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FALL 2003

H alf-way through his six-year term, achastened President Vicente Fox of Mexicoused his annual Sept. 1 state of the union

address to appeal to his nation’s legislature tocooperate with him and help enact the stalledstructural reforms his country — and hisadministration — urgently need. Defeat twomonths earlier for his National Action Party (PAN)in the midterm congressional elections had left thecharismatic chief executive further than ever fromenacting legislation including a major rationalizationof the fiscal system and market reforms to Mexico’senergy sector and various healthcare networks.

But Fox’s pleas for national unity may havefallen on deaf ears. Ideological differences and anintensely partisan political culture make it hard tosee how the two main opposition parties, theDemocratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) and theformerly-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party(PRI), might drop their antagonism to Fox’s keylegislative proposals. With none of the three partiesholding an absolute majority in either house ofcongress, and with even the PAN split into pro- andanti-Fox camps, the President will find it difficult tobuild an alliance to pass any significant reforms

CENTER FOR

Latin American StudiesU N I V E R S I T Y O F C A L I F O R N I A , B E R K E L E Y

continued on page 10

In Search ofContinuityBy Simeon Tegel

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In Search of Continuity

The Past and Future of U.S. Immigration Policy

Media, Politics and Reform in Mexico: The Specter of Televisa

California’s Version of Racial Politics

Cautious Optimism on Immigration

The Future of Globalization

Rhythms of Latin American Democracy: Linear or Cyclical?

Activist Research v. Cultural Critique

The Unidad Popular Coalition 30 Years After Its Defeat:A Re-evaluation

Women at Work in Chile’s Fields: A Change in the Labor Dynamic

The Strategic Dynamics of Latin American Trade

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This fall the second annual meeting of theU.S.–Mexico Futures Forum was at theheart of the Center for Latin American

Studies (CLAS) program. The Forum, a jointeffort of CLAS and the Instituto TecnológicoAutónomo de México (ITAM) and funded bythe William and Flora Hewlett Foundation,brings together a network of policy makers,scholars and leaders from social movements andthe business community to examine the currentstate of the U.S.–Mexico relationship and developpositive alternatives for the future (see page fora list of participants in the fall 2003 meeting).

This issue of the CLAS Newsletterfeatures six articles reporting on the forum’sdiscussions. The articles range from immigrationpolicy to globalization and include discussionsof media reform in Mexico and politics inCalifornia. Over the course of the semester, wehave featured a number of programs that havefurther explored issues raised at the Forum suchas immigration policy that we will report on inour winter 2004 issue (see our Web site atclas.Berkeley.edu for a preview). Once again, I

would like to thank the Hewlett Foundation fortheir invaluable support and my colleague,Rafael Fernández de Castro of ITAM, for all ofhis efforts in making the event a success.

In the spring 2004 semester CLAS willbe holding three special month-long seminarsfeaturing Jorge Wilheim, the former president ofSão Paulo’s Planning Department; SergioAguayo, a professor at the Colegio de México;and Jorge Arrate, who recently stepped down asChile’s ambassador to Argentina. In this issue,we feature an article by Ambassador Arratereflecting on the September 11, 1973 coup inChile.

CLAS also plans an ambitious programon Brazil in the new year. In addition to JorgeWilheim, who will be holding the Rio BrancoChair, we will be hosting Paulo Lins, the authorof the novel, City of God, who will be the firstrecipient of the Mario De Andrade Chair ofBrazilian Culture at UC Berkeley. We will beannouncing a major series of public policyevents related to Brazil on our Web site.

Letter from the Chair

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ChairHarley Shaiken

Vice ChairTeresa Stojkov

Managing EditorJean Spencer

EditorSimeon Tegel

Design and LayoutGeof Oppenheimer

PhotographyAP-World-Wide Photo

Brazilian ConsulatePaul Kahil

Karen LevyBeatriz Manz

Geof OppenheimerAndreas Peres

Dionicia RamosTelevisa

U.S. Border Patrol

ContributingWriters

Jorge ArrateChris Cardona

Lydia ChávezJavier A. Couso

Shannon GleesonCharles Hale

Sebastian KarcherDaniel Lavelle

Belinda I. ReyesAlex SaragozaSimeon Tegel

The CLAS Newsletteris published three times

a year by the Centerfor Latin American

Studies at UC Berkeley.

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Front cover photos:Clockwise from top

left: Pres. George Bush,Pres.Vicente Fox, Rep.

Ciro Rodriguez, Rep.Amalia García Medina

of Mexico, Rep. BobFilner, Sen. Cecilia

Romero Castillo ofMexico, Rep. Loretta

Sanchez, GovernorPablo Salazar

Mendiguchía ofChiapas.

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The movement of workers between Mexicoand the United States predates the formationof our national boundaries and numerical

restrictions on this flow were not imposed untilthe mid-1960s. Even after restrictions wereimposed, Mexican labor continued to play acritical role in many of our industries andconditions in Mexico continued to push workersout of the country. As a result, an undergroundeconomy has developed with a large and growingunauthorized population in the United States.The inconsistency between our currentimmigration policies and these economic realitiesraises questions about the soundness of ourapproach. Is there a set of policies that wouldbetter reflect our economic reality and stem theflow of unauthorized immigrants? This articlereviews our history, some of the issues we faceand several policy alternatives.

The early efforts at restricting immigrationbegan with the regrettable exclusion of Asian

immigrants, including the Chinese ExclusionAct of 1870 (Fix and Passel, 1994). In addition torestricting Asian immigration, the emphasis wason excluding criminals, prostitutes, the physicallyand mentally ill and people who could become apublic charge (Fix and Passel, 1994). In 1917,illiterate immigrants were also excluded, butMexican laborers were for the most partexempted from the literacy test in response towarnings of labor shortages from southwestgrowers (Kiser and Woody Kiser, 1979).

The first numerical restrictions onimmigration were imposed in 1921 and 1924,when the National Origins Act was passed (Fixand Passel, 1994). Again, Mexican immigrantlaborers were exempt from the quotas. To makethe exemption even more explicit, the U.S.Supreme Court in 1929 upheld an earlieradministration decree declaring that those whocommuted between Mexico and the UnitedStates were considered legal immigrants (Bach,

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The Past and Future of U.S.Immigration PolicyBy Belinda I. Reyes


Immigrants andimmigrants’ rightsactivists pray arounda coffin-shaped altarat the border fencein Tijuana.The altaris dedicated tomigrants who havedied while crossingfrom Mexico to theUnited States.

U . S .– M e x i c o F u t u r e s F o r u m

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The Mexican media conglomerate, Televisa,has once again raised concerns over itsenormous influence on Mexican politics,

as the company’s dominance of television hasgenerated mounting criticism for its capacity tocharge huge fees for electoral campaign spots aswell as for its selective coverage of issues. Andthe criticism holds important binationaldimensions, given Televisa’s growing interest inSpanish language broadcasting in the UnitedStates — while Mexican political parties wrestlewith the question of Mexican citizens outside oftheir country participating in elections backhome.

Analysts estimate that Televisa controlsas much as 70 percent of the television market inMexico, forcing advertisers to pay large sums topromote their products on the media giant’spopular programs. Televisa’s tentacles reach farbeyond television, however, as its interests rangefrom sponsorship of sporting events and soccerteams to the recording and entertainmentindustries. The company also has holdings inradio broadcasting, publications, cable systemsand satellite transmission. Crucial to its currentgrasp of the Spanish language media in Mexicois the company’s huge role in the production oftelevision programming for stations serving

Spanish-speaking audiences from Canada toChile and from Madrid to Manila. Moreover,Televisa’s programs have been translated intoother languages, such as Portuguese andRussian.

The reins of Televisa are presently in thehands of Emilio Azcarraga Jean, who representsthe third generation of his family to control thebroadcast empire. His grandfather pioneeredthe radio industry in Mexico and his fatherpushed the company into the television age. Thecompany’s long history has facilitated its tiesthroughout the Spanish-speaking world. In thisrespect, Televisa has made a number of strategicpartnerships with other media powers in orderto extend the market for its programs, notablythe Cisneros media group of Venezuela, anothermajor purveyor of Spanish language programmingfor television. Although several other examplesof this sort could be cited, suffice to say thatTelevisa has become an international mediapresence. Televisa does face competition insideand outside of Mexico. Nonetheless, Televisa hasproven to be resilient in its drive to maintain apowerful and dominant role in the globalizationof the Spanish language media.

In this light, Televisa’s recent move backtoward the U.S. market has been of particular

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Media, Politics and Reformin Mexico: The Specter ofTelevisaBy Alex Saragoza

The cast ofBig Brother México,

one of Televisa’s hit shows.

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interest. At one time, the Mexican companybasically controlled the first Spanish languagetelevision network in the U.S., named appropriatelythe Spanish International Network (SIN). Butthe U.S. Federal Communications Commission(FCC) eventually found Televisa’s holding ofSIN to be in violation of laws regarding foreignownership of the media in the U.S. TheMexican company was forced to divest itself ofSIN, leading eventually to the formation of thecurrently named Univision Corporation, themajor source of Spanish language televisionbroadcasting in this country. The majority ofUnivision’s programming comes fromTelevisa. Their relationship deepened in 2002,when, Fonovisa, a major recording label andTelevisa subsidiary, was bought by the U.S.-based company. In exchange, Univision signed aprogramming deal with Televisa through 2017.Equally significant, Univision added the head ofTelevisa, Emilio Azcarraga Jean, to its board ofdirectors, as the Mexican company increased itsstake in Univision from 6 to 15 percent.

Furthermore, this year Univision gained

control of the Hispanic Broadcasting Company,

the dominant player in Spanish language radio

broadcasting in the U.S. Univision radio stations

will be able to promote the parent company’s

television programs and recording stars, while

having privileged access to Televisa’s shows —

which will feature the recording artists of

Fonovisa; this will be a tidy arrangement indeed.

Through its ties with Univision, Televisa will

have even greater access to the Spanish language

media market north of the border, including the

so-called Latino market, worth nearly $600

billion a year in consumer spending by most

estimates. (Not to mention the non-Latino

media market, as Mexican food products, for

example, have become increasingly popular in

the U.S. Non-Latinos now consume the majori-

ty of tortillas sold in the U.S., about half of

which are produced by the U.S. subsidiary of the

Gruma Corporation of Mexico, a major source

of advertising revenues for Spanish language

radio and television stations on both sides of the

border.) The FCC disregarded critics of the

merger between Univision and the Hispanic

Radio Corporation and voted for approval along

party lines, with Republicans supporting the

deal and Democrats dissenting. The CEO of

Univision, Jerrold Perenchio, a Republican,

Marco Antonio Regilon the set of Televisa’s“100 MexicanosDijeron.”



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If everyone else spentthe weeks beforeCalifornia’s Oct. 6

recall election salivatingover a surge in the Latinovote, CongresswomanLoretta Sanchez remainedskeptical.

“Very few willcome to vote,” she saidseveral weeks beforeElection Day. Her reasons:no one other than theunions were spending get-out-the vote money, fewerpolling places would beopen and the Democratshad a Latino candidate whofailed to “energize” the elec-torate.

Rep. Sanchez washalf right.

The Latino vote —variously estimated at 11 to18 percent of the total vote— reached the solid levelsof recent elections andconfirmed the oft repeatedwisdom that the Latinos —even in California wherethey are predominatelyMexican-American — arenot monolithic. Far more important, however,the recall results underscored the co-dependentrelationship between the increasing Latinopresence in California and white voters. It’sCalifornia’s version of racial politics, and eversince anti-immigrant fervor reached a peak in1994 the bizarre dynamic, which can favorRepublicans as well as Democrats, has swayedelections.

First, the Latino vote. It has grown from8 percent in 1990, and it’s not one that eitherparty has in the bank. Latinos, as it turned out,were only slightly less star struck in Octoberthan the rest of California voters. Despite earlier

indications that Latinos thought it important toelect one of their own, according to the TomasRivera Policy Institute, some 31 percentsupported Arnold Schwarzenegger. Politicalanalysts talked about the actor’s negativesaround his support for Proposition 187, butmany Latinos — 65 percent — simply didn’tknow about it or thought he had opposed themeasure, the Institute’s survey found.

