“For Greater Glory”, a film directed by Dean Wright

Wright was a visual effects supervisor and producer in major films such as “The Lord of the Rings”.  “For Greater Glory” is the first movie he directed.  In an interview, Wright calls himself a “Method” director- needing to feel the emotions of the characters that he’s shooting, and to feel those emotions as authentic. 

Some critics have faulted “For Greater Glory” for being too heavy on the emotions, milking the audience for a tearful reaction by playing stirring music nonstop, and prolonging sorrowful and upsetting scenes.  The movie is about the peasant force in Mexico that rose up in 1926 against the anti-clerical President Calles, whose regime had been persecuting the Catholic faith.  The rebels were called “Cristeros”.  The movie shows how the rebellion was ignited by the brutality exhibited by the Federales, the government troops.  Wright highlights the historical figure Jose Sanchez del Rio, a young boy who was martyred in the rebellion and was beatified by the Church in 2005.  We see the rebellion through his eyes as he witnesses his parish priest killed by soldiers.  Many believers today wonder how they would behave in a similar situation, and in the film, we see some Catholics turning away and others standing firm. 

The acting is good, and while I do agree that they should have spoken Spanish instead of English, that is not a big hurdle in watching the movie.  The rhythm and timing of the film is well done, and that helps enormously with the intimate and emotional exchanges. 

The exact historical picture is not delineated in the film. It is not clear from viewing “For Greater Glory” that in actuality many citizens just stood by and watched, and that the rebel force was in the minority, although the rebellion was very effective.  We see principal players, like the US ambassador,  trying to make a deal with Calles for oil interests, and we hear of Rome’s shifting stance, which was not in open support of the rebellion.  The result of the rebellion was that some religious liberty was restored, although the rebellion failed to bring down the government.

Wright takes artistic liberties in portraying the rebellion’s leader and other key historical figures, to suggest how circumstances can accelerate your belief and propel you into a life-changing situation.  The leader, General Gorostieta, was indeed hired by the rebels and was not a believer.  Wright takes some poetic license by putting Jose Sanchez del Rio, the young boy, under Gorostieta. In the film, Gorostieta slowly takes to the boy, and is compelled and strongly affected by Jose’s faith. 

One reviewer took issue with the fact that the movie seems to be only concerned with the Catholics, and that other religions are not given equal “time”.  Well, in that time, in Mexico, religion pretty much was the Catholic Church.  Viewers can decide for themselves whether the Catholic faith, through the Cristeros, adequately defended the right to religious freedom.

2666 / by Roberto Bolano; trans. from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer

The son of a truck driver, Roberto Bolano was born in Chile in 1953 but moved with his family to Mexico City when he was still a child. After dropping out of school in his teen years, Roberto became heavily involved with the ongoing revolutionary movements in Central and South America. In 1973 he even

traveled back to Chile to give his support to the Salvador Allende regime (ironically the uncle of the other renowned Chilean author Isabel Allende) only to eventually be taken prisoner and held captive for several months. Afterwards, Bolano lived the life of a semi-vagabond for a time, residing in Spain, El Salvador, Mexico and France among other places before trying his luck as a writer, primarily as poet in his early career before turning to fiction full time. His novel 2666, published just after his death in 2003 from Hepatitis C, has been described as "an exceptionally exciting literary labyrinth" and  "the first great book of the twenty-first century".

