Mexico's Northern Research Articles

Economic Changes and the Need for a New Federalism: Lessons from Mexico's Northern States

Introduction Mexico's recent crisis has brought to the fore what is perhaps the most relevant feature of its current model of development: close interdependence with the global system, and particularly with the United States. Over the past twelve years, its strategy of economic opening proclaimed Mexico's participation in the globalization process as a sine qua non condition for modernization. As 1995 began with the peso crisis, the consequences of this opening revealed a side of globalization that might well be termed perverse. In this paper we pose questions regarding the role the states of northern Mexico have played in this shift from the current model of development. More specifically, we discuss the substantial modifications, which might be termed mutations, that have occurred in their economies and territories during the last few years. These changes oblige us to reassess the federalism model and the role that each of the states plays in the country's economic, social, and political future, understood as it is within the framework of growing economic liberalization, both continentally and globally. The central hypothesis here is that the recent economic changes have produced numerous transformations in Mexico's territorial organization but that, in turn, such transformations have not led to serious consideration of the relationship between the central government and the states most affected by the opening process. We have identified four different levels of analysis which are pertinent to this discussion: - The new definition of the existing connection between national and regional space and globalization. - The most significant regional changes in levels of development of the different states, their most important activities, and their relative position in the interregional division of labor. - The profound transformations of the cities, where the access to goods and services in many cases has led to serious conflicts, thus affecting the fundamental ideas put forth by the globalization process. - The impact of economic liberalization on regions constrained by limited local resources and by a fiscal policy conditioned by the central government. From Inward-Oriented Development to an Outward-Oriented Model The model of development which guaranteed Mexico's sustained economic growth for several decades was based on an import-substitution strategy and on the development of an increasingly important domestic market. Starting from a weak economic base, strongly affected by the events of the 1910 Revolution, Mexico was able to construct an economic model suited to the international situation. An important industrialization process was begun and, although it was insufficiently widespread, considerable accumulation in the secondary and tertiary sectors guaranteed the expansion of domestic markets, the development of a strong middle class, and Mexico's transformation into a relatively modern country. In emphasizing stabilization, this development model produced considerable imbalances because it favored the concentration of the economy in the nation's geographical center, the Mexico City metropolitan area. But these were also the result of the state's resistance to creating a more egalitarian territorial system and its willingness to subsidize the urban concentration in the capital. Even the oil boom from 1978-1982 acted to reinforce the concentration process and to resist better regional distribution of income and investments. The change to an outward-oriented model, after the failure of the previous development model, was achieved through the gradual adjustments implemented during the de la Madrid administration from 1982-88. These adjustments had to overcome ideological and corporate opposition which, in some cases, stemmed from sectors within the state apparatus. Under the Salinas de Gortari presidency from 1988-94, however, the transformations were accelerated and intensified. …

Thread of blood: colonialism, revolution, and gender on Mexico's northern frontier

This book is about the construction and tranformation of peasant military colonists on Mexico's northern frontier from the late 18th through the early 20th century. Though the majority of the data comes from the pueblo of Namiquipa in the state of Chihuahua, the argument has broader implications for the study of northern Mexico, frontier societies, and our understanding of the northern armies in the 1910 Revolution. The study is rare for its integration of several levels, placing an analysis of gender and ethnicity within a specific historical period. The author demonstrates that a distinct kind of frontier serrano society was generated in Namiquipa between the mid-18th and mid-19th centuries. In exchange for keeping the Apaches at bay, colonists were provided with arms and land grants. At the same time, they developed a gendered sense of ethnic identity that equated honor with land, autonomy, and a kind of masculinity that distinguished the civilized colonist from the barbarous Indian. While this identity was itself ordered hierarchically between men and women, and between Hispanic and Indian, it also provided serranos with a sense of pride and dignity that was not directly associated with wealth. After the defeat of the Apaches, and with increased state control during the last decades of the Porfiriato, the serranos on the frontier were transformed from bulwarks of order to victims of progress. The expansion of capitalism and the manipulation of local political office by men no longer accountable to communal norms eroded the legitimacy of both powerholders and the central state. In response, serranos constructed an ideology of history based on past notions of masculine honor and autonomy. This ideology motivated their confrontations with the Mexican state during the 1890s and also served as the force behind their mobilization in the 1910 revolution.

Thread of Blood: Colonialism, Revolution, and Gender on Mexico's Northern Frontier

Thread of Blood: Colonialism, Revolution, and Gender on Mexico's Northern Frontier

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.

Political Parties, Women Activists' Agendas and Household Relations: Elections on Mexico's Northern Frontier

Basado en entrevistas con activistas y con un muestreo de mujeres que habitan en barrios de clases sociales diferentes, el presente artículo reconstruye las ligas entre la participación política de las mujeres en las elecciones de 1986 en Ciudad Juárez y las relaciones familiares dentro del hogar. A pesar de la extensa participación de las mujeres en las campañas y en sus resultados y del reconocimiento de los partidos de la existencia de diversos electorados femeninos, un

Political Parties, Women Activists' Agendas and Household Relations: Elections on Mexico's Northern Frontier

Basado en entrevistas con activistas y con un muestreo de mujeres que habitan en barrios de clases sociales diferentes, el presente artículo reconstruye las ligas entre la participación política de las mujeres en las elecciones de 1986 en Ciudad Juárez y las relaciones familiares dentro del hogar. A pesar de la extensa participación de las mujeres en las campañas y en sus resultados y del reconocimiento de los partidos de la existencia de diversos electorados femeninos, un "programa para mujeres" no se convirtió en parte del proceso político. La participación política tuvo determinados impactos en las relaciones entre los sexos dentro de las familias, particularmente entre las activistas panistas.

Enregistrement des principaux épisodes transgressifs albiens sur la plate-forme carbonatée de Chihuahua (Mexique)

After the Late Aptian Transgression, a Carbonate platform developed on the Northern of Mexico from the Albian to Early Cenomanian period. During his evolution, the platform records two main crisis corresponding to two transgressive episodes: (1) Middle Albian (El Bronce Formation), (2) Late Albian (Benevides Formation). During these crisis, the carbonate sedimentation changed momentarily and more argillaceous limestones and marls with pelagic organisms were deposited in a more opened marine environment on the Platform. The carbonate series may be subdivided into three Megasequences of IV order. The main renewal of fauna are placed just afterthe beginning of the two transgressive episodes.

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.