Schwarzenegger’s share of the Latinovote compared to 33 percent who voted forWilson in 1990 and pretty much reflects the cutRepublicans have always been able to count on.The exception, of course, was 1994 when Wilsonran on the anti-immigrant Proposition 187 and

“California’s Version of Racial Politics By Lydia Chávez

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Voters register forthe California recall

election.

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won only 22 percent of the Latino vote. Latinoswere so upset that they began to register ingreater numbers and in 1996 and 2000 theypunished the Republ icans by vot ingoverwhelmingly for the Democrats.

In the 2003 recall, Latinos still preferredthe Democrat, but the margin narrowedconsiderably with only 55 percent supportingCruz Bustamante, compared to 65 percent forGray Davis in 2002, and 71 percent in 1998.

That’s the Latino vote. Now, considerthe warped relationship between the surge in theLatino population and the reaction it can instillin the white voter. During the boom years of1980s, the Latino population grew from 19 per-cent of the population to 26 percent. By 1994when a lousy economy and fears of moreimmigration were agitating white voters, PeteWilson was able to parlay their anxiety into anelectoral victory, embracing the anti-immigrantProp. 187 and warning Californians that “theykeep coming.” An economic boom and a distastefor immigrant bashing followed, but the economyis once again floundering. And playing theimmigrant card still works.

Some 70 percent of the voters thoughtit was a bad idea to give undocumentedresidents the right to drive, exit polls showed. InSan Diego County, author Mike Davis wrote,talk radio connected anger over the driver’slicense issue with anger about the increased taxfor car registration. To white voters, one promisedmore new immigrants and the other the moneyrequired to pay for them. AlthoughSchwarzenegger too opposed the driver’s licenselegislation, he never uttered an anti-immigrantword. Republican conservatives on talk radiodid that for him.

The immigrant card panics white voters— even liberal white voters. “I don’t understandit,” one of my students said referring to a con-versation he had with his parents. McGovernprogressives, they too hated the idea ofundocumented workers having a driver’slicense. They’re not racists. Neither were manyof the voters who supported Proposition 187.But, rational or not, most people fear changeand the big transformation in California continuesto be the color of its residents.

But if the demographics are changing,the voting profile has yet to follow. To win thesupport of white voters is to win the election sothe race card trumps the Latino vote. Take theLos Angeles Metropolitan Area where the vastmajority of Latino voters live. There, Latinos

represent 45 percent of the population, but only40 percent of the population that is 18 and olderand more important, only 25 percent of thepopulation that has the age and citizenshipstatus to vote, according to a study by USC’sSchool of Policy Planning and Development. Incomparison, non-Latinos make up 54 percent ofthe population but 75 percent of the eligiblevoting population.It’s no surprisethen that the heavilyLatino Los AngelesCounty supportedthe recall andSchwarzenegger.

As Latinosage and ear ncitizenship, theirvoting power andpopulation figures— now 32 percent— will begin tomesh. Until then,politicians — ortheir surrogates —will be able to playthe race card inelections. Or, theycan help to educatea populous starvedfor leadership anddirection.

In termso f f e a r i n gimmigration, thedriver’s licenseissue is reallybeside the point.With or withoutone, an undocu-mented worker can get a job, a bank account anda better life. They will keep coming.

The salient question is what to do aboutimmigration. Washington leaders and our newgovernor appear excited about legislation thatwould give some undocumented residentsearned amnesty and provide a guest workerprogram to regularize immigration for thosewho want to come. That begins a discussion thatconfronts realty rather than a retro rant thatriles the worst in all of us.

Lydia Chávez is an Associate Professor ofJournalism at UC Berkeley and a member of theU.S.–Mexico Futures Forum.

Anti-immigrant sentiments have long held sway

in California elections and have had their impact

on Congressional debates on immigration

reform. Ever since Mexico failed to support the

U.S. in getting a U.N. Security Council resolution

in support of the war, however, there is also an

anti-Mexican mindset in Congress.

Many in Congress, Rep. Sanchez said, are anxious

to approve legislation that will make many of the

country’s undocumented workers legal and give

employers a much wanted guest worker

program. But when Cecilia Romero Castillo, a

Mexican Senator, asked Sanchez what they could

do to help, Sanchez reminded her that the feelings

over Iraq were still raw.

“The less Mexico pushes, the better,” said Rep.

Sanchez.“There’s a lot of anger in Congress over

the Iraq issue.”


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Currently, the United States Congress haspending 98 bills dealing with immigrationissues. Despite the White House’s linking

of the war on terror with strict border policies,the public debate on immigration simply refusesto disappear. Two challenges to turning thesebills into law emerged during the U.S.–MexicoFutures Forum. First, how can legislators frame acompromise between liberal concerns forprotecting immigrants from exploitation andconservative fears over national security and theburden to taxpayers of continuing in-migration?Secondly, how can negotiations between Mexicoand the U.S. over an immigration bill be broad-ened beyond the executive level to incorporatethe legislative branches, rather than just the twocountries’ respective presidents?

Rejecting the Status Quo

Even in the context of the U.S.’s currentnational security priorities, both Washingtonand Mexico City appear to find unacceptable thestatus quo of large numbers of Mexicans enteringthe U.S. illegally to look for work. Belinda Reyes,a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute ofCalifornia, warned that the current policy ofmilitarizing the border and increasing arrestshas proved ineffective. Indeed, one of the mostnotable consequences of law enforcementprograms such as Operation Gatekeeper inCalifornia, Operation Hold-the-Line in Texasand Operation Safeguard in Arizona has beenthe dramatic increase in immigrant borderdeaths. Reyes also noted that, seen from a historicalperspective, these policies of str icterimmigration controls are a relatively recentphenomena. It has only been during recent

Cautious Optimism onImmigrationBy Shannon Gleeson



Rep. Jim Kolbe, Rep.Jeff Flake, Mexican

Secretary ofForeign Relations

Luis ErnestoDerbez and Rep.

John McCainanswer questionsafter meeting to

discuss two migra-tion initiatives being

presented inCongress.

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I. The Multifaceted Process of Globalization

With the mention of the word “global-ization,” all sorts of powerful yetstereotypical images come to mind:

cargo airliners and ships ready to leave withgoods for export, a team from the InternationalMonetary Fund arriving in a third world countryfacing financial crisis, mass demonstrations inglobal cities such as Seattle and Geneva. Alongwith these images, there are also ideas we associatewith this all-encompassing concept. Amongthese is the fear that in this brave new era ancientcultures will be lost forever as younger generationsabandon tradition and roots, seduced by theirresistible pull of cultural products fromHollywood or Western Europe. Anothercommon notion is that economic liberalizationand deregulation are now the “only game intown,” when it comes to policy-making.

Of course, all the above is to somedegree related to the complex set of processes wecall “globalization.” Having said this, however, ifwe were pushed to encapsulate the core elementsof it in a single idea, it would perhaps be akin toMathias Koenig-Archibugi’s dictum: that is, that

globalization has become the most common wayto refer to a rapidly changing world. Given themany dimensions of globalization, it is notsurprising that depending on who is using it orin what context, it becomes a matter of praise ordenunciation. Thus, while most economists tendto greet the term with excitement, thinking ofthe gain in productive efficiency that a moreinterconnected world brings about, union leadersthroughout the world regard globalization as athreat to their hard-won labor rights.

Beyond the perceived benefits ordangers of globalization, it is important to stressthat the enormous increase in the movement ofgoods, capital and cultural products whichcharacterizes globalization was neitherspontaneous nor inevitable. Indeed, as was thecase with the construction of national markets(a process so well described by Karl Polanyi inthe case of England), economic globalizationcame about after a long series of treaties aimedat increasing international trade and foreigninvestment, a process that runs parallel to theglobalization of human rights awareness, whichwas also constructed by numerous internationalmeetings and treaties.

The Future of GlobalizationBy Javier A. Couso



Giant cranes passbeneath the Golden

Gate Bridge on theirway from China to the

Port of Oakland.

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before his term ends in December 2006. With theMexican Constitution prohibiting presidentialre-election, Fox may be pondering his place inposterity.

Ironically, then, it may be the U.S.Congress which provides the Mexican presidentwith the elusive legislative breakthrough — andon the issue on which, more than any other, Foxhas staked his political reputation. Slowly butsurely, some U.S. politicians are starting to reviveFox’s ambitious plans for a comprehensiveimmigration deal with the U.S. to cover theestimated three to four million illegalimmigrants already within the United States, aswell as future migratory flows from Mexico. Theissue appeared to drop off the White Houseagenda during the post-Sept. 11 security crack-down and the ensuing freeze in the once warmpersonal relationship between Fox and his U.S.counterpart, President George W. Bush. Butnow, as Latino voters from California to NewYork slowly begin flexing their electoral muscles,even some conservative politicians in the U.S.are starting to wake up to the fact that backingan immigration bill could win them enough new

supporters from U.S. Hispanic communities tooutweigh the votes lost from other constituencies.

The debate in the U.S. over such animmigration bill reveals the tension betweenWashington’s ongoing response to the horrors ofSept. 11 and the need for both the U.S. andMexico to bring continuity and strength to theirbinational relationship. That dichotomy was acentral theme at the second U.S.–Mexico FuturesForum, a conference organized jointly by theCenter for Latin American Studies at theUniversity of California, Berkeley and MexicoCity’s Instituto Tecnólogico Autónomo deMéxico (ITAM) in Sausalito, California, inSeptember, shortly after Fox’s state of the unionspeech. Uniting an impressive line-up of policy-makers, academics and leaders from business,NGOs and the arts from both Mexico and theU.S., the conference examined issues includingimmigration, security, economic integration andelectoral institutions. The atmosphere wasnoticeably more upbeat than at the forum’sinaugural meeting in Cuernavaca, Mexico, inNovember 2002.

In Search of Continuitycontinued from the front page

Participants in theU.S.–Mexico Futures

Forum held inSeptember 2003 in

Sausalito, California.Kneeling, left to right:

Carlos Heredia,Gustavo Alanís Ortega,

Patricia Llaca,AdrianaGonzález Carrillo.

Standing, left to right:Mary Kelly, Juan José

García Ochoa, CarmenAristegui, David

Bonior, Bob Filner,Loretta Sanchez,Cecilia Romero

Castillo, Lydia Chávez,Rafael Fernández de

Castro,Amalia GarcíaMedina, Sherrod

Brown, Gilbert Cedillo,Rolando García

Alonso, Beatriz Manz,Alex Saragoza, Harley

Shaiken, RicardoObert, Pete Gallego.

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The U.S.–Mexico Futures ForumSan Francisco Bay AreaSeptember 19-21, 2003

Gustavo Alanís Ortega, President,Mexican Environmental Law Center(CEMDA)

José Alberto Aguilar, Subsecretary ofInternational Affairs, PRI

Carmen Aristegui, Journalist, Reformaand W Radio

David Bonior, Professor, Wayne StateUniversity; Member of Congress, Michigan,1976-2002; Democratic Whip, 1991-2002.

