Mexico : What Everyone Needs to Know®

In the fully updated second edition of Mexico: What Everyone Needs to Know®, Roderic Ai Camp will take readers through the myriad issues confronting Mexico domestically and internationally. Informed and contextualized by Camp''s deep knowledge of Mexican political and cultural history, the book will address Mexican security and violence, economic and political development, its foreign relations with the United States, social development, and current cultural concerns.

Today all would agree that Mexico and the United States have never been closer--that the fates of the two republics are inextricably intertwined. It has become an intimate part of life in almost every community in the United States, through immigration, imported produce, business ties, or illegal drugs. It is less a neighbor than a sibling; no matter what our differences, it is intricately a part of our existence. In the fully updated second edition of Mexico: What Everyone Needs to Know®, Roderic Ai Camp gives readers the most essential information about our sister republic to the south. Camp organizes chapters around major themes--security and violence, economic development, foreign relations, the colonial heritage, and more. He asks questions that take us beyond the headlines: Why does Mexico have so much drug violence? What was the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement? How democratic is Mexico? Who were Benito Juárez and Pancho Villa? What is the PRI (the Institutional Revolutionary Party)? The answers are sometimes surprising. Despite ratification of NAFTA, for example, Mexico has fallen behind Brazil and Chile in economic growth and rates of poverty. Camp explains that lack of labor flexibility, along with low levels of transparency and high levels of corruption, make Mexico less competitive than some other Latin American countries. The drug trade, of course, enhances corruption and feeds on poverty; approximately 450,000 Mexicans now work in this sector. Brisk, clear, and informed, Mexico: What Everyone Needs To Know® offers a valuable primer for anyone interested in the past, present, and future of our neighbor to the South.