The Illusion of Civil Society: Democratization and Community Mobilization in Low-Income Mexico

3. Cerro del Cuatro and the Origins of the UCI

How did trends of political economy and political change affect the lives of Mexican citizens on the urban periphery of Guadalajara? Economic changes in Guadalajara drove working-class families to search that periphery for affordable housing. Many came to live in Cerro del Cuatro, a zone without urban amenities that would be the birthplace of the Union of Independent Settlers (Unión de Colonos Independientes, uci). Local pri activists, working to maintain clientelist authority, nurtured the growth of the new settlement. However, the clientelist system’s failure to provide infrastructure occurred simultaneously with the organizing efforts of the popular church that was deploying the new ideological weapons of liberation theology. The arrival of a Jesuit organization mandated to promote social change further nurtured the residents’ efforts to mobilize outside of the traditional clientelist system. economic growth and urban change Economic change in Guadalajara reflected national changes. From the nineteenth century until the 1960s, Guadalajara remained a regional commercial and industrial center, relying on small and medium-sized companies that produced items for domestic consumption, such as shoes, clothing, and food (Gilbert and Varley 1991; Vásquez 1989). These goods found a secure market niche because of their cheap prices, a consequence of relatively low wages (Walton 1978; González de la Rocha 1994). Small family-run enterprises were the norm for Guadalajara’s industry until national and transnational firms established factories in the city. Foreign investment in Jalisco expanded significantly from 1960 through 1975. Between 1940 and 1959, only eight foreign enterprises operated in Jalisco. 3 cerro del cuatro and the origins of the uci In contrast, between 1960 and 1970, twenty-four foreign enterprises moved to the state, including Ralston Purina, Ingersoll Rand, Pepsicola, Kodak, General Mills, and Phillip Morris. By 1975, an additional twelve large corporations had arrived, including Nabisco, Ciba Geigy, Pennwalt, and ibm (de León Arias 1988, 291–92). These firms found Guadalajara attractive because of its large regional market, favorable urban environment, peaceful labor history, low wages, and the incentives offered by local authorities (Walton 1977). Into the 1990s, large industry increased in Guadalajara, but the city was still characterized by its predominantly small- to medium-sized industries coexisting with large, capital-intensive, high-technology production (Vásquez 1989, 102; Gilbert and Varley 1991; 63). In 1974, the appearance of maquiladora plants in Guadalajara’s industrial sector was an important change. These foreign-owned assembly plants, attracted by special low-tax regimes, were a key component of Mexico’s economic development policy for several decades, and they helped to significantly expand the country’s industrial production. Initially intended to operate along the U.S.-Mexico border, to provide access to materials in the United States and facilitate export shipping, the program proved so successful that the maquiladoras expanded throughout the country, including to Guadalajara in West Central Mexico. With the establishment in the late 1970s of Burroughs de México and Semiconductores Motorola, electronics production increased. It continued to grow with the arrival in the mid-1980s of two Hewlett Packard plants, which used Guadalajara’s central location “as a jumping off point to attack the Latin American computer market” (Sklair 1993, 152). By 1998, the electronic industry of Jalisco (much of it concentrated in Guadalajara and surrounding areas) accounted for 83 percent of the state’s exports (Román, Flores, and Govela 2004, 34). Nevertheless, although maquiladoras did much to diversify the region’s industrial sector, they were never the major element of its productive structure (Sklair 1993, 144, 146). In the mid-1990s, manufacturing in Guadalajara increased dramatically. Foreign-owned plants, not necessarily maquiladoras, predominated, and huge factories in new industrial parks encircled the city, while older Mexican-owned plants were still located in the traditional industrial area, between the downtown and the city’s southern border. By about 2002, of Guadalajara’s 75,606 formally recognized economic producers, 9,190 were manufacturing plants, employing 125,665 of Guadalajara’s 470,075 workers and producing over half of the municipio’s gross product (inegi 2003, table 8.7). Guadalajara’s thirty-seven maquiladora plants employed 4,059 workers (inegi 2003, table 9.3). Among the top employers were manufacturers of food and drink, clothing, chemicals, 54 the illusion of civil society plastics, furniture, and metal products, with smaller but still substantial numbers of workers employed in computer and electronic fabrication (inegi 2003, table 9.2). During the first half of...