Gendered Struggles against Globalisation in Mexico

Teresa Healy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780754637011
• eBook ISBN: 9781317129691
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Globalisation
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Teresa Healy here examines resistance within Mexican society during a period of sustained crisis at the regional and national level, as well as at the level of world order. She analyzes how working class men organized to fight for the recognition of their citizenship rights, how they defended those rights when faced with repression and economic restructuring and how they contested the terms of globalization as it wrested from them their masculine identity of 'worker-fathers'. Healy also demonstrates how these men battled employers and masculinized political power at every level within the state to maintain their livelihoods and resist the feminization of their work and their own identities. These were gendered struggles against globalizations as they were experienced and carried out by men. The volume uncovers the limits and possibilities of working class men and women in transforming the conditions in which they live and work, and highlights the diversity and rich political history of social movements in Mexico.

Chapter 1

Introduction

This book is concerned with globalisation and its gendered contestations. Globalisation is often defined in material terms as the liberalisation of international trade, the deregulation of international finance and the internationalisation of production. It may also be defined in ideological terms as the discourse which limits the range of legitimate political activities. The ideology of globalisation is captured in the refrain that ‘there is no alternative’ to restructuring along neo-liberal lines. Globalisation may also be defined in institutional terms as the consolidation of neo-liberal restructuring within agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). It has meant the restructuring of states in the wake of struggles between social forces at the workplace, in the community, at the national level, and at the level of world order. We have also come to understand globalisation by definitions of what it is not. In general, definitions of globalisation do not include ‘Fordist’ trade union rights and forms of work organisation, state support for public services, import-substitution industrialisation, or the ‘family’ wage. In a broad sense, we can identify a globalising dynamic that had its genesis in the crisis of the ‘postwar settlement’ beginning in the late 1960s.

Each of these statements opens up its own world of inquiry. Why did the transformation to globalisation take this path and not another? What was the role of contestation and repression? Which social forces are most implicated? What are the variations between and within countries? What happened to the people involved? Who has benefited and who is losing? This book approaches this great global transformation as it has been located in one country, Mexico; one economic sub-sector, auto assembly; and one gender, men. None of these can actually be contemplated in isolation, and so the stories which follow are also relational. Neither can these dynamics be understood without an historical account, so I will locate this period of crisis and transformation in a longer perspective.

In the following chapters, I trace the ways unequal power relations between men and women were written into Revolutionary Nationalism in an epic struggle to redraw the post-colonial map at the beginning of the twentieth century. Revolutionary Nationalism drew from the stability of gender relations in society and became aspects of the way Mexico intersected with the world economy. In this period, caudillismo came to define a particular combination of masculinised practices and ideas which served to legitimise the leadership of certain men in powerful positions, and delegitimise dissent. Whether it was through the presidency, or other lesser forms of political leadership, including trade unionism loyal to the ruling party, the hegemonic masculinity of caudillismo became a framework of power within which working-class movements for democracy, independence and autonomy were either co-opted or repressed and sometimes both. As movements of working-class men tried to disrupt these relationships they ran the risk of reproducing caudillismo in their own movements, but for the most part, the collective actions of rebel ‘worker-fathers’ could not gain institutional legitimacy and were crushed. Women’s subordination in the gendered division of labour is clearly part of this story, insofar as women workers were ‘protected’ by the institutions of Revolutionary Nationalism, prevented from becoming full participants in the economic and political life of the country, and active in organising against their disenfranchisement.

This book examines three key movements of resistance among trade unionists in the Mexican auto industry. These movements emerged during the period of crisis in Mexico spanning the years 1968-94. Each movement represents an effort by trade unionists to transform the character of labour representation in Mexico. Each was defeated and through each case, a significant moment in the deepening crisis is illuminated. This book explores how radical labour movements became both protagonists and casualties in the crisis which ushered globalisation into Mexico. Through their gendered struggles we can understand important aspects of the restructuring of the economy and production; the crisis in representation, including the political sphere and labour’s own institutions; and changes in forms of resistance.

