Differing Effects of the Global Financial Crisis: Why Mexico Has Been Harder Hit than Other Large Latin American Countries

In this article, we argue that the economic and financial crisis that began in Mexico in 2008 has not been primarily caused by the US crisis that began in 2007, as many have argued. As we will show, years of misguided economic policies at the national level have been at the heart of the Mexican crisis. On the one hand, the dominance of foreign banks in the country's financial system and the minimal presence of the public banks have greatly limited the range of counter‐cyclical policy options available to authorities. On the other hand, in the face of the crisis, Mexico has continuously applied deflationary Washington Consensus policies that have deepened the economic contraction. This article will focus on Mexico's individual problems, which offer important lessons for other Latin American countries with a shared recent history of Washington Consensus policies.     

La Generalización del Impuesto al Valor Agregado: ¿Una opción para México?

Given poor tax collection in Mexico –which has registered an average of 10 to 11 percent of the GDP over the last 10 years, while spending has remained around 20 percent–, fiscal reform has been a recurring issue in public debates. In this context, the vat generalization appears as a major option for the country. Nonetheless, its viability has been caught in a discussion tinged with dogmatic hues. This paper presents some important elements that should be taken into account in the debate regarding a generalization of the vat. If the argument for not generalizing this tax is based on the tax’s regressive turn, it should then be stressed that current tax structure has created a situation of greater inequality in terms of the recipients of the support.     

Immigration in the Life Histories of Women Living in the United States-Mexico Border Region

Abstract

This paper focuses on the role that immigration plays in the lives of very low-income women living along the United States-Mexico border. Life here is distinct from that in any other part of the United States, due to the international, social, political, and economic interdependence that characterizes this region. Thus, from the perspective of migration as a social process, this “contact zone” can provide insight on migration issues that occur within a transborder context. Based on life history interviews and focus groups with women living in two adjoining border cities, Brownsville, Texas and Matamoros, Tamaulipas, we observed the trajectories of women at two points of the migration course: (a) migration from the interior of Mexico to the northern border and (b) emigration across the international boundary to the United States. The study shows that although these women held expectations that migration would improve their lives and the lives of their families, their social and economic integration in the border region met with limited success.     

Drug trafficking,the informal order,and caciques. Reflections on the crime-governance nexus in Mexico

ABSTRACT

While Mexico is widely considered as an example of consolidated statehood, the deepening of drug-related violence and insecurity has corroborated the existence and expansion of ‘dark spaces’ governed by coalitions of state and non-state actors driven by criminal and political interests. In contrast to the prevailing interpretations and public narratives, I will argue that it is historically and conceptually flawed to understand such expressions of limited statehood solely in terms of the proliferation of criminal organisations and the exacerbation of the so-called war on drugs only. Instead, I will examine the historical patterns in Mexican state-making, in which actors and practices of political ordering outside the state properly speaking exercise multiple forms of de facto sovereignty and governance. These arrangements, including caciquismo, accommodate distinct crime-governance manifestations. The article substantiates its claims by looking at the examples from different periods and regions such as Sinaloa, Sonora and Michoacán.     

Participation and accountability in development management

This article critically reviews the role of participatory theory in managing development projects and programmes in poor countries. Participation has emerged in response to global demands for greater individual and social control over the activities of state and private agencies, and especially to the manifest failures of traditional ‘top-down’ management systems in LDCs. Claims made on behalf of these participatory methodologies are critically reviewed and a distinction is drawn between strong and weak versions of the theory. Empirical evidence is then considered to evaluate the effectiveness of these methodologies, using long-standing insights of social science theory to show that participation can succeed for specific kinds of projects and programmes in favourable circumstances, but is unsuitable for many others. It commonly fails in contexts where local conditions make co-operative and collective action very difficult, or where it is manipulated by implementing agencies to justify their own actions or poor performance.     

Shifting Tides of Informal Worker Resistance in Mexico: A Domestic Work-Construction Contrast

Informal workers in Mexico, the majority of the country's workforce, have organised to demand rights, but with varying results. In this article, we contrast recent organising by Mexico's domestic workers and informal construction workers. Household worker movements have succeeded in institutionalising significant new organisations and raising public awareness. Construction workers, despite earlier militant counterexamples, have remained trapped by corporatist structures, and their organising capacity has atrophied. We place these outcomes in the context of the overall decline of labour, suggesting conclusions for the limits and possibilities of contemporary Mexican labour mobilisation.     

Police Bribery: Is Corruption Fostering Dissatisfaction with the Political System?

The increasing salience of security concerns after democratization processes in the developing world has put scholars to explore the effects of police corruption as a key issue impeding the consolidation of the rule of law. Using data taken from surveys conducted in Mexico, Peru, and Bolivia, this article contributes to such literature by questioning whether cases of police corruption have an effect on the trust in the political system. The research finds that citizens can support the democratic order even if they have experienced bribery. The article unveils, however, that another type of police corruption—police protecting criminals—is a robust and statistically significant theory of variance in the confidence in the political system.     

Some Observations on Changing Business Practices in Drug Trafficking: The Andean experience

The field of cocaine production and trafficking has become more differentiated and the enterprises have become more heterogeneous. A new generation of traffickers has entered the business. They are low profile, cautious and they organize the trade in an informal way. They have a different style of operation than the druglords in the epoch of the big ‘cartels’. The use of individual couriers smuggling small amounts of cocaine while using normally scheduled flights has increased spectacularly presenting new challenges to law enforcement.