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185 Conclusion This book has argued that the passage of NAFTA relied on the creation of the North American labor and environmental side accords. It has argued, additionally, that the side accords were inextricably tied to Mexico’s ongoing political democratization and economic transition efforts to reconcile trade, non-trade, and sustainable development interests, as all three of these rely discursively and practically on participation as the key to their success. The side accords were intended to encourage and guarantee participatory possibilities among Mexican, Canadian, and American populations . In Mexico, public participation in the side accords’ petitioning and dispute resolution mechanisms was argued by the accords’ crafters to encourage the growth of civil society, a robust sense of citizenship and responsibility among citizens of a democratizing nation, and accountability by the Mexican government. The accords were also intended to keep the spirit and substance of the pre-NAFTA debates alive even after the signing of NAFTA. Trade negotiators, policy-makers, Clinton’s presidential campaign , and environmental and labor organizations were all in agreement that the debates had highlighted some of the most contentious points of conflict between free trade interests, on the one hand, and labor, environmental , and human rights concerns, on the other. Finally, it was believed that the environmental ills of the border region could be cured through the logic and practice of sustainable development because the maquila industry , until that point, had brought largely destructive development to the area. The sustainable development angle of the environmental side accord, evident most clearly in the mandates of the BECC and NADBank, conceptualized border communities as sustainable building blocks for a new and cleaner border region. Participation was the key to ensuring the success of these three broad-based mandates. The empirical material in this book has demonstrated , however, how difficult it was for these border communities to participate, whether in a fledging or meaningful manner, in side ac- 186   Sustaining the Borderlands in the Age of NAFTA cord institutions and processes—as well as in cross-border networks. US-Mexico cross-border advocacy is notoriously rife with basic and quotidian obstacles: language, cultural differences between nationalities and class, different organization building and advocacy techniques, and last, but not least, the border itself (Barry 1994; Bejarano 2002; Brooks and Fox 2002; Kelly 2002; Staudt and Coronado 2002). This did not start with NAFTA and it certainly has not ended with it—particularly with the United States’ post-9/11 security measures and Mexico’s unfolding drug cartel wars. The side accords introduced a new dimension, however , which was and is the emphasis on transparency as the key to securing participation and curing border ills. In doing so, they effectively added digital divide to the other social, cultural, linguistic, and territorial divides that fracture border life. NAFTA and the side agreements went into effect around the same time that the Internet and worldwide web were beginning to take root as ineluctable aspects of a globalized and technologically advanced world. Popular perceptions of the new Internet Age oscillated between conspira­ torial nightmares and optimistic visions of electronically supported democracies . Optimists believed that “electronic communications would have inherently democratic impacts, facilitating equal access to data and knowledge regardless of social standing or geographic location” (Warf 2001, 4; cf. Norris 2002). The fact that the Internet exists and that institutions can post documents on web pages, make announcements via mail discussion lists, maintain online discussions or a “civil society comment box” (as the Free Trade Area of the Americas or FTAA negotiators maintained for several years), and otherwise behave in an ostensibly transparent manner, means that the Internet can also be manipulated for what might be called the “performance of participation.” Performances of this type are now pandemic, as a perusal of the civil society-oriented web pages posted by the World Bank, IADB, FTAA, and other global development actors demonstrate. Once a document is online, it is officially public. However, this is a highly circumscribed public that effectively excludes those digitally disenfranchised by a host of social and economic reasons that predate the Digital Age. As Warf (2001) has argued, the geographies of power in the non-cyber world are replicated in the world of the Internet which, in turn, reproduce and reinforce inequalities of the material and social worlds. Anzaldúa’s description of the US-Mexico border as a place where “the third world grates up and bleeds against the first” is redolent even of the digital border where “all the...

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