The California-Mexico Connection 9780804766401

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THE CALIFO RNIAMEXIC O CONNE CTION

Contributors HAROLD BRACKMAN KATRINA BURGESS JORGE G. CASTANEDA DENISE DRESSER STEVEN P. ERIE AGUSTfN ESCOBAR LATAPf CARLOS GONZALEZ GUTIERREZ DAVID E. HAYES-BAUTISTA ABRAHAM F. LOWENTHAL CARLOS RICO JAMES N. ROSENAU RICHARD ROTHSTEIN LUIS RUBIO GABRIEL SZEKELY FERNANDO TORRES-GIL GUILLERMO TREJO GEORGES VERNEZ

THE CALIFORNIAMEXICO CONNECTION ~ EDITED BY ABRAHAM F. LOWENTHAL AND KATRINA BURGESS

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Stanford) California

Stanford University Press, Stanford, California © r993 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University

CIP data appear at the end of the book Original printing 1993 Last figure below indicates year of this printing: 03

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Preface

THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE has long been sharply divided, at the Rio Grande, between North and South. Politically, economically, demographically, and culturally, Latin America and North America have been worlds apart, despite their geographic proximity. Fundamental differences have been obvious in language, religion, values, mores, and institutions. Latin America has looked, smelled, and sounded very different from Anglo America. Pan-American organizations and rhetoric have never bridged the gap. Five hundred years after Christopher Columbus first brought the New World to Europe's attention, however, the line between North America and Latin America is eroding. A vast Latin American diaspora now lives on the mainland of the United States. Mexicans, Cubans, Salvadorans, Nicaraguans, Hondurans, Dominicans, Haitians, Puerto Ricans, Colombians, Peruvians, Ecuadorians, Brazilians, and others have been streaming into this country. They come no longer in isolated or temporary waves but in a sustained and growing flow. Some 10 percent of the total U.S. population are now Latin American immigrants and their descendants. The Latino population is the fastest growing group in the United States. The most pervasive amalgam between the United States and Latin America is occurring in southern California. In California's "southland," it is not only that Mexicans and Central Americans have been immigrating in very large numbers; it is also that the production and marketing of goods is becoming ever more integrated. The barriers to the movement of people, goods, and money across the Mexico-California border are fast disappearing. Not since the early nineteenth century, when California was still part of Mexico itself, have there been such close ties between Mexico and its former northern territory. For many practical purposes, indeed, the frontier has become something of an abstraction. v

Preface To put it another way, the border between Mexico and the United States is becoming blurred. Millions of persons from southern California and northern Mexico engage each day in an intricate web of mundane transactions, most of them legal but some not, in which the border is much less significant than shared aims and interaction. What Stanford economist Clark Reynolds some years ago perspicaciously called the "silent integration" of Mexico and the United States has become progressively louder, especially in southern California. California's Mexico connection has intensified remarkably during the past twenty years. One Californian in five today is of Mexican heritage, compared with fewer than one in ten in 1970. Latinos, mostly of Mexican origin, are expected to be about 30 percent of California's population by the end of the decade; already they make up 38 percent of the residents in Los Angeles County. Half of the babies born in Los Angeles County during the 1980s were Latinos, So percent of them Mexican or MexicanAmerican. Latinos accounted for nearly half of California's population growth during the 198os, both through continuing inm1igration and through high rates of fertility. Mexican and Central American migration to California, legal and illegal, continues apace. More than half the detentions of undocumented migrants entering the United States during the 1980s occurred at the San Diego-Tijuana border, and the number of detentions there has been rising since 1986. Authorized border crossings at that same spot doubled during the late 198os, reaching 6o million per year entering the United States. And the migration of Mexicans to California has been changing in character, as Mexicans become settlers, ending the long-time illusion of impermanence. Of the 1.25 million undocumented Mexican immigrants whose status in the United States was regularized under the provisions of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of1986 (IRCA), fully 43 percent reside in California, as do 53 percent of the more than one million "special agriculture workers" whose status was also protected by IRCA's provisions. Migration patterns in Mexico have changed, as increasing numbers of Mexicans think that living in California is an option. Trade between California and Mexico has exploded since the midI98os, increasing by some 6o percent in value from 1988 to 1991, from $6 billion to more than $10 billion. Mexico is California's second largest foreign market (after Japan), and it is likewise the source of ever larger and more diverse numbers of imports, both agricultural and manufactured. Mexico's maquiladora (assembly) industries near the border, many of them established with U.S. capital and tied into the production and distribution chains of U.S. firms, employ hundreds of thousands of workers, VI

