The relationship between crime victimization,corruption, and public attitudes of Mexico’s armed forces

This paper studies the relationship between self-reported crime victimization, perceptions of corruption, and attitudes of Mexico’s armed forces. We find that perceptions of corruption along with individual and state-level factors are important predictors of support for Mexico’s Army and Navy. While crime and violence have had a tremendous impact on Mexican society, crime victimization does not seem to undermine public support for the armed forces. In contrast, corruption in these institutions does undermine support. Given the historical and contemporary significance of the armed forces, this research has significant implications for the role of the coercive apparatus of the Mexican state.     

Motherhood and Extradomestic Work in Urban Mexico

Abstract— This article analyses the meanings attributed by Mexican women of different social classes to motherhood and extradomestic work, as well as life experiences of family planning and child care. Information for the study was provided by 79 in-depth interviews with women who were either married or living with a partner who contributed regularly to the family income. The findings suggest that cultural norms regarding motherhood change far more slowly in urban Mexico than child-rearing or fertility control practices. Many women from different social classes still consider motherhood as their main source of identity and only a very educated and privileged group speaks with ambivalence regarding their mother's role. In contrast, more women are ready to accept child-care substitutes, especially if they find satisfaction in extradomestic activities, or carry them out because of personal or family necessities. Finally, the analysis points out that most urban women in Mexico, particularly the younger and more educated cohorts, are very much aware of the costs involved in children's education and rearing, and have acted accordingly, using contraceptives and limiting their family sizes. 0 1997 Society for Latin American Studies     

Command and control at work: the evolution of the rules of work on Mexican railroads, 1883–1923

Abstract

This article examines the evolution of written work rules on the railroads in Mexico from 1883 to 1923, looking at three sets of work rules from the Porfiriato and three from the Revolution. Just as foreign investors, British and American, and foreign skilled workers, mostly American, played an important role in the establishment of Mexico’s first railroad companies, these same foreign businesses brought their written rule books, necessary for the impersonal management of labor in companies with large, diverse, and a far-flung labor force like the railroads, to Mexico. The first rules are often Spanish translations of the English-language originals and paid no attention to the workers’ opinions. Through the Porfiriato, however, Mexican railroad workers unionized, in part following the pattern of the American Brotherhoods, and their unions, through labor activism and strikes, fought to transform work rules from company commands to negotiated terrain, with some success before the Revolution broke out. When the Revolution did break out, however, it radically transformed the terrain of work rules, first because railroad companies, even before they collapsed in the face of revolutionary violence, lost the support of the state that they so needed to impose their work rules, and second, because the new state that emerged from the Revolution allied with organized workers to provide them with many of their revolutionary demands: legal trade unions, mandated work benefits, and collective bargaining. Thus, newly powerful railroad unions through strikes and activism and in alliance with the new state made work rules not only negotiated terrain between companies and workers, but terrain in which workers and their unions held the upper hand. As a consequence, the work rules of 1923, where unions are powerful and impose significant benefits to workers, bear little resemblance to those of 1883, where unions are not recognized by the companies, which felt no obligation to provide any benefits at all.     

Los caminos de la vida: acumulación,reproducción o superación de las desventajas sociales en México

This article develops an analytical model which, using a life-trajector y approach, attempts to identify and understand the articulation of social factors that favors reproduction, deepening or overcoming social disadvantages among youths. The analytical model analyzes longitudinal life-trajectories and places emphasis in their evolving character. The analytical reconstruction exercise stems from the systematization and analyses of 34 life-histories of Mexican youths who experienced harsh social deprivation during their childhood/adolescence. Testimonies were collected in three Mexican cities with diverse development levels: Oaxaca, Monterrey and Mexico City.     

