March 3, 2003

‘Uninvited guests’ become players in U.S.-Mexico economic integration

By Jennifer McNulty

Big business and big government may have been the initial forces driving the economic integration of the United States and Mexico, but advocates for labor, human rights, the environment, and immigrant rights are among those who have joined forces across the border to influence the terms of globalization.

The unexpected coalition-building by these "uninvited guests" is the subject of a new book coedited by Jonathan Fox, chair of the UCSC Latin American and Latino Studies Department, and David Brooks, U.S. bureau chief of the Mexican national daily La Jornada.

"The North American economic integration, locked in by the North American Free Trade Agreement, was a leading edge of what later came to be called globalization," said Fox. "In response, starting more than a decade ago, we saw a range of leaders of directly affected local and national constituencies coming together to call for a seat at the table."

In the process, participants across causes focused on their common interest in influencing policy, although getting to know each other first was easier said than done, said Fox. The story of their strategies, frustrations, limitations, and successes is told in Cross-Border Dialogues: U.S.-Mexico Social Movement Networking (La Jolla, CA: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, UC San Diego, 2002), a collection of essays by participants in this new form of transnational networking.

Called "indispensable reading" by John Coatsworth, director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University, Cross-Border Dialogues documents the ways these outside voices broadened the terms of economic integration between Mexico and the United States. By fighting for the inclusion of social and environmental concerns in the international economic policy agenda, these outsiders foreshadowed the widespread international questioning of globalization that followed.

The shift toward thinking "transnationally" came more easily to some groups than others in a process that is ongoing, noted Fox. But united by their recognition of the ways in which globalization would affect their interests, leaders of these social organizations sought out their counterparts across borders. In their search for common ground, they chose to "agree to disagree" rather than focus on their differences.

"Around the world, grassroots and national social organizations are now active in the transnational policy arena in ways that would have been hard to imagine a decade ago," said Fox. "The people-to-people organizing around North American integration can teach us a lot about the broader process of ‘globalization from below.’"

Contributors include social organization strategists and researchers like Fox who have followed more than a decade of cross-border networking.

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