May is No Place for Gringos Month

 May is 
No Place for Gringos 
Month !

The tank they threw me into was one of the worst there, with killers and dope fiends and homosexuals grabbing at you. The moment I came in, somebody noticed the mark on my finger left by the ring I had turned over to the guards, and they started beating me because they thought I was hiding it. 

-Poso del Mundo by Ovid Demaris

Here at the PorPor Books Blog, we like to take a break from reviewing science fiction, fantasy, and horror media from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, and instead turn our attention to other genres of fiction and nonfiction. 

And there were flies. Many flies. And pariah dogs.

Jocelyn glumly regarded two large curs engaged in an indolent tug of war over the torn carcass of a third, headless and disemboweled. One had a front paw, the other, the tail. The vertebrae seemed not so much flexible as elastic. 

-Incident at La Junta by Oliver Lange

Before the Sicario movies, before Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, there was a body of fiction and nonfiction literature that dealt with hapless gringos who found themselves in places where being an Americano was a liability.......whether with the native population, the criminal element, or (worst of all) the federales.

And so, for May 2022, we've decided to focus on vintage books dealing with the misadventures of gringos who find themselves South of the Border. 

Whether it's in MAY-hee-COH, WHAT-a-Mala, or EL SAL-va-DOR, those hellholes offer nothing to witless gringos but perdition, depravity, and death !

....Haydon felt the first twinges of eeriness that was the city's gift to any arriving traveler who knew anything about the country's history. The low-powered streetlamps gave a macabre glow to the smoke that hung about the towering cypresses of the boulevard like an infernal breath. Haydon could not avoid thinking of what the smog consisted of, for he had seen more than a few bodies dumped in the garbage of the ravines, most of them mutilated and swollen like sausages from the tropical heat. 

-Body of Truth by David Lindsey

Sadistic caudillos who scheme to subject gringa women to Fates Worse than Death............... desperate inquiries into the fates of gringos Gone Missing in Guatemala's 'dirty war'..........and Mexican police whose easygoing smiles conceal a willingness to visit all manner of horrors on those Americanos who decide to hide out in the wrong places........

Come along, on a dangerous trip South of Border. 

Before we go, amigo, make sure you have a healthy retainer with a Mexican attorney, and the contact information for the U. S. consulate........it might make things a little easier for you when the trip turns into a nightmare............