Season of the Swamp

Starred review from July 8, 2024
In this mesmerizing picaresque, Herrera (Ten Planets) speculates about the 18 months future Mexican president Benito Juárez spent in New Orleans during his exile following a dispute with then-president Santa Anna. Upon his arrival in the U.S. in December 1855, Benito and his small band of revolutionaries witness the arrest and beating of a young Black man. Troubled and disoriented, they’re then preyed upon by a family of con artists. Soon, they befriend an amoral printer named Cabañas, who rationalizes his fugitive slave posters (“It’s not like anyone’s capturing them in order to take away their freedom. They never had it to begin with”), prompting Benito to debate him. Cabañas then introduces Benito to coffee shop proprietor Thisbee, a Black woman whom Benito finds enchanting, and Benito eventually learns she’s helping people escape from slavery. Inspired by Thisbee’s resistance, Benito encourages his compatriots to develop a lofty vision for their country’s future, which Herrera never explicates. Instead, he focuses on the ways in which Benito is shaped by his stay. As glorious and messy as the best New Orleans gumbo, the novel comes together as Herrera vividly depicts the chaos of Mardi Gras, during which Benito is frightened and charmed in equal measure; the unsavory characters with whom he forms uneasy alliances; and his phantasmagorical dreams while fighting a bout of yellow fever. It’s a triumph.

August 15, 2024
One of Mexico's greatest political leaders enters his wilderness years in the rough streets of New Orleans just before the U.S. Civil War. In an abbreviated but essential preface, Herrera explains how future president of Mexico Benito Ju�rez came to live in New Orleans for two years beginning in 1853. Having already served as governor of his home state of Oaxaca but long before he will hold off an invasion by France, he's been sent into exile by political rival General Santa Anna, along with his brother-in-law Pepe Maza. No one living knows what happened to Ju�rez in the Big Easy, so Herrera's suppositions are well grounded between history and creative license. Asked by a new friend what brings him to town, Ju�rez replies drily, "A slight diversion, a delta, you might say." Even though Ju�rez is intimately familiar with Mexico's brand of corruption, he's unprepared to be beaten and robbed by the police upon arrival. He's even less prepared for the realities of an American slave trade at its height. "These people farm people, they breed humans captured at birth," Herrera writes. "These people fatten up their children, their own children, and then sell them." The narrative is populated with real historical figures like fellow reformers Melchor Ocampo and Ponciano Arriaga, with one memorable scene featuring a concert on 10 pianos by American composer Louis Gottschalk. In fact, there's a surprising richness to the milieu of a story mostly about meetings and letter writing. The New Orleans depicted here is carnivalesque, and the surreal spectacle of bear fights, spontaneous parades, and clandestine meetings, added to Benito's colorful dreams about liberation and justice, give the story a vibrant, almost hallucinatory feel. Meanwhile, Herrera's portrait of a leader in exile--rolling cigars, printing pamphlets, and plotting a revolution from the sidelines--depicts the frustrating dichotomy Ju�rez experiences between his lowly circumstances and his dreams of a better nation. A thoughtful portrait of one revolutionary's remarkable resilience, far from home.

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September 1, 2024

Herrera, who was a finalist for the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize, sets his newest, a work of speculative historical fiction, in 19th-century New Orleans where Benito Ju�rez, who will become the first Indigenous head of state in the postcolonial Americas, steps off a ship into the swamp of the city. Prepub Alert.

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