On the Rim of Mexico addresses the ties and asymmetries across the U.S.-Mexico border, from Tijuana/San Diego to Matamoros/Brownsville. Based on author Ramon Eduardo Ruiz's extensive research, travels, remembrances, and first-hand interviews with the people on the Mexican side, the book probes the history, economics, and customs that have shaped this region today. While the author considers many timely issues (the impact of drug trafficking, legal and illegal immigration, assembly plants and the global economy, and the ecological disaster in the making), the book is also an examination of the borderlands themselves: what they are, how they came to be, and salient aspects of life in this region of the world.