When Alfredo Corchado went to cover Mexico for The Dallas Morning News, he was determined not to focus on drugs and crime but rather to cover issues critical to the country's future — immigration, education and the economy.
But it seems the drug cartels had other plans. Corchado has spent years reporting on the savage violence of drug gangs and the corruption and ineptitude that enabled their reign of terror in much of the country, much of which he explores in his new book, Midnight In Mexico: A Reporter's Journey Through A Country's Descent Into Darkness.
The book is part memoir, part recent history of Mexico's struggle for peace amid chaos. Corchado was born in Mexico but grew up mostly in the United States in a family of California farmworkers. He was working in the fields and eventually dropped out of high school. He thought that the fields were where he would spend his life. This began to slowly change one day when a television crew arrived and asked questions.
"I was 13," Corchado recalls to Fresh Air's Dave Davies. "I was trying to look like I was 15. They came up to me and they started asking me all these questions: 'What's it like working in the fields? What's it like not having sanitation?'"
In retrospect, Corchado says he came away from the experience with a new sense of empowerment and awareness that he had a voice and that others might care about what he had to say. Much later when he decided to become a journalist, this moment became one of the many turning points in his life.
He is now the Mexico bureau chief for The Dallas Morning News and has reported for numerous U.S. papers, including The Wall Street Journal.