Sherrod Brown, Member of Congress,Ohio

Gil Cedillo, State Senator, California

Lydia Chavez, Professor of Journalism, UCBerkeley

Maria Echaveste, Attorney andConsultant, CEO Nueva Vista Group; DeputyChief of Staff to President Clinton

Bob Filner, Member of Congress,California

Juan José García Ochoa, Member ofCongress, Federal District, PRD

Rolando García Alonso, Director ofInternational Affairs, PAN

Amalia García Medina, Member ofCongress, Zacatecas, PRD

Adriana González Carrillo, Member ofCongress, Mexico State, PAN

Pete Gallego, State Assembly, Texas;Chair of the Mexican-American Legislative Caucus

Carlos Heredia, Advisor to Gov. LázaroCárdenas Batel on International Affairs, PRD

Mary Kelly, Senior Attorney and ProgramDirector, U.S.–Mexico Border Initiatives

Patricia Llaca, Actress

Beatriz Manz, Professor of Geography andEthnic Studies, UC Berkeley

Ricardo Obert, CEO, Productos QuimicosMardupol

Cecilia Romero, Senator, PAN

Loretta Sanchez, Member of Congress,California

Alex Saragoza, Professor of Ethnic Studies, UCBerkeley

Conveners

Rafael Fernández de Castro, Chair,Department of International Studies, InstitutoTecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM)

Harley Shaiken, Chair,Center for Latin American Studies,UC Berkeley

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C onventional wisdom suggests thatdemocratic transitions are one-waymovements and that they represent new

experiences for the countries involved. Peter H.Smith, Professor of Political Science and SimonBolívar Professor of Latin American Studies atUC San Diego, offered an alternative picture forLatin America based on a quantitative analysiscovering the whole of the 20th century.

Professor Smith undertook the arduoustask of coding each year between 1900 and 2000as democratic, semi-democratic, oligarchic orauthoritarian for 19 Latin American countries,based on the degree to which elections were freeand fair. This massive analytic effort yielded adatabase that allows us to chart the rhythms ofLatin American democracy during the 20thcentury and to address a fundamental question:Are these rhythms linear or cyclical?

Smith suggested that the answer to thisquestion varies by region within Latin America.In Central America, the data indicate that mostcountries are currently experiencing democracyfor the first time. They began the century underoligarchic rule — meaning domination byruling elites who restricted voting to a smallproportion of the population — or

authoritarianism.Aside from briefe x p e r i m e n t st h w a r t e d b yforeign interven-tion, most CentralAmerican coun-tries only beganto experiencedemocratic open-ings during the1970s. One wouldtherefore expectthese countries totake a differentattitude toward

democracy than those of South America, whichby and large experienced a period ofredemocratization in the past two decades.

Three South American countries —Argentina, Chile and Uruguay — experiencedearly episodes of democratization near the turnof the 20th century. By 1940, most SouthAmerican countries had developed some formof electoral democracy. The period from 1940 to1977 marked one “cycle” of democracy for theregion, a cycle that has, in Smith’s data, adistinctly “M” shape, indicating an initial surge,a sharp decline, and then a resurgence, all with-in this 37-year period. By the late 1970s,however, most South American countries hadfallen victim to an authoritarian regression. Anew cycle of democracy began in the mid-1980sand has continued to the present day. For Smith,this historical experience with democracies that“failed” has led South American countries toadopt a much more limited form of democracythan they did during the earlier cycle ofdemocratic opening.

This difference between SouthAmerican and Central American historicalexperiences with democracy has had profoundeffects on the quality of current democracies inLatin America. The desire to avoid a repetitionof the breakdown of democracy has leddemocratic leaders in South America to forgebargains with outgoing authoritarian elites thathave resulted in a restriction of civil liberties andan impoverishment of political representation.The end result is that democracy is no longer“dangerous,” that is, it does not pose a threat toexisting political and economic power relations— as did the more wide-ranging democraticopenings of the mid-20th century.

In Central America, the novelty ofdemocracy has had a dual impact. On the onehand, these countries have the potential toexperiment with extending democratic libertiesbeyond electoral participation into the social

Rhythms of Latin AmericanDemocracy: Linear orCyclical?By Chris Cardona

Prof. Peter Smithspeaks at CLAS.

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and even economic realms. On the other, theylack experience with democratic governance,leading them to model practices from othercountries, particularly South American ones. Itis the latter tendency that has prevailed, leadingCentral American countries to mirror thepractices of their South American neighbors. Asa result, Smith’s data show a cross-regionalconvergence on a model of “illiberal democracy.”

Democracy thus appears to have takenon a cyclical rhythm in South America duringthe 20th century, while in Central America itsevolution has been more linear. Despite thesedifferences, both regions face a commonchallenge: avoiding the “hollowing out” ofdemocracy that Guillermo O’Donnell hasidentified as resulting from the co-existence offormal democratic rights with violations of civilliberties and ineffective channels of politicalrepresentation. Smith’s diagnosis of theprevalence of “illiberal democracy” incontemporary Latin America points to some ofthe historical reasons for this troublingcondition. It also serves to remind us that we

must view democracy as more than the existenceof free and fair elections. Without the protectionof civil liberties and the practice of politicalrepresentation, electoral democracy will remainan exemplar of unfulfilled potential.

Chris Cardona is a graduate student in theDepartment of Political Science at UC Berkeley.

Professor Peter H. Smith spoke at the Center forLatin American Studies on April 25, 2003 and wasa visiting scholar at CLAS during the summer andfall of 2003.

Brazilian troops pauseon their way to Rio deJaniero after a militarycoup toppled the dem-ocratic government inApril 1964.

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decades that numerical restrictions have beenplaced on Mexican migration.

Despite this grim reality, Frank Sharry,Executive Director of the Washington D.C.-based nonprofit National Immigration Forum,insisted he was optimistic, detecting clear signsof political will for change despite thepersistence of conservative opposition to anyloosening of current immigration restrictions.“It is only a matter of time before we legalize,” hetold the forum. The choice, he added, wassimple: “smugglers versus visas.” Sharry citedgrassroots-initiated achievements such as therecent extension of the California drivers’ licenseto undocumented immigrants as a prime example.Other recent victories included the highereducation bill passed in California and thecontinuing fight to have the matricula, anidentification document offered by the Mexicanconsulate to Mexican citizens, accepted in theUnited States. Sharry also predicted that thisimpending sense of inevitability surrounding afuture immigration deal was leading the countryinto a “congressional phase” likely to includebipartisan support. National security would alsobenefit, with U.S. authorities being able to tracklegalized immigrants who currently slip into thecountry illicitly and without official approval orknowledge.

Forging a Compromise in Congress

California State Senator Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles), who played an instrumental role inthe driver’s license victory, also detected groundsfor optimism. Powerful entities such as theChamber of Commerce were crucial in framingthis bill as a pro-business initiative, he said.Additionally, grass-roots community effortsfrom groups such as immigrant “Home Clubs,”community organizations that bring togetherindividuals from common sending regions, werealso very active in the campaign. Overall, Cedillocited an amazing involvement of more than1,000 immigrants in the driver’s licensecampaign.

Yet timing and framing remain criticalelements in turning contentious bills intolegislative reality. Post 9-11 concerns regardingnational security are still crucial. In addition,there is the inescapable focus on local andnational elections, where anti-immigrant rhetoricis often perceived as a reliable vote-winner. TexasState Representative Pete Gallego (D-Alpine)argued that since the anti-immigrant faction is amajor base for the Republican Party, efforts togain immigrant rights are increasingly difficult.Furthermore, in a fast-paced political world,where re-election is a constant concern, there islittle time for the long-term vision that manywould consider ideal. Even legislation such as theguest worker program outlined in Texas Senator

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Cautious Optimism on Immigrationcontinued from page 8

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Rep. Bob Filner (cen-ter) makes a point

during a discussion onimmigration at the

U.S.–Mexico FuturesForum in Sausalito.Mexican Rep. José

Alberto Aguilar sits tohis left.To his right is

Carlos Heredia.

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In terms of the long-awaited immigrationdeal, less could be more. At least two immigrationbills were being prepared by U.S. representativesbefore the Congress was due to reconvene in thefall, with more possibly on the way. One bipartisaninitiative, publicly unveiled two days after theforum, proposed allowing approximately500,000 Mexican indocumentados, workers with-out official papers such as visas or work permits,to become legal residents. The limited scope ofthat proposal probably increases its chances ofsuccess. However, the sweeping immigrationaccord sought by Fox may still be on the table.The key doubt is not whether such a piece oflegislation, covering all Mexican illegalimmigrants in the US, passes but whether thecritical political momentum is built up to bringon board President Bush and enoughRepublican members of Congress to achieve adeal before the next U.S. presidential elections inNovember 2004.

Yet the search for a breakthrough onimmigration is not the only urgent challengefaced by the U.S. and Mexico. Overlapping with,

but distinct from, the issue of immigration arequestions of border security, Mexico’s troubledon-going attempts to catch up economicallywith Canada and the U.S. and the need to developdemocratic institutional structures within theNorth American Free Trade Agreement(NAFTA) framework to enfranchise the publicin the three signatory countries and allowcitizens’ voices to be more effectively heard.

The appearance post-Sept. 11 ofadditional controls at the 2,062-mileU.S.–Mexican border, with chaotic long lines ofwaiting vehicles, provides, in fact, only an illusorysense of security. None of the 9-11 terrorists hadarrived in the U.S. either illegally, as immigrants,or from Mexico. Failing to accept the reality ofthe economic pressures that cause migratoryflows means that the estimated 350,000Mexicans who do cross clandestinely into theU.S. every year are usually untraceable, a securityrisk in itself. It also forces those immigrants torisk their lives unnecessarily. “We don’t havesmart borders, we have dumb borders,” FrankSharry, Executive Director of the National

In Search of Continuitycontinued from page 10


Trucks form a linenearly half a mile longas they wait to crossthe border during abio-terrorism exerciseheld jointly by agenciesin Mexicali andImperial County inDecember 2002.

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Sen. CeciliaRomero Castillolooks on as Rep.Sherrod Brown

discusses immigra-tion at the

U.S.–MexicoFutures Forum.

Immigration Forum, a Washington, D.C.-basednongovernmental organization, told theconference.

The unpredictable delays at the borderare also braking economic growth in regionsalong both sides of the only land boundarybetween the developed and developing worlds.In Mexico, this is particularly painful withmaquiladora assembly plants and otherindustries already confronting growingcompetition from China, a future economicsuperpower. In the last 12 months, China hasovertaken Mexico as an exporter to the U.S. in arange of products, from office computers totextiles. Many of the hundreds of thousands ofpeople and vehicles that cross the U.S.–Mexicanborder every day are regular crossers, makingtheir current wait-times unnecessary.Manufacturers operating with just-in-time supplynetworks were particularly badly hit by Sept. 11.Without reform, integrated industries alongboth sides of the U.S.–Mexican border will againsuffer some of the most serious economicrepercussions following any future terroristattack in the U.S.

Meanwhile, Mexican-Americans andother Latino groups in the U.S. continue to pushand test the limits of their political power fromthe bottom up. There are growing bonds

between African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans, with the latter increasingly payingtribute to the formers’ struggle for civil rights inthe 1960s. A future coalition between the UnitedStates’ two largest minorities, sometime rivals inthe past, would be hard for any politician toignore. But hard lessons need to be learned.Hispanic candidates cannot take votes fromtheir communities for granted. Close to halfCalifornia’s large Hispanic electorate did notvote for Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante,the son of a barber from the San Joaquin valley,in the state’s gubernatorial recall election lastOctober. At the same time, even withBustamante a candidate to become California’sfirst Latino governor for more than a century,Mexican-American turnout was lower than forthe population as a whole.

Should these trends coalesce into asuccessful immigration bill in the U.S. in thenext 12 months, there would be direct implicationsfor Mexican domestic politics with Fox findinghis presidency re-energized from an unexpectedquarter and his own credibility restored in theeyes of many of his compatriots. Right from thestart of his presidency, Fox has prominentlycampaigned to secure an amnesty for themillions of his compatriots residing illegally inthe United States. Finally achieving that goalwould clear Fox of the accusation, levelled by his



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II. Shaping the Global Order for the Better

Aware that the shape globalization willultimately take is not a given, the U.S.–MexicoFutures Forum, an initiative of the Center forLatin American Studies at UC Berkeley and theInstituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México,had its third annual meeting last September.This initiative — itself an expression of a moreinterconnected world — provided academics,politicians and social actors from both Mexicoand the United States with the opportunity toexchange views on the challenges andopportunities of globalization, as well as itsimpact on the relationship between the U.S. andMexico.

