Mexico's Northern Border Research Articles

Industrialization and land use change in Mexican border cities: The case of Ciudad Juárez, México

The maquiladora (maquila) economy has brought enormous change to Mexico's northern border region during the last few decades. Scholars have studied many aspects of the region's maquila economy, including bi‐national trade, a range of environmental issues, and social and cultural impacts arising from rapid industrialization. Few, however, have examined the relationship between industrialization and the development of urban land. We respond to this deficiency by investigating land use change in Ciudad Juárez, México, during the 1988-1993 period. Two objectives guide the research. First, we document the extent to which the maquila economy has fostered rapid population growth and employment change in Ciudad Juárez and other Mexican border cities. Second, a simple simulation procedure is used to show how growth of the maquila economy has distorted residential and commercial land development in the city. The results indicate that during the 1988-1993 period residential land in the city was “overdeveloped” while commercial land was “underdeveloped.” The results offer important clues for understanding the impacts of rapid industrialization, and for guiding urban planning efforts in Mexican border cities.

Planning for hazard mitigation in the U.S.‐Mexican border region: An assessment of hazardous waste generation rates for transportation

This paper provides an assessment of the trends in hazardous waste shipments across the U.S.‐Mexican border. These wastes are generated in the maquiladoras (assembly plants) operating in the northern border of Mexico and are expected to be shipped back to the United States under the conditions imposed by the Environmental Cooperation Agreement. However, very little of such waste is actually sent back. This study first estimates generation rates for hazardous waste, based on shipment data, by type of maquiladora industry for 1995 and prior years. Second, it uses Sonora, Mexico, as a case to illustrate the impending problems of waste transportation and treatment by projecting hazardous waste shipments to 2005. The paper concludes with some suggested research to address the current policy impasse in managing hazardous wastes in the U.S.‐Mexican border.

Higher education along the Northern Border of Mexico: A historical approximation

The development of institutions of higher education along the northern border of Mexico reflects the growth of the border region as a whole. Traditionally, higher education in Mexico was concentrated in Mexico City. The settlement and rapid growth of the border region, however, increased the demand for higher education. Its expansion, then, has allowed students to stay within their home region to be educated and later employed there, contributing to the development of the region. In recent decades, northern Mexico has experienced the accelerated development of higher education and its diversification. Although studies within the border region have traditionally focused on issues relating specifically to the Mexican side, the study of binational issues is on the rise. In contrast, Mexico's southern border has endured a quite different trend in the expansion of higher education. Its few institutions were founded much later and have been greatly neglected by the central government. The relative abundance of institutions along the northern border can be attributed to its economic importance to the central government. This study looks at the extension of higher education to the northern border in terms of national regional development and policies, social and political movements, and the move to understand the complexities of this border region.

Migrant women crossing borders: The role of gender and religion in internal and external Mexican migration

This article examines the migration experience of women crossing two different borders, international‐national and rural‐urban. Two ethnographic examples are provided to document women's transformations through migration. The first case deals with Mexican women crossing Mexico's northern border into Texas. The second case focuses on Maya women crossing the rural border of a Maya community to urban Cancún. The core of the study is the analysis of the parallelisms between these two cases, mainly expressed in the connections between religious conversion and socioeconomic transformations resulting from these women's migration experiences. The ethnographic method allows the comparison of the two cases of female migration and facilitates the understanding of the ideological transformation, expressed through the religious conversion, interwoven with changes in their migrant socioeconomic dynamics.

Nongovernmental organizations in Mexico's Northern Border

This article documents and analyzes the activities of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) along the western part of Mexico's northern border. The research is based on fieldwork with 26 Mexican civic, not‐for‐profit organizations that promote social change and community development in the areas of environmental protection, poverty alleviation, and human, indigenous, and women's rights in Tijuana, Mexicali, Agua Prieta, Nogales, and Ciudad Juárez. Border NGOs are classified with respect to their activities and working style, focusing particularly on their relationship to their grassroots constituencies. The strongest NGOs are environmental groups, which in general work in policy‐oriented research and lobbying, and economic development NGOs, which mostly promote small business development. NGOs promoting a variety of civil rights generally operate with few resources and relatively little competency to carry out long‐term capacity building among their constituencies. The article shows that in contrast to NGOs in Mexico's interior, which have developed as allies of poor people's social movements, NGOs along the northern border do not have strong links with grassroots organizations of the urban or rural poor, thus limiting their effectiveness in promoting democratization and poverty alleviation. The author explores the factors contributing to the unique characteristics of border NGOs, including border culture and politics, ties to U.S. NGOs, and the recent creation of many border NGOs.

