Crossing Party Lines: Volatility and Ticket Splitting in Mexico (1994–2000)

This article aims to amplify our portrait of the Mexican electorate by examining the ways in which Mexican electors distributed their votes among the parties during 1994–2000, both over successive elections (volatility) and in the same election (ballot splitting). Aggregate and survey data revealed that Mexicans engaged in these two forms of electoral behaviour frequently, indicators of an electorate in flux. Regression analysis indicated that, contrary to the expectation that the politically sophisticated differentiated their votes, virtually all parts of Mexican society were equally likely to switch parties and split tickets.     

The Sovereignty of Things: Nationalism and Its Materials in Mexican Photography (1920s–1940s)

The ubiquity of the artefact in Mexican photography needs to be understood as the locus of key originary concepts and as a point of purchase for metaphotographic reflexivity and not merely as an emblematic prop or decorative marginalia. The article discusses the way in which strategies of focus, composition and visualisation, along with the selection or ‘find’ of particular objects and materials, made palpable the abstractions of self‐hood and cultural singularity through the disclosure of form, light and texture. It considers how the practice of the close‐up itself became a cultural trope and how, paradoxically, the pursuit of sovereign objects and autochthonous production in modernist photography elicited a response that infringed visibility in favour of proximity.     

Regulation and Quality Assurance Agencies of Higher Education in Mexico

This article examines the quality assurance (QA) regime of higher education (HE) in Mexico. In particular, we examine how the regulatory framework of HE quality has evolved in the past three decades and the different regulatory configurations and policy instruments used by QA agencies. We argue that the Mexican case is illustrative of a (weak) hybrid regulatory model that combines the policy instruments of both a state-centred model and a market-oriented model. Our results show diverse institutional patterns in the evaluation and accreditation of both public and private institutions.     

Tears,Trauma and Suicide: Everyday Violence among Street Youth in Puebla,Mexico1

Despite considerable ethnographic research with young people in street situations and a growing interest in violence, little attention has been paid to suicide. The occurrence of suicide is a dramatic event that reveals weaknesses in support systems established by governments and civil society organisations, as well as perceived failings of friends. While an interest in suicide usually considers cause, in this paper we explore effect. How does the death of a member of a tightly knit group of street youth affect others and what does the suicide tell us about their identification with death more generally? Research for the paper was part of an in‐depth study of identities among street youth in Mexico.     

Models of Clientelism and Policy Change: The Case of Conditional Cash Transfer Programmes in Mexico and Brazil

Clientelist systems vary, and this variation influences the adoption and evolution of conditional cash transfer (CCT) programmes. We find that vertically integrated, corporatist clientelism in Mexico and more locally oriented, bossist clientelism in Brazil differentially shape the choices of governments to turn piecemeal, discretionary CCTs into more expansive and secure benefits.     

Rooting and Cultura in West Mexico

Drawing on Kwame Appiah’s discussion of the relationship between rooting and cosmopolitanism, I show that this concern was shared by many in west Mexico, where I conducted fieldwork among diverse groups of townspeople, villagers, weekend visitors from Guadalajara, and migrants working in Guadalajara and in California. All of those groups talked about belonging or rooting to specific places – villages, towns, cities, countries and so on. They also used the term cultura in a way that resonated more with Appiah’s ‘cosmopolitanism’ than with his ‘cultural particularities’. Although most people aspired to gain cultura without losing rooting, I found that many people judged themselves or others to fail in one or both respects. Migrants in California, in particular, were felt to have lost rooting without having become cosmopolitan. I focus throughout on how west Mexicans, including the novelist Juan Rulfo, used their knowledge of history as a way of claiming both rooting and cultura.     

