Abstract:
This book went to press on the eve of the tumultuous presidential election
in Mexico in July 2006. A pro-globalization champion of a newly
emergent middle class squared off against a populist defender of the
“losers” of globalization—farmers, workers, the urban poor. For weeks
after the razor-thin election, millions of people marched and camped in
Mexico City’s zocalo, convinced that the election had been stolen. The
fundamental axis of political confl ict in Mexico—and indeed in much
of Latin America—involves the issues that we explore in this book: the
social, environmental, and economic impacts of “Washington Consensus”
policies based on global market-led growth, the role of foreign direct
investment in promoting economic development and industrial transformation, and the economic and environmental sustainability of marketdriven globalization as a development path.
In the 1990s, Mexico was a “poster child” for globalization. In an
abrupt about-face, Mexico threw open its borders to trade and foreign
investment, embraced the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA), and ejected government from its role in building up domestic
industry. Multinational corporations swarmed into Mexico, creating
low-wage jobs in enclaves. Domestic fi rms, including some in the hightechnology sector, went bust at a rapid clip. Along with large numbers
of farmers displaced by agricultural imports from the United States, the
result was ever-increasing unemployment and migration, a deeper and
more apparent gap between globalization losers and winners, and the
political mobilization of the “losers” and their allies.
The story was repeated throughout Latin America. The election cycle
of 2005–2006 was widely seen as a referendum on “free-market” policies
