfortable British boredom – in a place full of poverty and suffering, environmental and cultural destruction, orphans and widows from a slow-motion massacre. Rarely do adventure athletes, armed conflict-seeking journalists, or extreme risk junkies admit why they feel the need to risk life and limb.
The talking heads in the US foreign policy establishment are currently debating whether Mexico is a failed state, given the increasingly public clashes between the government and the narcos. Some of the kindest people I’ve ever known were Mexican, and I hope that, when the dust settles, the leaders of their country won’t be funded by the pot and coke addicts of the United States.
September 26, 2019
I see some of the bad reviews, a few of which are prefaced with, "Admittedly, I don't know much about the Sierra Madre..." which may also mean, I don't know much about Mexico or Mexicans. Perhaps knowing such is what it takes to get more into this book, because beyond some of the side-splitting anti-heroics and mishaps Grant happens into, so much of this book should resonate with anyone who knows Mexico well, and/or has spent significant amounts of time with/among them. As only one of many possible examples, the myriad different ways Grant comes up with to express foul language, in both Spanish and English, is clearly indicative of good understanding of a culture that swears better than any other on the planet. Such lends credibility, and relevance.
I enjoyed this book, would go almost as far as to call it a page turner. Three stars for me is a good grade, like getting a solid B. One will learn a fair amount about Mexican history, geography, culture and more in these pages. It reminded me a lot of another travel/adventure classic situated in this region, one of my all-time favorite books, Born to Run. If you liked that, this one is its dicier, raunchier and more raw cousin.
What this book will most definitely not help one with patience and tolerance for some of Mexico's cultural nonsense, in particular, machismo - unless, of course, one engages in machismo. If so, this is absolutely your book, knock yourself out. Otherwise, I was left entirely sympathetic to Grant's assassination of this cultural defect, because I know and have experienced it myself, unfortunately. A sampling:
"...what I really lost tolerance for...was Mexican machismo. I came to hate it with as much venom as the most strident lesbian feminist. It was the root of the worst evil in Mexico, I decided, the real reason why men killed each other and raped women in such horrifying numbers. Not that those numbers were available. According to Mary Jordan of the Washington Post, fewer than one percent of rapes are reported in Mexico, because it is not treated seriously as a crime and because rape victims who do go to the police are usually mocked and blamed for inviting the crime, and are sometimes raped by the police, who get aroused hearing the victim's story.
"In a world of chingones," wrote Octavio Paz, "ruled by violence and suspicion - a world in which no one opens out or surrenders himself - ideas and accomplishments count for little. The only thing of value is manliness, personal strength, a capacity for imposing oneself on others."
This book is fun, credible, insightful, humorous, and brave. Well done, Richard Grant.
I enjoyed this book, would go almost as far as to call it a page turner. Three stars for me is a good grade, like getting a solid B. One will learn a fair amount about Mexican history, geography, culture and more in these pages. It reminded me a lot of another travel/adventure classic situated in this region, one of my all-time favorite books, Born to Run. If you liked that, this one is its dicier, raunchier and more raw cousin.
What this book will most definitely not help one with patience and tolerance for some of Mexico's cultural nonsense, in particular, machismo - unless, of course, one engages in machismo. If so, this is absolutely your book, knock yourself out. Otherwise, I was left entirely sympathetic to Grant's assassination of this cultural defect, because I know and have experienced it myself, unfortunately. A sampling:
"...what I really lost tolerance for...was Mexican machismo. I came to hate it with as much venom as the most strident lesbian feminist. It was the root of the worst evil in Mexico, I decided, the real reason why men killed each other and raped women in such horrifying numbers. Not that those numbers were available. According to Mary Jordan of the Washington Post, fewer than one percent of rapes are reported in Mexico, because it is not treated seriously as a crime and because rape victims who do go to the police are usually mocked and blamed for inviting the crime, and are sometimes raped by the police, who get aroused hearing the victim's story.