Preface who consume on both sides of the frontier in a functionally integrated border economy. What used to be primarily a trading link between the economies of Mexico and California has increasingly become a production relationship because manufacturing takes place through intrafirm integration across the political frontier. Financial ties between Mexico and California are equally strong, though more difficult to document. In addition to investing billions of dollars in the maquiladora sector, Californian and other firms are increasingly attracted to Mexico by its growth prospects and by its changing attitudes and regulations on foreign investment. An estimated $3 billion per year is remitted to Mexico, moreover, by workers in the United States; as much as $2 billion of that may come from Mexicans in California. Although the flow of funds and goods is asymmetric, it is not all in one direction. Many billions of dollars of Mexican flight capital have been invested in California banks, real estate, and industries. Mexican beer and cement are winning increasing favor in California, as are Mexican fruits and vegetables. Mexican-produced television programs are being used by Spanish-language stations, and Mexican firms have been entering the U.S. print and electronic media aimed at Latino markets. Mexico has been opening its economy to the outside world and integrating more fully into world markets, in which California firms are vital. California's economy has likewise been looking outward and has become more dependent on foreign trade, including that with Mexico. California's growing Mexico connection shapes the state's life in many realms: from culture to cuisine, schools to board rooms, workplace to voting booths. Education is one sector of particularly high impact. Sixtythree percent of the students in the public schools of the Los Angeles Unified District-and 67 percent of those in elementary schools-are of Latin American (mostly Mexican) descent; more than half of them are from Spanish-speaking homes. Two of the central issues facing southern California's public schools-overcrowded facilities and the complexities of bilingual education-result directly from Mexican immigration. The health delivery and broader social service systems of southern California are also strongly affected by Mexican and other Latin American immigrants. Contrary to broad popular perceptions, Mexican immigrants are by and large healthy, with low incidence of most communicable diseases, low rates of infant mortality or inadequate birthweight, few drugaffected infants, good hygienic habits, stable family structures, and a strong work ethic. But Latino immigrants, young and often economically disadvantaged, do impose special needs on California's public health system: for prenatal and maternal programs, the enforcement of sanitary reguVll

Preface lations, mass immunization, and-in the second and third generationsfor substance abuse counseling and related drug syndrome programs. Failure to address these special needs would badly damage California's general health and productivity. Yet there is a profound gap between the needs of Latino immigrants and the services for which the older and politically more enfranchised Anglo population is willing to pay. The obstacles to health care and other essential services for Latino immigrants are exacerbated by regulations that withhold services trom the undocumented, and by prejudice and discrimination. Southern California's politics have not thus far been as substantially affected by Mexico, largely because Mexican immigrants have been slow to nan1ralize and slower yet to register, vote, and pursue group interests through politics. Despite the huge Latino population of southern California, fewer than 7 percent of voters in California's primary elections in 1990 were of Latino heritage. Whereas about two-thirds of European immigrants to the United States during the 198os have become or are in the process of becoming U.S. citizens, only one-fifth of recent Latino immigrants have yet taken these steps. Even those Latinos wh_o do become U.S. citizens have so far had little direct impact on public policy, mainly because they are residentially dispersed or victims of gerrymandering calculated to dilute their votes, but also because they lack strong interest groups. But this, too, is beginning to change. Latino voter registration in California increased by about 25 percent during the second half of the 198os, and implementation of the IRCA makes it more likely that the large and stable Latino noncitizen population will now move toward citizenship. Efforts by the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund (MALDEF) and other civic organizations, reinforced by partisan competition, are redrawing the electoral map of California, with the likely consequence of expanding Mexican-American and other Latino voting and political influence. In 1992 there were two Mexican-Americans on the Los Angeles City Council, one each on the school board and the powerful five-person County Board of Supervisors, four Latinos in the California legislature, and three Latino members of California's congressional delegation-representations almost twice as great as ten years ago. By the end of the decade, it would not be surprising if multiethnic and multiracial coalition building in southern California led to a Mexican-American mayor in Los Angeles, a MexicanAmerican majority on the Los Angeles City Council, ten to fifteen Latinos in the California legislature, and twice as many visible Latino leaders as at present. Such Latino empowerment should reshape public policy, not only