While social scientists have done much to illuminate the way in which a particular pattern of class relations came to be temporarily institutionalised in mid-twentieth century Mexico, the gendered dimension of this stability, and subsequent crisis is often not seen. I have set out to analyse how working-class men organised to fight for the recognition of their citizenship rights and how they defended those rights when faced with repression, economic restructuring and maquilisation. They contested the terms of globalisation as it wrested from them their masculine identity of ‘worker-fathers’. They fought other groups of men who tried to usurp their claims for self-representation. They battled employers and masculinised political power at every level within the state to maintain their livelihoods and resist the feminisation of their work and their own identities. These were gendered struggles against globalisation as they were experienced and carried out by men. Sometimes they involved solidarity with women’s movements. At times, the concerns of women workers remained invisible.

I will tell well-known stories of oppositional movements of working-class men within the unions at Nissan Mexicana, Ford de México and Volkswagen de México (Aguilar García 1982; Arteaga 1992; Bizberg 1990; Carillo 1990a; Micheli 1994; Middlebrook 1995; Molot 1993; Montiel 1991; Roxborough 1984; Shaiken and Herzenberg 1989). Here they are revisited through a gendered lens and an analysis of crisis and struggles for transformation. By reflecting on these experiences, I hope we may come to an understanding of the specific context of crisis and change in Mexico that led to the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). While caudillismo, a highly illiberal form of political leadership grew out of Mexico’s particular history, transnational capital also played a significant role in strengthening and maintaining the model. Similarly, as Mexico became increasingly open to the world economy in the period after 1968, the specifically gendered ways in which power relations were constructed conditioned the country’s relationship with ‘globalisation’. Gendered social relations infused labour’s sense of collectivity, the organisation of its institutions and its relationship to the state. The globalising dynamic did not so much diminish inequalities between men and women, as bring about a significant ‘re-gendering’ of the economy. This had a profound impact on working-class politics.

We only come to understand moments of crisis in their historical context. Crises emerge out of contradictions rooted in history. They also emerge from the struggles of social forces based in past experiences, constrained by pre-existing institutional arrangements, bound by material conditions and given vitality by options considered to be within the realm of possibility.1 Despite crisis, social forces will struggle on a terrain marked by a certain amount of continuity. In other words, if we are going to understand Mexico’s present, we must understand Mexico’s past. We must also appreciate the very concrete ways in which workers experience the terms of production in which they are engaged, in order to understand the strategies they choose in their resistance. Globalisation in Mexico cannot be understood without an appreciation of the history of social struggle initiated well before the transition to the new order.

Hegemonic Masculinity

One of the main concepts I will use to discuss these stories is the concept of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ which comes from R.W. Connell who defines it as the dominant masculine ideal of a culture to which all others are subordinated (Connell 1987, 183). Hegemonic masculinity problematises the concept of patriarchy as a universal or essential category by identifying a hierarchy of relations between different groups of men. Instead of pointing to a set of role expectations or an identity, the concept shifts our focus to changing practices that maintain men’s dominance over women and on devalued groups of men (Connell 1987, 183; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005; Hooper 2001, 28–53). As the ‘currently most honored way of being a man’, a specific masculinity becomes hegemonic through culture, institutions and persuasion, although at times is supported by force (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005, 832). It is possible for a hegemonic masculinity to be transformed in struggle and for a new masculinity to take its place. If a certain form of masculinity attains hegemony in a society, it cannot be built upon coercion only. It must elicit consent as well. Once it emerges, a hegemonic masculinity is not self-sustaining and requires ‘the policing of men as well as the exclusion or discrediting of women’ to be maintained (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005, 844).

One of the benefits of this way of looking at gender and power is that it suggests a wide range of possible definitions of masculinity and femininity and, correspondingly, many possible responses to issues of inequality. It is a one way of doing the ‘careful, politically focused, local analyses’ which may replace monolithic notions of patriarchy which Chandra Talpade Mohanty sees as leading to similarly reductive ideas about women’s oppression in post-colonial societies (Talpade Mohanty 1991 53–4, 65). Michael Kaufman has developed the argument that hegemonic masculinity takes different forms in different places and among different cultures at different times (Kaufman 1993). Similarly, Matthew Gutmann, who studied masculinity in a neighbourhood in Mexico City concludes that ‘claims about a uniform character of Mexican masculinity, a ubiquitous macho mexicano should be put to rest’ (Gutmann 1996, 263). These approaches suggest it would be fruitful to investigate the effect of hegemonic masculinity on various societal and global transformations. Some are less convinced of a concept based power relations that makes the powerlessness of individual lives invisible. Siedler, for example, would prefer explorations of masculinities which address the ambiguities and contradictions individual men experience (Seidler 2006, 13). On the other end of the spectrum, Ann Tickner uses the concept as a way to understand transformations in international security issues at the level of world order (Tickner 1992). It has also been suggested that by investigating masculinities, we immediately undermine their ‘naturalness’. As Steve Smith says, this in itself is an act that challenges centuries of privilege (Smith 1998, 65).