"In a world of chingones," wrote Octavio Paz, "ruled by violence and suspicion - a world in which no one opens out or surrenders himself - ideas and accomplishments count for little. The only thing of value is manliness, personal strength, a capacity for imposing oneself on others."
This book is fun, credible, insightful, humorous, and brave. Well done, Richard Grant.
February 6, 2011
Richard Grant is an Englishman who has had a fascination with the Sierra Madre mountains. The Sierra Madre is twenty miles south of the Arizona-Mexican border. It was the location for the famous Humphrey Bogart file, "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre".
This is the story of going into the mountains, sometimes with guides, sometimes not. After reading the book one wonders why anyone would venture into this lawless land. The area is controlled by drug dealers, and if there is any semblence of law, it is under the drug dealers control. I was astounded at the amount of drugs that are grown and distributed from this area.
Outsiders, obviously, are not welcome, and could very well be gambling with one's liffe. The use of drugs and alcohol borders on the incredible, and the men in this area are usually hyped up on both most of the time. They have no regard for their own lives, let alone the lives of others.
The military has very little presence in the Sierra Madre, If they do venture in they usually confiscate the drug crop for their own purposes.
The book will have little interest to most readers, unless of course if you are foolish enough to plan your next trip to the Sierre Madre.
I had a hard time maintaining interest, even though some of it was fascinating. The reader should also be advised that some of the language, and there is a lot of it, may be offensive.
This is the story of going into the mountains, sometimes with guides, sometimes not. After reading the book one wonders why anyone would venture into this lawless land. The area is controlled by drug dealers, and if there is any semblence of law, it is under the drug dealers control. I was astounded at the amount of drugs that are grown and distributed from this area.
Outsiders, obviously, are not welcome, and could very well be gambling with one's liffe. The use of drugs and alcohol borders on the incredible, and the men in this area are usually hyped up on both most of the time. They have no regard for their own lives, let alone the lives of others.
The military has very little presence in the Sierra Madre, If they do venture in they usually confiscate the drug crop for their own purposes.
The book will have little interest to most readers, unless of course if you are foolish enough to plan your next trip to the Sierre Madre.
I had a hard time maintaining interest, even though some of it was fascinating. The reader should also be advised that some of the language, and there is a lot of it, may be offensive.
December 4, 2008
Let’s face it. I bought the book mainly because I thought the title was clever and funny. It was also set in my back yard (sort of). My buddy and I often take road trips to the Mexican border. We cross occasionally to have little adventures (mainly drinking in Juarez) so I was even more intrigued by what this book might offer.
It’s violent – but nothing like Cormac Mcarthy’s works of fiction. Then again Mr. Grant, I doth thinketh thou exaggerates enough to verge on fiction! Despite the overly dramatic situations and continuous string of ominous characters, it’s a good read. He excels in the descriptions of the starkly beautiful landscape of the Sierra Madre. There is a point where the reader will utter an audible “ah-ha” and realize there is one too many despicable character to be believed. Northern Mexico is a dangerous place, I grant you (no pun) so sit back and enjoy. The historical bits are interesting. It’s a tourist turn-off. But, what travel books aren’t?
It’s violent – but nothing like Cormac Mcarthy’s works of fiction. Then again Mr. Grant, I doth thinketh thou exaggerates enough to verge on fiction! Despite the overly dramatic situations and continuous string of ominous characters, it’s a good read. He excels in the descriptions of the starkly beautiful landscape of the Sierra Madre. There is a point where the reader will utter an audible “ah-ha” and realize there is one too many despicable character to be believed. Northern Mexico is a dangerous place, I grant you (no pun) so sit back and enjoy. The historical bits are interesting. It’s a tourist turn-off. But, what travel books aren’t?
July 22, 2008
Richard Grant has written the kind of travel book I like -- attention to detail, crazy characters, historical backgound, and an easy-to-read writing style. If the Sierra Madre were a more appealing place, this book would make me want to go there. It's really not all that far away, after all.
