Coalitions and clientelism in Mexico

Coalitions and Clientelism in Mexico JON SHEFNER University of Tennessee Democratization in Latin American and Eastern Europe has engendered an increased interest in changing modes of state-society relations. As regimes change, scholars have focused on how community organizations, social movements, and nongovernmental organizations have challenged authoritarian forms of political control. Clientelism is often categorized closer to the authoritarian side of the continuum of political possibilities, and has received increasing scholarly attention? Such political activity defined the politics of the urban poor in Latin America for decades. 2 Recent work in Latin America suggests that new kinds of political organizing have emerged, challenging clientelism as the predominant form of political interaction? In describing these new developments, researchers have asked a number of important questions. Why do opposition organizations that emerged in a clientelist environment resist such relationships? What elements of the political environment allow organizations to deny the traditions of clientelism and seek change? I address similar questions through a case study of one organization in Guadalajara, Mexico. I argue that the coalitions in which this community group participated helped it pursue political goods without following clientelist process. Coalition work aided the community organization to define its goals as national, collective, and embedded within a set of wide political rights. Additionally, coalition work allowed the community group to forge alliances with a variety of political actors. Because clientelism thrives when relatively isolated actors define their grievances as local, coalitions provide valuable ammunition for organizations trying to resist clientelism. But coalitions do not make their members invulnerable to clientelism. Coalitions, like other contentious actors, voice grievances that are Theory and Society 30: 593-628, 2001. 92001 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 594 ultimately answerable by, on one hand, distributing resources, or by widening citizenship rights, on the other hand. That is, coalitions seek to satisfy political needs just as do their members. If coalitions are unable to obtain the resources to satisfy these needs, they may be as attracted to clientelism as are individual organizations. An innovative clientelist state may diminish the extent to which coalitions provide a genuinely alternative organizing path. This, I argue, was the case with one coalition to which the community organization I studied belonged. This article is based on fieldwork conducted in 1994 and 1995, with a brief follow-up in 1997. During the course of that time, I interviewed over seventy community organizers, coalition members, government officials, and party militants. I observed over one-hundred protests, community events, and meetings. Additionally, I scoured the archives of several organizations. When I found that the community organization on which I was focusing was a member of several coalitions, I widened my focus to include those coalitions, observed their meetings and events, and interviewed their leaders. This article addresses the emergence of a united community organization from its genesis as individual colonia groups, and discusses why that united community organization chose to resist clientelism. Next, I discuss several kinds of coalitions in which the community organization, the UCI (Union de Colonos Independientes, or Union of Independent Settlers) participated. Then, I discuss one of the coalitions, RAMAS, in which the UCI participated. The discussion of RAMAS demonstrates that, although coalitioning is a strategy that helps physically and politically isolated community organizations resist clientelism, the new coalitions, are in turn, vulnerable to a flexible clientelist state response. Clientelism in Mexico During its seven decades of dominance, the PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, or Party of the Institutionalized Revolution) perfected the Mexican variant of clientelism, based on delivery of material resources, reciprocal political obligations, and ideological legitimacy.4 The government and the party exercised clientelist control in strategic attempts to channel demand-making into sanctioned venues, limit alternative organizing, and reinforce state power by incorporating dissident groups and leaders. Party .or government patrons exchange 595 various goods for political support from groups organized around neighborhood or sectoral lines. Exploding urbanization in Mexico meant huge growth on the peripheries of large cities, and urban services, such as sewer and water lines, electricity, and road paving became a common material medium of clientelist exchange. Areas on the periphery of large Mexican cities are often settled either by organized groups of squatters or by individual households buying land. 5 Once settled, communities use local leaders' ties to the PRI to obtain urban services. Although the PRI often uses such communities for its own political benefit, these relationships also offered limited protection, advancement, and political participation. The community exchanges its political support for an individual's or agency's efforts on the community's behalf. When functionaries and party activists seek votes, they make it clear that allocation of resources to resolve local needs is contingent on neighborhood political support. Systemic legitimacy is nurtured when local leaders elicit community support for the entire political system in return for using their influence with state or party functionaries. 6 Clientelism also offers an ideological tool to patrons. For some time, Mexican clientelism enjoyed a legitimacy based on citizens' "highly positive orientations towards institutions such as the Presidency and the official political party.., especially insofar as these institutions are associated with the stated goals and symbols of the Mexican Revolution. ''7 The one-party state relied on its control of education, media, and its own rhetoric to preserve its position as the heir of the Mexican Revolution and standard-bearer of revolutionary goals. Such legitimacy was confirmed, according to Cornelius' study, by a majority belief that federal and local governments could be trusted, that the institutions noted above "contributed to the welfare of the country" and that the government was the most likely source of concrete benefits for poor communities. Indeed, Cornelius found that the urban poor he studied believed the government and official party were committed to addressing their needs. The corporatist structure of the PRI allowed a flexibility that afforded dissidents entry into pre-existing organizations. Such flexibility means that the state may incorporate even groups that organize independently and that make a conscious attempt to avoid clientelism. For example, Mexico City disaster victims organized outside of the PRI and resisted efforts to incorporate within traditional PRI organiza- 596 tions, s Nevertheless, the state maneuvered these groups into an agreement that bound them to state negotiations, convincing them "to work with and not against the state.., and put an end to popular protests. ''9 The state's flexibility facilitated its ability to impose an organizational structure that superseded independent organizing and reincorporated the area's residents. By channeling dissidents into sanctioned venues, patrons help maintain investment in the status quo, as these venues reflect state and party interests more than those of the organizations' constituencies. In so doing, patrons prioritize system maintenance over the satisfaction of community needs. 10 Channeling local organizations into state-sanctioned venues isolates them from independent allies. This strategy limits the potential for uniting neighborhood groups, despite the similarity of grievances and constituencies. Clientelism weakens potential bonds of solidarity by fomenting competition among groups, thus precluding the forging of unity among organizational peers. The very scarcity of resources, along with manipulation by patrons, forces neighborhoods to compete against each other for the state's largesse. 11 Concentrating on local political benefits keeps groups from working with others to seek common remedies to shared problems. In effect, clientelism serves to "deny linkages and prevent effective representation. ''12 The entrenchment of patron-client politics suggested a fairly glum prospect for the political future of the Mexican poor. The long-standing view found the poor so limited by clientelist politics that they can make only isolated efforts to attain local goods, and these efforts end once the state addresses their limited demands. The exchange always benefits the party or state over the poor, as the state maintains legitimacy at little cost. Ward notes that the state's control of the relationship allows it to "slow down the overall rate at which the system meets demands made upon it." 13Thus, the state dominates clients by controlling locale and defining both commodities and timing of political exchange. At the same time, the state limits coalition building, mutes common expressions of solidarity, and retards the emergence of an ethos of citizenship rights. Recent research suggests that during the past two decades, the Mexican urban poor have made concerted efforts to combat the clientelist politics that defined their neighborhood organizing. According to various analysts, clientelism has been challenged by a series of changes that includes the emergence of new social movements, 14 increasing 597 accountability of leaders, ~5 new confrontational strategies, and autonomously designed projects 16 and reform polices opening opportunities to exploitation by popular sectors) 7 In addition, others point to national coalitions as important actors in this challenge. TM Curiously, they have left unclear the process by which community organizations worked in coalitions, and how such work challenged clientelism. 19 How do coalitions help community organizations challenge clientelism? What elements of coalition work address the material, political, and ideological elements of clientelism? Before addressing these questions, I explore the political economic context that made coalitioning likely. Austerity and the impetus for social change It is worth remembering that acting in coalitions to challenge clientelist political process is a strategic choice that organizations of the poor make, just as they choose to participate as clients. Portes reminds us that the poor assess the likely outcomes of their political behaviors, comparing them within a repertoire of limited possibilities. A crucial element of this assessment includes the recognition of their structural location, which limits the kinds of political behaviors the poor are likely to follow. "Ways of acting in the slum are structurally determined to the extent that individuals continuously look for the most efficient way of improving their positions within the limits and barriers created by the existing social and economic organization. ''2~ In Portes's view, clientelism does not represent false consciousness, but a political choice strategically made by the poor. Such political choices are structurally limited, which suggests that as structures change, so does the repertoire of political choices available to the urban poor. What changes occurred in Mexico that allowed organizations of the urban poor to work toward new political directions? I suggest that the debt crisis and subsequent neoliberal policymaking re-made the Mexican political economy in ways that facilitated different political organizing possibilities. In Mexico as elsewhere, neoliberals espoused the need to reduce state intervention in the economy to allow the market to determine its own course and marshaled a set of strategies to attain their end. 598 According to neoliberals, opening the domestic market to the entry of foreign capital and trade leads to competition that will eliminate market distortions imposed by earlier state interventions. Since 1982, the Mexican government has endorsed IMF prescriptions by devaluing the peso, reducing social welfare spending, eliminating consumer subsidies, privatizing state-owned enterprises, and creating wider openings for foreign investment while reducing local industry protection. These policies aggravated the material privation of the poor, while threatening the formerly comfortable Mexican middle class. Prior to the crisis, Mexican economic development allowed for a general increase in the standard of living among the urban working and middle classes. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, real minimum wages rose steadily, while prices of basic foods decreased. Survey data revealed that in the late 1970s "over 50% of the industries surveyed ... paid wages high enough to allow their workers and their families to survive on a single wage.''21 Debt and austerity reversed these gains, and brought over a decade of negative economic growth and reductions in social spending. The urban poor felt the pain of austerity policies in ways that ranged from un-and under-employment, to wage declines, to increases in food prices and subsequent declines in calorie consumption.22 Reductions in government spending also resulted in a general decline in health and public health services. 23 Other segments of the Mexican population similarly suffered when neoliberal policymakers slashed the state sector. The agricultural ministry cut 20,000 workers, the urban development and ecology ministry reduced staff by 20 percent, and nationalized banking industry personnel were cut by 40 percent. By July 1985, cuts eliminated 20 percent of the personnel in local and regional governments.24 Also during this period, the state's industrial sector was cut by 41 percent, eliminating or privatizing various enterprises. The state's patronal power as employer declined precipitously. In addition to cutting state jobs, neoliberals in Mexico ended a tradition of protecting local industries and opened the domestic consumer market to foreign industries. As a result of these policies, the Mexican middle class, traditionally a privileged sector, suffered significant harm and began to express their political opposition in new ways. 25 I argue that the structural impacts of debt and austerity offered new mobilization opportunities to the urban poor. First, austerity policies diminished the patronage pool available to satisfy urban needs, and 599 second, these policies harmed another sector of the population, the middle class, with whom the poor could work to challenge the government. Such changes in political economy increased the pool of political contenders and helped the poor reshape their political demands. 26 State legitimacy declined with the economic damage. 27 In contrast to the attitudes found by Cornelius in the early 1970s, national survey data found that fewer Mexicans generally supported the PRI, and that those with higher incomes supported it more than the poor. A majority of Mexicans wanted to see other parties gain power, yet believed that electoral fraud was an obstacle to that occurring. By the late 1980s, large numbers of voters believed their votes would not be respected. 28 The survey data, combined with decreasing votes for local PRI officials and the 1988 election debacle, suggest that the PRI's legitimacy as the heir of the Mexican revolution was exhausted. As a generation of framing analysts have shown us, material grievances do not in themselves explain political contention. 29 Ideational resources must exist alongside material grievances in order to articulate opposition. As the political economy of Mexico worsened for the poor and middle class and the state became increasingly delegitimated, a relatively new ideational current became available with which to articulate contention. The following section discusses the transition of the UCI from separate neighborhood groups to a united social movement organization within an environment defined by a political economy imposing shared grievances and an ideological current nurturing non-clientelist opposition. A group of Jesuit social change promoters aided the unification, bringing not only material benefits to the UCI, but also an ideology that helped the urban poor develop both a new language of opposition and new strategies to resist clientelist isolation. 3~ The UCI: From neighborhood groups to united opposition The UCI evolved from individual colonia groups to a community organization advocating full urban services, human rights, and democratization in an area named Cerro del 4. Most of Cerro del 4 is located in the municipio of Tlaquepaque, neighboring the city and municipio of Guadalajara. The PRI's affiliate, CROC (Confederacion Revolucionaria de Obreros y Campesinos - Revolutionary Confederation of Workers and Peasants) governed Tlaquepaque for forty years, until 1991, 600 and continued to dominate the municipio until 1995.31 The CROC became dominant on the hill by selling lots to settlers, by soliciting urban services, and by controlling the legal neighborhood representation structures. CROC militants sold lots to settlers on Cerro del 4 from 1974 on, often misrepresenting the legality of the sale by selling without permission from the owners of the land, who were either private landowners or members of the indigenous community Santa Maria Tequepexpan. 32 Although comuneros directly sold settlers some individual lots, CROC militants coaxed cornuneros into selling the croquistas most of the community's land. 33 CROC workers then misrepresented themselves as the original comuneros in order to sell the land and to strengthen their positions when disputes over land tenure erupted. CROC members sold documents during and after the land sales, falsely assuring buyers that they possessed clear land titles. 34 The land sales created huge land tenure problems for the new residents, who had bought the lots in good faith. Once the land sales had established a constituency, PRI members continued efforts to establish clientelist controls by linking promises of urban services to party support. Settlers arrived in the early 1970s to find no urban services on Cerro del 4. One of the earliest settlers of the hill remembered: There was no water - we alwayshad to go down to the canal. There really were no services - no water, electricity,nothing. At that time, we had to get everything from below.... Everything, casks of water, had to be carried up from below. If land sales and promises of services were not sufficient to impose control, the P R I / C R O C also dominated formal neighborhood power structures. Formal political power on Cerro del 4, as in much of urban Mexico, is housed in neighborhood associations. Local PRI leaders' connections to higher party and government functionaries facilitated the dispensing of both patronage and promises through CROC block committee presidents. As more people moved to Cerro del 4 and proceeded to build their homes, PRI leaders solicited residents to participate in neighborhood organizations and to contribute money to pay for urban services. Two comments describe typical experiences on the hill: 601 Before,whentheyweretellingus that the serviceswouldcome,we paid some fees to the PR1 committee,so that there wouldbe roads, so theycould bring water tanks.We had meetingshere on the corner.... But it was onlytalk .... SefiorX ordered his peopleto comearoundeveryweekto collectmoney,and theybeganto havemeetingsand promisethe water,and the electricity,and the this and the other. And this happenedyearafter yearand nothinghappened. The priistas were trying to build clientelist control during a period when urban needs expanded concurrently with the diminishing availability of patronage. The 1970s and 1980s were a period of exploding urbanization but decreasing urban service delivery.35 If the pressures of urban growth were not sufficient, Mexico and the rest of Latin America were limited from meeting domestic needs by debt pressures, as I discuss above. On Cerro del 4, little resource availability translated into long waits for urban service delivery. Yet PRI leaders continued to make promises and collect money. When the municipio installed urban services, delivery was linked to electoral campaigns. In 1987, during the governor's race, city workers built a water line while neighborhood leaders campaigned for the PRI. Elsewhere on Cerro del 4, a PRI leader demonstrated patronal prerogatives when the city sent water trucks to her for dispatching through the rest of the colonia. The leader made delivery contingent on support for the PRI-controlled neighborhood association and PRI candidates. When the state Family Services Agency offered food to the colonia, a PRI leader gained control of this resource also. 36 Thus when PRI leaders called meetings and asked for "voluntary donations" for urban services, the requests carried some bite. The control of such resources sent clear messages about the kinds of political behaviors that were expected in exchange for access to such goods. Fox demonstrates a moment of transition from clientelism to citizenship in a mixed process of political control he terms semi-clientelism. Power in semi-clientelism is rooted in "inducing compliance more by the threat of the withdrawal of carrots than by the use of sticks.''37 With austerity politics or other pressures that diminish a patronage pool, the question emerges: what happens when most of the carrots have been removed? The PRI's opportunities for clientelist behavior on Cerro del 4 were reduced to limited negative sanctions. Patrons could retain delivery of minimal aid from dissident groups, but the delivery of large urban service projects became so delayed, due to austerity-imposed budget pressures, that they failed to provide positive rewards. The carrots were quite diminished, and the stick was not very sturdy. With 602 PRI leaders' failure to make good on their promises and ongoing privation, the area became ripe for alternative forms of organizing. From liberation theology to the CEBs As the manipulations of the local PRI became increasingly apparent, both the ideological veneer of revolutionary rhetoric and the failure of local patrons to satisfy popular needs weakened the ideational and material foundations of clientelism on Cerro del 4. What remained to be put in place for an alternative organizing effort to emerge was a frame that countered clientelism and an organizational impetus to unite colonia groups into a larger organization. Liberation theology supplied the former and a Jesuit social promotion group supplied the latter. The sharpening of material needs, in the presence of open clientelist machinations, helped to uncover the empty revolutionary rhetoric of the ruling party. But the residents on Cerro del 4 seeking to work outside PRI organizations needed a mobilizing frame to help them articulate their rights and launch new demands. Liberation theology supplied this frame for the UCI, as it has for social change efforts throughout Latin America since the 1960s. For the urban poor, the force of the theology comes not only from its religious appeal, but also from its advocacy of direct political action. Liberation theology identifies the struggles of the poor as a locale for active intervention by the Church. Gustavo Gutierrez, one of the doctrine's best-known proponents, views theology and action as inseparable elements of the struggle for social justice. For Gutierrez, liberation is made up of three integrated elements: liberation from oppressive social, economic, and political conditions; true human autonomy; and emancipation from sin and acceptance of new life in Christ. 