This thesis seeks to promote a clearer understanding of relationships between trade liberalization and environmental quality in a free trade zone along an international border, between countries unevenly matched in development and infrastructure. Specifically, it examines whether theories of environmental degradation provide appropriate models for explaining the impact of NAFTA on the environment in the Paso del Norte. The relationship between trade liberalization and environmental quality is examined through an analysis of environmental indicators in the decade preceding and following NAFTA. Finally, the role of environmental governance is addressed, especially the intricacies involved in multi-jurisdictional governance of the environment. The research indicates that trade liberalization is not necessarily environmentally harmful. The data suggest that NAFTA had little to no direct negative impact on the region's environmental condition, but they also do not provide evidence that NAFTA improved the environment. One factor that could have helped to limit its effects may be local, interstate, and international initiatives that improved the health of the ecosystem along the border before NAFTA was even conceived. Another factor is the environmental governance in place before and after NAFTA. Thus, it may be beneficial for trade liberalization agreements to address environmental concerns as integral parts of the negotiations, and to set requirements for meeting infrastructure demands, as the agreements are implemented. Furthermore, it is important that international environmental institutions established to monitor environmental cooperation be more closely associated with the trade cooperation organizations and be given the authority needed to complete their directives more effectively. / Master of Arts

Chicana Literature: A Feminist Perspective of Gloria Anzaldúa's Identity Politics Doctoral Thesis Mgr. et Mgr. Tereza Jiroutová Kynčlová 2017 ABSTRACT In the analyses executed in the present doctoral thesis, Chicana literary production emerges as a complex example of a strategic and reflexive instrumentalization of literature in the form of a political and activist tool contributing to Chicanas' gender and cultural emancipation on the one hand. On the other hand, within the Chicana/o context, literature is employed for perfecting the politics of recognition of the marginalized nation typified by the specificity of its geographic, cultural, and social location on the U.S.-Mexico border where a plethora of socially constructed categories interact and intersect. The doctoral thesis further provides a gender analysis of literary representations of Chicana/o lived experience by Chicana feminist writers in general and by Gloria Anzaldúa in particular, and investigates how these representations help shape feminist thought not only in relation to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, but within and beyond the United States. Moreover, the thesis supplies an interpretation of Anzaldúa's reconceptualization of the border concept as a pertinent means for comprehending Chicanas'/os' socio-cultural context and for forging a...

This study has for its goal to examine whether a new racist prejudice against Mexican illegal immigrants was driving the activities of the minutemen movement operating along the U.S.- Mexico border whose stated goal was to prevent illegal immigrants from entering the country. This work assumes that the old blatant racism is no longer acceptable within society but was replaced by a conspicuously color-blind rhetoric, typical of the minutemen movement, that might harbor a new racist prejudice. New racism does not put forth a race defined biologically but understands the white and non-white races conceptually. It thus contributes to the maintenance of the white-black dichotomy within society and more importantly to the discrimination and exclusion of the non-white races. In order to disclose a possible racist prejudice, this study conducts a Critical Discourse Analysis of the minutemen's discourse. Results of this analysis show that especially the focus on the notion of law and order, so typical of the discourse, is hugely misleading and that under this seemingly color-blind reasoning, there is, indeed, a hidden expression of the new racist prejudice.

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In the early 1990s, a series of gruesome murders of young women in Ciudad Juárez, a city located in the U.S.-Mexico border, shook the political landscape of Mexico. A decade later, the strange and violent murders, known as the feminicides or feminicidios of Juárez, reached international infamy across hemispheres and continents. During this time, the city and the cases became the subjects of an extensive body of scholarship and of any imaginable artistic medium (narrative, poetry, theater, performance, music, and so on). Eventually, the complexity and overexposure of the cases and the sociopolitical conditions of Ciudad Juárez placed them at the center of a paradoxical debate: on one hand, the work of activists, feminists, and scholars of social sciences (like anthropologists and sociologists) studied the murders as a localized example of a larger phenomenon of mysoginistic violence; on the other, journalistic and media investigations of Juárez understood the murders as the products of specific agents (serial killers, murderers, drug cartels, amongst others) and the fractures within the Mexican Nation-State. And yet, despite the expansion and overlapping of these discourses, fictional representations of Juárez remained tangential to this intricate debate. Thus, this research explores the different ways in which writers, artists, and filmmakers deployed and negotiated existent perspectives on the feminicides within fictional environments. As a result of the vast amount of published work available on Ciudad Juárez, I narrowed the objects of my research through a transnational scope. The resulting sample of texts transverses borders (Mexico and the U.S.), continents (Latin America and Europe), genres (fiction and nonfiction), and mediums (literature and film). The first chapter explores the connections of Sergio González Rodríguez’s Huesos en el desierto and Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 through the theoretical framework of the possible worlds of fiction. The second chapter moves to issues of representation, gender, and race through the analysis of two novels written by Chicana scholars: Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s Desert Blood: The Juárez Murders and Stella Pope Duarte’s If I Die in Juárez. Finally, the third chapter focuses on film representations of Juárez and the feminicides in the form of Gregory Nava’s Bordertown and Carlos Carrera’s Backyard/El Traspatio. / text

