Two Reviews: NAFTA and the Zapatistas.

At the beginning of 1990, the Institute of Economic Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico brought together 16 experts to examine the many implications for Mexico of the proposed North American Free Trade Area Treaty with the United States and Canada. The participants were particularly charged with the task of evaluating the changes that were taking place in respect to the relationships between Mexico and the U.S. The authors published the first edition of their papers in 1990, and for this third edition of 1992, at a time when the Treaty was still under negotiation, they revised and enlarged their contributions. The current instability and declining course of the Mexican economy confirms the accuracy of a number of the authors' predictions of the negative consequences of the Treaty for an economy characterized by deep structural discrepancies, manifested in the vulnerability of its external and financial sectors, the insufficient modernization of its productive structures, its low productivity and its abysmal social inequalities, the latter a condition of explosive proportions.