Estudiante

Isabel H. Rodriguez
CHS 503
November 29, 2012
Reading Response


Reading Response to
Mangos, Chiles, and Truckers
The Business of Transnationalism
By Robert R. Alvarez


Mangos, Chiles, and Truckers: The Business of Transnationalism by Robert R. Alvarez is an enlightening book on transnational trade in mangos and chiles with unique Mexican characteristics. It is a processinvolving key players within Mexico and the United States. Alvarez’s perspective us to present transnationalism at the local level, including U.S. penetration into Mexico and other countries. In doing so, he broadens the concept of communities, identity and the border.
Alvarez uses his own experience in the export-import trade, studies of northern and southern Mexican trade, interviews, andquantitative data to develop his thesis. He places the mango within a global perspective, provides an ethnography of the finances and actors in the movement of chiles, describes the activities engaged in by the truckers moving the produce, gives an example of how the transnational market is played out in Los Angeles and then concludes by discussing issues of identity and the historical connection of theU.S.-Mexico border. In this way he transforms the abstract discussion of transnationalism into its lived experience at local levels with live human beings.
In Chapter one, Alvarez discusses the global perspective of the mango trade. He indicates that the United States has become the world’s leading importer of mango and Mexico the world’s largest mango exporter. He proposes that this dramaticchange is an “example of the ways in which new patterns of transnational trade, migration, and investment are altering national identities and institutions.”( Alvarez,Jr., Robert R. Mangos, Chiles, and Truckers: The Business of Transnationalism. 2005 (University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis) Page 1) This results in “economic, social, cultural and political practices in both nations.” ( Ibid. Page1) In effect, it is “changing the nature of social membership and citizenship everywhere in the world.”( Ibid. Page 1)
The nation-state, especially the United States, exerts its control through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Customs Service and the Border Patrol. Various agencies are involved: the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Customs Service and Border Patrol. The former two enforcingstringent sanitation requirements purportedly enacted to protect U.S. crops from destructive pests, at the border and within Mexico, and the hemisphere, through its Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services. Penetration of these agencies into Mexico is of concern to Alvarez because it constitutes “not only in the hierarchical control of market economies, labor, and its effects on people at locallevels of production and distribution…mechanisms for ensuring dominance by U.S. firms over domestic markets and overseas sources of raw materials.”( Ibid. page 3) The nation-state’s role is to manage transnationalism through regulations affecting labor, taxes, the environment, and policing of border crossing within Mexico and the United States, beyond the geophysical border. For example, theBorder Patrol reaches far into the interior of the United States as far as Nebraska, Minnesota and New York, raiding high schools, work sites and neighborhoods, often violating civil rights, even of U.S. citizens. Globalization at the local level affects people’s behavior and “illustrates a complex reordering of identities, economies, and political persuasion.”( Ibid. Page 3)
Alvarez says thatmangos and other “ethnic” products reflect a “historical matrix that involves Latino immigration…the creation of transnational markets, efforts to increase the supply of low –wage labor and ensure its profitable exploitation, and current patterns of production and distribution.“( Ibid. Page 4) Immigrants, indigenous and non-indigenous, provide the low-wage labor and create a huge demand for new...