38 Liberation theologians offered a vision of social justice, and defined the Latin American poor as worthy of a higher standard of living by virtue of their existence as Christ's children. Indeed, the "preferential option of the poor" made it clear that aiding the struggles of the poor against oppressive social, economic, and political structures was among the most important works the Church should pursue. Commitment to this ideology led to the creation of CEBs, or Christian base communities, as organized expressions of the new theology.39 603 Although the political character of CEBs range widely, for the most part, Mexican CEBs have worked toward explicitly political goals. In 1977, at a Regional Meeting o f the CEBs o f the East, they expressed their goals: To unite in political actions, to mutually aid the construction of the kingdom of God on earth, by bringing greater consciousness-raising to the people (about) the defense of their rights, to realize the obligations and the search for solutions to common problems in an organized manner,a~ Liberation theology offered an important ideological resource defining a new vision o f social justice. As important, liberation practitioners supplied personnel to coax the p o o r away from resignation, deference, and isolation. These personnel relied on critical reading o f the Bible to assure the p o o r o f the value o f their opinions and struggles. " I f all can read and c o m m e n t on the Bible, the value o f popular insights is enhanced and traditional distinctions o f rank in religious life are undercut."41 Once a political project is explicitly joined to the religious project, the p o o r can apply their critique more generally to the stratification of power by political and class distinctions. Here, too, the "traditional distinctions" become undercut. Such was the impact o f liberation theology on Cerro del 4, where religious workers committed to social change founded small groups for Bible discussion and political action. Small bible study groups organized by Jesuit students and faculty from Guadalajara's Jesuit training school began to meet together during the mid-1980s. These groups followed the paths of CEBs elsewhere, first studying the Bible, then trying to put its teachings into practice through social struggle. The CEBs helped heighten the consciousness o f those who were later to work with the UCI. Agustin Martinez, a leader o f the UCI, said: I worked in some of the CEBs, reflecting on the situation. We read, and we began to act. And I began to be motivated, to feel the necessityto do something. Basically it was through the CEBs that I began to do the work of the organization. Tito, another U C I organizer, reflected on the importance o f the CEBs in his experience both with the UCI and growing up nearby. It was the first school to make me more knowledgeable of reality, of the colonia, the barrio, of the country, little by little. It was the way I started reading the Bible, and the way I learned of the necessity, the demand to change the situation, and the way to become more committed to participate 604 in organizations. Not just about religious questions, but to be able to look for spaces to increase faith, about the Christian exigency to commit oneself a little more, or a lot more, to change reality. Influenced by a theology that stressed action on behalf of their rights, future UCI members began to work with Jesuit students to address local problems. These groups circumvented PRI neighborhood associations and directly petitioned government officials for urban services. Working individually, the neighborhood groups enjoyed some success, obtaining greater water delivery and a community washing area. Land security continued to be a nagging concern on Cerro del 4. Both the PRI landsellers and the government threatened residents with dislodging at various times. Several attempts to dislodge residents added experiential weight to the threats, but left residents more committed to staying and gaining legal status for the area. Ana Mondrag6n, another UCI leader, remembers the collective response to the threat. When I feel the UCI was born, was before we were called the UCI ... when some houses were being destroyed in the colonia. The 23rd of May, in 1986, 4:00 in the afternoon. And I think this is where the UCI was born, and immediately 2.000 people came around, easy, in that moment. Like the 1986 experience Ana related, residents had resisted a 1984 attempt to push them out of a section of another colonia. A two-day conflict followed, ending only after the state governor called off the state police and the heavy machinery poised to knock down people's houses. The activity of organizers before and during the formal creation of the UCI capitalized on the unity shown by the residents, who became convinced they had to make their needs known in new ways. Individual group gains appeared to reach a limit by 1989. Although neighborhood unity had increased, the colonia groups won few urban services. The Jesuits involved in organizing the community felt it was time to build a larger organization. Padre Garcia Orso, CEB lead coordinator, remembers: We saw that it was necessary that the community groups would organize better. Organize better, and unite the distinct groups. It seemed important to us to ask SEDOC, why don't they advise this larger union, and in this way the UCI was formed. A proposal from us t o . . . SEDOC. And SEDOC thought about it, and decided, and advised us, and this is the way the UCI began. 605 From separate colonia groups, with the aid of Jesuit promoters espousing an ideology that challenged the legitimacy of clientelist exchange, the UCI emerged as a representative of the urban poor on Cerro del 4. SEDOC and the widening of local politics SEDOC (Educational Services of the West - Servicios Educativos de Occidente) formed in 1977 as an organization funded and directed by the Mexican Provincial Company of Jesus. The organizers defined their goals in terms that alternated between nebulous expressions of human progress and specific terms of political opposition: ...contribute criticallyand activelywith the popular process in the transformationof persons and social structures that create obstacles to the integral development of man and society as a whole.42 To consolidate and strengthenthe independentpopularmovement,throughits organizations.... To support the consolidationof the independentpopular movement, from each and everyone of its projects, and create closer relationsbetweenthem and the support centers,in order to forma commonfront.., to linkourselves withwidesocialmovements,withwhoseplanningand goalswe are aligned.43 The Jesuit organization built on the conceptions of the poor's rights advocated in liberation theology to articulate the place of these struggles within a wider opposition to Mexican authoritarianism. Although SEDOC workers helped the UCI gain urban infrastructure, its efforts were always embedded in a project of wider change, within which coalitioning was a consistent strategy. SEDOC workers pursued the aims of creating a wide opposition by following Freire's vision of popular education and consciousness raising. Freire stressed that participation by the poor in consciousness raising efforts would give them the tools to become a force to democratize society. 44 SEDOC committed to this vision by accompanying its organizing with strategies to educate the poor, and so further their participation in social struggle. The Jesuit-run organization employed teams of Jesuit fathers, students, and laypersons to work in local projects in order to "... try to develop a critical consciousness and transform unjust structures.''45 In 1989, SEDOC offered the UCI extensive resources to unify the separate groups, including significant funds, paid organizers and an office. The Jesuits also brought a wealth of organizing knowledge gained during a long history of popular education and community organizing. Finally, SEDOC brought the moral force intrinsic to religious affilia- 606 tion, legitimizing their community organizing and offering a distinct contrast to clientelist authorities on Cerro del 4. The UCI recruited members by focusing on local material needs. They varied their strategies, at times petitioning public works agencies for their needs, mobilizing mass protests at other times, and installing various services themselves at still other times. At one point, UCI succeeded in obtaining material benefits by exploiting divisions within a semi-clientelist government initiative. Fox discusses Solidarity as a program that respected the autonomy of some community organizations. This respect meant that the positive sanctions of clientelism, the access to resources, were present in the absence of negative sanctions of coercion.46 Yet the Solidarity program, despite its federal inception and intention to rebuild support for the PRI generally and the Salinas presidency specifically, was at times captive to the exercise of local power. On Cerro del 4, CROC representatives seized control over local Solidarity committees as a resource base aimed at perpetuating their efforts to maintain clientelist control. The UCI, with the aid of federal Solidarity officials, challenged the CROC in a way that undercut its legitimacy and support, while adding to that of the UCI's. When the Solidarity program came to Cerro del 4 in September 1990, the CROC-Ied municipality of Tlaquepaque announced that they would begin the first phase of an electrification project for the entire hill. UCI members reacted skeptically to the announcement because such promises had been made before, the timing coincided with local election campaigns, and it was made by the municipal Solidarity coordinator, a leader in the Tlaquepaque PRI. During a general meeting, the coordinator quoted a certain household cost. The federal government, through Solidarity, committed to paying a quarter of the costs, the state government would pay another quarter, and the residents themselves would pay half. Ana Mondrag6n described the meeting announcing the project: We obtained data about how much the work would cost, and we found out that they were charging double. An official from Solidarity in Tlaquepaque came, and gave a cost of the whole work .... Of this they were going to collect a quarter from the colonia, (and they announced the amount to the residents). And the people applauded ... and at this moment, I remember, Juan Diego (one of the paid UCI staff) who had accompanied me, turned to me and said "How? We are going to pay double?" And the struggle to demonstrate that they were charging too much lasted 15 months. 