In a session especially designed toaddress the issue of globalization, Lowell Jarvis,an economist from UC Davis, gave an overviewof the rise in international trade and investmentover the last fifty years. He pointed out that theincrease in national income that usually followsa surge in exports by poor countries does notnecessarily translate into better wages for workers.In fact, Jarvis told the members of the Forum,Taiwan grew rapidly for over twenty years beforewages grew. Related to this, he mentioned thefact that although Chile has experienced

impressive rates of economic growth over thelast 18 years (more than doubling it GDP duringthat period), the huge income inequalities thatcharacterize that country have remainedconstant.

According to Jarvis, the process bywhich the gains of free trade are distributedwithin each country is itself a political process,not an economic one. Thus, for example,income distribution would perhaps be improvedin Latin America if there was a political decisionto radically invest in public education, some-thing that none of the countries of the regionhave done so far. The lack of strong investmentin public education in this region contrasts withTaiwan and other Asian countries, whichsuggests that income inequality within countriesparticipating in the global economy it is not anintrinsic element of globalization, but a contingentone that can be changed.

In the discussion that followed Jarvis’presentation, members of the Forum discussedthe challenges that globalization presents forlabor rights, the protection of the environmentand indigenous peoples. While some were moreoptimistic than others, all agreed that such apervasive process should not be left unregulated.

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The Future of Globalizationcontinued from page 9

Participants at theU.S.–Mexico FuturesForum discuss theissues. From left: Rep.Loretta Sanchez,Mexican Rep. Juan JoséGarcía Ochoa andDavid Bonior.


18 18

Bill Cornyn’s Border Security and ImmigrationReform Act of 2003, which he characterized as “acommon sense solution to our broken immigrationsystem” have received harsh public reactions,according to Gallego.

Compromise is the name of the gamein creating politically feasible solutions. Despiteher frustration, United States CongresswomanLoretta Sanchez (D-Orange County) also saw abrighter future. In particular, she mentionedone immigration bill about to be introduced toCongress that would allow for earned residencyand even citizenship. The Senate would bebroadly “on board” and President Bush wouldapprove the legislation, she predicted.

Opening Lines of Communication

But what actions can Mexico take tosupport pro-immigrant legis-lation efforts in the UnitedStates? Relations betweenMexican President Vicente Foxand his U.S. counterpart,George W. Bush had appearedextremely warm before Sept.11. Since then, communicationbetween Mexican interiorminister Santiago Creel andTom Ridge, the U.S.’s head ofHomeland Security, has alsobeen positive. Yet, dialoguebetween the two nation’slegislatures has remained limited.Mexican congresswomanAmalia García Medina (PRD-Mexico City) suggested that

what is continually referred to as a “migrantpopulation” might better be characterized as abinational one, whose needs demanded a dia-logue between the representatives from both themigrant sending and receiving communities.

Solutions to the need for increasedbinational communication could include thecreation of a North American ParliamentaryUnion (NAPU) and the increased involvementof the Mexican consulates in the United States.The NAPU was proposed jointly by DavidBonior, formerly the Democratic Whip in theHouse of Representatives and now Professor ofLabor Studies at Wayne State University, andMexican economist Carlos Heredia, a prominentadviser to his country’s Democratic Revolution

Party (PRD). Professor Bonior told the forumthat the NAPU would help bring stability to abinational relationship that currently tends tofocus only episodically on important issues suchas immigration.

Mexico’s consular network in the U.S.could also be used to create additional channelsof communication, and opportunities for moreinvolvement by Mexican officals, suggested UCBerkeley Professor of Ethnic Studies AlexSaragoza. He recalled an event, organized inSonoma by the Mexican consulate in SanFrancisco, attended by many local representatives.Apart from being congenial public relationsopportunities, such efforts have the potential tocreate dialogue between Mexican immigrantcommunities in the U.S. and their representativesback in Mexico. The infrastructure of theMexican consular system would also provide themeans to facilitate dialogue between communityleaders and political representatives. Similarly,another forum participant, Ricardo Obert, CEOof a Mexican chemicals company, proposed thecreation of a specialized, bipartisan team ofdiplomatic personnel within the Mexicancongress.

In conclusion, conference convenerHarley Shaiken, Professor of Geography at UCBerkeley and Chair of CLAS, remindedparticipants that efforts such as the forum itselfcontributed to improved communicationbetween Mexico and the United States. With theU.S. economy continuing to offer work toMexicans — and with Mexicans able to earndramatically higher wages in the U.S than athome — continued immigration, illegal orotherwise, seems inevitable. Managing thatimmigration will be just one among manychallenges faced by Washington and MexicoCity. It will be up to a strong coalition ofconcerned politicians and citizens in both countriesto decide what conditions and dangers theseimmigrants endure during their journeys north.In an era when NAFTA has facilitated the move-ment of commodities and production facilitiesacross the southern border of the United States,it seems inevitable that considerations ofmigrant labor must eventually be addressed.

Shannon Gleeson is a graduate student in theDepartment of Sociology.

Cautious Optimism on Immigrationcontinued from page 14


California StateSenator GilbertCedillo, author

of the Californiabill allowing

undocumentedimmigrants to

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domestic political opponents, of political naivetyfor initially offering President Bush unerringsuppor t w i thout demanding spec i f i cconcessions in return.

The bill would mark the second timethat Mexican communities in the U.S. haveplayed a major role in Fox’s presidency. The firstcame before Fox even took office. On thecampaign trail in 1999 and early 2000, he pro-actively sought their support with flying visits tothe U.S. and tributes to the immigrants’ honestyand industry as they sought to better themselves,lauding them as patriotic “heroes.” Thatunprecedented rhetoric was a stark contrast tothe official disdain that illegal immigrants hadpreviously met with, not just in the U.S., buteven in their own homeland. As an electoralstrategy it may well have contributed to Fox’seventual victory.

A fresh focus from Fox’s government onrelations with U.S. legislators could also helpthem in their efforts to bring about the desiredimmigration package. Previously, the Mexicanpresident’s policy for dealing with the U.S. hasrevolved almost exclusively around the executivehub and, more specifically, his personal relationshipwith President Bush. But the U.S. President’sinitial slowness to push for an immigration dealfollowed by the shocking intervention of 9-11has illustrated the shortcomings of this single-track approach.

A new effort to build bridges to the U.S.Congress and state-level political leaders couldtherefore provide the Mexican administrationwith an escape route from the current impasse.In early November, Fox returned to U.S. soil,visiting Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. Duringmeetings with the three state governors, thePresident lobbied for support for an immigrationpackage. More such high-profile visits from thepopular Mexican chief executive to U.S. senatorsand congressmen with large Latino constituenciescould help them electorally. It would alsoencourage them to push for an immigrationpackage and motivate U.S Hispanic voters toorganize. A concerted effort to show U.S. legislatorswhat efforts are being made to economicallydevelop migratory sending regions withinMexico might also lead to a better understandingfrom beltway insiders of the complexdemographic and economic challenges thatMexico faces. Workers’ remittances sent from theU.S. to Mexico are now running at more than $1

billion a month, providing a major push to theMexican economy and even prompting thefederal government to offer to match local devel-opment funds provided by expatriates in theU.S. to their communities of origin.

Mexican and U.S. members of theircountries’ respective congresses could also benefitfrom deepening and broadening their currentlylimited and uninstitutionalized channels ofcommunication. Although the economic fates ofMexico and the U.S. are now closely intertwinedthrough NAFTA, the treaty’s principal rights-holders are corporate. One way of filling this gapin the treaty’s scope would be a North AmericanParliamentary Union (NAPU), proposed againby forum participants David Bonior, formerlythe second ranking Democrat in the U.S. Houseof Representatives and now a Professor at WayneState University’s College of Urban, Labor andMetropolitan Affairs, and economist CarlosHeredia, a former PRD congressman andcurrently Vice President of the Mexican Councilof International Affairs. Although initially limitedin scope and powers, such a parliamentaryunion could, in time, blossom into a powerful,representative institution to allow the citizenryin all three NAFTA member countries to balancetheir interests with those of the corporations onissues such as the environment, labor rights andmigration. Meeting regularly, it would alsoprovide continuity in relations betweenmembers of the U.S., Mexican and Canadianlegislatures, especially when most needed.

As the horror of Sept. 11 recedes intomemory, its impact on U.S.–Mexican relationsremains critical. Only now, more than two yearsafter the attacks, does the question of acomprehensive immigration package appear tobe moving back up Washington’s agendatowards the prominence it had on Sept. 10, 2001.Perhaps one positive permanent outcome couldbe the realization that the binational relation-ship is important, even to a superpower like theUnited States, and demands a transparent andaccountable political institution to help navigateboth the crises and the quotidian challenges ofthat relationship.

Simeon Tegel is a graduate student in the LatinAmerican Studies M.A. program at UC Berkeley.He worked as a freelance journalist in Mexico Cityfrom 1999 to 2003.



Seven black-robed judges listen to EdmundoCastillo and Rosenaldo Castro, pugnaciouslawyers for the Nicaraguan government,

visibly irritated by the preposterous idea that the“Illustrious Nicaraguan State” be brought tocourt by Awas Tingni, a small indigenouscommunity. At one side of the courtroom arethree lawyers from the Organization ofAmerican States (OAS) — formally presentingthe case — and James Anaya, an indigenous lawexpert and special counsel for the community.The room is packed with observers, includingabout 20 Awas Tingni community members.The atmosphere is tense.

Since the early 1990s, Awas Tingni hadexperienced increasing incursions intoterritories they consider theirs, most dramaticallythrough a government logging concession grantedto a multinational company. Awas Tingniattempted to use the Nicaraguan courts toprotect their land rights, to no avail, and turned

to the OAS Human Rights Commission. Aftertwo years of unsuccessful mediation, theCommission filed a petition on behalf of AwasTingni in the Inter-American Human RightsCourt, based in San José, Costa Rica. Thepetition cited violation of three articles, includingArticle 21, “Rights to Private Property,” of theInter-American Human Rights Convention. Forthe first time in the Convention’s 30-year history,Article 21 was applied to property heldcollectively and validated by traditionaloccupancy rather than legal title.

I had approached the trial at the Inter-American Human Rights Court in hopes ofcontributing useful expert testimony; the idea ofcarrying out a cultural critique of the proceedingscould not have been further from my mind. Butthe issue runs deeper. After all, the trialtranscript is a 240-page treasure trove of claimsand counter-claims, calling out for this kind ofscrutiny. In the face of that call — which I do

20

Activist Research v. CulturalCritique By Charles Hale

Nicaraguan anti-riotpolice arrest a groupof peasants who hadoccupied an area on

the outskirts ofManagua to demandland rights as well as

health and work bene-fits.

Opposite page:Members of the pros-

ecution representingthe Nicaraguan gov-

ernment comparenotes.

Court documentsfrom the Mayagna

Community of AwasTingni case.

The Inter-AmericanHuman Rights Court

in San José, Costa Rica.

Lawyers for thedefense.

Stills taken from“Children of the Sun” byPaul Kahil and Andreas

Peres.

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heed to some extent — this article is an attemptto rationalize my adamant rejection of culturalcritique as resting place.

My argument unfolds through ajuxtaposition of activist research and culturalcritique. By activist research I mean the method-ological development of a political alignmentwith the people who are the subjects of research,and the construction of a dialogue with themabout that research, its purposes and applications.A commitment to activist research has led me,together with my friend and colleague TedGordon, to take on two large studies of blackand indigenous land rights, one in Nicaraguaand one in Honduras, both funded by the WorldBank. One might ask how it is possible to do“activist research” when the funding comes froman institution like the World Bank?

During the spring of 2002, while thisHonduras research was still underway, aGarifuna activist intellectual named GregoriaFlores visited Austin and gave her answer to thatquestion. One of the most articulate and acuteactivists I have met in 20 years work in LatinAmerica, Flores recounted her organization’ssuccessful campaign to stop a Bank-fundedtourist project until Garifuna land claims to thearea were adjudicated. Reluctantly, the Bankagreed to fund such a study. Sharply critical ofBank policies and neoliberal ideology, Floresconcluded her talk: “We are using the system tofight the system.”