In the work that follows, my questions will consider whether the masculinity in question is hegemonic or not, but I will also explore how hierarchies of masculinities contributed to the hegemonic projects of dominant classes. Masculine power can and does reproduce the dominance of one class of men over another class of men and women. Rather than using an absolute notion of power, however, we can look for the ways subordinated groups of men, as well as women, resist and work to transform their situation. In Mexico, the ‘worker-father’ emerged as a very important masculinity in twentieth century Revolutionary Mexico, but it never attained hegemonic status. I would argue it was subordinated to the hegemonic masculinity of caudillismo, which itself experienced moments of construction, destruction, and reconstruction. As ideal-types, these two masculinities will help us understand some of the central ways gendered inequalities have been created and re-created in ideological, institutional and material terms.

Unequal gender relations were maintained in Mexico, despite the cataclysmic social impacts of the Revolution which began in 1910. Revolutionary Nationalist masculine authority was reproduced in the image of the caudillo who is often referred to a ‘strong man’ or as ‘a leader on horseback’. The best translation, however, is ‘chieftain’ (Wolf and. Hansen 1967). Historically, caudillos were not necessarily hereditary rulers, but criollo or mestizo leaders who gained power as a result of the Wars of Independence in Latin America. As Eric Wolf and Edward Hansen argue, caudillos were men who could assert their masculinity before other men by demonstrating their dominance over women, as well as their willingness to use violence to control others. Both of these dynamics led to conflict with other men. The caudillo was a leader who could gain authority by forming coalitions and commanding the loyalty of other leaders who would ‘declare’ their support for him any time he was challenged.2 The caudillo was constantly aware of his need to mobilise support for his leadership among his followers. Wolf and Hansen argue that, whether through trading or in pillage, it was crucial for the caudillo to use good judgment in the acquisition and distribution of the wealth obtained by the band so as to conserve the loyalty of these other leaders (Wolf and Hansen 1967, 169). There was instability in this form of leadership, as competition between men, disability, death or treachery could seal the fate of an individual caudillo. The system was, however quite diffuse, given the relatively large number of caudillos who developed regional power bases and kept each other in check (Wolf and Hansen 1967, 177). As a system of power, the caudillaje was by definition anarchic, and anti-institutional. Berthea Lerner and Susana Ralsky describe the caudillo in this way:

The regional caudillo is a military strong man, capable of offering a certain amount of protection to his followers. By means of his paternalism he attains internal loyalty to his persona and the dependence of his followers. As well, his leadership depends on the kind of strength that characteristically projects an image of exaggerated masculinity and heroism. He is a leader that ascends to power for his qualities of invulnerability and not by virtue of his education, his political vision with respect to the future or his social propositions at the national level. In general, he depends more upon his ample military intuition and on personal valour than on strategy or educated manoeuvring. (Lerner and Ralsky 1976, 26; Translated by the author)

There are many different determinations of when caudillaje as a system came to an end, but to the extent that it was a political form of a struggle for finite resources derived from the control of peasants, the expansion of land holdings and mercantilist trade, it survived only until the late nineteenth century (Wolf and Hansen 1967, 178). As political practice, however, caudillismo continued without much interruption. Despite the centralisation and institutionalisation of state power during the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz, and the increasingly important role of foreign investment, the porfiriato was stabilised through co-optation and alliances with criollo caudillos and state governors. This was very much in the tradition of caudillo politics (Garner 1985).

