POSO DEL MUNDO: Alongside--and Inside--the Mexican-American Border, from Tijuana to Matamoros

by Ovid Demaris ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 7, 1970

Psst, pst, senor. Ey, americano, you want a leetle, yes? . . . Two lesbians, real hot show? . . . No? Okay, how about man and girl? Two men and girl? Two girls and man? Wait, I got something you bet you never see before. How about girl and burro? Girl and two burros? . . . . "" This lengthy ""exotic proposition"" opens Ovid Demaris' latest and least socially redeemed sensationalist assay, a con-sin-trated survey of the United States-Mexico border, ""a sixteen-hundred-mile pleasure strip measurably oriented to gringos with low libidinal thresholds."" Guided appropriately by one Gene Pugh, agent in charge of U.S. customs in Laredo, Ovid trips through Red Light zonas both classy and (more frequently) cockroachy, in bordertowns ranging from the squalidly anonymous to famed Tijuana ""the toughest, roughest, gaudiest, filthiest, loudest--the most larcenous, vicious, predacious--the wickedest bordertown of them all."" And for the benefit of turistas with other tastes and problems, Demaris pungently details the sordid realities of bull-fighting, abortions, divorces, el contrabando, narcotics, gambling, and la mordida (""not simple graft, but a corrosive blend of bribery and extortion""). There's expose exchanges with mayors, border personnel, vice officials and vice entrepreneurs, an inside view of Mexico's execrable prisons, a bit of border history, and some short remarks on the culture of poverty. Poso del Mundo, by the way, means ""the lowest hole of the world."" MUCKraking.

Pub Date: May 7, 1970

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1970

Categories: NONFICTION