Now the words that come to mind arethose of the poet Audre Lorde. Her famousdictum — “The Master’s Tools will neverdismantle the Master’s house” — could be readas explicit criticism of Flores’ strategy. For many,progressive works of cultural critique contributeto this same re-visioning of politics that Lordeinspires. In contrast, I direct us to the improbablemeeting ground between Flores and Lorde:there may be no way to begin casting off theMaster’s tools of our trade, except by puttingthem to use in radically alternative ways, followingFlores’ contradictory path of struggle fromwithin.

Commission lawyers gave the Mexicananthropologist Rodolfo Stavenhagen themandate, as expert witness, “to testify on thetopic of indigenous peoples and theirconnections to ancestral lands.” Ancestral rights,Stavenhagen explained, were “the rights that acommunity enjoys, by virtue of historicalcontinuity with its pre-Hispanic origins, to

maintain its identity as a self-identified indigenous people.” Inconclusion, Stavenhagen told thecourt: “There is an old saying, thatan Indian without land is a deadIndian. And I think this is valid form a n y o f t h e i n d i g e n o u spopulations in our countries…This concept is deeply rooted in theculture of the indigenous peoplesthemselves; it is something that,unfortunately, those of us who livein the cities, who have becomedisconnected from our naturalorigins, often do not completelyunderstand.”

Government lawyers trieda number of tacks to discredit theAwas Tingni claim. Early on thegovernment argued that communitymembers could not possibly use allthe land they claimed. Thisassertion was trumped by aremarkable sequence of cross-examination of Jaime Castillo, amonolingual community leader:

Nicaraguan State: Señor Castillo,could you tell us what distance younormally travel to hunt and fish?

Witness (through an interpreter):In the whole area that we havemarked off as ours, we carry outdifferent activities, given that thereis no other way to earn a living.

Nicaraguan State: Excuse me,what distance do you travel to huntand fish?

Witness: He does not specifydistances, rather, he thinks in termsof the area as a whole; it doesn’tinterest him to be measuringdistances from here to there.

Nicaraguan State: But really, theNicaraguan State wants to knowthis distance.

Wi t n e s s : In th i s case , thegovernment has the obligation tocome to our community, and seefor yourself, rather than askingthese questions without ever

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1978).During the Second World War, labor

shortages increased the need for Mexican laborand in 1942, the Bracero Program formalizedthe migration that was already taking placebetween both countries. Although there was aformal process for Mexican workers to enter thecountry, many laborers entered the U.S. outsidethe program, and the United States exercised apolicy of benign neglect for those who enteredthrough the back door (Calavita, 1992). In somecases, unauthorized crossers were escorted to theborder and later brought back into the UnitedStates as legal braceros. In addition, the BorderPatrol was discouraged from deportingunauthorized immigrants, in many instances,until there was no longer a labor shortage. Tomake things even simpler for employers, theTexas Proviso of the 1950s made employersimmune to any risk involved in employingunauthorized immigrants (Calavita, 1992).

Although the U.S. approach was notdesigned to stop immigration or to removeMexican workers already in the United States,there was concern over Mexican immigrationeven in these early years. Two periods sawespecially strong opposition that led to majorrepatriations of workers: the Great Depressionand the 1950s, during which Operation Wetbackwas launched. However, many immigrants wereleaving voluntarily during the Depression,thereby reducing the number of Mexicans in theUnited States in the 1930s. Moreover, thedeportations in the 1950s did not lead to shortagesbecause the INS either legalized a large numberof immigrants, “exchanged” illegal workers forbraceros, or increased the number of temporaryimmigrants to ensure an ample supply of work-ers for employers (Calavita, 1979).

The first numeric restriction onMexican immigration did not take place until1965, when Mexico was placed on a WesternHemisphere quota of 120,000 visas annually(Fix and Passel, 1994). Since then, appeals forimmigration controls have increased and ourpolicies have become ever more restrictive.Nevertheless, the number of unauthorizedentries has increased. Today, we have one of the

most ambitious border control policies in U.S.history. At the same time, we also have thelargest number of unauthorized immigrants.The latest estimates from the Division ofCustoms and Borders are that we are spendingabout $3 billion a year trying to deter illegalimmigrants from crossing the U.S.–Mexicoborder. This budget is greater than the federalaid to states and local governments in 2002 forvocational and adult education ($1.8 billion),one of the major programs states use for immi-grant integration (Statistical Abstract, 2002,Table 412).

Despite this spending, the latestestimate of unauthorized immigrants is thatthere were approximately eight millionunauthorized immigrants in the United States in2001 and more than half are believed to be fromMexico (Bean, Van Hook and Woodrow-Lafield,2001). This population is larger than thepopulation of 39 different states and is morethan twice the number of unauthorizedimmigrants in the United States at the time ofthe Immigration Reform and Control Act(IRCA), passed in 1986.

The pattern of Mexican unauthorizedimmigration, which has been characterized byits temporary nature, also appears to be changingto a more permanent settlement in the UnitedStates (Reyes, Johnson and Swearingen, 2002).Part of the explanation for the change is thematuration of social networks for Mexicans inthe United States and the IRCA legalizations.However, the build-up at the U.S.–Mexicoborder may have also made it necessary for peopleto stay in the United States and not risk a return.Some of these migrants may have preferred tocome to the United States to work and return toMexico, but U.S. policies are making thatmigration pattern increasingly difficult.

People on both sides of the immigrationdebate argue that these numbers indicate thefailure of current U.S. Immigration Policy. Someargue that we should put even more resources atthe U.S.–Mexico border. The basic premise ofthe U.S. border control policy is that increasedenforcement will force immigrants to give uptheir efforts to cross illegally. However,

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The Past and Future of U.S. ImmigrationPolicycontinued from page 3


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apprehension does not deter illegal immigration.As long as people can earn substantially more inthe United States than in Mexico, as long aschildren cannot afford to go to school and aslong as Mexicans feel that their country has littleto offer to them, they will continue to come,whichever way they can.

It is also true that U.S. businessescontinue to rely on unauthorized labor. In someindustries, like agriculture, construction, hotelsand restaurants, immigrant labor is indispensable.It is hard to imagine the economic aftermath ifthe estimated eight million illegal immigrantsworking nationwide were gone overnight.

Moreover, their contribution is notlimited to low-skill, low-wage labor: Immigrantsare rebuilding many communities in the UnitedStates. Immigrants are generating cultural,social, political and economic energy through-out the nation. As the Chicago Tribune puts it,“The population and economic prospects oflarge metropolitan areas like Chicago wouldhave shrunk if it hadn’t been for large influxes ofimmigrants, legal and illegal.”

An alternative to increased enforcementis the creation of legal avenues for immigration.There are three guest worker bills being debated

in Washington. One of them is the AgriculturalJobs, Opportunity, Benefits and Security Act of2003, the so-called AgJOBS Act. This legislationwould grant temporary legal status to farmworkers who came here illegally but have workedin agriculture for 575 hours or 100 days duringthe 12 consecutive months between March 1,2002 and August 31, 2003. Their spouses andchildren would be allowed to stay in the UnitedStates but would not be allowed to work duringthe period of temporary status. If temporaryworkers labor an additional 360 days inagriculture over the next six years, they and theirfamilies will qualify for permanent residencyand, eventually, citizenship.

However, this law would apply only tothose who work in agriculture, and, mostunauthorized workers no longer work inagriculture. Consequently, broader sets of policiesare being discussed in both houses. RepublicansMcCain, Kolbe and Flake introduced a guest-worker bill in the House of Representatives(H.R. 2899) that would create two types of visas— one for foreigners who want to enter theUnited States to work and the other for illegalimmigrants already holding jobs here. Inaddition, Republican John Cornyn introduced aplan in the Senate (S. 1387) that would let


Participants in theImmigrant WorkersFreedom Ridemarch for immi-grants’ rights.Hundreds ofFreedom Ridersarrived inWashington, D.C.on Oct. 1, 2003after a week-longcross-country bustour.

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foreigners apply to work on a year-to-year basisfor up to three years. Of these two bills only theMaCain-Kolbe-Flake bill deals explicitly withsome of the issues that have been of greatestconcern: not tying workers to employers, notlimiting the program to agriculture and allowingfor the readjustment of status. It also deals withissues of families of temporary workers.

Although a move in the right direction,these efforts must to be accompanied by acomprehensive regional development plan inMexico. Some programs in Mexico matchimmigrants’ remittances with government moneys,and there are new types of banking opportunitiesbeing created, but these programs are partialand remain at the state level (Carrillo, 2004).The political will is lacking in Mexico to create acomprehensive federal plan that addresses issuesof health, education, housing, employment andinfrastructure development in sending regions.Also critical is the participation of the UnitedStates in helping the Mexican government withthese efforts. The United States and Mexicostarted the Partnership for Prosperity to coordinatetheir efforts in economic development, but sofar the emphasis has been on business develop-ment and not on the regional development,poverty reduction, health, educational andhousing reform that are critical for real progressto take place.

Creating legal avenues for Mexicanimmigrants in the U.S. will improve conditionsin the United States and will better respond toour economic realities. But it should not beexpected to solve all the problems. The long-term solution to unauthorized immigrationrests on creating economic opportunities inMexico and the enforcing of labor standards inthe United States. Unless Mexico makes thecommitment to create opportunities at homeand the United States recognizes a common

destiny with Mexico and cooperates in creatingrealistic long-term policies, the pattern ofunauthorized immigration will persist.

Bibliography:Bach, Robert L. 1978. Mexican Immigration and

the American State. International Migration Review 12 (4): 536-558.

Bean, Frank D., Jennider Van Hook and KarenWoodrow-Lafield. 2001. Estimates ofNumber of Unauthorized Migrants Residing in the United States. Washington, D.C.: Pew Hispanic Center.

Calavita, Kitty. 1992. Inside the State. New York:Routledge.

Carrillo, Teresa. 2004. Watching Over Greater Mexico. In Alambristas, edited by Kike Cull and David Carrasco, to be published by the University of New Mexico Press.

________ 1979. U.S. Immigration and Policy Responses. In Controlling Immigration,edited by Wayne Cornelius, Philip L. Martinand James F. Hollifield. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Fix, Michael and Jeffrey S. Passel. 1994.Immigration and Immigrants. Washington,D.C.: The Urban Institute.

Kiser, George C. and Martha Woody Kiser. 1979.Mexican Workers in the United States.Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

Reyes, Belinda, Hans P. Johnson and Richard

Van Swearingen. 2002. Holding the Line? San

Francisco: Public Policy Institute of

California.

U.S. Census Bureau. Statistical Abstract of the

United States. 2002.

Belinda I. Reyes is a research fellow at the PublicPolicy Institute of California.

A truck fitted withramps is positioned

on the Mexicanside of the Tijuanaborder in order toallow cars carrying

migrants to driveover the border

fence.

The Past and Future of U.S. Immigration Policycontinued from page 23


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having been there.

President of the Court: Could you reformulatethe question?

Nicaraguan State: It is very difficult… he is notcooperating…

Eventually, the government, sputteringwith frustration, was forced to ask the questionin a way that Jaime Castillo was comfortableanswering. In the process, the government lostthe specific point and proved inadvertently thatMayagna people do indeed conceptualize theirland differently. My testimony, and that of GalioGurdián, co-director of the Nicaragua indigenousand black land rights study, helped to rebutanother government objection. We assured theCourt that overlaps between the claims of AwasTingni and neighboring communities was nocause for doubt. Common throughout theregion, we explained, these overlaps were anexpression of traditional indigenous landtenure.

As the trial proceeded, governmentlawyers focused increasingly on the question ofancestral rights. While the observation that“indigenous people” lived in the region prior tothe arrival of the Europeans is uncontroversial,proving “continuity” between contemporaryindigenous groups and a discrete group of pre-Hispanic inhabitants is more problematic, a factnot lost on Castro. He told the judges: “The onlyproof in support of the supposed ancestraloccupation of these lands that they claim is adocument constructed solely on the basis of oraltestimonies of the interested parties, a study thathas no documented source, no archeologicalevidence, not even testimonies of the neighboringcommunities.”