History, Violence and Self‐Glorification in Afro‐Mexican corridos from Costa Chica de Guerrero

'The poetry, the culture itself, exists not in a dictionary but in the tradition of the spoken word. It is based as much on sound as it is on song. That is to say, the noise that it makes is part of the meaning, and if you ignore the noise (or what you would think of as noise, shall I say), then you lose part of the meaning.'( Braithwaite, 1984 )
'Y no importa si es el calipso de Trinidad, o "dancehall" de Jamaica, o el choteo cubano o el chuchumbé mexicano, la expresión popular afro de toda la región ha tendido a aprovecharse del "relajamiento" como arma en socavar la estructura social dominante y a reconstruir un individuo más liberado.'¹( Pereira, 1995 )     

Work,Wages and Gender in Export-Oriented Cities: Global Assembly versus International Tourism in Mexico

Drawing on a rich source of urban labour market data, the Mexican National Urban Employment Survey of 1998, this article addresses the question of how dissimilar export-oriented industries shape urban labour markets, particularly with respect to women workers. It compares Ciudad Juárez, which has an economy based on global assembly production, and Cancún, whose economy is based on international tourism. Employing economic base theory and location quotients, the analysis isolates the impact of the export sectors on the local labour markets. Results show that global assembly and international tourism encourage a mix of occupational and income prospects for both men and women in each of these Mexican cities. Female employment tends to be concentrated in the export-oriented sector in both cases, but the types of occupational and income opportunities therein vary. Overall, the analysis challenges common exploitation arguments that tend to stress the universally shared deleterious working conditions and low wages that result from global integration and export-led industrialisation in contemporary Latin America. It suggests that we pay closer attention to the diverse nature of outward oriented industries, which will tend to differentiate the labour market implications of increasing economic globalisation.     

The Federal Dilemma: Organisational Strategies and the Consolidation of Parties in Mexico and Argentina

What accounts for the consolidation of party organisations? The specialised literature has stressed the importance of institutions in shaping the ways in which political parties organise. However, little attention has been paid to the role of federalism. We argue that in federal settings, party territorial organisational strategies condition their capacity to become consolidated parties. We illustrate our theory with an analysis of the development of conservative parties in Argentina and Mexico to explain their different levels of consolidation.     

Mariano Arista and the 1850 Presidential Election in Mexico

Abstract – This article examines the 1850 presidential election in Mexico. It is divided into five sections: party political background, electoral regulations, candidates, campaign, results. General Mariano Arista was the successful candidate in what was the first genuinely contested presidential election since independence.     

The Abortion Debate in Mexico: Realities and Stalled Policy Reform

Over 500,000 clandestine abortions occur annually in Mexico, many under unfavourable health conditions. An uneasy silence about this situation has long prevailed. Since the 1970s, abortion has appeared periodically in public discourse and on the decision-making agenda, only for action to be repeatedly postponed. Mobilisation around the abortion issue grew slowly, but debate and controversy became nationwide as the country began to experience systemic change in 2000. Despite increasing political pluralism and growing awareness of the existing problems, for now in Mexico, as elsewhere in Latin America, the question of abortion is not judged sufficiently pressing to merit major policy change. However, improved contraceptive use and the institution of new technologies and post-abortion care are helping to make abortions safer and rarer.     

Between 'traditional' and 'new' Catholic church religious discourses in urban, Western Mexico

Abstract — This paper analyses processes of belonging, identity formation and construction of knowledge within and between 'new' and 'traditional' Catholic groups in a low-income neighbourhood of Guadalajara. It argues that these two expressions of the Church carry through distinctive 'progressive' and 'conservative' messages in matter of engagement with, and empowerment in social reality, notions of personal responsibility, relation to non-human agents and embodiment of experience. However, those groups are not internally homogeneous and to a certain extent the 'new' Church–the CEBs–is similar to the 'traditional' Church in terms of subtle hierarchical control of production, transmission and withholding of knowledge.     

‘A Natural and Voluntary Dependence’: The Royal Academy of San Carlos and the Cultural Politics of Art Education in Mexico City, 1786–1797

In this article, I explore the controversies that characterised the foundational years of the Royal Academy of San Carlos of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture in Mexico City (1786–1797). They provide provocative insights into questions of competing agendas and ambitions among the artists and bureaucrats of the royal academy. They also illuminate contemporary understandings about the hierarchical relationships between a metropolitan power, Spain, and its American colonies and their visual culture and artistic production, which mirror broader political hierarchies and relationships of power and subordination.     

