Mangos, Chiles, and Truckers

The Business of Transnationalism

2005
Author:

Robert R. Alvarez Jr.
Foreword by George Lipsitz

Examines the effects of global capital on both sides of the U.S.–Mexico border

Robert R. Alvarez Jr. analyzes how the produce and trucking industries in Mexico affect the organization of work, community, and social space for miles on either side of the international border. Emphasizing the importance of the nation-state in the global process, Mangos, Chiles, and Truckers demonstrates how people make meaning as they struggle with the economic circumstances of their lives.

This pathbreaking work brings rare genealogical depth to anthropological research on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Leo Chavez, author of Covering Immigration: Popular Images and the Politics of the Nation

Mangos, Chiles, and Truckers illuminates how local groups and individuals engage the global world and capitalism in creative ways. Robert Alvarez analyzes how the produce and trucking industries in Mexico affect the organization of work, community, and social space for miles on either side of the international border. Taking an ethnographic approach, Alvarez focuses on the impact transnational economic policies like NAFTA have had on growers of mangos and chiles in Mexico, those who transport the produce across the U.S.–Mexico border, and the immigrant communities receiving these goods in the United States.

Contrary to common perceptions in postnational studies, Alvarez shows how the nation-state enacts and connects with the transnational, crossing borders in ways that underwrite new technology and trade. Emphasizing the importance and control of the nation-state in the global process, Mangos, Chiles, and Truckers demonstrates how people make meaning as they struggle with the economic circumstances of their lives, creating cultural traditions and giving new value to old customs and practices.

Robert R. Alvarez Jr. is professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, San Diego.

George Lipsitz is professor of American studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

This pathbreaking work brings rare genealogical depth to anthropological research on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Leo Chavez, author of Covering Immigration: Popular Images and the Politics of the Nation

This isn’t a broad overview but a precise tracing of connections between politics, nations, and different states as they react to economic changes. In emphasizing the importance and methods of control of the nation-state in the global process, Mangos, Chiles and Truckers shows how people adapt to changing economic influences in their daily lives. A well documented, scholarly account.

California Bookwatch