Castro concluded in a seeminglyconciliatory tone, offering to grant Awas Tingnititle to community lands in non-ancestral areas.He apparently reasoned that if the ancestralrights argument disappeared, the entire claimwould collapse, or better yet, revert to the genericcategory of claims by landless peasants, who, ifthey are lucky, receive a miserable 10 hectaresper person from the Agrarian Reform Ministry.

Anaya then used his final arguments to

give the legal strategy a new twist, contrastingthe “modern” approach that states may follow inresponse to indigenous people’s claims withanother, which, though Anaya did not name it, isassociated with the past. I will call it the “back-ward” approach. The backward approach seeksto assimilate indigenous peoples, “strippingaway their cultural attributes, their culturalessence, preventing them from prospering in thelands where they have lived.”

The modern approach, in contrast, isfound in recently approved international laws,backed by the United Nations, which “strengthenthe cultural essence, the lifeways of indigenouspeoples, assign value to indigenous religious andphilosophical beliefs (cosmovisión) and to theirrelations with the land.” Anaya gave the word“modern” and its cognates a striking amount ofair time in those final minutes. For example, torefute the objection that the Awas Tingni are toomobile to have formed a continuous bond witha specific area of land, Anaya told the judges:“According to the modern criteria of the modernapproach, reflected in the modern judicialinstruments, it doesn’t matter how much youmove around; what matters is the continuity of ahistorically constituted group, which maintainstraditional traits and patterns. This has not beendisputed.”

Modernity was a space the judges, andthe Illustrious Nicaraguan State, imaginedthemselves to occupy, especially in contrast tothe Mayagna. Anaya had simply added a keyattribute to that space: judges and states, if theyare indeed truly modern, recognize and affirmthe rights of indigenous communities. Afterlengthy deliberations, the judges delivered asentence that resoundingly supported the AwasTingni.

Commission lawyers used the system tofight and, if legal precedent matters, change thesystem. Yet to prove Awas Tingni had specialrights, the lawyers were virtually obliged to“essentialize” Mayagna culture. This contradiction,specific to the Awas Tingni case, finds an echo inbroader struggles for land rights in CentralAmerica. Economic conditions in Honduras andNicaragua are nothing short of desperate. Thespecter of starvation, virtually unknown since


Activist Research v. Cultural Critiquecontinued from page 21

26

The Center for Latin American Studies Summer Field Research

CLAS annually funds 25-30 graduate students to carry out summer fieldresearch in Latin America and the Caribbean. Grants are awarded to studentsfrom a range of departments and professional schools. The following is oneexample from among many varied research projects carried out in the summerof 2003.

Karen Levy, a graduate student in the Department of Environmental Science,Policy and Management, traveled to Ecuador this summer to study the impactof road-building on the spread of infectious waterborne diseases in the northerncoastal region of Esmeraldas Province, where a new road is opening uppreviously remote villages to the outside world. In development studies, roadstend to either be sanctified, as sources of new wealth that bring people closerto health care and other services, or vilified, as bearers of environmentaldevastation, disease and increased disparities in wealth. However, very littleresearch has been done to study their actual effects. In her project, Levyexplored the linkages between environmental change and health outcomes forpeople living in the region. She carried out a demographic census, mapped thestudy villages, trained local health promoters to collect surveillance data andstudied the webs of contact amongst individuals within and between villages.

Women and children in Playa de Oro, Esmeraldas Province.A water drainage system runsbehind them.

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III. Mexico and the U.S. in theContext of Globalization

After debating the mostimportant aspects of globalization,the discussion centered on theimpact this process is having onMexico and the United States.The participants agreed thatthese two countries have becomeso interdependent that it wouldnot be an exaggeration to saythat, in spite of the fact that theyare two distinct states, they con-stitute “overlapping societies.”The U.S and Mexico sharecommon problems and shouldtherefore start working togetherto solve them. This is apparentwhen it comes to immigration,an issue that remains a source ofconflict and even tragedy, afterdecades of constant Mexicanmigration to the United States.

One of the virtues of thedebate that ensued was that itprovided concrete examples ofsuch abstract notions as“transnational citizenship,” thatso often are used to describe thenew features of a globalizedworld. For example, one of theMexican congressmen told theaudience that candidates for publicoffice in that country now feelcompelled to go to U.S. citiessuch as Chicago to campaign, dueto the thousands of Mexican voterswho live north of the border andvote regularly in the elections oftheir country of origin. Anotherparticipant told the audience thatof the nearly $8 billion that Mexican workersresiding in the U.S. send to their relatives inMexico, more than a $1 billion is lost in fees paidto intermediaries. These two anecdotes representvery telling images of the degree to whichglobalization has changed the very nature ofpolitics and citizenship in these two countries.Given this context, the innovative propositionadvanced some time ago by one of the participants

in the forum, David Bonior, for creating a NorthAmerican Parliamentary Union that wouldbring together politicians from the U.S., Mexicoand Canada to discuss issues of commonconcern for the peoples of all three countries,seems like common sense.

Javier A. Couso is an Associate Professor of Lawand Political Science at Universidad DiegoPortales, Santiago, Chile.

The Future of Globalizationcontinued from page 17

A Hyundai maquiladora in Tijuana.

View of a modern maquiladoraindustrial park.

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the 19th century, has returned. One of the onlyviable offers to support efforts toward demarcationand titling of black and indigenous lands comesfrom organizations like the World Bank, respon-sible, in a general sense, for the economicdevastation from which these communities suffer.The Bank offers a Faustian bargain: recognitionof multicultural rights in return forendorsement — implicit or otherwise — of thecultural, political and economic project ofneoliberalism. Few can flatly refuse.

If anthropologists aligned with theseorganizations follow them into the Faustianpact, we live the same contradictions. We use thelanguage of science to defend the claims that ourresearch documents, the same language that ourgraduate students decry as the oppressive “logo-centrism” of Enlightenment reason. We certainlydo not face the risks that the organizationsthemselves assume, but we do place reputationand conscience on the line, asserting that we are,on balance, advancing efforts toward social,economic and racial justice. This assertion wasborne out in the modest contribution that ourstudy made to the Awas Tingni court victory. Yetif anthropologists opt to live the contradictions,we inevitably go beyond cultural criticism, toproduce knowledge from within the same spacesthat our political allies are forced to occupy.Positioned in this way, we engender a moreacute understanding of these processes, becausewe are forced to think through and decide howto act upon the very dilemmas and problemsthat activists themselves confront.

Activist research requires us to stand intwo disparate intellectual worlds. One foot isplanted in the rarified space of cultural critique:generating the best analysis that empiricalresearch and theoretical reflection can muster.The other steps towards positivist law,demographics, geographic information systemsand other technologies of objective social

science — the very realms that cultural criticshave deconstructed. It is not a comfortable restingplace. It requires deft deployment of variedintellectual registers and it leaves our audiencesedgy and discontented. But this may be anecessary concession to brute realities. It surelyentails a more accurate reflection of thecontradictory struggles of the people withwhom we are allied and, more important still,the kinds of knowledge they need us to produce.

References CitedClifford, James. 1988. The Predicament of

Culture. Cambridge: Harvard.________ 2000. Taking Identity Politics

Seriously. In Without Guarantees: In Honourof Stuart Hall. P. Gilroy, L. Grossberg and A. McRobbie, eds. pp. 94-113. London:Verso.

Hale, C.R. 2001. What is Activist Research? Items(Social Science Research Council) 2 (1-2):13-15.

Hale, C.R., Galio C. Gurdian, and Edmund T.Gordon. f.c. Rights, Resources and the Social Memory of Struggle. Human Organization.

Lorde, Audre. 1984. The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House. InSister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. A. Lorde,ed. pp. 110-113. Freedom, CA: The CrossingPress.

Charles Hale is Associate Professor ofAnthropology and Associate Director of theTeresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin AmericanStudies at the University of Texas, Austin.Professor Hale spoke at the Center for LatinAmerican Studies on March 17, 2003.

Activist Research v. Cultural Critiquecontinued from page 25

29

reportedly donated money to then-Governor

Pete Wilson of California, the author of the infa-

mous proposition 187. Several Latino politicians

and advocacy groups, however, came to the

defense of the merger, which will reinforce

Univision’s grip on Spanish language broadcasting

in the U.S. with obvious benefits for its Mexican

partner, Televisa.

The ripple effects of Televisa’ far-flung

interests and media clout are not lost on

political parties in Mexico, as the 2006

presidential elections loom on the horizon. One

of the ironies of the PAN’s successful break of

the PRI’s stranglehold on Mexican politics has

been the campaign costs of a more open

political system; political competition has made

for a financial drain for the contesting parties

and a bonanza for the Mexican media, Televisa

most importantly. As a result, the political

grumbling in Mexico has led to growing talk of

reforming the relationship between the media

and politics. Much of the discussion has focused

on the public financing of electoral campaigns as

a means of lessening the burden of campaign

costs, primarily that of paying Televisa for prime

airtime. After the July 2002 midterm elections in

Mexico, it was reported that Televisa raked in

about $35 million from political advertising.

Thus far, no formal proposal has been

made to the Mexican congress, while President

Vicente Fox has offered mixed and vague views

on the matter. With a round of major

gubernatorial contests in Mexico slated for 2004,

the current discussion of this issue will likely

move toward the submission of formal

legislation on the matter. This question will also

complicate the discussion about Mexican

citizens who reside in the U.S. but wish to vote in

Mexican elections. The state of Zacatecas, for

instance, is considering a means to have its

citizens living in the U.S., participate in next

year’s (2004) elections for governor. Some

analysts estimate that as much as half of the

state’s voting age population may reside in the

U.S. for much of the year. Thus, this is no small

matter for the contending parties in Zacatecas,

which will force them in effect to pay Televisa for

airtime on both sides of the border. And all of

Mexico’s major parties stand to gain — or lose

— in any legislative effort to reform campaign

financing via radio and television.

In 1985, the Australian-born media

tycoon and majority owner of News

Corporation (e.g., Fox Network), Rupert

Murdoch, became an American citizen as a

means of evading FCC rules on foreign

ownership of U.S.-based media. A story in the

Los Angeles Times in July 2003 suggested that

Emilio Azcarraga Jean has made noises about

moving to the U.S. for perhaps similar reasons.

Stay tuned…

Alex Saragoza is a Professor of Ethnic Studies atUC Berkeley.

Media, Politics and Reform in Mexico: TheSpecter of Televisacontinued from page 5

Marco Antonio Regil ofTelevisa’s “100Mexicanos Dijeron.”


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The Unidad Popular represented the onlymoment in Chilean history in whichpolitical reality seemed about to change,

when a self-conscious mass of people existedwho believed they were about to achieve effectivepositions of power, who believed that theygoverned or were about to govern.

So what led to the defeat on September11, 1973? This question has fueled relentless self-criticism on the part of the Left in Chile.Although I continue to affirm the central ideasthat I held then, I now believe it is necessary totake another look at the Unidad Popularcoalition and re-evaluate its nature and purposewithin the historical context.

The Unidad Popular arose in a bipolarworld and in a time in which revolutions wereboth possible and desirable. Even though

revolutions had suffered more defeats thanvictories, some indeed had triumphed duringthe 20th century: the Mexican Revolution in1910, the Soviet in 1917 and later, the ChineseRevolution and the fight for national liberationthat had revolutionary results in Yugoslavia,Algeria and other countries and the CubanRevolution in 1959.

Within Chile, moreover, the UnidadPopular and the government of Salvador Allendecomprised a unique event in a very disciplinedhistory. This was the Chile of landowners andbishops and of those who lived off the rent of thesodium nitrate and copper mines — it was theChile of those who later profited from the stateprotection of a nascent national industry. TheUnidad Popular emerged out of that orderlyChile which had traditionally been governed by

The Unidad PopularCoalition 30 Years After ItsDefeat: A Re-evaluation By Jorge Arrate

The body of Pres.Salvador Allende iscarried out of the

Chilean presidentialpalace after the coup

of Sept. 11, 1973 led byGen.Augusto Pinochet.

