Richard Grabman

With a B.A. (Syracuse) in writing, somehow ended up in Indianapolis, Indiana, where I took grad courses, published a now-forgotten book of poetry, wrote for a few alternative papers and came close to starving. Back in NY for technical school -- computer and accounting classes -- and an off-and-on career as a tech writer and sometime journalist.

Bounced back and forth between Kansas City and Iowa for a couple of years on tech writing projects, eventually moving to Texas and ending up with higher paying jobs, just as I was getting accustomed to poverty. And, bored out of my mind with writing "Press any key to continue". I was living in a Mexican and Mexican-American neighborhood, was fascinated with the culture and had the money to travel, which I did extensively.

I realized that Mexican history is essential to understanding Mexican culture, and started taking notes, originally for my own use. By the time I decided (half on a whim) to move to Cuernavaca and take a teaching job sight unseen, I had about half a draft of a history of Mexico from the ice age through the 1850s. The Cuernavaca job was horrible -- being expected to teach everything from kindergarten to 9th grade computer classes AND English to junior high age kids, so moved to Mexico City to teach what is euphemistically called "Business English" (mostly being paid to hold conversations with executives). I kept working on my Mexican history, as well as writing "The Mex Files! (http://mexfiles.net) which started as just a convenient way to communicate with relations, and has ended up as one of the more important English-language alternative sources for contemporary Mexican views on political and cultural events.

A stab at avocado exporting was educational, but left me high and dry, so moved back to Texas, where I spent two years in the Big Bend, reporting for the local newspapers, writing about the borderlands, finishing my book and working for the railroad as a driver to pay the bills.

A Mexican history by a non-academic is a risky enterprise, and a small publisher in Mazatlan was willing to invest the time, effort and money to put into this book, as well as a short biography of World War II era Mexican diplomat Gilberto Bosques Saldivar, who, relying solely on his nation's ostensive neutrality, fended off spies, the Gestapo and the Vichy French as he saved somewhere around 40,000 people from the concentration camps. "Bosques War" was my first book for Editorial Mazatlán. What became "Gods, Gauchupines and Gringos: A Peoples' History of Mexico" was the largest book the publisher ever produced... and is its best seller.

Part of my signing deal with the publisher was hiring me, as "Gestor de proyectos" (more or less a combination of acquisitions editor, manuscript reader, occasional sales rep and p.r. guy), which I do when not working as a contributing writer to tourist guide books, or working on my own projects.