Migration Pessimism and the Subjective Well‐Being of Migrant Households in Mexico

A new migration pessimism argues that the economic benefits of international labour migration for migrant households may not justify the social costs. This article provides a test of this argument based on the author's survey of 304 households in Jerez municipio (municipality), Zacatecas, Mexico, in 2009. The results indicate that active households (those with at least one migrant abroad) perceived their economic situation to have improved more, but both their social cohesion and their happiness to be less than those of non‐active households. Social cohesion (family unity and maintenance of values) is shown to be pivotal in the happiness differential enjoyed by the non‐active households.     

Inventing Tradition at Gunpoint: Culture,Caciquismo and State Formation in the Región Mixe,Oaxaca (1930–1959)

This article examines the links between the creation of a post‐revolutionary Mexican culture and the maintenance of traditional forms of cacical control. Taking as a case study Luis Rodríguez, a cacique from the state of Oaxaca, it is argued that he utilised state notions of indigenismo and indigenous cultural production to assert and maintain his position as the strongman of the Mixe ethnic group. However, despite the employment of state discourses, Rodríguez’s fiefdom was never subsumed into the corporate revolutionary state. Rather, these claims of ethnic unity were used as a smokescreen to deter state intervention. As a result, Rodríguez was forced to use intimidation and violence to control pueblos outside his immediate sphere of influence during the 1940s and 1950s.     

My Space/Mi Espacio: Evangelical Christianity and Identity Politics in Mexico

This article analyses evangelical identity politics and more generally religious competition in contemporary Mexico through a specific focus on the construction, dissemination and imagination of space. The imagination and occupation of a particular space determines the specific identity of its followers. Since the identity–space construct is primarily anchored in the political, religious, economic and funerary contexts in most societies, these four rubrics are woven together to assess of the evangelical Christian space–identity construct. The paper furthers research on religious space creation, dissemination and demarcation amongst evangelical Christians in Mexico, and it emphasises the extent to which the strategies of spatial expansion can lead to rigorous intra‐faith competition and conflict.     

Anti‐Communism,Communism, and Anti‐Interventionism in Narratives Surrounding the Student Massacre on Tlatelolco Square (Mexico, 1968)

Shortly before the Mexico Olympics, on 2 October 1968, student demonstrators were shot by the military on Tlatelolco Square in Mexico City, thus ending the local student movement and its mass protests. This paper explores the government's use of anti‐communism to ideologically justify this massacre in the context of the Cold War. The student movement was presented as a foreign, communist intervention that threatened Mexico's sovereignty. The paper analyses the weaknesses and contradictions of this official narrative by contrasting public and confidential reports. Finally, the marginal role of communism in the movement and its internal divisions are also outlined.     

Government and Democracy in Mexico's Federal District, 1997–2001: Cárdenas, the PRD and the Curate's Egg

This paper analyses the challenges facing the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) administration when it became the first elected government of the Federal District in 1997. Through a daily review of press coverage between December 1997–December 2000, complemented by intensive interviewing during summer 1999, five areas of policy-making activity are analysed and evaluated. The policies entrained and their outcomes show significant advances in decentralization, devolution, and intergovernmental liaison, as well as modest improvements in environmental contamination and reduced crime, although they did not meet the high expectations generated during the Cárdenas campaign for election. However, the fresh image and invigorated confidence that his replacement Rosario Robles brought to the PRD was key in the PRD's success in the July 2nd 2000 DF elections won by López Obrador. The new administration will have to confront a more plural government structure, including five of the sixteen delegaciones and an evenly divided Legislative Assembly. López Obrador has a full six years in which to prove that a left-of-centre political party is capable of developing a 'Third Way' of governance in the DF.