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Preface on education and health questions but on family and child-oriented social policies and a whole range of other questions arising from Mexico's proximity to California. The merging of southern California and northern Mexico is also beginning to affect the politics of Mexico itself. Since the late 198os, California has increasingly become a major battleground of Mexican political competition. Opposition parties and the Mexican governing party have all recognized that California's Mexican-origin population is important as a source of support, funding, and legitimacy, and that the Mexican population in California can substantially affect politics south of the border. Interest groups, parties, and governments in both Mexico and the United States, in short, are increasingly able to mobilize and affect people whose interests and ties arc not defined by the national border. Fascinating issues of rights and representation are being raised. Some groups are calling for Mexicans in the United States to gain the right to vote in Mexico's elections through absentee ballots, \vhile others campaign to give all Latin American immigrants, regardless of citizenship, the right to vote in California's school board and other local elections. Transnational alliances among workers, investors, environmentalists, human rights advocates, and others all contribute to a tangle of overlapping interests and incomplete sovereignties that is captured in the phrase we have coined, the "California-Mexico Connection." This book is the first in any language to explore and begin to map the California-Mexico Connection. Despite the myriad ways in which California is affected by Mexico, no systematic effort has ever been made to examine the Connection's nature and scope, or to assess its main effects. By bringing together qualified experts on Mexico, California, and the issue areas where they intersect, we have tried not only to describe and analyze California's Mexico Connection but to consider how Mexicans and Californians can help assure that the Connection's effects are more consistently and mutually positive. All the essays in this book are original contributions, prepared especially for this volume, and discussed among the authors at a planning workshop and a conference held at the University of Southern California in April 1991. The book is organized in four parts and two appendixes. In Part I, a conceptual introduction by James N. Rosenau situates the CaliforniaMexico Connection in comparative and theoretical terms, and shows why and how interesting and innovative questions are posed by the interconnections this book explores. Jorge G. Castaneda then provides an overview comment from the Mexican perspective on the mutual impact of Califor-

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Preface nia and Mexico, full of surprises and unintended-even unperceivedconsequences. Part II outlines demographic, economic, political, and social changes in Mexico and how they are affecting California. Part III focuses more sharply on Mexico's presence within California and its impact upon the economy, society, education, health, labor, and politics. Part IV analyzes what can be done-by Mexicans and by Californiansto strengthen the positive effects of the California-Mexico Connection. The appendixes, prepared by Dan Himelstein and Ignacio Garcia Lascurain, present in visual form salient data on Mexico and California. A symposium volume always takes much more work than its editors anticipate, but in this case we were fortunate to have such good support and colleagueship as to make most of the chores seem pleasant. We express great appreciation to our fellow contributors to this volume; to others who participated in the project's workshops and conference, including Stephen Levy, Cathryn Thorup, Douglas Chalmers, Wayne Cornelius, David Ronfeldt, Geoffrey Bogart, Leo Estrada, Paul Ganster, Kevin Starr, Marilyn Snell, and David Rieff; to Muriel Bell and Ellen F. Smith of Stanford University Press; and to Dan Himelstein, Ignacio Garcia Lascurain, David Ayon, Clarissa Martinez de Castro, and Cristina Gallop of USC's California-Mexico project staff. Most of all, we thank the officers and trustees of the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation of Los Angeles, whose generous support made this project possible, and our colleagues at the University of Southern California who encouraged this effort.

A.F.L. K.B.

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Contents

Contributors

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PART I: INTRODUCTION

r. Coherent Connection or Commonplace Contiguity?

