Political Science 246
Political Science 346 Jim Mahon
Spring 2008 Stetson b22 (x2236)
Wed 10-noon
and by appointment
jmahon@williams.edu
MEXICAN POLITICS
This course surveys politics in Mexico. It is divided into four parts that differ both in content and in format. The first, historical section considers several themes, including the slow emergence of a stable national state and a national consciousness, changes in the basis of political legitimacy, how governments promoted economic development (or not), and how economic conditions and new conceptions of identity reacted in turn upon politics. During this part of the course, class time will be devoted mostly to lecture. In the second section of the course, we break into tutorial groups to consider four general themes that link historical trends with contemporary problems: the bases of Mexican national identity and how they affect politics (and vice versa); the impact, on the economy and politics, of migration and of rapid development in the northern border region; and the interplay between urbanization and political corruption in the context of great social inequality. In the third section of the course, we have standard lecture-and-discussion classes on contemporary economic and political issues. At the end, we turn to seminar-style discussion of student research projects.
Requirements. This course is writing-intensive. There will be a short (5-page) paper at the end of the historical section, two tutorial essays (4 pages) two tutorial responses (1-2 pages each) and a medium-length research paper (12-15 pages, with a corresponding class presentation in one of the last classes). There is no final exam. Weights in the grade are:
Map quiz 5 percent
First paper 15 percent
Tutorial essays (2), each 12.5 percent
Tutorial responses (2), each 5 percent
Research paper 30 percent
Presentation 5 percent
Class participation (esp. part III) 10 percent
Attendance is required and your preparation is essential to the success of the class. Honor code guidelines apply (pp. 136-37 of the Student Handbook). Give credit for ideas you get from others; put marks around direct quotations; and for course readings, internal abbreviated citations like this (Stout, 301) are fine. Unless you are able to turn your papers in to me personally, please turn them in by email, preferably with a receipt acknowledgement (for your own security against my mishandling).
Readings. The following books are required and should be available at Water Street Books:
Meyer and Beezley, eds. The Oxford History of Mexico (Oxford, 2000);
Julia Preston and Sam Dillon, Opening Mexico (FSG 2004, paperback 2005);
Sam Quiñones, True Tales from Another Mexico (U. New Mexico 2001);
Robert Joe Stout, The Blood of the Serpent (Algora 2003).
Most of the rest of the readings are in a packet, the first part of which is available immediately through the Political Science Department (room g18, M-F 9-12, 1-4). The rest will come out once the enrollment is settled. A few pictorial and video materials are on reserve at Sawyer. Students should follow Mexico news every day. At present a decent English site is the Banderas News page . By the end of the course I hope we can all read and discuss current news, editorials and op-eds from this and other sources.
SCHEDULE
(* = in packet)
2/1 Introduction and overview
I. State, Economy, and Nation in Mexican History
2/5 State and Nation
Joel S. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States (1988), pp. 15-24.*
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, rev. ed. (1991), pp. 5-12.*
Eric Hobsbawm, "The Nation as Invented Tradition," from The Invention of Tradition (1983), excerpted in Nationalism, John Hutchinson and Anthony Smith, eds. (Oxford, 1994), pp. 76-82.*
Tim Golden, "Help, Police, Thieves. (Help. Police thieves.)" NYT 3/24/95.*
Stout, Blood of the Serpent, excerpt from chap. 7 (pp. 172-80).
Begin readings for next class!
An introduction to theories of state and nation. The first readings define the terms, put them into their context of origin in European history, and describe their spread to countries where they represent more of an imported ideal (for some people, anyway) than a reality. The article from the Times and the excerpt from Stout help us appreciate the importance of what we often take for granted in the concept of the state.
2/8 The Meaning of the Conquest and New Spain
Oxford History of Mexico, Chapters 3, 4, and 9.
The first major "new" political unit in America was New Spain. But the popular and official versions of Mexican history downplay its importance--witness the country's name and the insignia on its flag—despite the obvious importance of the Spanish cultural legacy.
