Mexico: Why a Few Are Rich and the People Poor

Explicitly focusing on the malaise of underdevelopment that has shaped Mexico since the Spanish conquest, Ramon Eduardo Ruiz Offers a panoramic interpretation of Mexsican history and culture from the pre-Hispanic and colonial eras through the twenty-first centrury. Drawing on economics, psychology, literature, film, and history, he reveals how development processes have fostered glaring inequalities, uncovers the fundamental role of race class in perpetuating poverty, and sheds new light on the country's contemporary reality.

`Ramon Eduadrdo Ruiz has dedicated his career to unlocking the historical reasons for the rebelliousness of Maxican society and its failures to achieve great goals behind those bursts of collective energy and idealism. This book is a culmination of rigorous scholarship and a moral commitment to confronting all aspects of the Mexican people. There is also an element of hope in these pages that Mexico will become a prosperous, just, and viable Society." Lorenzo Meyer, El Colegio de Mexico

In Mexico, Ramon Eduardo Ruiz brings a lifetime of study and a Passionate love of his subject ot bear on the most puzzle any historian of Mexico can confront: Why should a country so rich in potential remain perennially mired in poverty, corruption, and injustice? This is a bold, angry, and absolutely indispensable book." More

Timothy J. Henderson, author of The Mexican Wars for Independence
Romon Eduardo Ruiz, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, San Diego, is the author of many books, including Triumphs and Tragedy: A History of the Mexican People, Memories of a Hyphenated Man, and On the Rim of Mexico: Encounters of the Rich and Poor.