3

Theorizing About the California-Mexico Overlap JAMES N. ROSENAU 2.

Mexico and California The Paradox of Tolerance and Dedenwcratization JORGE G. CASTANEDA

PART II: TRENDS IN MEXICO: IMPLICATIONS FOR CALIFORNIA

3. Reform, Globalization, and Structural Interdependence New Economic Ties Between Mexico and California

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LUIS RUBIO AND GUILLERMO TREJO

4. The Connection at Its Source

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Changing Socioeconomic Conditions and Migration Patterns AGUSTfN ESCOBAR LATAPf

5. Exporting Conflict

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Trans boundary Consequences ofMexican Politics DENISE DRESSER

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Contents 6.

California and Mexico Facing the Pacific Rim

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GABRIEL SZEKELY

PART III: MEXICANS IN CALIFORNIA

7. Mexicans in Southern California

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Societal Enrichment or Wasted Opportunity? DAVID E. HAYES-BAUTISTA

8. Mexican Labor in California's Economv

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From Rapid Growth to Likely Stability GEORGES VERNEZ

9.

Separating Myth from Reality The Impact ofMexican Immigration on Health and Human Services FERNANDO TORRES-GIL

IO.

In Search of the American Dream Obstacles to Latino Educational Achievement RICHARD ROTHSTEIN

u. The Once-and-Future Majority Latino Politics in Los Angeles

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HAROLD BRACKMAN AND STEVEN P. ERIE 12.

The Mexican Diaspora in California Limits and Possibilities for the Mexican Government

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CARLOS GONzALEZ GUTIERREZ

PART IV: CONCLUSIONS

J3. From State to "state"

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Managing Mexico)s California Connection CARLOS RICO

14. Challenges from the South

Enhancing California)s Mexico Connection KATRINA BURGESS AND ABRAHAM F. LOWENTHAL

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Contents - - - - - - - - - - - - - - · · - - ----- ---- -------

APPENDIXES A.

North of the Border

279

Who Makes What Decisions Where DAN HIMELSTEIN

B. The California-Mexico Connection in Tables and Figures

289

DAN HIMELSTEIN AND IGNACIO GARCfA LASCURAfN

Notes

309

Index

353

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Tables and Figures

Tables r.r.

r.z. q. 1.4.

r.s. 6.r. 6.2. 6.3. 8.1. 8.2. 8.3. 8.4. 8.5. 8.6.

The Political Space Occupied by Issue Areas and Political Communities The Political Space Occupied by the California-Mexico Connection Transformation of Three Basic Parameters of World Politics Changes in Attributes oflndividuals Resulting from Turbulence in World Politics Differentiating the Two Worlds of World Politics The Economies of the Pacific Rim Indicators of Socioeconomic Progress in the Pacific Rim, 1965 and 1989 Foreign Direct Investment in California, 1977 and 1987 California Population Growth, I900~I990, with Breakdown by Birth and Immigration Comparison of Labor-Force Characteristics ofU.S.-Born Workers, Mexican-Born Immigrants, and Other Inunigrants Undocumented Mexican Immigrants Intercepted at the Border, by Mexican State of Origin, 1984 Distribution of Mexican-Born Population by State of Destination in the United States, 1980 Schooling of U.S. Natives, Mexican-Born Immigrants, and Other Immigrants, Aged Eighteen or Older, 1960 and 1980 Mexican-Born and Mexican-Origin Population in California,

7 8 20 21 22 II6 II7

120 148 151 153 154 157

1970-1990

A.r. A.2.

159 281 284

Decision Makers: The Executive Branch Decision Makers: The Legislative Branch XV

Tables and Figures A.3. B.r. B.2. B.3. B.4. B.s. B.6. B.7. B.8. B.9. B.IO. B.n. B.12. B.13. B.14.

