Por Quién Doblan Las Campanas De Taco Bell: Respuestas Populares Al TLC Al Sur De La Frontera (For Whom the Taco Bells Ring: Popular Responses to NAFTA South of the Border)

Abstract

This paper explores recent forms of Mexican popular nationalism in the wake of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Drawing on ethnographic research in a colonia popular of Mexico City, I maintain that analyses of nationalism and class, including within critical theory, should reexamine cultural questions pertaining to national sovereignty within contemporary globalization. Responses to the Free Trade Agreement among the urban poor in Mexico, for instance, indicate a growing disparity between elite and popular perceptions regarding issues such as democracy and nationalism. Although grassroots leftist politics in the last two decades have been successful in overcoming a previous neglect of daily needs and realities for the poor, the paper also argues that recent popular social movements have too often ignored debate on questions of transnationalism and nationalism.