John Deckinga

The Road to Cocoyoc John Deckinga

In his village of Cocoyoc in north central Mexico all Juan Carlos Aguilar wants is to live a quiet life, and for the woman of his dreams, Rosa Maria Garcia, to fall in love with him. But at the outer edges of his narrow world the great upheaval of the 1910 Mexican Revolution is giving off its first tremors, and before that movement finishes, it will shake his world to its foundation and tear him from his beloved Cocoyoc and from Rosa María García. In its conflict with the revolutionaries the Mexican federal army, hungry for conscripts, drags Juan Carlos from his village to fight in far-off Chihuahua, where he engages the supposed enemy in battle after battle and experiences the horrors of warfare. Captured by the revolutionaries at the Battle of Juárez and recovering from near-fatal wounds in one of their hospitals, he meets the dynamic Pancho Villa, who explains to him the other side of the struggle. When a peace of sorts is finally forged, Juan Carlos returns home, bearing the weight of what he's lived through, while eager to embrace the tranquility of Cocoyoc and the affection of the woman he loves.