La Zona Final

About the Book

When he was a young boy, Patrick Alcatraz would travel to the Texas-Mexico border with his father and he would be shown the land as if being shown beautiful paintings at a museum. It wasn’t long before Patrick was wanting to go there every weekend. The border – described as a Hell on Earth by social scientists and a pack of newspaper writers – has always had a certain charm about it for writer Alcatraz. He has written about it for The Houston Post and other publications. He has been to its many border bordellos for stories about the doomed prostitutes. He has written about its music and about its lawlessness and about its unique people, many of whom long-ago stoppped dreaming.

  The Texas-Mexico border, Patrick Alcatraz says, is “one of those areas on the planet where the moon rarely shows its face. People here see it, but it’s not the romantic symbol it is elsewhere. A lot of men down here see the moon and they instantly believe they can go rob the junkyards for auto parts. The moon has had a tough time in the Rio Grande Valley. I’d say it has checked-out.”

   Invariably, when he travels to the area, Patrick Alcatraz finds new blood in the old people. There is always a story to be told a new way. A father talks about his son in jail and he centers on his upcoming release. A waitress talks about her new rubber-sole shoes and how they make her job easier. A politician talks about his ambitious dreams and then says he hopes the newspaper does not publish his police record. A writer talks about staying at the Cameron Motor Hotel and how the many adulterers staying in the adjacent rooms make it hard to concentrate on his novel. A cab driver talks about how his drives across the international bridge into Mexico with amorous couples energize his evening work. It never ends. The story of the collective is the story of one. The Texas-Mexico border is full of characters eager to gain publicity, to become larger-than-life, to get the Hell out of there.

  This is the mural that Patrick Alcatraz has chased for years. He began painting it in the 1980s and the job continues. It is a labor of love for him, for he knows that if he doesn’t do it…it won’t be done.

   “I am for the little guy and there is no more little guy in the U.S. than the residents of the Texas-Mexico border,” he likes to say. “I wish I could point a camera at all of them and throw them on some national television show. That would be malarious, for sure.”

   Patrick Alcatraz is steeled in knowing that the stories are endless, that even after someone dies…another is born, that so long as the church keeps passing the colelction plate…that he will show up to move the populace along with his writing.

   It is as his friend Jerry McHale says, “Patrick Alcatraz is both Don Quixote and Zorro. And he could be much more if only he would go ahead and move to this hellhole.”

   Mr. Alcatraz will stay the course. He is at work on a biography of The Texas Tornados, his favorite Tex-Mex rock ‘n’ roll band.

About the Author

Patrick Alcatraz knows of only one piece of land that holds him like no other. He has explored and enjoyed the harsh and alive Texas-Mexico border for many years, always taking more of its pelasures than he deserves. This is his fourth book about a piece of geography some say is here only for the lizards and snakes and scorpions and ants. Mr. Alcatraz lives in Fort Worth, Texas, miles to the north, but he journeys to the border every chance he gets. He is a former writer for The Boston Globe and The New York Post and the Associared Press in Denver. At prseent, he is at work on a book about The Texas Tornados, his favorite band.