cover image Mexico and the United States: Ambivalent Vistas

Mexico and the United States: Ambivalent Vistas

W. Dirk Raat. University of Georgia Press, $18.5 (277pp) ISBN 978-0-8203-1457-0

This substantial, accessible history covers much ground: Mexico's relationship with the United States and the world economy, the United States' influence on Mexico's development, and the competing civilizations of Protestant North America and Native American-Hispanic Catholic Mexico. Raat ( Mexico: From Independence to Revolution ) begins with the evolution of competing ethnocentrisms (``gringos'' and ``greasers''), then explains how the early history of Mexico's native peoples has shaped the present. (``Mexico today is a land of superimposed pasts.'') Tracing the differences in ecology, climate and colonial economies, he probes the sources of overdevelopment in the United States and of underdevelopment in Mexico. He explains Mexico's own role in its loss of Texas and the divisive political impact of this loss on both the U.S. and Mexico. Raat asserts that like Franklin Roosevelt, Mexican modernizer Cardenas, who nationalized the oil industry, wanted to preserve capitalism. The most interesting chapter explores the ambivalent, hybrid border culture of Mexamerica. Illustrations. (Dec.)