One of Grant's skills as a writer is his ability to write so warmly about the beauty of the area he travels in, while at the same time juxtaposing it against the brutality of living in an anarchic drug-producing area. There are moments of great beauty and terrifying violence in this book.
We and some friends have been toying around with the idea of taking the train from Chihuahua to Los Mochis through the Copper Canyon area for quite a while now. I'm really going to have to think hard about whether I want to go after reading this book...
One of Grant's skills as a writer is his ability to write so warmly about the beauty of the area he travels in, while at the same time juxtaposing it against the brutality of living in an anarchic drug-producing area. There are moments of great beauty and terrifying violence in this book.
We and some friends have been toying around with the idea of taking the train from Chihuahua to Los Mochis through the Copper Canyon area for quite a while now. I'm really going to have to think hard about whether I want to go after reading this book...
January 11, 2012
This is what travel writing should be. The Sierra Madre are a place you shouldn't go and people tell Richard Grant that constantly. He ignores their advice and goes in, even sometimes on his own which is a big time no-no. But he doesn't make it out like he's some bad ass adventurer. Instead, he points out how niave and sort of sick he is for wanting doing what he is doing. The places and people are insane but he presents them in an endearing way without judgement, unless of course the thing is so far off the charts that it can be objectively deemed one way or the other. In total, it's a really good travel book (unlike anything Paul Theroux writes) where he goes against better judgement and embraces what he encounters with open arms and ready to admit that he's a complete dope for doing any of this. What travel writing should be.
March 31, 2008
I believe a quote from the author will suffice:
"I drove out of the mountains and then north across the plains and deserts and I didn't stop driving for fifteen hours until I was within striking distance of the U.S. border. I was ready to write about celebrity bathroom fixtures for a living, designer footwear, what your window treatments say about you. Some other fool could go into Sinaloa. I never wanted to set foot in the Sierra Madre again. The mean drunken hillbillies who lived up there could all feud themselves into extinction and burn in hell. I was out of courage, out of patience, out of compassion. They were sons of their whoring mothers, who had been fornicating with dogs."
"I drove out of the mountains and then north across the plains and deserts and I didn't stop driving for fifteen hours until I was within striking distance of the U.S. border. I was ready to write about celebrity bathroom fixtures for a living, designer footwear, what your window treatments say about you. Some other fool could go into Sinaloa. I never wanted to set foot in the Sierra Madre again. The mean drunken hillbillies who lived up there could all feud themselves into extinction and burn in hell. I was out of courage, out of patience, out of compassion. They were sons of their whoring mothers, who had been fornicating with dogs."
April 15, 2009
Gain further insight into the surreal of Mexico and the erosion of native culture while drugs and violence escalate the embrace of “modern life”.
Highlight’s include:
1. A live version of “The Most Dangerous Game” hosted by beer drinking, coke snorting hillbillies with the author as the unfortunate "guest".
2. Beer drinking, cigarette smoking Indians beating North American runners in a marathon.
3. Religious celebration centered on drinking beer. [my favorite:]
Recommended for those that grew up in the Southwest and like Mexico, others may not find this book as rewarding. It feels as if the author details just about every mile of his trip and that the book could’ve used some condensing.
Highlight’s include:
1. A live version of “The Most Dangerous Game” hosted by beer drinking, coke snorting hillbillies with the author as the unfortunate "guest".
2. Beer drinking, cigarette smoking Indians beating North American runners in a marathon.
3. Religious celebration centered on drinking beer. [my favorite:]
Recommended for those that grew up in the Southwest and like Mexico, others may not find this book as rewarding. It feels as if the author details just about every mile of his trip and that the book could’ve used some condensing.
May 10, 2015
I learned a lot from this book.In some ways it read like a thriller.Lots of humour,and I admired and shook my head at his bravery(craziness?).If you have read Tim Butcher,you should enjoy this.
