Transforming Chicana/o and Latina/o Politics: Globalization, and the Formation of Transnational Resistance in the U.S. and Chiapas

In 1993 Congress passed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), with great anticipation at home and abroad that the newly formed regional alliance between Mexico, the United States, and Canada would increase productivity, reduce inefficiency, and strengthen the states\u27 economies. However, the agreement was not met with universal enthusiasm. Among many of the rural poor, campesinos, working classes, racial minorities, and indigenous populations of all three states, NAFTA\u27s passage signaled an unprecedented move toward globalization and mounting economic pressures (Mander and Goldsmith, 1996). In particular, in Chiapas, Mexico, peasants, campesinos/farmers, and indigenous populations had for some time been under the weight of neoliberal economic strategies intensified by the austerity programs adopted by Carlos Salinas in the 1980s (Collier, 1994; Harvey, 1990). These campesinos and indigenous communities had been notably impacted by privatization and deregulation. In effect, they had seen their own farms and communities displaced and deterritorialized in the move toward regional economic integration and knew that NAFTA\u27s passage would only expedite this process (Kearney, 1996).