Philip Caputo: Mexico is where facts, like people, simply disappear.
William T. Vollmann: Across the border, the desert is the same but there are different secrets.
Fernando Diaz Santana: In Mexico it is dangerous to speak the truth. It is even dangerous to know the truth. As long as we don't get too deeply into a story, we are safe.
Clifford Geertz: Having been told that the world rested on a platform which rested on the back of an elephant which rested in turn on the back of a turtle, he asked, what did the turtle rest on? Another turtle. And that turtle? "Ah, Sahib, after that it is turtles all the way down."
Caputo: What began as a war on drug trafficking has evolved into a low-intensity civil war with more than two sides and no white hats, only shades of black. The ordinary Mexican citizen -- never sure who is on what side, or who is fighting whom and for what reason -- retreats into a private world where he becomes willfully blind, deaf, and above all, dumb. In seeking, much less speaking, the truth about what the Mexican army is up to, one often runs into the paradox of the Mexican reality: something dreadful happens and is then treated as if it hadn't happened. Facts, like people, simply disappear.
"Leonard Nimoy": It's all lies. But they're entertaining lies. And in the end, isn't that the real truth? The answer ... is No.
The Fall of Mexico | 