Cometh the NAFTA, whither the maquiladora? Reflections on the future of industrialization in Northern Mexico

The objective of this article is to explore what impacts NAFTA might have on Mexican maquila operations. Our main focus is on the fate of the maquiladoras located in a narrow strip along Mexico's northern border which account for approximately eighty percent of the total. Our concerns about the future development of the United States-Mexico border region derive partly from the fact that we live there and have no immediate plans to depart, but also due to the region's strategic, geographic, economic and cultural importance. Our observations, couched in a framework of evolutionary change, lead us to more pessimistic prognostications about industrialization in the frontera norte than other projections mentioned below. We conclude that the fundamental shortcoming in the northern border region is the lack of a technological base sufficient to support sustained, dynamic socioeconomic development.

The Limits of the Mexican Maquiladora Industry

This paper analyzes the growth of the maquiladora industry on Mexico's northern border. The concentration of capital, its productive structure, wages, working conditions and structural problems are analyzed. Its deleterious effect on the region and its major cities and the environment only exacerbate the unequal and subordinated pattern of Mexico's integration into the U.S.

The Maquila industry in perspective

It is well known that industrialization in northern Mexico began in the middle 1960s. Although it is argued officially that this process was an outcome of Mexican government strategy designed to address border unemployment caused by a decline in cotton production and the termination of the bracero program, I suggest that two external factors were more responsible for border industrialization. First, are the technological improvements that occurred in the industrialized countries during the 1960s. In some industries these improvements made possible the segmentation of productive processes. In particular, I refer to microconductor (micro chip) technology and to the consequent electric and electronic miniaturization process. This technological shift would soon affect the electric household goods sector and eventually would spread to the automotive electric industry. Second were the developments in communications and transportation systems that made possible the transmission of work orders and the shipment of parts and unfinished products between distant plants at comparatively low costs. In combination, these external factors resulted both in trade (export platforms) in some developing nations and in the adjustment of customs regulations (e.g., U.S. Tariff Schedules 806.30 and 807.0) in the industrialized countries. Free trade were established in Seoul and Inchon (Korea) in 1960 and the Kaoshiung (Taiwan) trade zone was established in 1965. At about the same time, trade were established in Ireland, Singapore, Hong Kong, the Phillipines, India and Mexico. In Mexico's northern border region, the old free zones and their boundaries were easily transformed into export platforms.

Identidad cultural en la frontera entre México y los Estados Unidos

<span>Ángela Moyano afirma que la existencia de una identidad nacional en la frontera norte de México es cuestionada debido al ímpetu de la influencia cultural estadounidense. Analiza las diferencias entre las dos civilizaciones y explica el pensamiento de Estados Unidos, pues dicha nación tiene la convicción histórica de que, por destino providencial, debe llevar la democracia y el trabajo al resto del continente. La autora asegura que la linde nacional se mantiene independiente ya que sólo hay influencia pero no hay dominación; más aún, los habitantes de la región constituyen una barrera contra la transculturación.</span>

