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

1. The Production of Colonias as Neoliberal Spaces

· 47 ·· CHAPTER 1 · The Production of Colonias as Neoliberal Spaces El que quiere baile, que pague músico. He who wants to dance should pay the musician. It would be wrong to assume that neither state officials nor colonia residents view the existence of colonias as an offense to resident’s basic rights as citizens. Rather, in many situations, the resource deprivation experienced in the colonias as an issue of basic rights is just not discussed . Yet, according to Orlando Cervantes, Chairman of the Doña Ana County Planning and Zoning Commission, “We have complete communities here without water, sewer or roads for access by emergency service. The government has failed in this case to meet its obligations to protect the people” (Nelson 1995). For Chairman Cervantes to believe “the government had failed to meet its obligations” by allowing communities to exist without basic services, he would have to believe it is within the role of the government to be sure people have these basic services in the first place. This is an assumption that is not obviously in line with the central tenets of neoliberalism: privatization and personal responsibility. Yet colonias are clearly neoliberal housing at its best. They are privately developed and brought from the lowest standards up to the most basic services by individual residents as a matter of personal responsibility, what could be more in keeping with neoliberal ideals? This chapter examines how colonias become one of the many spaces of neoliberalism. I examine the history of the border region and the development of economic integration between the United States and Mexico and the neoliberal state’s abandonment of immigrant communities in order to illustrate colonias as neoliberal spaces and this production of space as a site of convergence . It is at this site of convergence that I approach the book’s greater question of how leadership is constructed and gendered across the shifting dynamics of neoliberal restructuring; nongovernmental organization 48 THE PRODUCTION OF COLONIAS AS NEOLIBERAL SPACES (NGO) interventions; transnational connections; and local, ethnic, and gendered relationships. Here, the foundation is set from which later discussions of the development of leadership, the role of NGOs, and the complex relationships between the two can be examined. The Production of Colonias Colonias are home to working poor on the U.S. side of the border, and a great many of the working poor here are Mexican immigrants. Over the years, the number of jobs available to the working poor in the region has increased rapidly. Economic development along this part of the border succeeded. Both agriculture and light production have increased in southern New Mexico and Texas (Larson 1995). But for all the economic development and job production, little has been done to create affordable housing for the workers attracted to the new jobs in the region. One of the most enduring relationships along the border is that between Mexican labor, usually immigrant, and the U.S. economy. By tracing this relationship, I argue that colonias provide more than just homes for Mexican working poor on the border. They are an important site for the production of Mexican immigrants as self-reliant neoliberal citizens. A complex set of actors, structures of power, techniques of governmentality, and history combine in the production of colonias as impoverished communities in which the state is nowhere to be seen yet exerts its power in insidious ways. This work attempts to question, pull apart, and complicate popular discourses on the colonias. Because these are rural, out-of-sight communities , many of the discourses surrounding the colonias are based on hearsay and assumptions and not on actual experience. Few politicians or journalists have actually visited colonias, but many pass judgment based on little more than the federal definition and the lack of infrastructure the definition implies. I examine and complicate the solely economic view, which holds that colonias exist because they pose the only logical alternative for housing the working poor (Ward 2000). Alongside the rather one-dimensional economic perspective, I highlight the disturbing political reasons why the existence of colonias fits well with the idea of neoliberal governmentality and an independent citizenry. Colonias are complex and ambiguous communities. At first sight, they appear to be underdeveloped Third World slums. The dirt, dust, and garbage , combined with the run-down housing stock and unpaved roads, give THE PRODUCTION OF COLONIAS AS NEOLIBERAL SPACES 49 these areas a seemingly deserted appearance at...