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In the border city of Santa Teresa, Mexico, there has been an ongoing series of serial murders of young women since 1993. The local law enforcement estimates that somewhere in the neighborhood of 300-400 homicides have occurred though local residents estimate the count significantly above that. "Los Feminicidios", as the victims have come to be called, are mostly poor, uneducated and nondescript females ranging in age from 15-36. Though a series of suspects and criminal trials have come and gone, few viable leads and hard evidence have come to light as the wave of brutal killings have continued unabated, the police seemingly as useless at preventing crime as they are at a loss for answers to solve them. Among the residents of the city, the murders are perpetually in the public conscious. Everyone is on edge, wary of their surroundings, going about their lives in grim, foreboding fashion under constant fear for themselves and their loved ones. Even outsiders new to Santa Teresa can't help but be engulfed in the distinct air of menace and fear which grip the streets.
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All the while amid the surroundings saturated with anxiety and unease, odd contradictions and unlikely connections permeate the scene. A sophisticated set of European literary critics has gathered in Santa Teresa to be near the obscure German poet Benno von Archimboldi, a man himself well-associated with violence and murder and of who it is said is in the city for some peculiar reason associated with the "Los Feminicidios". Coincidentally, the critics and Archimboldi are colleagues of one Oscar Amilfitano, a professor at the local university who fears for his own daughter's life, she being "of the age" for targeted victims. Within the same circle of these foreigners and fringe intellectual types is Oscar Fate, an American journalist representing an NYC-based lifestyle magazine, who's in town to cover a high profile boxing match even as he knows nothing about the sport. Instead of covering the fighters he's supposed to be interviewing, Fate becomes interested in the murders and promptly starts his own investigation into the case, targeting the high concentration of women murdered between the years of 1993 and 1997.
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Up front there are three things the reader should know about this book: Santa Teresa is a fictional equivalent of Cuidad Juarez, the murders are real and based on fact, and the title '2666' is relatively meaningless (the number itself is a vague allusion to the Biblical book of Exodus but never mentioned in the text). An epochal tale centering on the ongoing series of very brutal crimes, it's a novel not so much concerned with violence and death--no one would mistake it for crime or mystery fiction--as it is a diatribe subtly hinting at the sinister world in which we inhabit. There's something very secret and very horrible centered around the desert city of Santa Teresa and, conversely, Cuidad Juarez, a place perhaps as reminiscent of Sodom and Gomorrah as anywhere. Evil is as much a reality as eating and drinking. And not just a commonplace criminal element, but a distinct brand of extreme violence and vulgar bloodlust which define the setting and accommodate Bolano's savory, emanating style. Further enhancing the book's almost mystical resonance is the author's death in 2003 coinciding with the novel's publication that same year--the tome (and it is a 'tome', over 900 pages long) sort of his magnum opus and a labor of love which the publisher took great care to leave fully intact. But unlike the themes of death and mortality which so wrap themselves around the book and its author, there are no real resolutions established in the narrative of the story. No defining moments or revelations are reached as the mysteries remain unsolved and largely unapproachable in their complexity, vastness and overwhelming tragedy. The mood is almost sublimated to match the atmosphere as things remain strange and unpredictable, an element of Bolano's which compounds the surreal, provocative quality of this intensely superior work. (FIC BOLANO)

D.B.: A Novel / by Elwood Reid

A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Elwood Reid worked as a bartender, a teacher, a cook and even a carpenter in the wilds of Alaska before he was able to earn a living as a fiction writer. He is a 1994 graduate of the University of Michigan where he majored in English, lettered as an offensive lineman on the football team and later recieved his M.F.A. His 1999 short story collection What Salmon Know was well-recognized for its vivid portrait of the hardscrabble, yet dignified lives of working class American males. D.B. is the semi-factual tale of "D.B. Cooper", a man who in 1971 orchestrated the only successful airline hijacking in American history.
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On November 24, 1971 Northwest Airlines Flight 305 took off from Portland International Airport bound for Seattle. Shortly after takeoff, a man going by the name of D.B. Cooper handed a note to the flight attendant which read "I have a bomb in my briefcase. I will use it if necessary. I want you to sit next to me. You are being hijacked." Upon arrival in Washington state, Cooper allowed passengers to exit the airplane in exchange for $200,000 and a parachute before ordering the pilot to once again take off with a course set for Mexico City. Cooper was never seen or heard from again, having exited the plane in-flight somewhere over the Pacific Northwest and vanishing without a trace despite a massive FBI investigation and ongoing manhunt over the next several years.