2/12 Independence and Political Failure
Mariano Otero, Considerations Relating to the Political and Social Situation of the Mexican Republic in the Year 1847, in Cecil Robinson, ed. and trans., The View from Chapultepec: Mexican Writers on the Mexican-American War (U. Arizona, 1989).*
Oxford History of Mexico, Chapters 10 and 11.
The failure to build a stable order after Independence left Mexico exposed to conquest from the north; this event, in turn, only deepened the national crisis and was followed by almost two decades of intermittent civil war, including the intervention of French imperial forces and the rule of a Hapsburg prince (1862-67). Otero, an acute observer of his country, provided a catalog of ways in which Mexico in 1847 did not live up to the liberal ideal of the nation-state.
2/15 No class, Winter Carnival
2/19 Juárez, Liberalism, and the Porfirian Peace MAP QUIZ
Oxford History of Mexico, Chapters 12 and 13.
The basic story of post-Independence Mexico is that the Liberals won, but not completely and not as they had envisioned. Slavery was abolished, the state was finally consolidated on liberal lines, the Church was reduced in importance, and the indio and mestizo majority was sometimes quite visibly incorporated into national life--even at the top, as evidenced by the two key figures of the period, Juárez and Diaz. But these changes were extremely limited ones. The liberal period became known as one of exploitation in which the economically strong (which often meant foreigners or those Mexicans who best connected internationally) dominated the weak, using the state against them and their liberty. There was order and progress, but the former was coercive and often explicitly racist, and few enjoyed the latter.
2/22 The Mexican Revolution
Oxford History of Mexico, Chapters 14, 15, and 16.
The Mexican Revolution (with the War of the Triple Alliance and the US Civil War) was one of the bloodiest armed conflicts in the history of this hemisphere. About a million people (out of a population of 14-15 million) died from the direct or indirect effects of the wars, mostly in central and central-northern Mexico.
It can be seen as a popular rebellion, or a series of civil wars, which broke out when an aging dictator faced the typical problem of dictatorships--succession. Each of its most famous leaders has been described as representing a different social group: Madero, the respectable middle class that wanted to imitate the United States and have stable democracy; Villa, rural and urban workers and small business; and Zapata, the traditional peasantry aggrieved by expanding capitalist farming. But even though today Zapata and Villa are the most popular Revolutionary heroes, neither was on the winning side of the Revolution. The winners were the Constitutionalists, led by Carranza and Obregón, propertied men of the north. Some of this had to do with military strategy and foreign intervention, but much was due to the alliances--and promises--they made. Many of these were kept only later by Lázaro Cárdenas after he came to the presidency in 1934. He built the corporatist state (this means people were "represented" by their social sector rather than by territory), nationalized oil and railroads, becoming a hero to peasants and workers and the ideal of many later politicians.
2/26 The Institutional Revolution and Its Decline
Oxford History of Mexico, Chapters 18 and 19.
Preston and Dillon, Opening Mexico, Chap. 4 and excerpts from Chap. 6 (149-50, 161-69, 176-80) and Chap. 7 (181-82, 197-204, 214-227).
These readings consider the ossification and weakening of the revolutionary regime. In the post-WW2 generation the system became “institutionalized,” symbolized by the change in the party’s name from PRM to PRI. Nobody did more to help its birth than Miguel Alemán (president 1946-52). He became the representative figure in the creation of a new moneyed elite out of the Revolutionary political one, and so (in contrast to Cárdenas's public presence) in the corruption and disenchantment summarized in the cynical phrase, "la Revolución le hizo justicia" (the Revolution did him justice--that is, gave him a chance to become illicitly rich), even though this process started well before him.