March 14, 2019
I’d give it 3 1/2 stars due to the interesting content about a fascinating corner of the world, but the author got on my nerves a bit and some of the writing was a little clunky.
July 28, 2022
I really enjoyed the story telling and the historical backgrounds provided for each town Grant arrived in, the analysis of the culture, and his views on not taking part in society (working to die), but I would have appreciated more analysis of why the machismo was so strong in the Sierra madre specifically (because although machismo is everywhere in Mexico, it is not as extreme as it is in the Sierra Madre). I did not like how he was grouping Mexicans as being one and the same with exceptions.
There also should have been a discussion on how there came to be so much drug trafficking and violence in the Sierra madre including parts of US and Mexican history. The book seems a little misleading at points making it sounds like it is the Mexican’s fault of why they are living the way they are.
There also should have been a discussion on how there came to be so much drug trafficking and violence in the Sierra madre including parts of US and Mexican history. The book seems a little misleading at points making it sounds like it is the Mexican’s fault of why they are living the way they are.
June 29, 2022
This is the crazy and dangerous journey that Richard Grant accomplished from one end of the Sierra Madre Occidental mountain range in central Mexico to the other. Like the books says this is a lawless wild country. Grant both finds it not as dangerous as advertised and yet almost loses his life bringing this crazy adventure to paper. His adventure includes a description of an Easter celebration which has got to be one of unholiest horribly unchristian events I’ve ever heard of. The levels of blasphemy and simply wrongness is beyond belief. He’s definitely fearless and mostly skates by unharmed until the last night of his trip in which he is literally hunted by drug thugs. All and all this is a very good travelogue of an area so close to the US but on nobody’s radar. This part of Mexico is a sad world of drugs, murder, random violence and more than a little just plain bizarre, yet Grant manages to find kindness and beauty in the midst of it all and best of all, lived to tell it.
March 28, 2021
Meh. Listened to this in 1 hour increments over several months while traveling with Joel. We could only ever handle about an hour at a time as it is highly repetitive. Author goes to a town, meets some people, drinks, does drugs with them, feels unsafe, ask a lot of questions and then leaves to repeat in the next town. There are funny bits and some interesting facts and tidbits throughout but glad to finally put this one to bed and not have to listen to anymore stories based on bad decision making skills with mid to poor outcomes.
August 26, 2015
4 stars. Some travel books inspire the desire to hop on a one-way flight to the featured destination this afternoon. This is not one of those travel books! God's Middle Finger lets me know that the Sierra Madre is nowhere I need to visit any time soon (but I was pretty darn glad Richard Grant took his trip and chose to write about it).
The beautiful mountain country of western Mexico sounds stunning, remote, and dangerous. More dangerous by far are the petty criminals, violent offenders, and territorial hodgepodge of the narcotraficantes' turf. Life is cheap, and murder and rape are all too often commonplace. Grant starts with a harrowing account of being chased through the woods by homicidally inclined, gun toting men near Durango, hooking me right from the beginning.
Grant writes with a descriptive eye and an obvious feeling of shared humanity for even the most wretched people he encounters (well, except for the pair entertaining themselves by doing their level best to shoot him, for which I think I can forgive him). He doesn't miss the humorous and the ludicrous either, such as picking up a hitchhiker before going into certain areas because there's safety in numbers, or how the drug kingpins have made the Copper Canyon area very safe for tourists (because they have too much financial stake in the money laundering opportunities presented by tourism). I also had a wry smile at the tradition of "coming down to the Sierra to get away from the law, or 'for their health' as [they] say here."
God's Middle Finger can't really be termed a "fun" book--a rogue's gallery perhaps?--but I certainly enjoyed its edge-of-my-seat tale (from the comfort of my own house). This was an impulse purchase from the used bookstore, and it proved to be well worth the cost and the pleasurable time spent reading Richard Grant's puckering story.