607 In October, the UCI denounced the overcharges, which they calculated by working with a federal land regularization agency to conduct a census. Unknown to Tlaquepaque municipal officials, SEDOC and UCI knew the federal Solidarity delegate and the director of the national Solidarity program. The federal Solidarity delegate (a federal functionary who worked at the state level) gave UCI members untainted figures on the costs of the public works. Despite the UCI's research, the CROC-Ied Solidarity apparatus, PRI neighborhood leaders, and the municipal treasury continued to collect the higher assessment from residents. When UCI suggested that residents postpone payments until officials reduced the costs to their proper levels, local PRI officials charged the UCI with delaying installation of the service. Local Solidarity committees, run by neighborhood PRI leaders, controlled the work, increasing UCI's worries of fraud. UCI leaders described their efforts as being like balls on a billiard table, going from municipal offices to the state department of public works, to the Solidarity offices, to the Federal Institute of Electricity and back again for a period lasting 15 months. Officials from the municipality and the Solidarity committees continued to quote high costs to the residents. In November 1991, after repeated attempts to meet jointly with all the agencies involved with the electrification program, the UCI finally sat down with representatives from federal Solidarity, from local Solidarity committees, and from the municipality. They came to an agreement on the census count and the household assessed cost. By December, the costs were fixed at a level closer to the UCI's figures and the work was on its way. Tlaquepaque authorities admitted they had overcharged residents and began returning some of the payments to those who had already paid. This example not only demonstrates UCI activity, but shows that flexible clientelism can operate in contradictory ways. As Fox shows, Solidarity in some locales created a transitional system that was flexible enough that community organization autonomy was respected, while the PRI government wooed these organizations. On Cerro del 4, local patrons captured federal resources in the effort to maintain a more traditional clientelism. Local officials were unwilling to dismantle their control for the longer-term survival of the PRI and its effort to re-build its constituency. With federal government aid, the UCI proved the manipulation of local officials. UCI members learned that one entity could be played off the other, but it was the patronal power 608 closest to them that could be counted on to try to exploit residents of Cerro del 4. This lesson helped mold UCI's responses to future encounters with Solidarity. The UCI circumvented traditional clientelist process by working outside the limits of the PRI-controlled neighborhood associations, and by articulating their urban service needs within a language of rights. But the UCI worked to attain other goods as well. With the influence of SEDOC, the UCI defined itself as part of a wider civil society opposition to the PRI-state. SEDOC's contacts with other opposition groups offered coalitioning as a strategy to further UCI's agenda and resist clientelism. The UCI began to participate in alliances both to address traditional urban service needs, and to present wider political demands. Carr and Montoya, among others, noted the increased activity of coalitions responding to decreasing quality of life following debt-driven austerity policies during the 1980s.47 The pain imposed by austerity harmed formerly privileged members of the middle class and the poor alike, as costs increased, wages stagnated, and employment dropped. In short, the debt crisis and subsequent policies imposed grievances that increased the likelihood of cross-class mobilization. I divide UCI's coalition work into three categories. Coalition work provided alternatives to clientelism by creating other venues to pursue material gains, generate political support, and participate in a new construction of citizenship. First, the UCI worked with other organizations representing Guadalajara's urban poor to press jointly their demands for material infrastructure. Second, the UCI offered and received political support by working in campaigns responding to local and national crises. Finally, the group worked in several coalitions expressing wide political demands, providing a new vision of statesociety relations. This final form of coalition is exemplified by RAMAS, which faced its own struggle with flexible clientelism. Organizing with the poor The UCI participated in coalitions with other organizations of the urban poor demanding the satisfaction of shared urban needs.48 During 1990 and 1991 the coalition organized two Campaigns of Struggle for Services, Housing and Democracy, bringing together member or- 609 ganizations for joint press conferences publicizing community needs, and discussing their situation on Guadalajara radio talk shows. In addition, the coalition held multiple marches and sit-ins at government offices, met with government officials, and organized an urban festival. 49 UCI members continued to hold joint negotiations for urban services throughout the coalition's existence. The coalition enjoyed great participation by UCI members, giving voice to the material needs commonly suffered by the urban poor. The coalition challenged the clientelist tradition by articulating collective rather than individual needs, and refusing to trade the satisfaction of such needs for political support. Additionally, the coalition demanded the concurrent satisfaction of various communities' needs. These strategies strengthened alternative organizing by building unity. A UCI organizer described the coalition's negotiations with the government as a firm repudiation of clientelist exchange. From the beginning of the work with each one of the functionaries we have had relations with, from the beginning we have dealt with them as an independent organization, and whatever the functionary gives us is because they have to attend us, they have to listen to our requests, and we don't have to give anything in exchange, except to behave courteously. Coalition work helped the UCI recognize the similarity of the situations of their counterparts in other organizations. By working with other organizations, Cerro del 4 residents confirmed they were not an isolated and marginal group of people whose only recourse lay in clientelist relations. The coalition of the poor consistently expressed these beliefs. ... we have all the right to demand the authorities to fulfill their obligations and recognize the character of our social organization as independent of the state Party and (its) system .... The Frente Popular Independiente will not permit the PRI to continue manipulating our basic needs to continue gaining supporters. We reject this form of doing politics .... We struggle against the distribution of public resources with political ends. 5~ Although the coalition of the poor consistently focused on urban infrastructure, it also expressed wider demands, articulating its goals of establishing a "...just society in which all can share the national wealth that is generated by the immense work of all Mexicans.''5~ Organizers voiced their interest in advancing the urban popular movement in the Guadalajara metropolitan zone. 610 In the Popular Front, we are bringing together settlers from distinct social organizations, colonias, and diverse addresses of the city and state, whose identity is that we live under the same problem, and that this movesus to the same work of gaining better conditions ofjustice and equalityfor all.52 Their discussion made it clear that the coalition was convinced that obtaining public services could not be its single goal. Furthermore, the Front identified themselves as against the PRI and their policies of "... manipulating our basic necessities to continue winning followers for their party." 53 The unity created by working together with other organizations reinforced UCI's efforts to satisfy its urban service needs. Doing such work reinforced a shared opposition to clientelism. This solidarity helped the organized poor avoid the competition and isolation fostered by the PRI state in its efforts to limit alternative organizing. With the aid of the coalition, and through their independent efforts, the UCI won legalization of much of the zone, some water and sewer service, electricity, street paving, and increased access to bus routes and schools. Material successes pleased UCI members and further convinced them that non-clientelist political action was a viable course of action. Working in coalitions helped the UCI build relationships that continued to challenge the political and ideological components of clientelism. As dramatic political events unfolded in Mexico, UCI members would have plenty of opportunities to work with other organizations to oppose state negligence and bad policy. Organizing in the heat of the moment: The UCI responds to crises The UCI participated in several temporary coalitions that responded to local and national crises. These efforts demonstrated UCI's involvement in regionally and nationally defined politics, and the political support the organization gave to other opposition efforts. Like the coalitions of the poor, coalitioning on extra-local issues demonstrate UCI's clear efforts to resist isolation and marginalization. The first of these examples emerged in response to Guadalajara's street explosions. The damnificados support group. On April 22, 1992, a series of explosions rocked Guadalajara. For months, gasoline had leaked into the city's sewer system from a nearby refinery. Although the government 611 estimated 210 died as a result of the explosion, various independent sources calculated the dead and disappeared disaster victims actually numbered between 800 and 1,000, with 600 injuries, 3,020 damaged buildings, and over 3,500 affected families. 54 Federal control of the petroleum industry and local officials' failure to respond to residents' complaints of the smell of gasoline fed widespread attributions of government culpability. Dissident disaster victims, or damnificados, found aid in a support coalition that formed within days of the disaster. The support coalition was formed by organizations with mostly middle-class constituencies, and offered various kinds of aid during the immediate aftermath of the disaster and for some months following. 