The system lost different pillars of its legitimacy at different times. Gustavo Díaz Ordaz was an enigmatic and authoritarian man of the system (1964-70), who in the Tlatelolco massacre of October 1968 killed off many people’s illusions that the middle letter in “PRI” actually stood for something. Luis Echeverría (1970-76) and José López Portillo (1976-82) oversaw the PRI’s final failures—its inability to become more transparent and or to manage oil and public debt sustainably. The crisis of 1982 (along with López Portillo’s final spasm of nationalism in response to capital flight) brought the rupture of the state-centered development model that underpinned the remaining legitimacy of the PRI. It began nearly a decade of economic slump and the prolonged agony of the PRI system, led by technocrats, burdened by external debt, and increasingly challenged by new social and political movements. These showed up most obviously in the wake of the 1985 earthquakes and they found a voice in the presidential campaign of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas in 1988, who lost what was widely regarded as a blatantly fraudulent election. The last two events are the special focus of the first two chapters assigned from Preston and Dillon. In the third they describe how Carlos Salinas tried to build his presidency (1988-94) on a dramatic turn away from the historic commitments of the PRI.
2/29 The Fall of the PRI System and the Election of Fox
Preston and Dillon, Opening Mexico, Chap. 8 (229-39, 250-53, 254-56), Chap. 9 (all but 293-96), Chap. 17 and Epilogue (all).
Here we get into the pith of Preston and Dillon’s description of how Mexico “opened.” It begins with the crisis year of 1994 and how this produced a modest president who was both a skilled technocrat and a political novice. Facing a major economic crisis with few traditional levers of power, Ernesto Zedillo followed his inclination to open the political process, against the interests of his own party.
PAPER DUE SUNDAY, MARCH 2 AT 4:00pm
II. Tutorial
A. (March 3-7) Forjando Patria, or the State as Agent of Cultural Change and Nation-building
Alan Knight, "Popular Culture and the Revolutionary State in Mexico, 1910-1940," Hispanic American Historical Review 74:3 (1994).*
Viewing of excerpts from Allá en el Rancho Grande (1938, 1943) and Rio Escondido (1948), Tuesday class period.
Andrés Uc Dzib, "La Escuela Rural, una Nueva Escuela de la Época de Oro de la Educación en México," first part, and
María del Carmen Cano Sandoval, "Memorias de una Maestra," from Los Maestros y la Cultura Nacional, 1920-1952, vols. 5 and 4, respectively (Mexico City, Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1987) [original followed by my translation in packet].*
Rick A. López, “The India Bonita Contest of 1921 and the Ethnicization of Mexican National Culture,” HAHR 82:2 (May 2002).*
Alan Riding, Distant Neighbors, chap. 15.*
Stanley Brandes, “The Day of the Dead, Halloween, and the Quest for Mexican National Identity,” Journal of American Folklore 111: 359-80 (1998).*
José de Cordoba, "Oh, Say Can You See," WSJ 12/11/98.*
School calendars, 2002-07.*
The post-Revolutionary state set out to incorporate and civilize the masses, even as it claimed to represent them. These readings touch on a general theme: how states, especially through public education and public art, try to create citizens who feel themselves part of a nation. Playing an important role were intellectuals and artists, especially the famous mural painters who sought to create an authentically Mexican art form that would represent the country’s uniqueness to the world, while performing a didactic function for its local viewers. The Knight article is a valuable and complex overview; try to read or skim it before seeing the film excerpts. Allá en el Rancho Grande represents a very popular, romanticized view of the pre-Revolutionary (or unreformed) countryside, where men are gallant, women are virtuous and demure, and everyone defers appropriately to the patrón. Rio Escondido gives a stirring argument for the government’s side of the controversy described by Knight. The next two readings are testimonials by teachers about their youthful experiences, collected by the education ministry as part of an oral history series to celebrate the government's achievements in this area. Note the attitudes toward indigenous people, landed interests, and the Church expressed by the teachers (one indigenous, one probably creole) and their unapologetic attitude about the role of state power in the redemption of future citizens. López shows how race intersected with conceptions of national culture in the 1920’s—and how all this is (mis)remembered today.
