Endangered Mexico

When the debate over NAFTA was still receiving national attention, Simon, a journalist who has been covering Mexican politics since 1990, took his notepad to Tijuana and recorded the shimmering green-and-yellow pools of toxic waste spotting children's playgrounds. His awe at the wretched state of things at the border led him to more extensive research. The author plunges deep into Mexico's history, beginning with the Aztecs and taking readers through the years of colonization and warring conflict that have ""turned like an enormous plow over the fertile Mexican earth."" The crimes of Mexico's ravagers, from the Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes to the current secretary of commerce, are brought to life with explicit descriptions of Mexico's diverse landscapes--lakes and sandy beaches, jungles and plains--eroding into desert and waste. Simon does not propose any easy solutions, but he makes the connections between Mexico's environment and its social and economic troubles devastatingly clear through evocative accounts of hiking the jungle with a gun-toting Tarahumara healer in a ski mask and of sitting down to a meal with a man who can feed his family for three with the money from one mahogany tree. The ""edge"" implied by the subtitle is that of disaster--but it could just as well be that of the United States; this book a compelling testimony not only to the earth's vulnerability to human politics and human economics but also to our responsibility to protect it. (Apr.)