Indigenous Groups, Globalization, and Mexico's Plan Puebla Panama: Marriage or Miscarriage?

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Pages:368
ISBN:0-7734-5734-8
978-0-7734-5734-8
Price:$239.95 + shipping
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Designed to build Central American infrastructures, Mexico’s Plan Puebla Panamá (PPP) was launched with fervor in 2001 but collapsed hopelessly by 2003. A content analysis finds the Washington Consensus severely at odds with indigenous cultures, while invoking the broader globalization-localization debate. As Mexico’s latest bridging efforts with Central America drifted in lose-lose directions, readers are exposed to the fate many modern chief executives face under similar circumstances. Defying familiar international relations postulations, these findings not only elevate James Rosenau’s catch-all turbulence theory, but also show how drawing-board disconnections mirror those in the trenches. Both developed and developing countries have plenty to learn from PPP’s wide-ranging experiences.

Reviews

“ ... The Plan Puebla Panamá (PPP) was attempted during Mexico’s complex and controversial economic restructuring, its national political integration, its changing approaches to Central America, as well as its increasingly tense relations with the United States. Dr. Hussain uses theoretical analysis to suggest that states face a serious challenge from indigenous groups, that PPP reveals the disorder and restlessness at sub-national levels, that Mexico’s dominant position over Central America will mean less integration and more interdependence, that there has been far less of a consensus about Washington’s goals than many have claimed, and that Mexican-US relations are unlikely to return to where they were at the start of the Fox administration. Rather than consensus, turbulence and disorder seem to better characterize current relations between Mexico and the United States, politics within Mexico, and the prospects for globalization and liberalism.” – (from the Foreword) Professor Lowell Gustafson, Villanova University

“This book demonstrates the growing constraints and contradictions of desires to take advantage of the opportunities globalization affords developing nations positively in the economy, including achieving economies of scale, regional cooperation, and diversification, against pressures created by globalization, such as transnational social movement, loss of sovereign control, and dependence upon foreign financial and export markets. The failure of Plan Puebla Panamá illustrates amply the difficult position in which developing countries often find themselves ... this book is important to those interested in Mexican foreign policy and the future of Central America ...” – Professor Anil Hira, Simon Fraser University

“Vicente Fox’s victory in the 2000 presidential elections was significant in modern Mexican political history. Yet five years later, with new presidential elections forthcoming, Mexico finds itself on the crossroads again economically, politically, and socially. In this book, Dr. Hussain dissects the unraveling of the Fox presidency, using the major policy initiative in Plan Puebla Panamá (which was announced at the outset of the Fox presidency). Dr. Hussain’s analysis of composite facts reaffirms that the Mexican state in the coming years, even after the departure of Fox from power, faces daunting challenges from its citizens of indigenous origin ...” – Professor Satya Pattnayak, Villanova University

Table of Contents

Preface
Foreword by Lowell Gustafson
1. Introduction – After the Sexenio Crisis: A Los Piños Crisis?
2. Glocalization, Fragmegration, and Chaord: Architectural Discord, Theoretical Triage
3. Sputtering Past and Paradigm Porosity: Mexico’s Central American Malaise
4. Kiss of Life or Love? Imported Oxygen and Collective CA Action
5. PPP Nuts and Bolts, Humps and Bumps: Riding a Paper Roll?
6. Gasping Grassroots and Evasive Elites: Backbone-Building in a War Zone
7. Taking Flings? Central America in Northern Embrace
8. At the End of the Rope: Hanging, Swinging, or Leaping Over?
Bibliography
Index

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