On electronic mass media, the Riding chapter, although a little dated, poses the main issues best, as he describes the dominant role of Televisa (which persisted through the 1980’s, but has now been reduced to one part of a duopoly with a similar conservative orientation) and decries the basic political message of the typical telenovela. Brandes shows how particular understandings of popular religious observance become codified as “typically Mexican.” Finally, the school calendars and the De Córdoba article update Knight’s themes to the present. On the calendars, note the poster art and which days are school holidays (and how these are described).
Important issues: What is at stake in the state’s attempts to mold popular culture? Why do states do it? What’s at stake in calling something “national” or “authentic”? On balance, was the Mexican state a force for good or bad in these efforts?
B. (March 10-14) So What Does It Mean (Politically) to Be Mexican?
Oxford History of Mexico, Chapter 20.
Viewing of excerpts from Ahí Está el Detalle (1940) and El Patrullero 777 (1978), class period.
Juan Gabriel, “El México que Se Nos Fue” [The Mexico We Have Lost] and Canción 187” (1995), class period.
Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude, chap. 2, "Sons of La Malinche."*
Anthony DePalma, "Let the Heavens Fall, Mexicans Will Revere Virgin," NYT 6/21/96.*
J. Favrot Peterson, "Virgin of Guadalupe: Symbol of Conquest or Liberation?" Art Journal 52 (Winter 1992).*
Carlos Monsiváis, Mexican Postcards, essay 3, "Tradition Hour."*
Carlos Monsiváis, Mexican Postcards essay 7, “Cantínflas: That’s the Point!”*
Jeffrey Pilcher, ¡Qué Vivan los Tamales! (1998), Introduction and Epilogue.*
Alma Guillermoprieto, “Mexico City 1992,” from The Heart that Bleeds: Latin America Now (1994), (originally published as "Serenading the Future" in The New Yorker).*
Sam Quiñones, “The Ballad of Chalino Sánchez, “ and “Telenovela,” chaps. 1 and 3 from True Tales, plus story updates from p. 326.
A major theme of artistic and cultural expression in Mexico, as in many countries, has involved efforts at national self-definition. After the overview chapter from the Oxford volume, we begin with an excerpt from the most influential work in this vein. Following in the footsteps of Samuel Ramos, Paz's famous and controversial essay begins with a conception of the Conquest as rape and Mexicans as born of rape. Some of the other readings dispute Paz directly or implicitly. We then turn to a figure that many people name first when they try to define Mexican identity, the Virgin of Guadalupe. Her traditional veneration was one of the targets of the culture-reformers Knight wrote about. We consider the contemporary, mass-mediated and (in recent years) officially sanctioned forms of guadalupanismo. Next, Cantínflas (Mario Moreno) was the garrulous, alienated, but good-hearted vagrant of many, many popular movies between the late 1930's and 1981 (becoming less alienated and more preachy over time). Monsiváis brings us back to Ramos and the early inquiries into Mexican “national character.” Pilcher talks about the battle and then fusion between corn and wheat in the self-defined national cuisine. Guillermoprieto asks about what happens when popular ideas of Mexicanidad collide with a modernity imported from the north. Finally, the essays from Quiñones are about the most famous singer of narcocorridos (Chalino) and the most famous telenovela actress of all (Veronica Castro).
The video excerpts are first, from the film mentioned by Monsiváis, which was Cantínflas’s first big hit in a starring role, and then, from a later and more formulaic movie. The first song by Gabriel—the title track of a million-selling album—drips with the nostalgia of the recently urbanized for the country and the village. (The second song is for the next tutorial section.)
Important issues: What does it mean to say that Mexicans are “essentially” or “naturally” devotees of Guadalupe or sons of La Malinche or whatever? Does it make a difference whether a Mexican or a foreigner says this? Is it more likely to be true if the belief or practice is not coming from the state? How did the persona of Chalino and the typical roles played by Veronica Castro relate to ideas of Mexican character?