Decision Makers: Nongovernmental Actors, by Issue Area California and Mexico: Basic Data, 1989-90 California's Top Exports to Mexico, 1989 Port Data California's Top Imports from Mexico, 1989 Port Data Foreign-Owned Financial Institutions in California, 1990 Estimates of Undocumented Aliens in the United States by State, 1980 Proportion of Latino Elected Officials in California, 1980 and 1990 Political Appointments of Latinos in California, 1975-1991 Judicial Appointments of Latinos in California, 1959-1991 Latinos in the June 1990 California Primary Election Mexico Voter Abstention, 1982 and 1988 Elections Educational Level of the Mexican Population, 1978 and 1988 California Occupational Structure by Ethnicity, 1990 San Diego-Tijuana "Twin City" Population, 1970-1990 Mexican Maquiladora Plants by State, 1990

286 289 293 293 293 296 297 297 297 298 298 300 301 303 305

Figures 6.1. 6.2. 7.1. 7.2. 7.3. 7.4. 7.5. 7.6. 7.7. 7.8. 7.9.

no.

Californian and Mexican Exports, by Destination, 1989 International Visitors to California, 1982 and 1989 California Households Consisting of Couples with Children, by Ethnicity, 1980 California Labor Force Participation of Males Sixteen and Over, by Ethnicity, 1980 California Males Sixteen and Over Not in Labor Force, by Ethnicity, 1980 Average Unearned Income of California Women Aged 2024, by Ethnicity, 1985 Life Expectancy at Birth in Los Angeles County, by Ethnicity, 1986 Low-Birthweight Babies in Los Angeles County, by Ethnicity, 1986 Infant Mortality per 1,ooo Live Births in Los Angeles County, by Ethnicity, 1986 Percent ofLatinos in California with High School Diplomas, by Generation, 1990 Percent of California Total Adult Male Population and Total Prison Inmate Population, by Ethnicity, 1990 Degree of Engagement by California Latinos in Latino Culture, by Generation, 1990

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II9 122 134 136 136 137 138 139 139 140 141 143

____ __ ,

8.I. B.r. B.2. B.3. B.4.

B.s. B.6. B.7. B.s. B.9. B.10. B.n. B.r2. B.13. B.14. B.15. B.16. B.17. B.18. B.19. B.2o. B.2r. B.22. B.23. B.24.

,

Tables and Figures ______________________ _

Mexican-Born Share ofTotal Employment, by Industry California Population, by Ethnicity, 1980-2000 California Population, by Age, 1990 Latino Population of Los Angeles County, 1950-1990 Urban Population of Mexico, 1940-1990 Average Age of the Mexican Population, 1920-2oro California Employment, by Sector, 1989 Breakdown of Mexican Gross Domestic Product, 1989 Liberalization of Mexican Import Controls, 1982-1990 Number of State-Owned Enterprises in Mexico, 1982-1989 Increasing Market Capitalization in Mexico, 1983-1990 Legal Mexican Immigration to the United States, 1930-1988 Number of Illegal Immigrants Seized in California, 19831988 Voting Pattern in 1989 Los Angeles City Mayoral Election, by Ethnicity California Public School Students, by Ethnicity, 1966-2ooo High School Dropout Rate, Los Angeles Unified School District and U.S. Average, by Ethnicity, 1988-89 Average Educational Levels of Californians Age 25 and Older, by Ethnicity, 1989 Median Family Income in California, by Ethnicity, 1988 California Adults Not Covered by Health Insurance, by Ethnicity, 1986 Homeowners in Los Angeles County, by Ethnicity, 1980 New Felons in California Prisons and Camps, by Ethnicity, 1960-1988 Annual Border Crossings into California, 1970-1989 Index of Per Capita Income in Border Municipalities of Baja California, 1980 Mexican Maquila Employees, 1965-1989 Value Added of Baja California Maquiladora Plants, 19791988

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152 289 290 290 291 291 292 292 294 294 295 295 296 298 299 299 300 301 302 302 303 304 304 305 306

