A Jumble of Needs: Women’s Activism and Neoliberalism in the Colonias of the Southwest

Notes

· 211 · Notes Introduction 1. “Facts about Farmworkers and Colonias,” U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, http://www.hud.gov/groups/farmwkercolonia.cfm (accessed June 25, 2008). 2. I would like to counter this report to say the colonias in which I did this research were 95 to 99 percent Mexican immigrant, not Mexican American. This is a significant ethnic difference in cultural, economic, and political terms. The women with whom I worked did not want to be identified as Mexican American. They preferred to be identified as Mexican and keeping their ethnic identity tied to Mexico was very important to them. 3. Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Office of Community Affairs, “Texas Colonias : A Thumbnail Sketch of Conditions, Issues, Challenges and Opportunities,” Texas Secretary of State, http://www.sos.state.tx.us/border/colonias/faqs.shtml (accessed September 23, 2008). 4. Personal communication with Espy Holguin, HUD Las Cruces, New Mexico , 2000. I have tried to locate newer numbers, and in more recent conversations with Ms. Holguin in 2007, I was informed that no such data exists. 5. President Bush was the governor of Texas before he was the president of the United States, and Texas has more than two thousand colonias. When he ran for president for the first time, there was a great deal of excitement in colonia circles and hope that perhaps it was finally time for the nation to become aware of these forgotten communities. But no one was terribly surprised when conditions remained essentially the same in the colonias, and, if anything, life on the border became more and more difficult during the two Bush administrations in 2000 and 2004 due to severe immigration legislation. 6. “State and County Quick Facts,” U.S. Census Bureau, http://quickfacts .census.gov/qfd/states/35/35013.html (accessed March 22, 2008). 7. “Quick Tables,” U.S. Census Bureau, http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/ QTTable?_bm=n&_lang=en&qr_name=DEC_2000_SF1_U_DP1&ds_name=DEC _2000_SF1_U&geo_id=05000US35013 (accessed March 22, 2008). 8. Ibid. 212 NOTES TO INTRODUCTION 9. “StateandCountyQuickFacts,”U.S.CensusBureau,http://quickfacts.census .gov/qfd/states/35/35013.html (accessed March 22, 2008). 10. “Quick Tables,” U.S. Census Bureau, http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/ QTTable?_bm=n&_lang=en&qr_name=DEC_2000_SF1_U_DP1&ds_name =DEC_2000_SF1_U&geo_id=05000US35013 (accessed March 22, 2008). 11. “State and County Quick Facts,” U.S. Census Bureau, http://quickfacts .census.gov/qfd/states/35/35013.html (accessed March 22, 2008). 12. In the late 1970s, Mexico discovered the extent of its vast oil reserves and began down the dangerous “oil boom” other countries in the global south, such as Venezuela and Nigeria, had gone before it (Riding 1989). As the Mexican economy grew faster than it could then finance itself, it had to borrow money to address its increasing deficit. As signs began to pile up all pointing to imminent demise, President López Portillo ignored them and focused instead on creating jobs and waiting it out. When López Portillo’s successor De La Madrid took over in 1981, the country was at the edge of collapse and foreign banks began to demand repayment of their loans. All Mexico could do was close their foreign exchange markets and suspend payments on their over $80 billion in debt. Help came quickly in the form of an IMF intervention, paving the way for similar interventions in the global south for years to come (Riding 1989, 149; Wynia 1990). 13. “Mexico and Remittances,” The Multilateral Investment Fund, http:// www.iadb.org/mif/remittances/lac/remesas_me.cfm (accessed April 11, 2008). 14. “Facts about Farmworkers and Colonias,” U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, http://www.hud.gov/groups/farmwkercolonia.cfm (accessed July 18, 2007). 15. The tone of Estella’s voice was just as important here as her choice of words. Cabrona is a rather harsh word to use to describe a woman and certainly not one thrown around lightly. But what really made the moment memorable was Estella’s trademark deadpan delivery: you could never tell if she was joking or completely serious, and it took me nearly my whole year in New Mexico to be able to read her. At that point, I was working on blind faith that she was complimenting me and that it was a good idea to go along with it. 16. The theories of scholars such as Sayer (1991) and Massey (1991) can help clarify the constitutive relationship between the “local” and the “global” in the colonias. Sayer (1991) developed a typology that helps debunk the idea...