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C. (March 31- April 4) Migration and the Border
Photographs at NPR Border Film Project and from Mariposa Resources at
Carolyn Lochhead, “Give and Take across the Border,” SF Chronicle 5/21/06.*
Susan Ferriss, “Breaching the Border,” Sacramento Bee 9/3/06.*
Enrico Marcelli and Wayne Cornelius, “The Changing Profile of Mexican Migrants to the United States,” Latin American Research Review 36:3 (2001).*
Sam Quiñones, True Tales, chaps. 7 and 8 (“The Dead Women of Juárez” and “West Side Kansas Street”).
Stout, Blood of the Serpent, parts of chap. 4, 5 and 6 (pp. 93-99, 113-19, and 125-32).
Rubén Martínez, "Beyond Borders," NACLA Report 30:4 (Jan/Feb 1997).*
Michael P. Smith and Matt Bakker, “The Transnational Politics of the Tomato King: Meaning and Impact,” Global Networks 5 (2005).*
Ginger Thompson, “Mexico’s Migrants Profit from Dollars Sent Home,” NYTimes 2/23/05.*
Ginger Thompson, “Mexico Worries about Its Own Southern Border,” NYTimes 6/11/06.*
N.C. Aizenman, “Meeting Danger Well South of the Border,” Washington Post 7/8/06.
Richard Marosi, “A Harsher Border Crossing,” LA Times 8/20/06.*
Kevin Diaz, “The Money Pipeline,” Minneapolis Star Tribune 5/21/06.*
Ginger Thompson, “Some in Mexico See Border Wall as Opportunity,” NYT 5/25/06.*
June Kronholz and John Lyons, “Smaller Families in Mexico May Stir US Job Market,” Wall Street Journal 4/28/06.*
Carin Zissis, “’Two-Way Street’ on the Border,” Americas Society 1/22/08.*
Monica Campbell, “The Opportunity They Never Had,” Newsweek 10/22/07.*
Ian Gordon, “Flight Simulator,” Slate 12/29/06.*
Over the past 20 years or so, Mexican migration to the US has evolved from serving mostly agricultural and a few service sectors to constituting a key source of labor in nearly all sectors virtually everywhere in the USA. The migrants’ length of stay, gender composition, and source areas have also changed significantly. Even before 9/11/01, US immigration policy had become more militarized, more focused on media-visible, urban parts of the border, and more confused. Now the confusions and divisions are sharper than ever, as migrant flows go across the most lethal part of the borderlands, the Sonoran Desert, and disperse widely, many to new US destinations.
Many of the border towns grew up as refuges from Prohibition. Since the mid-1960's they have expanded rapidly. The maquiladora or in-bond manufacturing sector began in 1965 as a way for US companies to take advantage of cheap Mexican labor while being taxed only on the value added by the labor. Inputs cross from the US to Mexico "in bond" and return as finished goods after assembly. The arrangement was supposed to stem immigration while helping US companies compete with Japanese ones. Although nowadays there are maquilas in other places (Yucatán, especially), most are still on the border and are integral to border life. Tijuana was for a long time the world’s largest assembler of TV sets. However, when you mix political marginality and jurisdictional fragmentation (6 Mexican and 4 US states) with a highly mobile population, a cheap-labor-based, high-turnover legal economy (the maquila plants), and a very profitable illegal economy (trafficking in drugs and people), you get a lot of social and political problems.
These readings are mainly about how migration and the rapid development of its northern border region have affected Mexico economically and politically. On the changes in sending communities, the key academic reading is the Marcelli and Cornelius article. The photos and Stout give description, while Quiñones suggests some deeper ways in which migration affects Mexico. The short piece by Martínez is a good example of the argument that questions the relevance of the border, or the national identities it supposedly separates, for many Mexicans today. (He makes the argument at length in a subsequent book.) The recent news articles bring us up to date on various aspects of the issue, including the impacts of remittances and hometown associations, the Mexican government’s own treatment of its southern border, the now-greater risk of the crossing at the north, and the prospects of a wall. The last article is about a unique border-crossing theme park in Mexico. (One of the benefits of the 2005-06 immigration debate in the US was that it spawned a lot of good journalism.) The Lochhead and Ferriss pieces also end with useful tables of data, so I put them up front.