55 UCI joined the support coalition out of sympathy for the disaster victims, and because members recognized the disaster resulted from a combination of government negligence and poor decision-making, which struck them as parallel to their own position on the urban periphery. Although UC1 lacked the material goods and professional personnel that many other support organizations were able to donate, it shared its organizing experiences with the disaster victims. UCI leaders described their contacts with government functionaries and gave advice to the damnificados, who listened gratefully to the UCI's expert advice. During marches and rallies that continued throughout the summer, UCI members added their voices to calls for justice and reparations. By the following autumn, the support coalition fell apart. As the drama disappeared from the headlines, the issue receded from the daily concern of Guadalajara's citizenry. On Cerro del 4, too, the participation of UCI members dwindled with time. Another opportunity for allied action quickly followed. Una Sola Voz. The UCI participated in another coalition sparked by a dramatic tragedy in Guadalajara. On May 24, 1993, Cardinal Juan Jesfis Posadas Ocampo and several others were murdered at the Guadalajara airport. In response to this event, several organizations formed Una Sola Voz ("a single voice"). This coalition expanded its initial critique of the official version of the cardinal's death to include a general condemnation of increasing violence in Jalisco, and the impunity with which officials acted. Una Sola Voz organized marches, pressured the media for better coverage, and worked with state legislators urging the creation of a special prosecutor's office to contest violations of law by government officials. The coalition also pushed 612 legislators to remove a heavily-criticized federal police force from the executive branch of government. Both legislative efforts failed. Opposition to escalating violence and governmental arrogance united the disparate groups in Una Sola Voz. The 1994 assassination of the PRI presidential candidate, Luis Donaldo Colosio, provided another event to which the coalition responded. But Una SolaVoz tried to unite groups divided by deep political differences. Without officially disbanding, the organization stopped being a public forum of criticism and action. Nevertheless, the alliance offered another opportunity for groups and organizers to work together. Asemblea Civil Jaliscencia pot Chiapas (Jalisco Civil Assembly for Chiapas). Immediately after the January 1994, rebellion in Chiapas, nongovernmental organizations across Mexico responded to the Zapatistas' call for support. The EZLN (Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional, or Zapatista Army for National Liberation) recognized that, unimpeded, the Mexican Army could easily annihilate them as it had destroyed predecessors. The EZLN believed that the Mexican nongovernmental community could serve as a crucial mediator between the rebels and the government, and reduce the likelihood of massive repression. After the cease-fire, many Mexican NGOs sent members to Chiapas to safeguard the Zapatistas by participating in the "belt of peace" that surrounded peace talks. Almost 450 Mexican NGOs aided in this and other efforts to support the Zapatistas, pressuring the government to resolve the problems that led to the rebellion. 56 The chord struck in Chiapas resonated with many opposition organizations in Jalisco, including the UCI. The UCI joined other organizations to form the Jalisco Civil Assembly for Chiapas, which helped protect the Zapatistas, spread their message, and participate in Zapatista-called national forums. UCI members marched in support of the Zapatistas, and responded to requests to denounce human rights violations. One leader commented on why the rebellion had such national impact: It was like the alarm clock for the country, like the drop that makes the glass of water overflow. It is a hope we have, that the Zapatistas will be the beginning of something. Not violent, but a big change. Another leader expressed his sympathy and support concisely: "Because we are all at risk, not just Chiapas. Chiapas is the whole coun- 613 try." UCI leaders' interest in the uprising signaled their support for wide political change, and their desire that UCI play a part in it. Except for one support rally, however, there were few roles for UCI members to play. Coalition organizers failed to create space for mass participation. Instead, they believed it was sufficient to keep pressure on the government by writing public letters and organizing forums, neither of which required mass participation. When the coalition organizers later wanted to organize large rallies, they were unable to attract more than the activists with whom they had worked. These coalitions reinforced UCI's organizational profile and security. The coalitions took very public stands on the crises to which they responded. UCI participated in press conferences, interviews, demonstrations, and other efforts to bring the coalitions' views to the public. In this way, the UCI itself received publicity that heightened its organizational profile. The media discussed not only UCI's local struggle, but its membership as co-equals in various groups. UCI's membership in these coalitions helped build relationships with other organizations whose constituencies held greater economic and political power. Allying with such organizations offered the UCI a set of groups on whom they could call for support for their local agenda and as a barrier against repression. The UCI also participated in other national and regional coalitions aimed at democratization and protection of human rights. For example, UCI members trained and acted as poll observers during the 1994 clean election campaign organized by the Alianza Civica. Additionally, UCI members participated in campaigns with different national human rights networks. Their most important extra-local alliance was with RAMAS, a coalition of human rights groups that sought to foment democracy by uniting Jalisco NGOs. RAMAS' work demonstrates intense efforts to generate social change. Because its members came from many sectors with greater power than the urban poor, RAMAS also supplied a powerful ally with which to forestall clientelism. The experience of RAMAS, however, also demonstrates the ongoing vulnerability of opposition organizations to flexible clientelism. Organizing for a new society RAMAS (Red de Apoyo Mutuo para la Accion Social - Network of Mutual Support of Social Action) supplied similar political goods to 614 the UCI as the coalitions discussed in the preceding section. In addition, RAMAS offered the UCI elements of an ideological challenge to clientelism with its focus on building new citizenship rights. RAMAS grew out of discussions among Guadalajara's nongovernmental organizations about their increasing financial difficulties and the growing importance of NGOs on Mexico's political and social landscape. The impetus to create a formal working group came with a 1989 tax law requiring non-profit organizations to pay taxes. Fiscal concerns remained important to RAMAS, but the organization also provided a space for reflection, policy suggestion, and an additional structure for demand-making. 57 RAMAS members saw their organization and other NGO networks as a new force in Mexican politics, responding to the state's decreasing concern for popular welfare and its inability to ameliorate the ravages of debt and austerity. The problems of the accumulation of wealth in few hands, and poverty, antidemocracy, the destruction of ecosystems ... have intensified in the last decades because of the application of inadequate models of development .... The civil organizations consider ourselves part of a new force, or social initiative, and we have joined in the work of the reconstruction of the country. 58 Determined to expand the roles and power of nongovernmental organizations in Mexico, RAMAS members worked to change Mexican politics and foster a new participatory political ideology. For example, RAMAS worked on a project to introduce legislation to fund NGOs directly to accomplish some of the work done by government agencies. Working with other national NGO networks, RAMAS pushed to "... establish a legal setting in the country that would recognize the new reality of the participation of civil society in Mexico."59 The proposed law called for greater citizen participation in social welfare spending decisions. 6~ The NGO community, through this law, would win direct control over social spending. "The law provides that the civil organizations will be organs of permanent consultation in the formulation and execution of the policies, criteria, programs, proposals and activities of the federal public administration related to actions of welfare and social development.''61 The law, in its attempt to restructure the government's budget and mandate, radically challenged the Mexican state. The effort to create financial support for grassroots organizations at the expense of gov- 615 ernmental ministries would have gutted the clientelist tradition. No longer would resources controlled by the state be available during electoral battles. Without such resources, the state would be unable to exchange local aid for votes, violating the exchange intrinsic to clientelism. During 1994, RAMAS made this proposed legislation the subject of several workshops, conferences, and advisory committees. After consultation with a large group of NGOs, RAMAS agreed to spearhead the effort in Jalisco. Other NGOs pushed it in M e x i c o City. 62 RAMAS members and their NGO allies first embarked on a publicity campaign in the local media, then proposed that state deputies sympathetic to their work sponsor the law for legislative debate and action. 63 PRI control of the government precluded the possibility of the initiative becoming law. Nonetheless, RAMAS' organizing work confirmed its readiness to enter into projects that directly challenged Mexico's political system, and create and advocate policy to build new statesociety relations. RAMAS' efforts represented an effort not only to build new structures of representation, but to nurture an ideology of political participation. Yet RAMAS' economic standing meant it was vulnerable to ingenious responses by the state using innovative clientelist strategies to maintain its power. Nongovernmental organizers in Guadalajara consistently commented on the contrast between then-President Salinas's efforts to create an image of Mexico as a nation making great economic progress, and the poverty-stricken status of most of the Mexican population. 64 According to organizers, this false public image not only contradicted Mexico's reality, it created great problems for NGOs in their search for funds. One longtime organizer commented that international agencies and foundations had financed much of the earlier Mexican NGO work. With Salinas's public relations campaign, money dried up. Before ... it was relatively easy to find resources for a project. N o w we have entered the First World. N o w we aren't poor. T h e g o v e r n m e n t sold a vision o f a m o d e r n country, one which is m o v i n g into the First World, a n d the view o f the E u r o p e a n foundations is that we are doing well. Another organizer concurred, saying "In the eyes of the international community, Mexico has passed out of the problems of development, and is now entering into the community of countries of the first world." 616 The changed international donor attitude, compounded by the troubled Mexican economy, reduced the funds upon which NGOs relied. RAMAS thus faced the organizational dilemma of continuing to work toward its goals of democratization while balancing its needs of organizational maintenance. RAMAS was forced to search for new sources of funding, return to previous donors, and explore untapped foundations advocating international social change. The creation of a government program aimed at funding nongovernmental organizations complicated RAMAS' search. Despite their reluctance to work with the government, the NGOs' financial straits made government resources more attractive. The government's social development ministry, SEDESOL (Secretaria de Desarollo Social - Secretariat for Social Development), initiated the Fund for Social Co-Investment in June 1993, making funding available for some NGO projects. 