The Role of Ideology in Peasant Politics: Peasant Mobilization and Demobilization in the Laguna Region

Introduction: disarticulations in global commodity production In the late 1990s visitors to La Laguna might have regarded this region of northcentral Mexico as a textbook illustration of the export-generated growth predicted by boosters of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Tens of thousands of workers were employed in the region's maquiladoras, making tractor engines for John Deere, automotive ignition systems for General Motors, and televisions for Thomson RCA. The region's leading product, however, and the engine of its post-NAFTA export surge, was blue jeans, which local factories were turning out by the millions per week. Bearing familiar labels such as Gap and Calvin Klein, most of these jeans would be sold in US retail outlets to consumers whose purchases enabled the region to proclaim itself the``blue jeans capital of the world.'' Industry analysts celebrated La Laguna as a promising sourcing location for foreign clothing companies, while regional development agencies touted the dramatic growth in its manufacturing base, citing impressive increases in both employment and production volumes (Bianchi, 1999;Gereffi and Mart|¨nez, 2000). Apparel industry jobs more than quintupled in the first five years after NAFTA, increasing from 12 000 in 1993 to 65 000 in 1998. By 2000 approximately 75 000 people were working in the region's textile mills, sewing factories, and industrial laundries. Collectively they produced six million garments a weeköa twelve-fold increase over the region's estimated pre-NAFTA output (Bair and Gereffi 2001).

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‘Who is Using Whom?’ Clientelism from the Client's Perspective

Hilgers

2009

Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research

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The Role of Ideology in Peasant Politics: Peasant Mobilization and Demobilization in the Laguna Region

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The Place of Disarticulations: Global Commodity Production in La Laguna, Mexico

‘Who is Using Whom?’ Clientelism from the Client's Perspective

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