i'm maria hinojosa. this is one on one. john francis, welcome to our program. >> thank you, maria. >> hinojosa: good to have you here. so you are the author of the book planetwalker: 17 years of silence, 22 years of walking. >> yes, i am. >> hinojosa: and so it really was. people, i'm sure they're like, "really? he stopped talking for 17 years?" >> right, i did, actually. >> hinojosa: and you walked for 22. >> for 22 years, without motorized vehicles, yeah. >> hinojosa: and throughout all of that, an essential part is your friend here, the banjo. >> my friend the banjo. >> hinojosa: does banjo have a name? >> well, it's american princess. american princess. it's an old banjo. it's over 100 years old, and was built in philadelphia. >> hinojosa: so the banjo became a central part of you as a persona in these years where you were walking and you were not talking. >> yeah, it did. >> hinojosa: but let's go back for... and you play it normally. >> i do, all the time. so you might hear it as we're talking. >> hinojosa: it's an ex

i'm maria hinojosa. this is one on one. alfredo corchado, you are the mexico bureau chief for the dallas morning news. as such, you spend a lot of your time covering drug dealers, the traficantes, the narcos, the kidnappings. this was not the mexico that you would have been reporting on 20 years ago. it's a whole new mexico. >> well, i actually ca to mexico, and my real passion back then was covering immigration, covering the us-mexico relations. and when i left mexico in 2000, i left mexico for washington, because i thought the story had died in mexico, you know? >> hinojosa: the immigration story. >> the immigration story, but also, you know, mexico now had democracy in the year 2000. and so i figured that maybe the story was going to be washington and mexico city. so i moved to washington. three years later, september 11 comes around, there's no mexico story. i mean, there's no real us policy to mexico. and i returned to mexico, and my first assignment was to cover the women of juarez-- you know, who was killing the wome

i'm maria hinojosa, this is one on one. luis alberto urrea, welcome to the program. a lot to people know you because you're a best-selling author. you wrote across the wire. you wrote the amazing book the devil's highway-- extraordinary. your newest book, into the beautiful north, which we'll get to in a minute. but a lot of people also know you because you're the mexicano who breaks all the molds. >> ah, yeah. >> hinojosa: you are not the mexicano who looks like all the other mexicanos that they think they know. >> yeah, yeah. i... in louisiana, somebody told me i was a "bubba-looking mexican." >> hinojosa: bubba? >> yeah, "the bubba-looking mexican." >> hinojosa: ( laughing ) and you can... you even got that southern training twang there. you can... >> well, you know, it's having lived in the south, i guess. i'm fascinated by it. >> hinojosa: i mean, you really are like 100%, and even in your home when you were raised, you were 100% mexicano. your dad didn't even want you to ca yourself a chicano. >> oh, no. >> hinojosa: and you mom was 100% american. >> right. >>

i'm maria hinojosa. this one on one. >> hinojosa: antonio gonzalez, president of the southwest voter registration project, big mover and shaker in terms of latino politics across the country. yeah, you're smiling. >> thank you. >> hinojosa: it's true! will this year be the year, in the presidential election, when there is no doubt that the latino vote, in fact, can carry, change, sway an election? >> well, this will be the biggest year ever for latino politics, this presidential cycle, but it won't be the first year when we've had big influence and have made a difference at a number of levels across the country. we project that we'll have about 12 million latino voters registered, and about ten million of them will cast votes. and they'll be a weighty impact. you know how presidential elections work. you go with the... what's called the swing states, and those will be states that have lots of latinos this time. it hasn't always been true. but this time you see, you know, the one that you always hear abou