Important issues: How is migration good and bad for Mexican politics? What place does migration have in Mexicans conception of themselves, even if they have never made the trip (for real, I mean)? What does it mean for Mexico to have its most important single pole of industrial growth along its edge and its second largest source of foreign exchange the remittances of migrants? Globalization is supposed to make this a borderless world (Martínez), but might there also be important ways in which the character of the border zone depends on the real existence of big differences in labor markets, legal systems, and cultures between the two sides?
D. (April 7- 11) Rich, Poor and Crime in Urban Mexico
Review pp. 578-79 (from Sherman chapter) in OHM.
Photographs in Rossell, Ricas y Famosas 2002 (class hour).
Amores Perros 2000 Alejandro González Iñárritu, 153’. R
Stout, Blood of the Serpent, chaps. 1 and 2 (pp. 7-62), chap. 6 (pp. 138-41, 149-51, 155-66).
Preston and Dillon, Opening Mexico, Chaps. 11 and 13.
Quiñones, True Tales, Introduction, chaps. 2, 12, and 14 (“Lynching in Huejutla,” “Tepito,” and “The Popsicle Kings”).
Sam Quiñones, “From Ivory Tower to Streets,” Houston Chronicle 11/1/98.*
Peter Fritsch, “Mexican Economy Drives Political Shift,” WSJ 6/4/00.*
Kevin Sullivan and Mary Jordan, “A Quiet Hero in Mexico’s Corruption Fight,” WaPo 10/27/03.*
These materials consider the shocks of urban Mexico: vast income disparities, public insecurity, and state corruption. The ongoing crisis of urban public order can be traced in part to the 1994-96 economic recession. But the corruption of the army and especially the police forces leads many to conclude that they are more likely to be part of the problem than part of the solution.
We begin with photos and a movie. Rossell scandalized Mexican high society not only because she gained incomparable access to the homes of so many through family contacts and mild subterfuge, but also because the book exposed the tawdry, self-involved, kitschy sensibility of the self-regarded aristocracy. Amores Perros also had a big impact with its gritty hyper-realism and the metaphor of colliding lives and classes. Then the chapters and articles offer journalistic testimony on chaotic urbanization and its problems (Quiñones, Stout) headline-grabbing crime (Preston and Dillon 13), and corruption (all). The public-spirited beauty queen (Quiñones ’98), honest postal official and the popsicle kings also show us another side, where ordinary people fight corruption or succeed through hard work and smart investment. The Fritsch article, written a month before the hints election of Fox, optimistically posits a deeper force at work.
Important issues: Is an increase in crime and corruption just one of the changes one might expect as economy growth proceeds and cities—sprawling and anonymous--grow larger and come to predominate over the countryside? Or is it the opposite true (it’s just a stage)? How do corruption and crime relate to the enormous gulf between rich and poor in Mexico?
III. Current Topics
Please start keeping up with the daily news. Here is the “Around the Republic” page at a Puerto Vallarta paper in English, Banderas News: .
4/15 The Zapatista Movement and Indigenous Autonomy
Preston and Dillon, Opening Mexico, chap. 15.*
Shadows of Tender Fury: Letters and Communiques (Monthly Review, 1995), pp. 94-99, 204-06, 241-51.*
Stout, Blood of the Serpent, excerpts from chap. 10 (238-49, 257-65, 269-75).
