The Way that Leads Among the Lost (2024) by Angela Garcia

 Book Review

The Way That Leads Among the Lost (2024)

by Angela Garcia

  Sourcing non-fiction consistently is tough. Mostly I rely on the Sunday Book Review section of the New York Times for ideas, but the number of potential titles is limited since I don't go in for biography, autobiography, memoir or books about current events.  I also don't like books about people travelling or books about subject I am actually interested in, but are pitched at a more general audience.  I also don't want to read books on subjects I'm actually interested in that are meant for specialists in the field.   The Way That Leads Among the Lost is an interesting work of non-fiction about the world of Anexos, semi-legitimate drug treatment centers that proliferate in the informal economy of Mexico and in the United States near the southwestern border.

   I checked out the Audiobook from the library after I read the New York Times book review, which was mixed but convinced me based on the subject matter.  I'd never heard about Anexos before despite 20 plus years practicing criminal defense on the southern border.  It seems like a phenomenon I would have read about in probation reports written about my Mexican national clients, many of whom have grappled with drug addiction. 

 Basically, in Mexico, if your kid has a drug problem and you aren't super rich, you pay a bunch of thugs to kidnap them and they are then locked inside a room with a bunch of other addicts, where they are forced to give lengthy testimonies about their history of abuse and addiction.  The stay is indefinite, but can go on for months and even years. The environment is complicated by the presence of the mentally ill, committed for their own protections, and some people who simply stashed by parents who need to be elsewhere.   It's all loosely based on the credo of alcoholics anonymous, particularly the part where you recount your sins in a group setting- testifying they call it here.

   Garcia presents herself as a Stanford trained academic doing field work in anthropology, but she also introduces a narrative involving her own experience, in which she was essentially abandoned by her feckless parents as a young teen and forced to find her own way in the wilds of New Mexico, where she experimented with drugs and homelessness but eventually found her way to Stanford.  In one particularly interesting chapter Garcia herself participates in a desert session of confession, which sounds like the camping part of Coachella without music, fun or food but with people forced to spend hours recounting their traumas.

  As one can perhaps imagine about a Stanford trained anthropologist, Garcia isn't here to tell us whether Anexos work or don't work, or whether they are good or bad.  They exist and they are described.  Overall the tone of The Way That Leads Among the Lost is more novelistic than academic which is a credit to Garcia.  Not every observation lands, and the whole thing doesn't tie together as tightly as it might, but the reader will come away with a firm understanding of the Anexos phenomenon .