Newsletter: Essential California: In pursuit of the Mexican dream

Good morning, and welcome to a special edition of the Essential California newsletter. It’s Sunday, Dec. 3.

Over the last week, the Los Angeles Times published two spectacular series about Mexico. These stories by Richard Marosi, who spent over a year looking at the country’s housing crisis, and our Mexico City correspondent Kate Linthicum, who honed in on one town that’s witnessing a surge of migrants returning from the United States, are a testament to our commitment to covering California and how it intersects with the wider world.

Here is a guide to the projects. Plus, get some details about how you can explore the work further with a Q&A later this week.

BACK TO MALINALCO

Chapter 1: For decades, millions of Mexicans crossed into the U.S. in one of the largest mass migrations in modern history. But stricter immigration enforcement and new opportunities in Mexico have reversed the trend. Now, many are returning to towns like Malinalco, a rural community southwest of Mexico City. But for families like the Almanzas, who returned in 2012, coming home can be complicated. German and Gloria spent two decades in Athens, Texas, toiling in factories and building, cleaning and repairing other people’s homes so that one day they could make a place of their own back in Mexico — a place to finish raising their two kids. Los Angeles Times

Chapter 2: Meet Jose Roberto Tetatzin, who knew he was going to be deported to his native Mexico. He and his partner, Judith Cristal Gudino, would have to decide what to do next. Should the girls stay in the U.S. with Gudino, or should the whole family relocate to Mexico? Los Angeles Times

Chapter 3: Rosa Icela Nava begged her husband, Agustin Poblete Ortega, not to leave Malinalco again. But the lure of America was powerful, and deadly. Los Angeles Times

MEXICO’S HOUSING DEBACLE

Chapter 1: Sixteen years ago, Mexico embarked on a monumental campaign to elevate living standards for its working-class masses. The government teamed with private developers to launch the largest residential construction boom in Latin American history. The program has devolved into a slow-motion social and financial catastrophe, inflicting daily hardships and hazards on millions in troubled developments across the country, a Los Angeles Times investigation has found. Los Angeles Times (En español: Los Angeles Times)

Chapter 2: Homex was a Wall Street-backed developer that reaped billions. Then it went bankrupt and left slums across Mexico. The human cost of these choices is still being felt more than a decade after the company went public with a $100-million valuation. By 2014, the company was bankrupt. Los Angeles Times

Chapter 3: Humbertus Perez, a 54-year-old academic, was Mexico’s leading homeowner activist — a fiery orator who railed against the Mexican housing developers and foreign investors who reaped enormous profits at the expense of working-class people. He exposed housing corruption and ended up in prison. Los Angeles Times

Chapter 4: Imagine a mortgage loan that only gets more expensive, even if you make payments on time. That’s what happened to Maria De Jesus Silva on a spring day in 2014, when she found a thick stack of foreclosure documents on her doorstep. Her story is an example of one of the harsher aftershocks of Mexico’s housing collapse. It came from subprime-like mortgages given to the working poor, people who didn’t qualify for loans from Infonavit, Mexico’s giant housing finance agency. Los Angeles Times

Chapter 5: This story concerns homes — really, really small ones. Today in Mexico, there are about 1 million houses so tiny that they have come to be known by their reviled nickname: mini-casas. They squeeze a bedroom, bathroom, living room and kitchen into a space smaller than a typical American two-car garage. Los Angeles Times

AND FINALLY

Much like his 2014 series “Product of Mexico,” which looked at the atrocious conditions for farmworkers and was a finalist for the Pulitzer prize, Marosi’s work about the housing crisis has generated a fair share of attention. Check out this Univision segment based on his reporting, and be sure to read this from Animal Politico — one of Mexico’s most prestigious news outlets. Also, send your questions to Rich and he may answer them during our Facebook Live from Mexico next Wednesday, Dec. 6, at noon Pacific time.

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Please let us know what we can do to make this newsletter more useful to you. Send comments, complaints and ideas to Benjamin Oreskes and Shelby Grad. Also follow them on Twitter @boreskes and @shelbygrad.