Globalization has exacerbated the impact of three Northern-driven forces on Central American unions. Transnational firms have restructured or enhanced their levels of subcontracting. Governments, while weakening labor-code implemention, have launched extensive privatization schemes. And international supporters of unions have espoused new priorities and rechanneled funding. Although all three trends have caused major difficulties for unions, this article assesses whether or not their traditional spirit of “social-movement unionism” has been undermined. Based on extensive interviews and primary and secondary data, the study documents union resilience in the banana and maquila sectors despite problematic corporate behavior and market conditions. Stung by state privatizations, unions that fragmented following the Central American Peace Accords have partially regrouped to resist public-health takeovers and labor-code harmonization. Facing losses in Northern funding, unions have painfully adapted to fresh organizing strategies and sensitivity to women's issues, which they found to be fundamental to successful collaboration with corporate campaigns, trade pressure, and NGOs. Despite losses, unions have tapped a broader solidarity in their struggle against the demons of globalization.

This article examines relations between the Mexican state and transmigrants through an analysis of migrant- and state-led transnational practices and policies. It addresses discussions of the strength and extent of Mexican state control and hegemony as well as debates in the transnationalism literature on the potential autonomy of transmigrant groups and the role of subnational linkages. The analysis is based on information on transmigrant organizations and Mexican political authorities in Los Angeles and Mexico and focuses on Zacatecas. Mexican transmigrant organizations predate current state initiatives aimed at Mexicans in the United States, but state involvement has been crucial to the institutionalizing of transnational social spaces. The state's hegemonic project involves the largely symbolic reincorporation of paisanos living abroad back into to the nation but depends on provincial and municipal authorities and transmigrant organizations for implementation. Because these vary, the project has been implemented unevenly. The complexity of these processes can be captured only by examining transnational social spaces at a subnational level. The case of Zacatecas shows how a corporatist and semi-clientelist transmigrant organization has managed to gain concessions that broaden opportunities for participation. It remains to be seen whether and how promises of political representation will be fulfilled.

El criollismo ha sido elaborado—desde diversos géneros—como espacio del consenso identitario aún en momentos de graves tensiones simbólicas. Se trata de un lugar construido sobre la capacidad de desplazamiento de la voz letrada, en función de adaptarse a los cambios producidos en la esfera cultural. Con el fin de trazar algunos de los hitos de este proceso de apelación identitaria en el caso específico de Venezuela, revisaré textos, publicados en su mayoría en la prensa, a lo largo del siglo XIX y principios del XX. La lectura de este corpus mostrará la trama de discursividades sobre la cual se asienta la autoridad letrada que emitió el discurso criollista.