From the Revolution to the Maquiladoras

Jennifer Bickham Mendez is Associate Professor of Sociology at the College of William and Mary.

• About the Series viPreface viiAcknowledgments xi1. "Just Us and Our Worms": The Working and Unemployed Women's Movement, "Maria Elena Cuardra" 12. Oppositional Politics in Nicaragua and the Formation of MEC 253. Gendering Power and Resistance in an Era of Globalizations 594. "Autonomous but Organized" : MEC's Search for an Organizational Structure 795. "Rompiendo Esqruemas" : MEC's Political Strategies and the Free Trade Zone 1336. MEC and the Postsocialist State : Democracy, Rights, and Citizenship under Globalization 1777. Resistance Goes Global : Power and Opposition in an Age of Globalization 205Notes 227Abbreviations and Acronyms 239Bibliography 241Index 267

“Jennifer Bickham Mendez provides a nuanced ethnography that does not simply assert the gendered intricacies of local and global political-economic processes but artfully traces their unfolding in the contemporary Nicaraguan context. She reveals the organizational and discursive possibilities presented through the international feminist and human rights movements and also elucidates the constraints and tensions across local political hierarchies of organized labor, state bureaucracies, and a national/regional women’s movement fractured along class lines. Mendez’s analysis of MEC and the wider regional Network provides a powerful lens on the range of tactics, coping mechanisms, and organizational strategies currently being enacted on a stage that is simultaneously local, regional, and global.”-Carla Freeman, author of High Tech and High Heels in the Global Economy: Women, Work, and Pink-Collar Identities in the Caribbean “This is a compelling case study of a women’s NGO organizing women workers in a Free Trade Zone in post-Sandinista Nicaragua. Jennifer Bickham Mendez’s account reveals the challenges faced by a feisty NGO trying to survive and maintain its autonomy-from capital, the state, and the good intentions of international donors. It is a testimony to the strengths, but also the fragility, of civil society in today’s struggling democracies.”-Jane S. Jaquette, coeditor of Women and Democracy: Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe “From the Revolution to the Maquiladoras is written on the basis of ethnographic research and the author’s personal involvement over the course of a decade; it is therefore a historical chronicle, an investigation into the operations of a unique women’s organization, and a personal testimony.” - Patricia Fernández-Kelly (Signs) “A must-read text for anyone interested in contemporary women’s movements, labor organizing, and issues of transnationalism and globalization in Latin America and elsewhere.” - Lynn Stephen (American Ethnologist) “This well-written, well-organized and accessible book is exemplary in its ability to locate a case study within a larger context and reveal the connections between day-today organizing and the transnational links and multiple global spheres stimulated by globalization.” - Norma Stoltz Chinchilla (Contemporary Sociology)