SOURCE: "In the Shadow of a Colossus," in Washington Post Book World, June 23, 1996, p. 5.

In the following review, Mead provides a generally positive appraisal of A New Time for Mexico.

"We turn on the television sets of the Mexican mind," writes Carlos Fuentes in A New Time for Mexico, "and every night we hear the same evening news. Top of the news: THE SPANISH HAVE CONQUERED MEXICO. Second item: THE GRINGOS STOLE HALF OUR TERRITORY. After that, murders, arson, kidnappings and, five-legged cows."

The murders and five-legged cows have been coming thicker than usual since the policies of former Mexican president Carlos Salinas de Gotari collapsed ignominiously in 1994–95. Salinas had promised through the magic of NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement] to turn Mexico into a First World country. Instead, as Fuentes makes clear, the Mexican scene remains a kind of Jurassic Park inhabited by political dinosaurs and...