This study examines the development of the crisis in Mexico, with the primary focus on the 6-year term of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari and the first few months of his successor, President Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León. It poses the question of how a country with such seemingly bright prospects as Mexico in the wake of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) approval by the U.S. Congress could so quickly plunge into crisis. The answer is that these problems had been festering for some time. By 1994, a combination of factors-including recurrent economic crises, a failure to introduce meaningful political reforms, the social devastation wrought by neoliberal economic policies, continuing corruption and mismanagement by Mexican political and economic elites, human rights violations, and the growing power of narcotraffickers-was sufficient to destabilize what had long been considered one of the most stable countries in Latin America. The prospects for the future are mixed, at best. While some substantive political, judicial and police reforms have been belatedly made, serious doubts remain as to how far President Zedillo will be willing/able to go in challenging the power and perquisites of the traditional government/Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) elite and the narcotraffickers. A major threat to these elements would probably in itself be destabilizing; it could also be personally dangerous for Zedillo at a time when political assassinations are becoming increasingly commonplace. Moreover, corruption and inefficiency are so ingrained in the political institutions and practices at all levels of Mexican society that nothing short of a wholesale cultural revolution seems likely to solve the basic problem. Such fundamental changes in values are notoriously difficult to carry out and would take years, indeed decades, to accomplish. Thus, while the economy may pick up in a year or two and significant advances in democratization may occur, political violence and social turmoil will continue, at least in the short-to-medium run. In turn, this will pose serious problems for the United States, especially in the areas of illegal immigration, narcotrafficking, and all the costs and dangers they pose for American society.

Teresa Healy here examines resistance within Mexican society during a period of sustained crisis at the regional and national level, as well as at the level of world order. She analyzes how working class men organized to fight for the recognition of their citizenship rights, how they defended those rights when faced with repression and economic restructuring and how they contested the terms of globalization as it wrested from them their masculine identity of 'worker-fathers'. Healy also demonstrates how these men battled employers and masculinized political power at every level within the state to maintain their livelihoods and resist the feminization of their work and their own identities. These were gendered struggles against globalizations as they were experienced and carried out by men. The volume uncovers the limits and possibilities of working class men and women in transforming the conditions in which they live and work, and highlights the diversity and rich political history of social movements in Mexico.

Farewell to the Peasantry? questions class-reductionist assumptions in certain Marxist and populist approaches to political movements in twentieth-century rural Mexico, highlighting the interpretation of the process of political class formation.

By tracing the complex relationship between the Sandinista government and the Nicaraguan business elite, this book examines the shifting mix of alliances and oppositions that shaped the Sandinista revolution. Rose Spalding takes issue with models of the business sector that assume a high degree of class cohesion. Drawing on carefully structured interviews with ninety-one private-sector leaders at the end of the Sandinista era, Spalding documents responses to the Sandinista government that range from extreme ideological hostility to enthusiastic support. To explain this variation, Spalding explores such factors as the prerevolutionary social and economic characteristics of the elite, their organizational networks, and their experiences with expropriation and government subsidies. She is one of the first scholars to look at the ways in which these groups have evolved in the postrevolutionary era under the Chamorro government. In addition, Spalding provides a valuable analysis of four other cases of attempted structural change, thereby drawing broader, cross-national comparisons and developing theoretical insights about the political character of the 'bourgeoisie.' Originally published in 1994. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Offering often-surprising insights into American foreign policy, this book is the first comprehensive analysis of the U.S. Government's public statements and actions regarding democracy in Mexico. Spanning the years from the Central American crisis of the Reagan administration through the 1995 Mexican peso crisis, Mazza uses revealing interviews with many of the leading U.S. policy officials to probe beneath the surface of American foreign policy toward Mexico and question the set of aging, unexamined assumptions under which it operates. By chronicling and analyzing how the United States has treated democracy in Mexico, she adds a new understanding to United States-Mexico relations and to the nature of U.S. policy-making on democracy.

First published in 1999, the main theme of this book is the relationship between bureaucracy and politics in Mexico. This examined though a study of the Secretariat of Programming and Budget, which came into existence in 1976 and was abolished in 1992. The book charts the rise and fall of the Secretariat over three presidential terms and gives an explanation of the chain of events that led to its disappearance. In doing so it underlines the significant impact hat institutional and bureaucratic factors have on group politics in contemporary Mexico.

Globalization poses a formidable dilemma for the third-world state. While there are compelling external pressures to liberalize domestic economies, market-oriented reforms threaten the economic well-being of various societal groups. Popular resistance to these reforms has been strong throughout the developing world. This volume examines the political strategies employed by third world governments to maintain programs in the face of domestic opposition.

Kessler shows how political considerations distorted the liberalization process in Mexico, leading to inconsistent and unsustainable patterns of financial policy. Although market reform is promoted in developing countries to improve economic efficiency and stimulate growth, in Mexico financial liberalization provided rent-seeking opportunities for privileged groups and increased the states' ability to finance politically inspired obligations. The research examines four periods: the populist administrations of EcheverrÍa and Lopez Portillo, during which the foundations of modern financial markets were paradoxically laid; the debt-crisis years of de la Madrid, who reversed his party's political strategy by favoring the business class with financial opportunities; the economic transformation undertaken by Carlos Salinas, who mixed genuine reform with destabilizing anti-market measures; and the political watershed of the Zedillo administration, whose unpopular bank rescue gave opposition parties unprecedented power within Mexico's policy making process. Kessler also provides a comparison of financial collapse in two other emerging markets, South Korea and Russia, and examines the political roots of crisis in both countries. He concludes by suggesting how greater attention to questions of power, social organization, and challenges to state authority can help the policy-making community avoid giving well-meaning advice that is unlikely to be implemented in a sustainable way.