To Be and Not to Be: The Question of Transborder Civic Activism and Regionalization in Mexico. A Critical Account of Neo-Gramscian Perspectives

Abstract

This article analyses how neo-Gramscian IPE and IR traditions look at the transborder agency of civil society actors in the making and re-making of regional orders. In particular, the article identifies key limitations of neo-Gramscian analyses that derive, on one hand, from how agency is understood and, on the other, from an insufficient attention to complex and paradoxical features of transborder collective action. Having as a case study three examples of Mexican TCA opposing market-driven regionalization policies during the 1990s, my empirical observations suggest that diversity and ambivalences of collective transborder action need to be addressed as first order questions. Despite this, neo-Gramscian accounts on transborder forms of collective action have either emphasized that: a) agency is conditioned by powerful structures of the global political economy; or b) that agency is making up these structures. While not rejecting this altogether but attempting to go further, this article advances a critique of both ‘emphases’ on agency and some alternatives.

Notes

1 The ideas developed in this article have been presented to diverse audiences in different countries and venues. I have always received insightful comments and I am particularly grateful to Erik Amnå, Edme Dominguez, Barry K. Gills, Jonathan Graubart, Jan Aart Scholte, Fredrik Söderbaum , Rolando Vazquez, Håkan Thörn, Teivo Teivainen and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. The shortcomings are, of course, mine alone.

2 It is acknowledged that the term ‘neo-Gramscian commentators’ as any other label can be problematic. For example, some of the scholars under examination here would be more comfortable with the label ‘critical’ or ‘historicist tradition’. Nevertheless, this term is used to make reference to those analyses within IPE and IR on regional and world orders that have as an important reference the work of Antonio Gramsci.

3 See note above.

4 This analysis derives from mostly: a) primary documentation produced by each case of study; b) attendance as an observer to core events; c) semi-structured interviews with its main participants conducted between May 2001 and November–December 2003 in three Mexican cities: Mexico City, Xalapa, and Estado de Mexico; and d) my own involvement as an activist in these experiences of TCA during 1998–1999. At the end of the article, a complete list of the events attended and interviews conducted is included. Whenever possible, the main argument of this analysis was shared with civil society practitioners who have been active participants of this process of critical reflection. This article represents one attempt in a larger research agenda that seeks to develop from the bottom-up an understanding of the societal implications of free trade agreements for local communities in Mexico around issues of identity formation and organizing strategies. Many of the primary sources used for the elaboration of this article are internal documents that have never been published, but that nevertheless, I was allowed to quote. These documents were consulted in May 2001 and November–December 2003 at DECA Equipo Pueblo's Documentation Centre (CEDOC) and at FAM offices in Mexico City. I am deeply grateful to Laura Becerra from DECA Equipo Pueblo and to Enrique Brito from FAM for their trust and support in allowing me to conduct this research.

5 In Spanish: Red Mexican de Acción Frente al Libre Comercio (RMALC), Ciudadanos de México Frente a la Unión Europea (Ciudadanos) and Foro Permanente de la Sociedad Civil del Gran Caribe (GC Forum).

6 See www.rmalc.org.mx.

7 NAFTA was signed in 1994 creating the first free trade area between such unequal partners (Mexico in relation to the US and Canada) under a reciprocal treatment or national status.

8 DECA Equipo Pueblo is a Mexican civic association (asociación civil) founded in 1977 that had a crucial role in gathering civil society organizations in Mexico for launching Ciudadanos and RMALC's campaigns. See www.equipopueblo.org.mx.

9 The EU–MEX Agreement is also known as Global Agreement.

10 All interviews were semi-structured, conducted in Spanish and lasted an average of 90 minutes.

11 The ACS had been previously launched as a sub-regional mechanism in 1994 by the countries of the Greater Caribbean to encourage economic cooperation.

12 However, none of these agencies continued supporting the GC Forum in 2000 contributing in this way to its deadlock and following cancellation (interview no. 4)

13 Ciudadanos particularly criticized that in international trade negotiations only the Coordination of Business Organizations for Foreign Trade (COECE) had an official consultative status in Mexico (Ciudadanos and CIFCA, 2002).

14 For example, in 1995 RMALC and other civil society organizations and networks in Mexico launched the Liberty Referendum which in three months was endorsed by 428,000 Mexicans. According to the Development GAP's official website, this referendum aimed to: ‘identify an alternative strategy to surmount the economic crisis through a program of growth, moderate inflation, conservation of the productive sector, and increasing levels of employment and income’. In this referendum, different groups joined RMALC, such as Asociación Nacional de Empresas Comercializadoras del Campo (ANEC, National Association of Agricultural Entrepreneurs), representing small agricultural producer's organizations; Coordinadora Nacional de Organizaciones Cafetaleras (CNOC, National Coordination of Coffee Producers' Organizations), representing small coffee growers associations; Asociación Nacional de Industriales de la Transformación (ANIT, National Association for Transformative Industry Representatives), representing medium and small Mexico City entrepreneurs; Unión de Productores Agrícolas, Industriales, Comerciantes y Prestadores de Servicios (El Barzón, Union of Farmers, Industrials, Traders and Service Sector Employers), representing middle-class private business and medium and small farmers; and Unión de Organizaciones Regionales Campesinas (UNORCA, Peasants Regional Independent Organizations Union), representing regional campesino organizations.

15 ALOP, Asociación Latinoamericana de Organismos de Promoción. See www.alop.or.cr

16 Prior to the UAOS establishment, in 1994–1995 the SRE created an office to attend information demands from national and international NGOs with regards to the Chiapas conflict. This office eventually disappeared.

17 The FTAA is a US initiative to create a free trade area from Alaska to South America. For more information on the FTAA from a critical view, visit the Hemispheric Social Alliance website: www.hsa.org. In this same website and in RMALC's website (www.rmalc.org.mx) can be found information on the the Plan Puebla Panama [Puebla Panama Plan] that involves the creation of an industrial corridor from the southern city of Puebla in Mexico to Panama, financed by the IADB and the World Bank.

18 For example, a member of Equipo Pueblo noticed regarding RMALC: ‘it is sometimes authoritarian, specially the coordination team. During a workshop on the Plan Puebla Panama and the FTAA, they said to us that all the participants should have to reject funding coming from the BID. From my perspective, this is something that needed to be discussed not imposed’ (interview no. 1).

19 Original quotation, but my own emphasis.

20 Original quotation, but my own emphasis.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rosalba Icaza Garza

Rosalba Icaza Garza#is Marie-Curie Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Iberoamerican Institute, Göteborg University, Sweden. Her current research focuses on global trade politics, democracy and gender exploring the democratic and gender impacts of free trade agreements between northern and southern counterparts and of local civic activism's engagement in this debate. She is author of ‘Sociedad civil y políticas de regionalización en México. Un análisis sobre el poder y el activismo transnacional en la globalización’, in G. Maihold (ed.) Las Modernidades de México. Espacios, Proyectos, Trayectorias (México: Miguel Ángel Porrua).