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just a few.The Unidad Popular included the

Communist Party as well as leftist Christiangroups. The Communist Party, a huge,disciplined force, had a clearly defined politicalview shared by all its members. Its most moderatepositions coincided in large part with those ofthe president. However, like all of the left, theCommunist Party was a prisoner of its strongadhesion to rigid theoretical precepts that hadbeen constructed in the doctrinaire debates ofthe international and national Marxist move-ment. In Chile, the Party was never able to acceptAllende’s thesis that socialism could beconstructed without the dictatorship of theproletariat. There was, as I pointed out thirtyyears ago, a mismatch between the actors and theproject.

On the one hand, the members ofChile’s Communist Party shared Allende’s planand on the other, it maintained, in theory atleast, a desire to establish the dictatorship of theproletariat. It was contradictory to attempt tomove toward socialism by democratic meanswhile proposing this as a goal. Even though anargument was made that it was a form ofdemocracy, everyone understood that thedictatorship of the proletariat was, in reality, thesuppression of the other parties. The examplesof Russia and the other countries of EasternEurope proved that point.

The Unidad Popular coalition was notthe only force on the Left. There were at least twoothers that should be mentioned: the LeftistRevolutionary Movement (MIR) and theSocialist Party. The MIR was a party thatadvocated a more radical leftist agenda than theUnidad Popular. Although it never attainedelectoral success, the MIR was a significant forcebecause it garnered support and exerted considerableinfluence among the young as well as in the poorneighborhoods and the countryside.

The Socialist Party in Chile wascomprised of, among others, anarcho-syndicalists,socialist libertarians and the Trotskyites who hadsplit with the Communist Party. As a group, theyheld a variety of Marxist and social-democraticviews; some sectors held positions very similarto those of the Communist Party and othersectors were ideologically closer to the moreradical MIR. A large and important segment,however, held views that were consonant withthat of President Allende.

The Socialist Party believed itself to be

the melting pot party, but it did not alwaysachieve an effective synthesis of the views heldby its members. As a result, there was a good dealof divisiveness about the so-called “Chilean way”and its proposal of nonviolence. Allende himselfadmitted that the Unidad Popular’s revolutionwas a process that could require violence, but adefensive violence: “contra la violencia reac-cionaria, la violencia revolucionaria” (“againstreactionary violence, revolutionary violence”).There was also a very important wing of theSocialist Party that believed in the inevitabilityof conflict. History appears to support theirview, but one must admit that it also could havebeen a self-fulfilling prophecy.

There was one great actor on the Left:Salvador Allende and Allende-ism. Allende was apersonality and he made important contributionsbeyond what has traditionally been recognized.First, Allende, who was a member of parliamentfor many years, was a political negotiator. Hepracticed politics 100 percent. There was nopolitical space that Allende did not occupy, withboth his strengths and his weaknesses. He ranfour presidential campaigns on the platform ofunity among the workers.

Second, and this is a point I want tostress, is that both in practice and in the theoriesthat he expressed in his written works, Allendeformulated an implicit criticism of the ChileanLeft. In a subtle but effective way, he criticizedthe scholarly leftist parties who read texts andmade biblical interpretations of Marx, who paidtoo much attention to processes that hadoccurred in other realities.

Another trait of Allende’s that has beeninsufficiently appreciated is that he wasuncompromising on certain core principles. Herefused to extradite the Argentine revolutionarieswho fled to Chile from Trellew jail, in spite ofthose who made strong arguments in favor ofdoing so. He did not accept the conditions thatthe Christian Democrats imposed, whichconsisted of the formation of a governmentmade up of the military and technocrats whowould have the power to remove mid-level civilservants because he believed that this wouldconstitute a relinquishing of the Unidad Popularproject.

The opposition from the Right wasmade up of three parties. Its fascist spearheadwas undoubtedly Patria y Libertad (Motherlandand Liberty), but it could also count on theNational Party, traditionally the choice of the


32

The women laboring in Chile’s fruit andvegetable export industry are no longerposter children for the damage wrought by

neoliberal economic policies. According toWalter Goldfrank, professor of Sociology andLatin American & Latino Studies at UC SantaCruz, they have instead become a struggling butdistinct new interest group in the Chilean laborscene.

Women make up more than half of theworkforce employed to pick and clean the tablegrapes, stone-fruit and kiwis that flourish in thefertile valleys of the country’s Andean foothills.The majority of these rural female workers aretemporeras, or temporary workers, saidGoldfrank. This means they work without bene-fits and without a contract, or with one that onlyofficially employs them for a short period oftime. But, said Goldfrank, they have brought anew dynamic to the labor landscape in Chile.Unlike other groups of workers, who organizeand operate through Chile’s Labor Ministry, theytend to work more with the government agencySERNAM (Servicio Nacional de la Mujer), whichmore directly with women’s concerns. So, whilerural female workers actively press for formalwork contracts including work benefits andenforcement of pesticide regulations, they alsoare lobbying for household-related alternativessuch as community kitchens and daycareoptions, issues which have not typically beenunion concerns.

Chile’s export agriculture sectorboomed in the late 1980s and early 1990s whena new demand for fresh, rather than canned,produce emerged in the United States andEurope. Chile’s counter-seasonality allowed it tosend its summer crop of fruit to the NorthernHemisphere while the latter’s fields lay fallow forthe winter. According to Goldfrank, a number offactors have contributed to what has becomeknown as the “Chilean Miracle,” a national move

into new export products such as kiwis andcranberries. These factors included the expan-sion of Chile’s proletariat during the socialistadministration of President Salvador Allende,heavy investment in ports and highways duringthe years of the Pinochet dictatorship, state-sponsored marketing campaigns in Europe andthe U.S. and increased technical assistance tohelp growers assure quality control.

But the “Chilean Miracle” has come at ahigh price. The expansion of large industrializedfarming has seen the emergence of pesticideproblems and increased infant mortality.Smaller farmers have been squeezed out of busi-ness. Meanwhile, control of the lucrative indus-tries of fruit packing and shipping remain in thehands of transnational corporations. And,according to Goldfrank, the boom has alsobrought two key factors to play in the Chileanlabor dynamic. First, the work environment hasbecome highly gendered. Women pick and cleanthe fruit, while men are involved more withplanting, spraying and machine operation.Second, the workforce now lives primarily inChilean urban centers and is bused into agricul-tural areas only to labor in the fields.

In the early 1990s, Goldfrankresearched worker demographics in theAconcagua Valley, a strip of fertile farmland 80miles northeast of Santiago, in the shadow of theAndes. Working in conjunction with theAconcagua Valley Project, a program educatingfarmers to shift to organic production of tablegrapes, Goldfrank interviewed field workersfrom local communities.

He found that almost 90 percent ofworkers only had short, temporary contracts,often long expired. Women made up 63 percentof the labor force and earned between $6 and $9a day during the low-season but more during theharvest when they often worked shifts of 14 to 16hours. Ten to 15 percent of workers were found

Women at Work in Chile’sFields: A Change in theLabor Dynamic By Daniel Lavelle

33

to live in extreme poverty, which surprised theresearchers, who had expected a higher percent-age of laborers to fall into this demographic.Ninety-two percent owned televisions.

Pesticide regulations were only sporad-ically complied with in the valley, with only aquarter of growers keeping their workers out ofthe fields the recommended 24 hours after theapplication of agro-chemicals. Almost half ofthe workers reported medical problems.

Living in conditions of harsh poverty,and with few worker protections, the womenlaborers have been perceived by many to be vic-tims of the expanding neoliberal export agricul-ture business. Struggling to feed and clothe theirfamilies, working with SERNAM on issues spe-cific to their concerns, women farm workers inChile have ceased to be these poster children,said Goldfrank. Instead, they have become a spe-cial interest group with a political influence that,even if small, was inconceivable a little over adecade ago.

Daniel Lavelle is a grad student in the Departmentof Latin American Studies.

Walter Goldfrank is Professor of Sociology andLatin American & Latino Studies at UC SantaCruz. He spoke at CLAS on September 29, 2003.

A Chilean temporerasorts apples for theexport market.

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The trade policies of Latin Americancountries have led to very different levelsof success. While Chile is reaping large

economic gains from its international traderelations, other countries such as Argentina havebenefited to a far lesser extent from externaltrade. Conventional wisdom holds that thesedifferent outcomes are due to low state capacityto implement long-term plans in the lesssuccessful countries.

In a joint presentation Professor VinodAggarwal and doctoral student Ralph Espach, ofUC Berkeley’s Department of Political Science,challenged this view. Presenting results from avolume they edited with Joseph Tulchin,Director of the Latin America program at theWoodrow Wilson International Center forScholars, they highlighted the way the tradepolicies of Latin American countries are guidedby different strategies that yield varying politicaland economic outcomes. They illustrated theirargument with case studies of Argentina, Brazil,Mexico and Chile.

Professor Aggarwal introduced thetheoretical framework for their analysis of tradepolicy. He classified trade governance accordingto product scope (few vs. many) and actor scope(uni-, bi-, mini- and multilateral), generating amatrix with eight fields. As the scope of actorsvaries, trade governance is expected to havedifferent advantages and disadvantages, bothpolitically and economically.

Most Latin American countries engagein cross-sectoral agreements, or agreements thatcover many products, according to the analysesof Aggarwal and Espach. Among the casestudies, Mexico and Chile stand out with a veryhigh number of trade agreements, many of thembilateral. Based on their trade strategy, the fourcountries were classified as follows:

Argentina is a “regional partner.” Thefocus of its trade policy is minilateral, regionalagreements.

Brazil is a “regional leader.” While, like

Argentina, it emphasizes regional, minilateralism,it is also active in negotiations for multilateralagreements.

Chile is a “multilevel trader.” Its tradepolicy includes unilateral liberalization, bilateral,geographically dispersed agreements andmultilateral activities.

Mexico follows a “hub market strategy”.It focuses on bi- and minilateral agreements,taking advantage of its position as the “entrancedoor” to the U.S. market.

Espach went on to explain howMexico’s hub strategy is centered on the NorthAmerican Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Itsclose ties to the U.S. have led to high economicgrowth rates and dramatic increases in exportsand foreign direct investment. Furthermore, thisstrategy has turned Mexico into “a market thatcannot fail” as could be observed during theU.S.-led bailout package during the 1995“Tequila Crisis.” A third benefit that Mexicoreceives from NAFTA is the institutional learn-ing process that comes from close cooperationwith U.S. counterparts.

The downside of Mexico’s approach isthe limits it sets to autonomous economic andpolitical action. Economically, Mexico is highlydependent on the U.S. business cycle. The recentdownturn in the United States has slowedMexico’s growth to 0.9 percent in 2002.Politically, Mexico cannot risk a crisis in therelationship with its major trading partner. If theU.S. economy remains weak, these ties mightform a threat to Mexico’s political stability.

Argentina’s strategy as a regionalpartner also brought economic gains at the costof political autonomy, but on a much smallerscale. Strongly centered on the SouthernCommon Market (MERCOSUR), Argentina’seconomy showed high growth rates while Brazilboomed but was hit extremely hard by thedevaluation of the Brazilian Real in 1997. Thisblow was exacerbated by the fact that theArgentine peso could not devaluate because it

The Strategic Dynamics ofLatin American TradeBy Sebastian Karcher

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was tied to the U.S. dollar. MERCOSUR createdregional security in the 1980s and proved auseful platform for further trade negotiations inthe early 1990s, but the Argentine governmentfailed to extend its trade ties during these goodtimes. Moreover, trade negotiations with outsidepartners such as the EU and the Andean Pactwere complicated by Argentina’s membership inMERCOSUR. According to Espach, Argentina’soverall trade policy was guided by short-termconsiderations and a lack of a long-term vision.