65 SEDESOL followed this effort by convening a series of meetings with 190 different NGOs. In 1994, 273 organizations participated in a SEDESOL/NGO conference in Guadalajara touted as offering "... a space of debate and analysis to make concrete specific proposals for the future" (SEDESOL, 1994). SEDESOL held a series of meetings to form work groups united by similar organizational mandates (SEDESOL, 1994). Building on this effort, SEDESOL founded a council to head the working groups (the Consejo Tecnico Estatal de ONGs, or State Technical Council of NGOs). SEDESOL officials led the council, which was additionally staffed by two representatives of each of the ten work groups. This council was given the mandate of making allocation decisions for a new and larger Fund for Social Co-Investment. Through the council, SEDESOL established criteria to define how proposals would be evaluated, organized workshops on proposal writing, and made funding decisions. RAMAS members believed that the state council's intention of securing financing was a theft of one of RAMAS' central goals, and as such an effort to supplant the organization. The immediate question was what kind of relationship should exist between the two entities. RAMAS members decided that there would be no organizational relation between RAMAS and SEDESOL, but individual member groups were free to make their own decisions regarding participation in the State Council. 617 The decision to allow their colleagues to participate in the state council did not resolve RAMAS members' discomfort with the government's actions. When RAMAS members met to discuss this action by the State Council, many of their comments revealed their antipathy. "The intention of the government has been to integrate and coopt, with programs like PRONASOL," said one NGO organizer, while another concurred: "That is why organizations of Solidarity and SEDESOL are used, to give money, to quiet you, to get you in their line." They were careful not to speak too forcefully, as certain RAMAS members continued to work in the state council. Several RAMAS members applied for and won project financing. In addition, three RAMAS members acted as representatives on the council. One RAMAS organizer found the relationship between SEDESOL and the NGOs "unhealthy": Because now SEDESOL continues deciding ... who has the money. They decide the people who participate, they selected who will be part of this committee, through all the maneuvers they're used to, no? So it appears to me that it is not democratic, the formation of these kinds of relations. It is not a relation where I believe civil society is adequately represented. One member saw her participation in both RAMAS and the state council as a balancing act. RAMAS' goal of building Mexican democracy proved attractive to her. In contrast, the state council's appeal derived exclusively from the availability of project money. The organizer recognized that working with the government might limit her organization's opposition activity, especially because she judged the government's selection of representatives to be quite manipulative. She designed a strategy to work together with other NGOs to form a power bloc within the government entity, but this strategy failed as avowed allies became less willing to confront government manipulation after winning funding. Despite RAMAS members' belief that the state council was a clientelist maneuver, financial constraints forced some of them into uneasy relations with the government. Ironically, of eleven organizational members in RAMAS, the two most adamantly opposed to any link to the state council were organizations representing the urban poor. UCI's opposition reflected its troubled relations with Solidarity under the CROC's control. Relying on these and other experiences with SEDESOL, the UCI charged Tito to speak against RAMAS forming a relationship with SEDESOL. 618 We took a position earlier (opposingparticipation) because of SEDESOL's work in Cerro del 4 and the relations we have had with them. They lied to us and tried to divide us. We denied the invitation to participate in the human rights council.... SEDESOLwants things that we can't give if we are going to remain independent. The UCI's experience with clientelism resulted in a decision to stay away from the government. Other RAMAS members, from largely middle-class backgrounds, had less direct experiences with state clientelist efforts. They believed they could work with the government while avoiding cooptation. This analysis proved wrong when the State Council's actions led to splits in RAMAS. Some of the organizations that took SEDESOL funds became increasingly silent. RAMAS' fundraising efforts remained unsuccessful, and member groups continued to search for ways to avoid further entanglement with the government while advocating democratic change. Coalitions, false dichotomies, and material needs In this case study, I've discussed how an organization of the urban poor, emerging in a political environment largely defined by clientelism, formed as an anti-clientelist group. My explanation focuses first on the manipulation of community residents by local patrons. This manipulation coincided with a delegitimation of the political system, driven by a declining economy. The declining economy shrank the available patronage pool concurrent with sharpened material needs. This delegitimation amid sharpened grievances made new allies available to the urban poor, who brought with them organizing knowledge and a contentious mobilizing frame in the shape of liberation theology. Because the UCI's earliest allies, SEDOC, held political interests well beyond the UCI's locale, coalition work became an important part of UCI's organizing repertoire. Coalitioning, I argue, helps community organizations resist the temptations of clientelism in several ways. The very act of working together with other organizations teaches community groups that they are not isolated, despite patrons' attempt to convince them otherwise. Coalition work reinforced the lessons of liberation theology, which defined political and human rights as intrinsic, rather than a commodity of clientelist exchange. 619 Forming a united front makes it more difficult for the state to pick off leaders or groups and coopt them. In addition, coalitions make it more difficult for clientelist states to use repressive apparati - the sticks of clientelism - because there remain others willing to articulate the shared grievance while defending those who have been targeted for repression. The increased visibility of the UCI, when they worked on issues beyond the local scope of Cerro del 4, similarly provided a barrier against repression. Coalition work also widens the scope of political goals, again making it harder for the state to quiet opposition by addressing needs in a piecemeal fashion. It was harder for the PRI to accede to a culture of respect for human rights, for example, than to pave a several-block long section of a poor neighborhood. As the expression of grievances widened within coalitions, the ability to address them within the framework of clientelist politics shrank. Too, the demands of the coalitions in which the UCI participated provided more of a threat to the status quo than local demands of urban infrastructure. Although material demands were increasingly difficult to address within a political economy of austerity, the provision of urban services would not threaten the logic of the PRI regime. Full respect for the vote, human rights, greater state attention to increasingly marginalized peasants, and ceasing of official impunity were all coalition demands that provided a more comprehensive challenge to the PRI than did the call for better urban services. I should note here that the demands of all coalitions are not intrinsically more difficult to address. In this case the demands were, and in cases where coalitions express political demands wider than those of member organizations, they will pose a greater challenge. Coalitioning provides a logic that helps contradict the isolationism and marginalization that characterize many clients. But the discussion above brings out several other issues as well. The first of these is the flexibility of clientelism. Second, I reiterate recent arguments suggesting that assigning clientelism an unchanging position on a continuum of "good" to "bad" politics loses sight of structural influences on political contention. Finally, some of clientelism's long-standing appeal suggests a hierarchy of political needs. 66 Gay reminds us that clientelism is an extremely flexible mode of political control, varying by time, locale, and political environment. 67 Fox 620 concurs, writing, "... political entrepreneurs can replace rigid, antiquated controls with new, more sophisticated clientelistic arrangements without necessarily moving toward democratic pluralism. ''68 Although Gay echoes Fox's view of greater nuances in the continuum ofclientelism to citizenship, he argues that recognizing the flexibility of clientelism means we have to "be open to the possibility that it plays a role in the democratic process that transcends notions of conformity and resistance.''69 Gay and Fox help us push beyond the notion of a static clientelism. This case suggests that, in addition to variations in political environment, the specifics of clientelist flexibility are determined by a constellation of political actors including local contentious groups, those who support them, and federal and local powerbrokers. If, as Gay reminds us, clientelism may be challenged, negotiated, and changed, where can we find the sources of change? One source of change discussed here is increased societal discontent in the presence of a contentious ideology that can be used to launch a challenge. Too, the tools available to the patrons may change. Fox, like others, recognizes that effective clientelism requires the patron to hold sufficient power to enforce compliance through coercion. The coalitions in which the UCI participated helped provide an obstacle to such coercion. In addition to the authoritarian stick, patrons need the resource carrot. In Roniger's words," (t)he structure of limiting payoffs can be maintained only by making payoffs...,70 Legitimacy, whether it is accorded a national system as Cornelius demonstrated or the affective relations with local patrons as Auyero has recently shown, must be accompanied by the exchange of material resources. 71 If resources contract in such a way that patronage fails to be exchanged for client's expressions of support, challengers hold clear rationale to discard clientelist paths of politics. If anti-clientelist efforts are unsuccessful in generating alternative resources, then such efforts remain vulnerable to clientelism. Clientelist efforts have been successful at imposing state control on potentially unruly constituencies because they have offered venues for controlled participation while coopting threatening challenges. But such efforts have also been successful because they have addressed popular needs. If challenges to clientelism do not find ways to satisfy material needs, there is little rationale for organizations to participate in them. It takes a certain level of resources to maintain the clientelist exchange. Thus, challenges to clientelism must go beyond offering new 621 ideological tools to opposition groups and offer some tangible goods to elicit participation. As Roniger writes, "Patrons and clients are not interested in the generality of equality and legal rules; they are interested in resources.''72 Hellman also is unconvinced that rank-and-file members of popular organizations hold as much interest in democratization as they do in the resolution of material needs. 