Surviving Mexico’s Dirty War: A Political Prisoner’s Memoir. ALBERTO ULLOA BORNEMANN: Edited and translated by Arthur Schmidt and Aurora Camacho de Schmidt. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2007.

Abstract

 Ulloa Bornemann has given us a gift in his memoir documenting how he survived Mexico's dirty war in the 1960s and 1970s. His gift is a sensitive, personal, profoundly moving account that opens the doors on the brutality and violence of the Mexican state, the goals of left wing civil movements and the role that one man plays. Ulloa Bornemann's book follows the model of a testimonial or testimonio - a rich traditional literary trope in Latin America - but at the same time it is much more. The author has opened an important window to a painful period in Mexico's history, one that some would argue continues to the present given the persistence of civil unrest as well as the sustained and heavy handed response of the state.