Laura Carlsen, “Mexico/ Indigenous Conflict Profile,” Foreign Policy in Focus, October 2001.*
Pilar Franco, “Zapatistas, without Marcos, Trying Peaceful Approach,” Inter Press Service, 12/30/03.*
Roger Stoll, “The Other Campaign/ La Otra Campaña,” ZNet 8/25/06.*
James McKinley, “Marcos Back In Public Eye in Mexico,” NY Times 5/9/06.*
Eduardo Castillo, “Mexican ‘Subcomandante’ Announces Withdrawal of Zapatista Rebels from Public Spotlight,” AP 12/18/07.*
Diego Cevallos, “Army and Paramilitaries Target Zapatista Stronghold,” InterPress 1/10/08.*
Explanations of the (1994- ) Zapatista rebellion usually tend to differ on whether they emphasize "structural" features (the intolerable situation of the peasants) or ideological ones (they came to believe X about the world), and on whether they emphasize the agency of groups (religiously inspired segments of Mayan society) or individuals (often arguing that Rafael Sebastián Guillén Vicente, aka Subcomandante Marcos, led the indigenous people by the nose). The excerpts from Shadows and the chapter from Preston and Dillon are meant to illuminate a bit of the internal dynamics and discourse of the EZLN. Carlson discusses the move to de facto autonomy after August 2003.
Indigenous autonomy, the most consistent demand of the Zapatistas, has been an issue in many places in Latin America. Everywhere it challenges the traditional idea of the nation-state as the political expression of free and equal citizens with some kind of pre-political or primordial belonging (“nation”) in common. We look at how this issue became crucial for the movement, what autonomy means on the ground, and what indigenous identity is coming to mean in contemporary Mexico. We also read about Marcos’s second major caravan-style foray into national politics, the Other Campaign of 2006. The last two articles bring you up to date.
Issues for discussion: Is the Zapatista movement a national, international, or indigenous-only movement? What is Marcos’s role? Can Mexico reconcile indigenous autonomy with the historic ideal of the liberal nation-state, or with the semi-mythical historical continuity of that state with the Aztec empire? (Should Mexico have a different attitude on this issue than does the USA?)
4/18 Is Mexico’s New NAFTA Economy Working?
“Provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement,” NY Times 1994.*
Gary Gereffi and Martha Martínez, “Mexico’s Economic Transformation under NAFTA,” chap. 6 in Crandall, Paz, and Roett, eds., Mexico’s Democracy at Work (Lynne Rienner, 2005).*
Anthony DePalma, “How a Tortilla Empire Was Built on Favoritism,” NYT 2/15/96.*
David Luhnow, “As Jobs Move East, Plants in Mexico Retool to Compete,” WSJ 3/5/04.*
Kevin Hall, Janet Schwartz, and Jay Root, “Split on NAFTA,” Sacramento Bee 8/5/06.*
Marla Dickerson, “Placing Blame for Mexico’s Ills,” LA Times 7/1/06.*
Marla Dickerson, “Building a Mexican Giant,” LA Times 5/21/06.*
Richard Boudreaux, “The Seeds of Promise,” LA Times 4/16/06.*
David Luhnow, “The Secrets of the World’s Richest Man,” WSJ 8/4-5/07.*
Elizabeth Malkin, “Mexicans Miss Money from Relatives Up North,” NYT 10/26/07.*
Joel Millman and J. Lynn Lunsford, “Mexico Seeks a Lasting Share of Aerospace Boom,” WSJ 11/26/07.*
Ana de Ita, “Fourteen Years of NAFTA and the Tortilla Crisis,” IRC Americas Program 1/10/08 (web only, no copy in packet):
“Tariffs and Tortillas,” Economist 1/26/08.*
The Gereffi and Martinez chapter is a detailed summary of how Mexico has fared under NAFTA. What follows are a series of newpaper articles covering different aspects of economic reality in Mexico. Along with overall retrospectives on NAFTA, they cover several themes. Important ones are: 1) how favoritism and monopoly have shifted the gains from trade from consumers to well-connected businessmen; 2) how foreign competition, some from the US as a result of NAFTA but much from elsewhere as a result of Mexican adherence to the GATT (1986), has challenged Mexican firms and impacted Mexican consumers; 3) a particular story in the last category about corn (maize), whose importation from the US was liberalized much earlier than NAFTA required; and 4) how some companies are nonetheless succeeding against domestic and international competition.
Issues for discussion: Who has been helped and hurt by NAFTA? Has it really made Mexico into a colony, as its critics sometimes allege, or is that just a product of Mexico’s location next to an economically immense country? Has the treaty tended to strengthen Mexican democracy or weaken it?