73 These statements, I believe, do not indict the urban poor for anti-democratic tendencies. Instead, they force us to ask the question: what is politics for? Huiskamp points out that feminist analyses of women's movements in Latin America often gauge the relative success of women's organized resistance to authoritarian and democratizing governments by assessing the impacts of their actions on patriarchal dominance. TM That is, such analysis imposes a judgement based on external criteria stemming from the critics' own hope for change. Perhaps this is the trap that analysts' of clientelism - especially those like me, who document resistance - similarly fall into. Part of our task then, should be to return to contributions such as those of Portes and the Leeds, which remind us that the urban poor are indeed strategic and sophisticated in the political choices they make. 75 However, those choices are constrained by social structures that limit their political options. As I have tried to demonstrate, changing political economy may change the opportunities that are delimited by social structure. Yet we should not assess the willingness to enter into, or the success of, anti-clientelist efforts with a false dichotomy of "good politics versus bad politics" or lack of sophistication, or false consciousness. Instead, social structure helps define the politics of the possible, and both clientelist and anticlientelist politics represent part of a wide repertoire of ways to satisfy political needs. The choices made are in part determined by a hierarchy of political needs that influence how people go about doing politics. What is politics for? Within a coalition characterized by widely varied members, politics may be used to resolve very different needs. UCI members' participation in the different coalitions tell us things about how coalitions may resist clientelism, but they also tell us about a hierarchy of political needs. Although many UCI members discussed the importance of their participation in the coalitions of the poor, and their support of the damnificados, far fewer reported more than initial participation in other crisis-driven or democratization coalitions. UCI members expressed great interest in democratic change, but they acted more immediately to address their material needs. Despite the impor- 622 tant impacts coalition work may have on political ideology, unemployed citizens do not become employed by changes extending their citizenship rights. Neither are populations without potable water able to drink new citizenship rights. UCI leaders, on the other hand, possessed great interest in working to affect wide political change and build democracy. Much of this interest emerged from a long-standing relationship with SEDOC organizers. TM Leaders consistently identified the urban service struggle as a means to further the end of democratization. They recognized too that although UCI members criticized anti-democratic politics, they felt even more deeply the need for material progress. The political needs generated by their status and class made the urban poor more consistently willing to push for their material needs than for new political process. Again, that the urban poor were more deeply motivated by their material needs than by societal calls for democratization demonstrates neither false consciousness nor a shallow level of political sophistication. It is instead an answer to the question of what politics is for, for those living in their structural location. For poor people, the hierarchy of political needs defines material needs higher than representation needs. This prioritization of needs explains UCI members' differential participation in coalitions. Yet relying on an explanation highlighting the hierarchy of political needs raises a dilemma. Why were the poor better placed to resist clientelism than their middle-class counterparts in RAMAS? The need for resources extends beyond traditional urban clients to NGOs, as this case study demonstrates. On one hand, RAMAS helped the UCI resist clientelism; on the other hand, RAMAS itself proved vulnerable to clientelist maneuvers. RAMAS members, despite long histories of involvement in opposition politics, still found themselves seduced by the availability of funds from state sources. The state was able to induce RAMAS members to participate in a state venue, with predictable results of quieting opposition and disturbing opposition unity. Again, the availability of material resources within a hierarchy of political needs continues to be central. Organizational sociology, from Michels to Pfeffer, tells us that one of the most poignant organizational needs is survival. RAMAS organizers clearly felt their organizational survival was endangered with the closing of international funding 623 sources. Despite their recognition of Solidarity as a clientelist effort, the middle-class organizers, less accustomed to living on a shoestring than their poor counterparts, felt they could influence the government from within the belly of the beast. For the UCI, Solidarity's rhetoric of inclusion was belied by its actions on Cerro del 4. The CROC/Solidarity interactions convinced the UCI of the bankruptcy of clientelist politics. CROC corruption had so weakened the ideological underpinnings of the local patronal role that the UCI recognized that corrupt patrons could capture resources meant for semi-independent use, and divert them to their own ends. Both organizations of the poor and NGOs remain vulnerable to the ideological claims and material rewards of clientelism. Yet clientelism is also vulnerable to change from the pressures of these same organizations. Recent Mexican elections demonstrate as much. Increased access to material resources, joined with an anti-clientelist ideology, may open political spaces that community organizations, social movements, and NGOs can exploit. Challenges to clientelism force the state to relate to contentious actors in new ways. Even clientelist states responding to such challenges may present popular organizations with openings for democratic change. If current struggles continue to be defined by the political economy of austerity, however, fully democratic, flexibly clientelist, or authoritarian clientelist states will continue to face the challenge of how to attend the material needs of their citizens. The prioritization of material needs has distinct implications for democratization processes. If basic needs are not met, how far has democratization really gone? And in a political economy defined by austerity and neoliberalism, how far can democratization go? Acknowledgments I am grateful for the careful reading and comments offered me by Michael Benson, Sherry Cable, Robert Gay, Bob Gorman, and Donald Hastings. I am grateful also for the careful reading and useful comments of the Editors of Theory & Society. 624 Notes 1. See, for example, Robert Gay, "Rethinking Clientelism: Demands, Discourses and Practices in Contemporary Brazil," European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 65 Dec 1998: 7-24; Javier Auyero, "'From the client's point(s) of view': How poor people perceive and evaluate political clientelism," Theory & Society 28/2 (1999): 297-334; Javier Auyero, "The logic of clientelism in Argentina: An ethnographic account," Latin American Research Review 35/3 (2000): 55-82; Luis Roniger and A. Gunes-Ayata, editors, Democracy, Clientelism, and Ovil Society (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1994). 2. This tradition is represented by works such as Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968); Wayne Cornelius, Politics and the Migrant Poor in Mexico City (Stanford: Stanford University Press,1975); Susan Eckstein, The Poverty of Revolution - The State and the Urban Poor in Mexico (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988); Richard Fagen and William S. Tuohy, Politics and Privilege in a Mexican City (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972); Janice Perlman, The Myth of Marginality (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976); David Collier, Squatters and Oligarchs: Authoritarian Rule and Policy Change in Peru (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976) ; Talton Ray, The Politics of the Barrios of Venezuela (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969); Anthony and Elizabeth Leeds, "Accounting for Behavioral Differences: Three Political Systems and the Responses of Squatters in Brazil, Peru, and Chile," in John Walton and Louis Masotti, editors, The Oty in Comparative Perspective (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1981). 3. Philip Oxhorn, Organizing Ovil Society: The Popular Sectors and the Struggle for Democracy in Chile (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995); Robert Gay, Popular Organization and Democracy in Rio de Janeiro (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994); Susan Stokes, Cultures in Conflict: Social Movements and the State in Peru (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Juan Manuel Ramirez Saiz, El Movimiento Urban Popular en Mexico (Mexico DF: Siglo XXI, 1986). 4. Robert Gay warns that clientelism differs by locale, time, and political environment (personal communication with author). Hence my focus on a peculiarly Mexican variant of urban clientelism. 5. Daniel Vasquez, "Rural-Urban Land Conversion on the Periphery of Guadalajara," in Housing and Land in Urban Mexico, ed. Alan Gilbert (Center for U.S.-Mexico Studies, UCSD: La Jolla) 1989; Alan Gilbert and Ann Varley, Landlord and Tenant: Housing and the Poor in Urban Mexico (London: Routledge, 1991). 6. Fagen and Tuohy, Politics and Privilege; Carlos V61ez-Ibafiez, Rituals of Marginality: Politics, Process, and Culture Change in Central Urban Mexico, 1969-1974 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983); Cornelius, Politics of the Migrant, 1975; Peter Ward, Welfare Politics in Mexico: Papering over the cracks (London: Allen and Unwin, 1986); Luis Roniger, Hierarchy and Trust in Modern Mexico and Brazil (Praeger Publishers: New York, 1990). 7. Cornelius, Politics of the Migrant, 54. 8. Susan Eckstein, "Poor people versus the state and capital: Anatomy of a successful community mobilization for housing in Mexico City," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 14/2 (1990): 221-246; Ligia Tavera, Social Movements and Civil Society: The Mexico City 1985 Earthquake Victims Movement (New Haven: Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Department of Sociology,Yale University, 1999). 625 9. Eckstein, Poor People, 290. 10. V61ez-Ibafiez, Rituals of Marginality; Ward, Welfare Politics; Eckstein, Poverty of Revolution. 11. Paul Cammack, David Pool, and William Tardoff, Third WorldPolitics: A Comparative Introduction (London: Macmillan Education Ltd, 1988). 12. Joe Foweraker, "Popular Movements and Political Change in Mexico," in Popular Movements and Political Change in Mexico, ed. J. Foweraker and A. Craig (Lynne Rienner Publishers: Boulder, 1990), 16. 13. Ward, WelfarePolitics, 97. 14. Jorge Alonso, Los movimientos sociales en el valle de Mexico (Mexico, D.F.: CIESAS, 1986); Vivienne Bennett, "The Evolution of Urban Popular Movements in Mexico Between 1968 and 1988," in The Making of Social Movements in Latin America, ed. A. Escobar and S. E. Alvarez (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992); Diane Davis, "Social Movements in Mexico's Crisis," Journal of International Affairs 43/2 (1990): 343-367; Paul Haber, "Political Change in Durango: The Role of National Solidarity," in Cornelius et al., Transforming State-Society Relations in Mexico (San Diego: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, 1994); Juan Manuel Ramirez Saiz, El Movimiento Urbano; Juan Manuel Ramirez Saiz, "Urban Struggles and Their Political Consequences," in Popular Movements and Political Change in Mexico, ed. Joe Foweraker and Ann L. Craig (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1990); Jeffrey Rubin, "Popular Mobilization and the Myth of State Corporatism," in Popular Movements and Political Change in Mexico, ed. Joe Foweraker and Ann L. Craig (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1990); Tavera, Social Movements. 