With the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, in 1994, the opening up of Mexican commercial sectors was completed. Thereafter, the growth of multinational supermarket chains accelerated and Mexican food distributors and retailers were forced into redefinition and regrouping, not only at company level but also at the regional-location level. The central and northern regions are witnessing increased efforts on the part of supermarket chains to capture local market segments, a process which imposes new demands on producers, wholesalers, and consumers. This article addresses the strategies of competition and collaboration of Mexican and US supermarket chains in the new regional context, and highlights the lack of Mexican public policy to help domestic retailers to compete effectively.The 1994 NAFTA agreement accelerated the liberalisation, privatisation, and deregulation of the agrifood sector that had been under way in Mexico since 1982. While these were part of the requirements and conditions negotiated with Canada and the United States, the creation of safety nets and the protection of vulnerable sectors were not considered by the Mexican government. However, just before NAFTA came into force, Mexican analysts voiced expectations that it would lead to the end of the domestic food retailing sector (Gonzalez, 1992;Perez, 1992).The liberalisation and deregulation policies were, as we argue here, important for the creation of a context for the acceleration of the entry of multinational supermarket chains into Mexico. In their original design these policies assumed that market forces would help domestic retailers step up their capacity to compete, and that open competition negotiated in NAFTA would in general be positive. The reality was, however, that the Mexican domestic supermarket chains confronted a series of challenges greater than their resources. Nevertheless some of them undertook successful strategies to survive in the face of the foreign competition. Moreover, the predatory practices (discussed below) used by multinational retailers such as Carrefour, K-mart, Auchan, and Price Club, to access and control the Mexican market forced them to reorganise and to consider alliances that five years before were unthinkable.The existing literature is limited with respect to the analysis of competition among multinational and domestic supermarket chains in developing countries. It tends to focus on the study of formats used by the global retailers in their positioning in these countries. The issues of how international retailers initiate the processes of market entry, internal decision-making to determine the format used, and the structural * Manuel Chavez (chavezm1@pilot.msu.edu) is at Michigan State University, East Lansing, USA. He thanks Kendra Sredzinski and Meghan Frith for their research assistance.

No abstract

It is suggested that the problem of the social causes of disease should be analyzed on the basis of the significant social processes of a given society. In this theoretical framework, a comparative study of two Mexican rural villages at different degrees of development is presented in order to clarify two related questions: what is the impact on morbidity of the rural development process, and what is the influence of socio-economic conditions on the distribution of disease in the population? It was found that morbidity was significantly higher in the more “developed” village than in the one characterized by a predominantly subsistence economy. This finding is ascribed to the character of Mexican rural development, similar to that of other subordinated countries, which implies a change from subsistence agriculture to cash-crops in an unstable market, a massive conversion of peasants into wage laborers with unstable employment, and substantial migration; these phenomena give rise to new, unfavorable living and working conditions for large parts of the rural population. It is argued that it is not development as such that is responsible for the increase in morbidity, but the particular form that it assumes in the dependent countries. It was also found that socioeconomic characteristics such as people's position in production, the sector of economic activity, and migration patterns define groups of high and low morbidity more clearly than do sanitary conditions and access to professional medical care. These results suggest that the success of public health activities depends on the possibility to plan the process of change.

This article examines two major institutions widely touted in the United States as servants to communities and the general public: the government and the news media. The Flint water crisis is a textbook case in which these two institutions failed to live up to their responsibilities of accountability and transparency. The authors examine the major events during the water crisis, looking at it through the lens of government actions and how the press covered them, conducting qualitative context analysis during the first five months of the crisis. The analysis includes the actions of federal, state, and local agencies and the reporting of national, state, and local newspapers. Their findings show that the institutions completely imploded, with an impact on thousands of residents, many of whom happened to be minorities. resumen Este trabajo analiza la labor de dos grandes instituciones que prestan servicio a las comunidades y a la sociedad en general en Estados Unidos: el gobierno y los medios de comunicación. La crisis del agua Flint es un caso de libro de texto que muestra cómo estas dos instituciones incumplieron sus responsabilidades de transparencia y rendición de cuentas. Los autores examinan los principales sucesos ocurridos durante la crisis del agua, observándolos a través de la lente de las acciones gubernamentales y la cobertura que les dio la prensa, realizando un análisis cualitativo de contexto de los primeros cinco meses de la crisis. Tal estudio incluye las acciones de las agencias federales, estatales y locales, y cómo fue tratado en la prensa a nivel nacional, estatal y local. Los hallazgos muestran que hubo una absoluta implosión institucional que impactó a miles de residentes -muchos de los cuales resultaron pertenecer a minorías-.Palabras clave: rendición de cuentas, transparencia, gobierno prensa, crisis agua.

No abstract