ROOTS OF INDIFFERENCE relates the injustices during a time so pertinent to the history of ethnic inequality. The history of the Rio Grande River affected the citizens living on both sides of the border - the imperialistic haughty `northern Americans and the culture of a generation of Hispanics. To the authors credit she opens her book with a Prologue that relates the interaction of an elderly Mexican physician for both animals and humans, Fred Juelson, who is returning to Texas after a long absence and encounters abuse from some young Hispanic ruffians - a move that sets the tone for Juelsons recollections over the years of how time has changed the little town of Mercedes at the Texas Mexican border. The story is fact based fiction - a technique that allows the drama to bend to the will of the writer yet offer a valid exam of life and conditions during the time and location of the story. Wisely, Ragsdale incorporates supernatural incidents predicted and caused by the healers (`cuarandera), and those practicing witchcraft - a factor that yields a sense of drama and a fine reflection of Mexican culture. There are murders, forbidden love affairs, conflicts and tensions that well describe the milieu and hence the history of a silent people, the victims of the animosity that raged at the border. Reading Ragsdales book will underscore the problems we currently are encountering with the bitter debates over immigration of a people who were the first inhabitants of this `land of opportunity. It makes you think and reprioritize the effects of history on todays culture. Grady Harp, May 14
Posted on: Thu, 11 Sep 2014 16:01:39 +0000