The beautiful mountain country of western Mexico sounds stunning, remote, and dangerous. More dangerous by far are the petty criminals, violent offenders, and territorial hodgepodge of the narcotraficantes' turf. Life is cheap, and murder and rape are all too often commonplace. Grant starts with a harrowing account of being chased through the woods by homicidally inclined, gun toting men near Durango, hooking me right from the beginning.
Grant writes with a descriptive eye and an obvious feeling of shared humanity for even the most wretched people he encounters (well, except for the pair entertaining themselves by doing their level best to shoot him, for which I think I can forgive him). He doesn't miss the humorous and the ludicrous either, such as picking up a hitchhiker before going into certain areas because there's safety in numbers, or how the drug kingpins have made the Copper Canyon area very safe for tourists (because they have too much financial stake in the money laundering opportunities presented by tourism). I also had a wry smile at the tradition of "coming down to the Sierra to get away from the law, or 'for their health' as [they] say here."
God's Middle Finger can't really be termed a "fun" book--a rogue's gallery perhaps?--but I certainly enjoyed its edge-of-my-seat tale (from the comfort of my own house). This was an impulse purchase from the used bookstore, and it proved to be well worth the cost and the pleasurable time spent reading Richard Grant's puckering story.
September 25, 2010
A thrilling page turner of an adventure novel. You learn the history and current state of north central Mexico's Sierra Madre mountain range as the author tries to travel its spine in order to see if it is really as dangerous as you have heard. It feels like a mix of Sebastian Junger and Ernest Hemingway. It's hard to tell if the overwhelming narco-traffic content is embellished, but I sense that it's not. It certainly gives more perspective on the nature of the drug trade coming from Mexico to the US, and the lifestyle of those willingly or unwillingly involved.
It's not often that I bring a book to work with me and hope for red lights to be longer so I can read a bit more on stops in the drive.
It's not often that I bring a book to work with me and hope for red lights to be longer so I can read a bit more on stops in the drive.
August 1, 2010
Very good book about this crazy english dude who decides to go off by himself into the sierra madre mountains in mexico, where a good percentage of the people are drunken, homicidal drug dealers. not my idea of a good time, and it almost gets him killed. the sale of drugs from mexico to the us is a $50 billion a year business and 90% of all cocaine in the us comes from mexico. it's quite funny, in a twisted kind of way...these mexican drug lords still live in shacks but have $40,000 chevy pickups, satellite tv and all the guns and booze that money can buy (not to mention rocket launchers), and 4 or 5 girlfriends aside from their wives.sounds like loads of fun, doesn't it?
December 18, 2015
"We (the author and a local guide) got back in the truck and rolled slowly into the village. There were about two dozen shacks, most of them built out of crudely woven sticks and dried mud with palm-thatch or corrugated tin roofs. More often than not, they also had a solar panel, a TV satellite dish, and a big American pickup truck parked out front."
"'With the money from your first marijuana crop you buy clothes, jewelry, and guns,' said Gustavo. Then you buy your truck, your solar, your satellite, and TV. The last thing you spend money on is the house. Look at that: he didn't even buy a tin roof to keep the rain out but he's got a $30,000 Dodge Ram parked out front.'" Okaaaay.
"'With the money from your first marijuana crop you buy clothes, jewelry, and guns,' said Gustavo. Then you buy your truck, your solar, your satellite, and TV. The last thing you spend money on is the house. Look at that: he didn't even buy a tin roof to keep the rain out but he's got a $30,000 Dodge Ram parked out front.'" Okaaaay.
January 18, 2013
This book feels very padded with uneven research, retelling of other authors, many historical anecdotes and tall tales. It reminds me of a gonzo version of very old travel writings, looking for and emphasizing the dangerous and exotic, and full of anecdotes about the area. He never did get to Sinaloa, as he felt it too dangerous. He's trying too hard and coming up with too little. I am left with the feeling that the book might be entirely fiction. One correction points out the narrow and spotty nature of his background reading. Pancho Villa was NOT "the only revolutionary leader not to start scheming after more power and wealth", as Zapata equaled or exceeded him in this way.
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