Consideration Sets and Political Choices: A Heterogeneous Model of Vote Choice and Sub-national Party Strength

This paper brings to political science a new decision-making model based on research in consumer behavior. Individuals do not necessarily make choices from the universe of alternatives; rather, they choose from a “consideration set,” a notion derived from both utility maximization and information processing theories. Here I apply a model of heterogeneous consideration sets to voting in the 2000 Mexican national election. I argue that the sub-national variation in the strength of Mexican parties leads to heterogeneous consideration sets, resulting in individuals with identical issue preferences and personal attributes making different voting decisions. Application of this model provides both interesting substantive conclusions about vote choice in Mexico and a more general theoretical innovation regarding vote choice.

Social process as everyday practice: the micro politics of community-based conservation and development in southeastern Mexico

This article explores the everyday exchanges associated with community-based natural resources management in southeastern Mexico to suggest how formal and informal social practices shape conservation and development outcomes. Discussions of social process in most policy analyses emphasize formal exchanges based in rational action but typically overlook the impact of everyday social practices, which often occur “off-stage.” First, I build on existing conceptualizations of social process in the policy sciences by exploring culturally-informed approaches focused on everyday practice, infrapolitics, and performance. Second, I present a case study detailing the emergence and decline of a timber marketing fund to reveal how informal lending among community members contributed to the decapitalization of the fund. Third, I trace flows of economic capital from the fund in order to discuss specific policy outcomes. Fourth, I present ethnographic and archival evidence showing the persistence and frequency of informal lending, the performative aspects of local social process, and the character of “off-stage” interactions. I conclude with a discussion of social process that extends analysis beyond values-based outcomes to consider how long-standing practices based in particular logics (political cultures) collide with formalized (technocratic) practices of the public sphere. I employ this conceptual approach to critically examine questions of petty corruption and local conflict, to uncover multiple dimensions of micro political interaction, and to explore how cultural perspectives on social process might inform policy responses.

Negotiating Violence and Creative Agency in Commissioned Mexican Narco Rap

This article explores agency as an ability to act and exert power creatively when failure implies literal death. It draws on interviews with an ex‐narco and rappers who willingly accept narco‐commissions in 2010s Tamaulipas, Mexico, a context where precarity and necropolitical logics prevail. It asserts that many rappers exert power creatively, despite the risks. Rappers shape narco‐aesthetics by determining the lyrical and sonic elements of songs; draw on experiences of narco‐life to contribute to narco‐ethics; and mould narco‐masculinities by encouraging listeners to stay firm. It proposes that prevalent discursive Us–Them dichotomies facilitate Othering and stigmatisation of actors in the narco‐world, and serve to accentuate narco‐power.     

Breaking the Law to Ensure Order: The Case of Tijuana (2007–2012)

This paper explores how state agents and civilians justify human rights violations when the military perform police tasks. Based on a set of interviews and documents, it analyses the actions of the armed forces and the police during a military-led operation that targeted drug trafficking organisations in Tijuana. In a context of limited civilian control over the armed forces and the police, the paper identifies two discourses that supported the illegal action of state agents: the construction of a foreign other who does not belong to society and the need to use violence to accomplish a greater good.     

Automotive global value chains in Mexico: a mirage of development?

ABSTRACT

International monetary organisations argue the ‘developing countries’ should foster linkages to the world economy as a means to overcome backwardness. In this article we refute the narrative that Mexico has experienced industrial upgrading. Rather, industrial growth in Mexico over the last 40 years has been shaped by neoliberal economic policies which have turned the Mexican economy into an export-led manufacturing platform designed to supply the North American market, sustained by a precarious labour market. As a result, Mexico occupies the most labour-intensive and low value-added segments of regional production chains. To make this argument, we perform an in-depth analysis of the Mexican automotive industry, demonstrating that instead of being an engine for domestic industrial development, the auto industry has become a dominant economic sector through productive hyper-specialisation concentrated in the northern Mexican border states, a reliance on transnational capital, particularly from the United States, a disconnect with domestic markets, and the super-exploitation of labour.