The Jaguar's Children by John Vaillant
Wednesday, April 29, 2015 at 8:29AM 
Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on January 27, 2015
"It is harder to think good thoughts in the dark." Sealed inside a tanker with thirteen other Mexicans who are trying to cross the border without documents, Tito (the name by which most people address young Hector) has few reasons to think good thoughts. The truck has a broken axle, the coyotes driving the truck have apparently abandoned them, and the battery on Tito's phone is nearly dead. Soon the people welded inside the tank will be in the same condition as the truck and the battery: broken down and dying. Tito nevertheless narrates his plight (along with a variety of rants about corruption, poverty, crime, and the misery of life for an indio in Oaxaca), recording sound files on his friend's phone that he hopes will reach someone when he presses "send."
Also in the truck, although unconscious, is Tito's friend Cesar. Tito once borrowed a copy of The Savage Detectives from Cesar but they otherwise had little contact before a coincidental sets of circumstances caused Tito to join Cesar on his journey from Oaxaca to the border. Cesar is running to the border for reasons that have to do with corn (more than that I will not reveal).
The meandering stories that Tito narrates (the central story, told to him by the man he calls his grandfather, is a love story that tangentially relates to an ancient Jaguar Man carved from jade) are a mixture of reality and folklore. Tito talks about the power of icons, the power (or indifference) of saints, the history of Mexico, the desperation of Mexican life, the differences between the United States and Mexico, and the fundamental similarities of people everywhere. The story is a reminder of the things that are most important in life, the things we never think about until we are deprived of them.
The Jaguar's Children offers a heady mix of humor and sorrow. Death, Tito tells us, is the national drug of Mexico, "the god everyone worships but no one will name." Tito's ordeal would be a test of faith if he had any, but faith is more the province of his grandmother and his friend Cesar. But even as Tito faces the prospect of a horrifying death by dehydration inside a steel coffin, surrounded by others who share his misery, his story is life-affirming. It is the story of struggle, of the search for a purpose, of how different people find different purposes in different ways. It is moving, haunting, and illuminating.
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