Brazil, a regional leader, also centeredits t rade pol icy on MERCOSUR, butcomplimented this with a strong extra-regionalfocus. Since trade plays a much less importantrole for Brazil than for Argentina, both costs andbenefits from its strategy were very limited.Politically, Brazil fared considerably better thanits neighbor to the south. Due to its size andregional importance, Brazil, like Mexico, “couldnot be allowed to fail” and received benevolenttreatment from lenders. Additionally it managedto take a prominent position in internationalnegotiations such as the World TradeOrganization and the Kyoto protocol. Overall,Brazil’s strategy can be described as a careful“hedging” of both domestic costs andinternational risks. While successful in minimizingrisks, some opportunities, most notably expandingties within MERCOSUR, have been missed.

Chile can be considered a multileveltrader. Starting in the 1970s it unilaterallyliberalized much of its trade legislation. Sincethen, the country has been engaging in bilateraltrade agreements around the world and hasbeen very active in multilateral negotiations.

This strategy has resulted in large gains fromtrade with a high degree of political flexibility.The professionalism of Chile’s trade negotiatorsgives it an edge in multilateral talks.Furthermore, many countries such as SouthKorea have used Chile to gain experience inbilateral economic agreements since anyagreement with Chile bears little domestic cost.This has helped Chile reach very beneficialterms. However, Chile’s eclectic net of partnersprovides no strong political bonds and might bea threat to security when international tensionsarise.

Aggarwal and Espach provided aremarkably clear and well-structured account ofthe different options and strategies for tradepolicy. Their analytical framework proved veryeffective in shedding light on the reasons for thevarying outcomes of trade strategies. Questionsabout the causes of different strategy choicesand evidence supporting the strategic nature oftrade policy might, nevertheless, have meritedcloser attention.

Sebastian Karcher was a visiting scholar in theDepartment of Political Science at UC Berkeleyduring the 2003-04 academic year.

Professor Vinod Aggarwal and graduate studentRalph Espach spoke at the Center for LatinAmerican Studies on April 7, 2003.

Actor Scope

ProductScope

Few products(sectoralism)

Unilateral

Quotas or tariffs on specificproducts. Repealof Corn Laws (1)

Geographicallyconcentrated

Bilateral

U.S.–Canada autoagreement (2)

Many products Tariffs such asSmoot–Hawley, orAPEC IAPs (7)

U.S.–Canadafree tradeagreement (8)

Geographically dispersed

U.S.–JapanVoluntaryexportrestraints (3)

Mexico–Chilefree tradeagreement (9)

MinilateralGeographicallyconcentrated

European Coaland SteelCommunity (4)

NAFTA, EU (10)

Geographicallydispersed

Early voluntarysectoral liberalization.TheCairns Group (5)

FTAA,APEC,EU–MERCOSUR(transregionalism) (11)

Multilateral

InformationTechnologyAgreement(6)

GATT or WTO(globalism)(12)

Categorizing Modes of Governance in Trade

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oligarchy, and on the Christian Democracy, acentrist party that was supported in large part bythe middle classes. Each party’s opposition to theAllende regime forged a link that united theseotherwise disparate groups. The Right under-stood two very important facts early on: 1) thatit would need Patria y Libertad to drive theprocess forward and, 2) that it had to maximizeits influence over the Christian Democrats. Avirtual battle for the Christian Democratsensued. The Right expertly engaged in the fight,knowing that winning was a prerequisite forputting an end to the Unidad Popular government.The Unidad Popular did not, I believe, conductitself with the same skill.

It is important to note that big businesswas behind the National Party and Patria yLibertad. In Chile, even today, the overlapping ofeconomic power and rightwing politics is almostabsolute. On the other hand, businessassociations, which were identified with themiddle class, were also important actors. Theseassociations were the principal actors in theOctober 1972 strike. While the parties were busymaking elaborate plans, it was the truck-owners’association, the factory owners, wholesalers andretailers, in other words the various branches ofcommerce, who launched the October strike.

The international backdrop of theseevents was the Cold War world. In those yearswe lived in a world in which the two greatpowers were competing for the planet. This contextis crucial in explaining what happened duringthe period of the Unidad Popular coalition. TheCold War experienced by the citizens of Prague— who were invaded by Soviet tanks in 1968 —was not the same as that experienced by thecitizens of Santiago. In reality, Chileans were notthreatened by Soviet tanks. The Communistworld was theoretical and it exerted an ideologicalinfluence in Chile via political parties and theCuban Revolution. On the other hand, the directpolitical and financial intervention of the UnitedStates was both significant and decisive.

Trade unionism became a significantforce, and the unions logically lined up behindAllende. In addition to trade unionism, another

form of social organization emerged whichgenerated discussion and debate. I refer to theso-called “cordones industriales” (workers’coordinating committees). These were groups ofunion and social leaders in the country’s industrialbelts that combined the leadership of unionswith that of neighborhood organizations andthe Popular Distribution Committees (JAP) whodistributed food in times of scarcity. Thesecoordinating committees were constituted inareas of industrial concentration.

None of these actors or organizationsremained inert. They all went into actionsimultaneously at the top and at the bottom. Anunavoidable dimension of any analysis is therelationship between the top and bottom. Thecordones industriales confronted the unions andthe political parties because they wanted autonomy.This generated a demand from the bottom thatinfluenced the direction of the process andpressed Allende to go farther, to push the limits.Allende’s political base also wanted to go fartherand insisted that the governmental authoritiesand the President of the Republic adopt a moreradical position. They wanted to give a differentrhythm to the process.

Some of the parties were converted intovirtual battlegrounds. One of these was theSocialist Party. In the Socialist Party everythingwas open for debate: Allende, the MIR, theCuban Revolution and the Communist Party.

A second battleground was theChristian Democracy that, more than a centristparty, was a social doctrinaire platform fromwhich the Unified Popular Action Movementsprang in 1969; the Christian Left split off in1971. To be fair, the splintering of these groupsdid not leave Christian Democracy without anyleftist tendencies because progressives likeRadomiro Tomic, among others, did not leavethe party.

But the right continued to exercise apitiless force over the Christian Democracy andin the end, the most conservative spirit of theparty dominated. It is a debatable point, but Iam convinced that the dialogue Allende openedwith the Christian Democracy, against fierce

The Unidad Popular Coalition 30 Years AfterIts Defeat: A Re-evaluation continued from page 31

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socialist opposition, never bore fruitbecause of forces that were alreadyoperating inside the party.

The third and final battle-ground was the Armed Forces. Withrespect to the Armed Forces, one hasto ask: “Why didn’t it occur earlier?Why did it take three years for them tostage a military coup?” What I wouldlike to suggest is that there had to besomething in Allende’s military policythat allowed the Armed Forces toabstain, in general, from any actionagainst a revolutionary process thathad as a goal a break with the past.They behaved this way, I believe,because they were imbued with arespect for the law that was finallyexhausted, breaking under thepressure from the right and the influ-ence of the United States.

Was the Unidad Popular’sproject viable? Yes, I believe it waspossible.

T h e r e a r e n o l i n e a rrevolutionary processes in whicheverything comes together perfectlylike the pieces of a puzzle. There weredecisive moments for Unidad Popular.In some moments, much could bedone, in others, little, in still others,almost nothing. The critical moments,I think, were the following:

• The municipal elections of April, 1971.The Unidad Popular received 51 percent of thevote, and there were some who called for aplebiscite in order to form a constituency,approve constitutional reform or callparliamentary elections.

• The assassination of Edmundo PérezZujovic, a high-level leader in the ChristianDemocracy, in July of 1971. It was carried out byan extreme leftist group that had no relation tothe Unidad Popular or the MIR. But it ended upseverely distorting Christian Democracy’s viewof the Unidad Popular, and they distancedthemselves from the coalition.

• The nationalization of copper. This was agreat moment. The move was unanimouslyapproved in the Congress, and it opened up thepossibility for the government to broaden its

base of support. It was unable to capitalize onthe opportunity.

• The strike of October, 1972. By that point,the distance between the Unidad Popular andChristian Democracy was very great. Attemptswere made to foster dialogue between the twoparties. There are those who claim that theSocialist Party was responsible for the failure ofthese discussions. As I already mentioned, I donot share that vision.

• The parliamentary elections of March, 1973,when the Unidad Popular received 43 percentof the vote and kept the opposition from gaininga two-thirds majority in Congress. The rightdebated whether to attempt to impeach thepresident — which would require a two-thirdsvote — or to stage a coup. In reality, with theparliamentary elections of ’73, the right wasconvinced that the constitutional route was


Chile’s ArmyCommander in Chief,Gen.Augusto Pinochet,center, attends a cere-mony on Sept. 11,1997 commemoratingthe 24th anniversary ofthe military coup heled against the govern-ment of SalvadorAllende.

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impossible and that a coup was their onlyoption.

• The frustrated coup attempt of June, 1973,the “Tancazo,” that would serve as a test to seewhat the reaction would be to an event of thisnature. The attempt was put down by GeneralPrats without any members of the militaryhaving to exchange fire.

• General Prats’ forced resignation from hisrole as Commander in Chief of the Army inAugust of 1973 and the very unfortunate choiceof his sucessor, General Augusto Pinochet, madeby President Allende.

These last two moments correspondedwith the military’s abandonment of its tradition-al respect for legitimate authority and openedanother possibility for Allende and the UnidadPopular. I have already men-tioned the plebiscite and theagreement with ChristianDemocracy. But there was athird possibility, which onoccasion was toyed with duringthe Unidad Popular’s three yearsin power: the exercise of legalpower in relation to the ArmedForces. Legally, the presidentcould replace the commandersin chief as well as high-rankingofficers.

Three options existed: ap o l i t i c a l a cco rd i n t h eparliament, a plebiscite whichtook the matter to the peopleand finally the use of presidentialpower over the military, whichcould eventually have led to adifferent outcome. PresidentAllende worked tenaciously onthe first option. He turned thento the second, making theannouncement on Sept. 11,1973, when circumstanceswere already critical for the

government. In any case, as demonstrated withhis defense of La Moneda, the presidentialpalace, Salvador Allende never consideredsurrendering the program put forth by UnidadPopular or declaring the project a failure.

Jorge Arrate is President of the Universidad ARCISin Santiago de Chile, ex-President of the SocialistParty of Chile and former minister during theAllende, Alwyn and Frei adiministartions. He wasChile’s Ambassador to Argentina under PresidentLagos.

Amb. Arrate will be teaching a course titled“Argentina and Chile: Democracy and Integration”in the spring of 2004 at CLAS.

The Unidad Popular Coalition 30 Years AfterIts Defeat: A Re-evaluation continued from page 33

Flowers mark thedoorway through

which SalvadorAllende’s body was

carried after the coup.The door, boarded up

for thirty years, wasreopened on Sept. 11,

2003.

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Brazilian Studies at Berkeley

Professor Jorge WilheimUrban Planning: Innovations From BrazilThe Rio Branco Institute of Brazil and the Center for Latin American Studies are pleased to announce the appointment ofProfessor Jorge Wilheim as the Rio Branco Visiting Chair of Brazilian Studies at UC Berkeley for spring 2004. His one-monthseminar is open to graduate and advanced undergraduate students and will cover several themes in the history of urbanplanning in Brazil.

Jorge Wilheim was formerly the Deputy Secretary-General of Habitat II. A well-known Brazilian architect and town plan-ner, he has been, at different times, the country’s Secretary of State for Planning and for the Environment and São Paulo’sPresident of the Planning Department.

Paulo LinsNovelistThe Brazilian Ministry of Culture and the Center for Latin American Studies are pleased to announce the appointment ofPaulo Lins as the Mario De Andrade Chair of Brazilian Culture at UC Berkeley for spring 2004. Mr. Lins is the author of thenovel City of God, upon which the award-winning film of the same title is based. Mr. Lins will be in residence during March2004

M a g i c a l M e x i c o : P a i n t i n g s b y X a v i e r C a s t e l l a n o s On exhibit: August 25 – December 15, 2003 at the Center for Latin American Studies.

Center for Latin American StudiesUniversity of California, Berkeley2334 Bowditch StreetBerkeley, CA [email protected]: 510-642-2088Fax: 510-642-3260

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