Robert Joe Stout

Where Gringos Don’t Belong ($20, ISBN: 978-1-937536-81-7, Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-68114-123-7, LCCN: 2014949615, 174pp, 6X9″, October 2014, Buy on Amazon or Barnes and Noble): Early in the evening of November 25, 2006, George Bynum, the protagonist leaves his Mexican novia Patricia among anti-government protest marchers in the city of Oaxaca, Mexico and returns to his apartment to finish a report for his employers, the Rural Development through Education Center. Before he can finish, his cell phone rings. “They’re attacking! Killing..! They won’t…stop!” Patricia’s voice rings in his ears. He rushes out, hoping to find her, but blinded by teargas from a federal police assault trips and has to be helped to safety. He and several others, including a young woman named Claudi Auscher, make their way back to George’s apartment. Claudi, who defines herself as “a Mexican Jew gypsy bitch rebel” joins George in his efforts to reestablish contact with Patricia, who has been flown to a maximum security prison along with other innocent victims of the militarized purge. George and Claudi are fictional characters but the events in which they’ve become embroiled are based on the actual political and social upheavals that reverberated through Oaxaca from November 2006 through April 2007.

Robert Joe Stout’s books include Hidden Dangers, a 2014 analysis of the deteriorating ability of Mexico and the United States to deal with crucial problems such as crime, immigration and corruption. Previous books include The Blood of the Serpent: Mexican Lives, “a rich chorus of voices, which produce not a song but an energetic discussion and argument about the soul of Mexico”, according to Publishers’ Weekly. A graduate of Universidad de las Americas, he has won national journalism awards for news writing and his fiction and poetry have been anthologized in a variety of publications, including New Southern Poets and Southwest. In addition to journalism assignments as a magazine managing editor, editor, newspaper columnist, contributing editor and copy editor and junior college instructor he has been a government account, theater owner, director and actor and sugar factory worker.