Causes of growth in the informal labor sector in Mexico's Northern Border Region

The Mexican border region, along with other developing regions, is experiencing increasing pressure from a growing labor supply. Demand for labor in the modem industrial sector has not kept pace with this expansion. The necessity of survival prevents the resulting excess supply from being unemployed. Instead, this labor is forced to seek employment in the turning its creativity into the self-generation of income. This unorganized sector, which has come to be called the urban informal sector, consists of owners and employees of micro-enterprises (usually defined as no more than four employees), independent producers and unpaid family members (Ortiz 1985:105). It is characterized by ease of entrance, but also by low wages, marginalized living, lack of security and lack of opportunity to create physical or human capital. Its labor supply operates with a minimum of physical resources, but manages to compete by remaining hidden from government regulations, taxes and by accepting very low wages. The informal sector interacts with and subsidizes the formal sector by providing needed services cheaply and by maintaining a flexibility and adaptability that allows it to respond quickly to changing demands. Much of its market is directed toward other members of the informal sector, providing a cheaper source of goods and services. Growth in demand for labor in the informal sector does not depend on its own capacity for capital accumulation, but on labor surplus from the industrial sector and on possibilities of producing or selling anything that will generate income (Souza and Tokman 1976:355). Expansion of the informal sector in Mexico should not be viewed as an inevitable part of the development process. The size of this sector relative to the size of the formal labor sector is strongly influenced by government policies. Altering these policies could alter the proportion of workers channeled into marginalized living. For purposes of this study the urban informal labor sector is treated as a residual (U). It includes all labor (L) which is not in the urban industrial sector (N) and not in agriculture or mining (A). It can be expressed as: (1) U = L - N - A. That this residual has grown so rapidly during the course of Mexican border region development is regarded as a failure of the economic system. This study empirically examines the impact of various policies and cultural changes that have occurred in the Mexican border region on the growth of the informal labor sector during the last thirty years.

Políticas del gobierno mexicano en la región fronteriza norte

En el artículo se analizan los programas y políticas instrumentadas por el gobierno mexicano desde 1848 en la región fronteriza norte. El objetivo central de todos ellos ha sido integrar económica, política y socialmente esa región al resto del país. Se evalúan aquí los resultados obtenidos en relación con el objetivo mencionado, y se concluye que tal objetivo nunca se ha logrado; el autor cree por tanto necesario cuestionar seriamente la validez de la integración como elemento fundamental en la política regional y urbana en la frontera norte de México.

Site and situation strategy in tourism planning: A Mexican case study

Mexico has experienced all the effects, good and ill, of a large and expanding tourist trade. Tourism's negative consequences--economic dependency, crime, cultural erosion--have manifested themselves in tourist ghettos along Mexico's northern border, on the Mexican Riviera, and in the capital. This study is an assesment of contemporary Mexican tourism planning as it relates to these problems, and further as it seeks to make tourism a stimulus to economically depressed areas of the nation. A case study approach is utilized to identify the strategy of site and situation selection for the new programmed resort complex at Cancun on the Caribbean coast of the Yucatan peninsula. It is concluded that Cancun embodies, at least for Mexico, a radical departure in tourism development. The resort is situated to attract a large foreign clientele and to create the greatest possible positive economic and social impact on a resident Mexican population that has suffered chronic underdevelopment.

Chicanos and the Border Cities: An Interpretive Essay

research for this paper was made possible by a grant from the Ford Foundation. 'As used in this work, the term refers to the line of demarcation separating Mexico and the United States and to the narrow land strips immediately adjacent to that line on both sides and extending to the limits of the U.S. counties and Mexican municipalities within the zone. In the historiography of the U.S.-Mixico border, the greatest emphasis is placed on international conflict and diplomatic relations between the two countries. Although listed in a broader multidisciplinary context, references to historical works dealing with the border may be found in Charles C. Cumberland, The United States-Mexican Border: A Selective Guide to the Literature of the Region, Supplement to Rural Sociology, XXV (June 1960); and Ellwyn R. Stoddard, ed., The Status of U.S.-Mexico Borderlands Studies: A Multidisciplinary Symposium, Social Science Journal, combined double issue, XII-XIII (1975-1976), 3-112. 2Attracted by the area's rapid population growth, increased urbanization, and incipient economic development, sociologists, economists, and geographers have accelerated their border research since the mid-1960s. Important works published in the last decade include William V. D'Antonio and William H. Form, Influentials in Two Border Cities: A Study of Community Decision Making (Notre Dame, 1965); David North, Mexican Border Crossers: People Who Live in Mexico and Work in the United States (Washington, D.C., 1970); C. Daniel Dillman, Urban Growth along Mexico's Northern Border and the Mexican National Border Program, Journal of Developing Areas, IV (1970), 487-508; Donald W. Baerresen, Border Industrialization Program of Mexico (Lexington, Mass., 1971); Julian Samora, Los Mojados (Notre Dame, 1971); John A.