Contributors

HAROLD BRACKMAN consults on interethnic relations for the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. In I990-9I, he and Steven Erie completed a major project on ethnic politics in the Los Angeles metropolitan area for the California Policy Seminar. KATRINA BURGESS is a Ph.D. candidate in the Politics Department at Princeton University. She served as assistant director of the U.S.-Mexico Project at the Overseas Development Council and as associate director of the California-Mexico Project at the University of Southern California. JORGE G. CASTANEDA is a professor of political science at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and has been a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley (U CB) and Princeton University. A frequent commentator on Mexican and Latin American affairs, he is coauthor with Robert Pastor of Limits to Friendship: The United States and Mexico and author of Beyond Revolution: The Latin American Left After the Cold War. DENISE DRESSER is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University and professor of political science at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM). As a research associate in the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California, she helped design the California-Mexico Project. STEVEN P. ERIE is associate professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). In addition to publishing numerous articles on the politics of race, ethnicity, and gender, he is author of Rainbonrs End, an award-winning study of urban ethnic politics. AGUSTIN ESCOBAR LATAPf is research professor at CIESAS Occidente in Guadalajara, Mexico. During the last ten years, he has studied

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Contributors changes in Mexican urban labor markets, the informal sector, and migration. Together with Mercedes Gonzalez Gutierrez de la Rocha, he edited Social Responses to Mexico)s Economic Crisis ofthe 8os. CARLOS GONZALEZ GUTIERREZ is consul for community affairs at the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles. He received a master's degree in international relations from the University of Southern California and has been a member of the Mexican Foreign Service since 1987. DAVID E. HAYES-BAUTISTA is professor of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and director of the Center for the Study of Latino Health at the UCLA School of Medicine. He is coauthor of The Burden of Support: The Young Latino Population in an Aging American Society. ABRAHAM F. LOWENTHAL is professor of international relations and director of the Center for International Studies at the University of Southern California. He was the founding executive director of the Aspen Institute's Inter-i\merican Dialogue, and of the Wilson Center's Latin American Program. CARLOS RICO is Minister, Deputy Chief of Mission at the Mexican Embassy in Tokyo. He is on leave from his position as professor of international relations at the Center for International Studies, El Colegio de Mexico. JAMES N. ROSENAU is university professor of international affairs at George Washington University and professor emeritus of the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California. Among his numerous works, his most recent is Turbulence in World Politics: A Theory of Change and Continuity. RICHARD ROTHSTEIN is a Los Angeles-based research associate of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. He writes regular columns on economic affairs for the Sacramento Bee, LA. Weekly, and La Opinion newspapers. LUIS RUBIO is director general of the Center of Research for Development in Mexico City. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Banamex and writes a weekly column for La Jornada. He is author or editor of sixteen books, including Mexico)s Dilemma: The Political Origins ofEconomic Crisis. GABRIEL SZEKELY is senior fellow at the Center for U.S.-Mexico studies, University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and at El Colegio de Mexico in Mexico City. He is a consultant on international trade and investment for U.S., European, and Latin American firms.

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Contributors FERNANDO TORRES-GIL is professor of social welfare at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and adjunct professor of gerontology at the University of Southern California. He has been special assistant to two Secretaries of Health and Human Services and staff director of the U.S. Health Select Committee on Aging. GUILLERMO TREJO is an economist from the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM) and a political scientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). He is research assistant at the Center of Research for Development. GEORGES VERNEZ is director of the Institute on Education and Training and director of the Program for Research on Immigration Policy at the RAND Corporation. He writes extensively on immigration, human resources, and urban and economic development.

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CHAPTER -----

I

-----~

Coherent Connection or Commonplace Contiguity~ Theorizing About the California-Mexico Overlap JAMES N. ROSENAU