15. Joe Foweraker, "Popular Movements," in Mexico's Alternative Futures, ed. Wayne A. Cornelius, Judith Gentleman, and Peter H. Smith (San Diego: Center for U.S.-Mexico Studies, 1989); Ramirez Saiz, El Movimiento Urbano; Popular Mobilization. 16. Ramirez Saiz, El Movimiento Urbano, Popular Mobilization. 17. Jonathan Fox, "Targetting the Poorest: The Role of the National Indigenous Institute in Mexico's Solidarity Program," in Cornelius et al., Transforming StateSociety Relations in Mexico (San Diego: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, 1994); Jonathan Fox, "The Difficult Transition from Clientelism to Citizenship: Lessons from Mexico," WorldPolitics 46 (1994): 151-184; Haber, "Political Change." 18. Barry Carr, "The Mexican Left, the Popular Movements, and the Politics of Austerity, 1982-1985," in The Mexican Left, the Popular Movements, and the Politics of Austerity, ed. B. Carr and R.A. Montoya (San Diego: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California, 1986); Foweraker, "Popular Movements and Political Change." 19. Although some of the work cited uses a social movements perspective rather than one of urban politics, the struggles are much the same. 20. Alejandro Portes, "Rationality in the Slum: An Essay on Interpretive Sociology," Comparative Studies in Society and History (1972): 286. 21. Agustin Escobar Latapi and Bryan Roberts, "Urban Stratification, the Middle Classes, and Economic Change in Mexico," in Social Responses to Mexico's Economic Crisis of the 1980s, ed. Mercedes Gonzfilez de la Rocha and Agustin Escobar Latapi (San Diego: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, 1991), 98. 22. Nora Lustig, "Economic Crisis, Adjustment and Living Standards in Mexico, 1982-85," World Development 18/10 (1990): 1325-1342; Davis, Social Movements; Rolando Cordera Campos and Enrique Gonz~ilez, "Crisis and Transition in the Mexican Economy," in M. Gonz~lez de la Rocha and A. Escobar Latapi, editors, 626 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. Social Responses to Mexico's Economic Crisis of the 1980s (San Diego: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, 1991); Gerardo Otero, editor, Neoliberalism Revisited: Economic Restructuring and Mexico's Political Future, (Westview Press: Boulder 1996). Cordera Campos and Gonz~.lez, Crisis and Transition. Judith Gentleman, editor, Mexican Politics in Transition (Boulder: Westview Press, 1987) Maria Tarres, "Crisis and Political Opposition/among the Mexican Middle Classes," International Sociology 2/2 (1987): 131-150; Heather Williams, Planting Trouble: The Barzon Debtor's Movement in Mexico (San Diego: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, 1996). See Jon Shefner, "Sponsors and the Urban Poor: Resources or Restrictions?" Social Problems 46/3 (1999), for elaboration of this argument. The delegitimation of the PRI and the government certainly began long before the debt crisis. The student protests culminating in the massacre at Tlatelolco, the subsequent "openings" of the political system under Echeverria, and the steady erosion of votes for the PRI all testify to this fact. This process deepened with the debt crisis. See Roderic Camp, Politics in Mexico, 2nd edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) for these survey results. For an extensive review of the work on framing, see Robert Benford and David Snow, "Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment," Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000): 611-639. I am grateful to an anonoymous reviewer for stressing the need for my argument to address ideational components of clientelism. The CROC is a national labor union controlled by the PRI. The CROC held control over much of urban Jalisco because of its link to elected officials. The CROC worked as an urban political machine in Tlaquepaque, dispensing patronage in the form of jobs and urban services to loyal neighborhoods, while punishing non-supporters, In addition, neighborhood CROC members mobilized in favor of CROC candidates for local power. Indigenous communities, like ejidos, are a form of traditional land tenure institutionalized in the Mexican Constitution. Agustin del Castillo, "Expropriacion, '1o mejor' para el cerro del Cuatro," Siglo 21, (24 February, 1994): 7; David Velasco Yhfiez, "El caso de la Union de Colonos Independientes," in La Democracia de los de Abajo en Jalisco, ed. Jorge Alonso and Juan Manuel Ramirez Saiz (Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara, 1996). Irma Gamboa Rodriguez and Monica del Carmen Mancilla Soto, Proyecto de la Reconstrucci6n Hist6rica de la Uni6n de Clonos Independientes del Cerro del 4. Taller de Integraccion ( ITESO: Guadalajara, 1991); Velasco Y/tfiez, "El caso"; author interview). Ward, Welfare Politics; Alan Gilbert, The Latin American City, 2nd edition (London: Latin American Bureau, 1998). The Family Services Agency (Desarollo Integral de la Familia, or DIF) is a staterun organization mostly staffed by government officials' wives. Fox, "The Difficult Transition," 157. Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis 1973). CEBs (comunidades de base, or base Christian communities) in Mexico have not enjoyed the same high profile as in countries like Brazil, largely because of opposition from the church hierarchy. See Michael Tangeman, Mexico at the Crossroads: Politics, the Church, and the Poor (Maryknoll, N.Y., 1995). Despite the conservative 627 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. Mexican church hierarchy, bible reflection groups have had significant effects on organizing both rural and urban communities. By 1988 over 5,000 CEBs were organized in Mexico, heavily concentrated in six states of the republic, including Jalisco. See Jorge Castafieda, Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left After the Cold War (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 212. Quoted in Juan Manuel Ramirez Sfiiz and H6ctor Nuncio Hermosillo, Entre la Iglesia y la lzquierda: El Comite Popular del Sur (Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara, 1994), 25. Daniel Levine, Popular Voices in Latin American Catholicism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), 40. SEDOC, Estatuos de Servicios Educativos de Occidente, A.C. (Guadalajara, Jalisco, 1986), 1. Ibid., 14. Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Continuum: New York, 1970). SEDOC, Planeaeion de Servicios Educativos de Occidente, 1989-1993 (Guadalajara, Jalisco, 1989), 5. Fox, "The Difficult Transition." Barry Carr and Ricardo Anzaldfla Montoya, editors, The Mexican Left, the Popular Movements, and the Politics of Austerity (San Diego: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California, 1986). The names included Frente Popular Independiente (the Independent Popular Front), and the Movimiento Democratico de Lucha Urbana (the Democratic Movement of Urban Struggle). Newsletter of Grupo Nueva Santa Maria 1990; Newsletter of the UCI, February 1991, photocopy. Frente Popular Independiente, Primera Reunion Preparatoria (1991), 3-6, photocopy. Ibid., 3 Ibid., 2. Ibid., 4. Sergio Rene de Dios, "Los damnificados exigieron solueion a sus demandas," Siglo 21, (2 May 1992), 3; Rosanna Reguillo, "Topografia de la Memoria," Renglones 28 (1994); Jose Manuel Mora and Maria Eugenia de la Torre, "Cronica," in Quien nos hubiera dicho, Guadalajara, 22 de abril, ed. by Cristina Padilla and Rossana Reguillo (ITESO: Guadalajara, 1993). For more on this event, see Jon Shefner and John Walton, "The Damnificados of Guadalajara: Politics of Domination and Social Movement Protest," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 17/4 (1994); and Jon Shefner, "Legitimacy Crisis, Contentious Supporters, and Post-Disaster Instability: A Case Study of Political Ferment," International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters 17/2 (1999). Pedro Armendares, "El afio de las ONG's." La Jornada (24 September 1994). UCI participated in several national coalitions and networks organized around wide political change and human rights defense. UCI worked most consistently with RAMAS because of its Jalisco focus. RAMAS, Red de Apoyo Mutuo Para la Accion Social. Documento Base. Primer Borrador, (1994), photocopy. FAM, "La Legislacion de Fomento a l a s Organizaciones de la Sociedad Civil," (1994), photocopy. The proposed law was entitled the Ley de Fomento alas Orgaizaciones Civiles The Law to Promote Civil Organizations. 628 61. FAM, Ley de Fomento a Las Organizaciones Oviles (Proyecto), (1994), photocopy. 62. The Forum for Mutual Aid (FAM) and the Convergence of Civil Organizations for Democracy were RAMAS' Mexico City partners in this effort. 63. Ruben Martin, "Las ONGs piden Ley de Fomento a organismos civiles," Siglo 21, (13 July, 1994). 64. These comments were echoed by NGO organizers in Mexico City. See Douglas Chalmers et al., "Mexican NGO Networks and Popular Participation," Columbia Institute. The Institute of Latin American and Iberian Studies. Papers on Latin America #39 (1995). 65. SEDESOL served as the bureaucratic umbrella housing Salinas's flagship social welfare/public relations policy, Solidaridad. Solidaridad has been widely criticized due to its efforts to regenerate PRI legitimacy. See Denise Dresser, Neopopulist Solutions to Neoliberal Problems: Mexico's National Solidarity Program (UCSD Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies: LaJoUa, 1991); Denise Dresser, "Bringing the Poor Back In: National Solidarity as a Strategy of Regime Legitimation," in Transforming State-Society Relations in Mexico, ed. W.A. Cornelius, A. Craig, and J. Fox (UCSD Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies: LaJolla, 1994); Haber, "Political Change." Fox's analysis of Solidaridad is similarly critical, yet he sees this reform from above opening some opportunities to alternative organizing from below. See Fox, "The Difficult Transition," "Targetting the Poorest." 66. I am grateful to Sherry Cable for suggesting I steal this term. 67. Gay, Rethinking Clientelism. 68. Fox, "The Difficult Transition," 155. 69. Gay, Rethinking Clientelism. 70. Roniger, Democracy, Clientelism, 4. 71. Cornelius, Politics and the Migrant Poor; Javier Auyero, "The Logic of Clientelism in Argentina: An Ethnological Account," Latin American Research Review 35/3 (2000). 72. Roniger, Democracy, Clientelism, 10. 73. Judith Hellman, "Mexican Popular Movements, Clientelism, and the Process of Democratization," Latin American Perspectives, 81/21 (1994): 124-142. 74. Gerard Huiskamp, "Identity Politics and democratic transitions: (Re)organizing women's strategic interests through community activism," Theory and Society 29/3 (2000): 385424. 75. Pones, Rationality in the Slum; Anthony Leeds and Elizabeth Leeds, "Accounting for Behavioral Differences: Three Political Systems and the Responses of Squatters in Brazil, Peru, and Chile," in John Walton and Louis Masotti, edidors, The City in Comparative Perspective (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1976). 76. For more on the relationship between SEDOC and UCI, see Shefner, "Sponsors and the Urban Poor."