It is hard to classify Ramón Eduardo Ruiz’s most recent work: it is partly a history book, partly investigative journalism, and partly a personal reflection on the border between Mexico and the United States and the ways in which the lives of the author and his family have been tied to it. It is a work of synthesis that focuses primarily on the Mexican side of the border, that other half of the chestnut that tends to receive less attention both in the American consciousness and in American academia. Within the bounds of a medium-size book Ruiz manages to take the reader on a remarkable 2,000-mile journey from the heavy-partying Tijuana during Prohibition, through the bustling El Paso-Ciudad Juárez corridor, to the Rio Grande valley on the Gulf of Mexico coast.
The deeply personal character of this book makes for both its weaknesses and strengths. The subjects covered are chosen in a free-wheeling manner (e.g., the vagaries of the peso-dollar exchange rate, drug trafficking, environmental degradation, national identity, etc.) although the author does find an overarching theme in the vast asymmetry that manifests itself in all dealings between Mexicans and Americans along the border. In any one chapter the reader is apt to encounter liberal doses of social analysis, personal anecdotes, and history of the U.S.-Mexico border, mostly of the twentieth century. The organization is hardly that of the conventional monograph as the author has dispensed of all footnotes and the clinching evidence is sometimes found in an anecdote or a direct quotation from a man or woman of the street. Ruiz is admirably egalitarian as he culls information from casual conversations, newspaper articles, personal experience, and songs, as well as scholarly works. Those expecting falsifiable hypotheses connected to long footnotes are bound to be disappointed.
But those with more catholic interests will find a well-crafted and entertaining portrait of the Mexico-United States border region that incorporates the most recent scholarly and journalistic insights and takes the border story up to the present. The presentation is balanced and the ideas are engaging. One of the strengths of the book is that the author leaves no doubt as to where he stands on the various issues discussed and minces no words to denounce the corruption and injustice so prevalent on the border. On the Rim of Mexico also has the virtue of steering clear of simplistic ethnic explanations and mechanistic dependency models; instead it shows the multiplicity of factors originating both in Mexico and in the United States that converge along the border to shape a peculiar lifestyle. Ruiz singles out the contemporary global economy as the main culprit of the harsh and at times desperate situation in which many residents of the Mexican side of the border presently find themselves. But the author spreads the blame around widely to include corrupt Mexican politicians and entrepreneurs, ruthless drug lords, and unscrupulous and abusive American and Japanese assembly-plant owners. A certain nostalgia for the pre-maquiladora border creeps into the book, providing a suitable backdrop for the apocalyptic conclusion.