SociAL SCIENTIFIC MAPS all depict communities that arc sustained by a modicum of cohesion, that have at least a semblance of legitimacy, that are able to enact and implement policies, and that have members who are sufficiently linked to a shared history or a current plight to appreciate the symbiosis of mutual benefit. None of these cartographical features, however, obtains with respect to the links between California and Mexico. They subsume neitl1cr the shared values normally associated with a community nor the structures usually conceived to mark a system. More precisely, the overlap of California and Mexico encompasses communities, but it is not in itself a community. It occupies a specified territory, but it is not in itself bow1d together by the deep bonds normally associated with territoriality. It embraces a host of social, economic, and political structures, but it does not in itself appear to have a coherent structure. Despite the absence of community and structured coherence, something about the proximity of Mexico and California captures our attention. Something tells us that their contiguity has substantial consequences, that the \vays in which the people, conununities, and structures of Mexico and California overlap, interact, or otherwise intersect along a number of dimensions are important. So we refer to them as forming a "Connection," a label that seems appropriate because the standard nomenclature does not fit. 1 The label suggests the presence of a meaningful whole, of diverse interdependencies, of unavoidable interactions, even as it also implies that the prevailing structures of California and Mexico are such that the interactions are endemic and likely to endure for the foreseeable future. Beyond the intinlation of systemic links, moreover, the label is usefully ambiguous. It justifies our search for patterns in an unfamiliar political terrain, in a geographic space that is not bounded by a sovereign state, that 3

JAMES N. ROSENAU

does not embrace an integrated economy, that does not partake of a common culture, that does not consist of a formal international relationship, and that lacks any kind of authority structure for making decisions on behalf of those who fall within its scope. Involved, rather, are numerous layers of authority (a sovereign state, a large state within a larger union, large communities within the large state, small border towns), overlapping economies, discrepant cultures, migrating populations, and a long, tensionfilled border area. One way to discern the unfamiliarity of this terrain is to note that it lacks officials or public institutions responsible for worrying about and improving the welfare and coherence of the California-Mexico Connection as a holistic entity. Where the problems and opportunities that arise out of the contiguity of West European or Southeast Asian communities are the concern of interstate institutions such as the European Community (EC) and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) or interlocal institutions such as the Conference on Local and Regional Authorities or the Outline Convention on Transfrontier Cooperation Between Territorial Communities and Authorities, 2 the problems of Mexico and California are not the preoccupation of bureaucracies that can negotiate differences and evolve institutions. There is no Tijuana-San Diego County Commission, or Baja California-Imperial Valley Organization, or any other entity comprised of associated governments charged with addressing challenges to the region. To be sure, local communities have reached out to counterparts across the Mexico-U.S. border to conclude agreements and form regulatory bodies that are marked by transborder preoccupations and a modicum of authority; 3 but these are institutional expressions with limited jurisdictions, and none of them has been extended on a regional scale that treats the California-Mexico Connection as a single entity. 4 Indeed, academics may be alone in positing a larger system that could benefit from recognition as a whole in need of coordination and management. 5 And even then, as the essays of this volume reveal, the boundaries and internal coherence of the whole entity do not readily come into focus for scholars who worry about its integrity and well-being. How then to proceed1 How to construct a map that will lead us out of the network of unfamiliar links and enable us to clarify the underlying dynamics of the California-Mexico Connection1 How to fashion a theoretical perspective on which we can fall back in order to address particular policy problems in a larger context? While answers to such questions are not easily developed, the process of searching for them has enormous theoretical implications that extend well beyond the particulars of the California-Mexico Connection. For the dynamics of global change are fostering ever more numerous, diverse, and 4

Theorizing About the California-Mexico OJJerlap salient Connections that ignore, negate, or otherwise span long-established cultural, economic, and political boundaries. Increasingly the world is witnessing "the decline of the great collective forms of identification and the emergence of fragmented and multiple collective actors." 6 That is, the evolution of new social movements, the growing impotence of governments, the advent of pervasive authority crises, the globalization of national economies, and the expanded repertoire of skills available to citizens everywhere in the world has intensified the decentralizing tendencies and transnational links that presently sustain public affairs. The map of tl1e world's political wilderness has become an endless array of unfamiliar ties among dis aggregated units tl1at do not conform to established and historic boundaries and, accordingly, that do not lend themselves to treatment as mere variations on known forms of collective action. Viewed in this way, the California-Mexico Connection is more typical than it is unique. Although perhaps less explosive, it bears more than a little resemblance to the Kashmir-Pakistan Cmmection, the QuebecU.S. Connection, the French-North Mrica Connection, and the BalticRussian Connection-to mention only some of the contiguities that have become more salient under the relentless press of the global tendencies toward decentralization. In short, if we can evolve a theoretical context in which to examine the California-Mexico Conne