4/22 The Mexican Voter and the 2006 Elections
George Grayson, “Mexican Messiah,” WSJ 8/11/06.*
Joseph Klesner, “The 2006 Mexican Election and Its Aftermath: Editor’s Introduction,”
Alejandro Moreno, “The 2006 Mexican Presidential Election: The Economy, Oil Revenues, and Ideology,”
Joseph Klesner, “The 2006 Mexican Elections: Manifestation of a Divided Society?”
Kathleen Bruhn and Kenneth Greene, “Elite Polarization Meets Mass Moderation,” and
Chappell Lawson, “How Did We Get Here? Mexican Democracy after the 2006 Elections,” all from a symposium in PS: Political Science and Politics 40:1 (Jan. 2007).*
For reference: 2006 election results, along with 2000 (and for Chamber, 2003) results for comparison, followed by details on the Mexican electoral system, all from “Election Resources on the Internet,” composed by Manuel Álvarez Rivera, at .*
Here we look at the 2006 elections and what survey research can tell us about the Mexican electorate today. After Grayson’s bit on López Obrador, drawn from a book published in Mexico in 2006 by the same title (in Spanish), we have the fruits of some good political-science research, most of it connected to a big project at MIT.
Issues for discussion: Describe a few major points of the 2006 platforms of the three major candidates (Coalción por el Bien de Todos, PRD-PT-C, Andrés Manuel López Obrador; Partido Acción Nacional, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa; Alianza por México, PRI-PVEM, Roberto Madrazo Pintado). Is the Mexican voter ideological, pragmatic, or just disengaged? What are the most important dividing lines in the electorate—class, gender, region, urban/rural, or something else? Do we get any clues about why AMLO protested so long and vigorously? (Was he justified, in your opinion?)
4/25 The Fox Administration in Retrospect
Wikipedia entry for Vicente Fox:
Linda Diebel, Betrayed: The Assassination of Digna Ochoa (Avalon, 2006), preface, Chaps. 1 and 18, and epilogue.*
Harley Shaiken, “Firm Steps on Uncertain Ground,” Berkeley Review of Lat. Am. Studies, Fall 2007.*
Webcast of Sergio Aguayo, “Governors, Billionaires, Drug Cartels, and Mexican Democracy,” given at UC Berkeley, 23 October 2007:
The legacy of Vicente Fox’s sexenio will be debated for a long time. He left office with high personal popularity but less in the way of concrete legislative and institutional achievements than many had hoped. In particular, his critics have noted a continuation of impunity for the powerful and a weakening of the federal government. Diebel’s book is a disturbing look at Mexican institutions of justice (including the main human rights protection office); Aguayo offers a broad critique in the talk (web video), summarized in the Shaiken article. His responses to questions are particularly interesting.
Issues for discussion. What were Fox’s major achievements? Do you agree with Aguayo about his failures? Does the case of Digna Ochoa tell us that real change in Mexico is impossible?
4/25 One-page summary of final paper topic with preliminary bibliography due in class
4/28- 4/30 Meetings on final paper topics
4/29 The Calderón Administration So Far
Andrew Selee, “Back from the Brink in Mexico” Current History Feb. 2008.*
Manuel Roig-Franzia, “Mexicans Ask Where Flood Aid Went,” WaPo 11/19/07.*
James McKinley, “Mexico Hits Drug Gangs” NYT 1/22/08.*
We’ll talk about Felipe Calderón’s first year, which has featured an aggressive “law and order” campaign against narcotrafficking organizations and, compared to his predecessor, adept dealmaking in the congress.
IV. Research Seminar and Conclusion
5/2, 5/6, 5/9 Student presentations
Five to ten minutes of formal presentation followed by five to ten minutes of question and answer. Four or five presentations per session, reserving 20 minutes on 5/9 for any that remain.
5/9 Summary
RESEARCH PAPERS DUE FRIDAY MAY 16 AT 4:00
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