This idealised masculinity was rooted in the family where gender hierarchies were heavily guarded. Women’s subordination to her husband, the church, her in-laws, and her own parents and community was designed to preserve the honour of her husband. Women’s virtue and sexual purity were controlled by keeping women chaperoned and at home. There they were seen to be responsible for the upbringing of their children and attending to their husbands (Carne 1987, 97). This was, however, an idealised femininity. Contrary to the nineteenth-century myths suggesting women were confined to the home, there were many women who worked in small businesses, domestic service and in all activities related to the production of food and clothing. Women were teachers. Women on ranches worked in both the house and the farm, and peasant women were heavily involved in agricultural production and artisanal work, as well as household production. At the beginning of the twentieth century women were employed in offices, and in textiles and cigarette factories (Carne 1987, 105). Miserable working conditions and low wages and sexual harassment were not mitigated by the right to join unions. Nevertheless, there were moments in which women’s resistance resulted in strikes (Ramos Escandón 1987, 158).

The argument advanced here is that much of the ‘code of caudillo behaviour’ survived the transition to capitalism and the Revolution (Wolf and Hansen 1967, 178). Certainly caudillismo as ‘militarised factionalism’ was evident in the Revolutionary period and in the crisis that followed (Garner 1985). It is quite common for scholars to identify the Revolutionary generals in Mexico as caudillos, and to identify caudillismo in the actions of Revolutionary presidents in their dealings with regional leaders (Martínez-Assad 1978). Indeed, the apparently ‘individualistic’ leadership of strong men continued through the mid-century to be rooted in a system of power tied to ‘groups’ of other powerful men and regional interests. As will be argued below, caudillismo has played an important role in the history of trade unions in Mexico. It is this continuity of practice which is most salient. Caudillismo became the ‘hegemonic masculinity’ with dire consequences for working-class emancipation.

This particular masculine framework of power has been so long-lived because of the way it combines paternalism and authoritarianism. Paternalism may be understood as a set of social practices in which social inequality is legitimated and reproduced in ways similar to those of a patriarchal family. In this image of family, the father may be benevolent but commanding. He exercises decision making power by arguing that it is in family members’ best interests to defer to the internal hierarchy (Jary and Jary 1991). To the outside, the family is presented as a homogeneous entity while the unequal power relationships within it are legitimised. The privileging of such structures of masculine authority enables one actor to emerge in relation to a number of other ‘pre-actors’ having no legitimate role in representing their own interests within or without the collectivity.3 In this sense, paternalism may refer to the usurping of rights to self-representation legitimised by the dominant group.

Within patriarchal relations, authoritarianism may underlie this paternalistic effort to legitimise relations of social inequality. Authoritarianism is the means by which the subordinated are threatened with the possible withdrawal of resources, or the application of violence if they challenge the relationship. The authoritarianism of patriarchal social relations is relatively easy to identify, but when authoritarianism is joined with paternalistic relationships built on the acquiescence and consent of the subordinated, unequal gendered relations of power attain a resilience that is much more difficult to contest. If we are to assume that the gendered dimensions of hegemony rest upon paternalism as well as authoritarianism, then we can expect to see an interplay between the two in the hegemonic masculinity in question. In the Mexican case we witness the ebb and flow of paternalism and authoritarianism within capitalist society.

As I will argue in Chapter 2, victorious and authoritarian Revolutionary leaders sought to conclude the civil war and re-establish stability, by promoting a model of progressive capitalism which incorporated into the Mexican Constitution through Article 123; the article dedicated to issues ‘of labour and social provision’. The chapter continues on to explore how the transition from the crisis of the Revolution to a more stable order depended upon three dimensions of gender that developed in succession. These included: 1) a paternalistic ideology incorporated into the Constitution of 1917, in which the family, rather than the individual or class, was constructed as the basic unit of society; 2) institutionalised caudillismo as the hegemonic masculinity within the state and expressed in the federal executive and official union leadership, and the universal father-worker; 3) the masculinised character of state corporatism which was the productive mode favoured by the state, exemplified by the automotive industry and i...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Series Editors’ Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 ‘Of Labour and Social Provision’: Gender, Production and Revolutionary Nationalism
• 3 Nissan Workers, Caudillismo and Social Unionism
• 4 The Maquilisation of Ford de México
• 5 Volkswagen, NAFTA and the Disintegration of Labour Rights in Mexico
• 6 Globalisation and the Gendering of Working-Class Politics
• Bibliography
• Index