The man known as D.B. (Dan B.) Cooper at the time of the plane heist was (and remains) a man named Phil Fitch. A Vietnam veteran thoroughly fed up with his non-descript life, his going-nowhere job and a wife who's left him for something better, Fitch had made the decision to attempt the daring exploit out of little more than elevated frustration and a need to prove to himself that he is in fact capable of greatness. The hijacking having been got off successfully reconfirms to Fitch what he's always suspected but never verified--that he is indeed a man of destiny for whom a life of anonymous drudgery is unfit. Things since haven't been quite as exciting. Drifting aimlessly in the years following his crime, Fitch has been in Mexico for the better part of his life as a fugitive, floating around with other expats and similarly situated refugees, many the by-products of 1960's/70's counterculture movement who ironically share much of the same philosophy of anti-convention and an untethered lifestyle though none of the daring ambition.
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Paralleling Fitch's own shiftless, anti-climactic life is Frank Marshall, the FBI agent who'd originally headed the investigation into the hijacking. With the frustrating failure of the still unsolved case after years of inconsequential evidence and fruitless leads, Marshall has been mired in his own personal rut owing largely to too much time on his hands and not enough closure. Due in part to his participation in the Cooper case but also due to a myriad of other near-miss assignments, Marshall has been retired prematurely by the bureau and has spent the last few decades feeling the weight of his own purposeless existence. On a whim when he decides to aid an ambitious young agent look into the Cooper case, Marshall suddenly stumbles upon a shred of evidence which leads him back on the trail of the elusive fugitive and a quite unexpected revival of his flair for life. In a short time, as the case finds its way back in to the public conscious, both men--Cooper and Marshall--are set on a course which will inevitably witness a rather awkward resolution to the distinguishing pinnacle of each of their lives.
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In this finely crafted re-imagining of one of the most high-profile hijackings in American history, Reid accomplishes something few other writers really do: fully realize the human condition within two divergent, though not so different characters--one having achieved the romantic ideal through criminal means, the other sticking to the honest life and yet self-perceived as a failure. And though everything outside the actual 1971 event and subsequent disappearance of D.B. Cooper, including Cooper's real identity as Fitch and Marshall, is hypothetical, it's not hard to go along with the story. Reid is good at highlighting the motivations of his characters and providing the background detail as to why someone like Fitch or Agent Marshall could yearn for something more in life. It's not even much of a leap for the reader to tap in to why Fitch would have the sheer audacity to pull off something on such a scale as an airplane hijacking for purely personal reasons just like it's comfortingly familiar perceive his subsequent life as a still dissatisfied individual. (FIC REID) 

The Aftermath of the Mexican Revolution (Aftermath of History) / by Susan Provost Beller

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Many associate the Mexican Revolution with the 1910 overthrow of President Porfiro Diaz, the rise of Pancho Villa and the ensuing US intervention. Yet even these pertinent facts fail to tell the full story and relate the subsequent events which established the Mexican Constitution, introduced reforms and indelibly determined the future of the country. In addition to creating directives which redistributed land and wealth between the populous, the Revolution instituted new measures for the separation of church and state, ensured voting rights for all citizens and pushed for equal opportunity education. Much of the 1917 constitution established the current system of government that the country of Mexico has grown accustomed to. The establishment of a Congress of the Union coincided with the allocation of legislative and judiciary bodies at the same time that federal and state constituencies were introduced.
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Yet in the years following the revolution, Mexican society was much the same. Despite progressive initiatives toward equanimity and accountability in governmental policies, the balance of power began to shift back to its pre-revolutionary status with wealth and authority disproportionately administered through the upper classes. Many of the same problems of unstable government, political corruption, religious discriminiation and poverty (the most readily apparent by-product of the pre-revolutionary days) continued unabated into the second half of the twentieth century. As the new millenium dawned, much of the ideals fought for in the Revolution as well as the goals allocated by the 1917 constitution remained unfulfilled. Issues of cross-societal inequality and economic disparity are as constant as ever with more recent problems of illegal drug trafficking and border conflicts still unresolved.
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Beller outlines the key components of the Mexican Revolution, its initial causes, principle contentions and eventual resolutions, chiefly highlighting the state of affairs following the fighting in this well-detailed, abundantly illustrated and easy-to-understand non fiction book. This volume is one of several in the "Aftermath of History" series, a set of books chronicling some of history's most high profile events and distinguishing the conflict itself from the residual outcomes through the subsequent years. In what is clearly the unique objective of the series, the book is an especially accessible education resource, well-tailored for use by persons of all ages and instrumental in curtailing the implications of such an important period in history. Along with this volume, the library carries another title, The Aftermath of the Anglo-Zulu War (968.4045 WELTIG) in the collection. (972.0816 BELLER)