Le développement démocratique engendre-t-il un changement dans la politique étrangère du Mexique ?La politique étrangère « traditionnelle » mexicaine est réputée pour être passive, légaliste et nationaliste, telle la définie le Parti Révolutionnaire Institutionnel au début du XXème siècle, jusqu’à la fin des années 1990. Depuis cette date, la politique étrangère mexicaine est en pleine transition sous l’effet d’un nouvel ordre mondial et du processus de démocratisation interne.En 2000, l’élection du président Fox jouit d’une légitimité internationale qui lui permet de renouveler la politique extérieure en se focalisant sur la défense des droits de l’Homme et de la démocratie. Ce changement diplomatique marque une rupture politique avec le régime précédent.Par le biais de la révision du ALENA, il cherche d’une part, à approfondir l’intégration avec les États-Unis avec la négociation d’un accord migratoire, et d’autre part, à développer une activité multilatérale, en particulier au sein des forums de l’ONU. Cette politique vise à réduire la dépendance du Mexique vis-à-vis des États-Unis en intensifiant sa présence multilatérale. Cet objectif sera néanmoins fortement perturbé par des éléments internes, comme l’inertie bureaucratique, et externes, avec les attentats terroristes du 11 septembre.Cette recherche s’appuie sur la littérature politiste spécialisée sur la politique étrangère mexicaine.Elle critique les analyses qui s’attachent exclusivement à démontrer le manque d’habilité et les erreurs diplomatiques de l’administration Fox. La thèse soutient au contraire, que ces changement sont permis de mettre sur l’agenda politique des dossiers fondamentaux comme la politique migratoire, les droits de l’Homme et la coopération pour le développement. / Has Mexican foreign policy changed with the advent of the new democratic rule in Mexico?Traditional Mexican Foreign Policy, known as passive, reactive, legalistic, and nationalistic, was installed by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) from the start of the 20th century to the late90s. Since that date, Mexican foreign policy faces a double transformation dynamic: the external,with the establishment of a new world order; and the internal, with the Mexican democratization process.2000 elections, depicted as a transparent process, gave president Vicente Fox sufficient international legitimacy to modify foreign policy agenda, introducing the protection of human rights and democratic values. These changes produce a political rupture with the previous regimeand triggered a change in the foreign policy behaviour.The new foreign policy program includes a complementary strategy: first, widen the regional integration within the United States, by the revision of the NAFTA, with a negotiation of amigration agreement; second, deploying a strong multilateral activity (mainly United Nationsforums). This stratagem seeks to reduce Mexico’s U.S. dependence, by intensifying its multilateral presence. But, internal and external causalities, inertial bureaucratic practices and the effects of September 11 reversed this policy.This research is based on political literature specialized in Mexican foreign policy. It critically analyzes the classic approach that focus exclusively on the lack of diplomatic skill and blunders of Fox’s administration. This thesis argues instead that these changes have helped set the politicalagenda of fundamental issues as migration policy, human rights and development cooperation. / ¿Hubo cambio en la política exterior de México con la llegada de la democracia?La política exterior “tradicional” de México, conocida como pasiva, legalista y nacionalista,instalada a inicios del siglo XX por el Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) se enfrenta, en los años noventa, a un doble contexto de transición: el externo, ante la influencia de un nuevo orden mundial; y el interno, con el proceso de democratización. La elección del 2000, considerada un proceso electoral transparente y equitativo, le otorga algobierno de Fox una legitimidad internacional que le permite proponer una agenda de política exterior “nueva”, centrada en la protección de los derechos humanos y la democracia. Esto representa una ruptura política con respecto al régimen anterior y un signo de cambio en el comportamiento hacia el exterior.El nuevo programa de política exterior incluye una estrategia complementaria: primero, profundizar la integración con Estados Unidos, mediante la revisión del TLCAN, con la negociación de un acuerdo migratorio; y segundo, una actividad multilateral, particularmente en los foros de la ONU. Esta política busca reducir la dependencia de Estados Unidos, intensificando su presencia multilateral. Este objetivo es revertido a causa de factores tanto de causalidad interna como externa,como las inercias burocráticas y los efectos de los atentados del 11 de septiembre.Esta investigación se basa en la literatura especializada sobre la política exterior mexicana, y criticalos análisis enfocados exclusivamente en la falta de habilidad y los errores diplomáticos de la administración Fox. Esta tesis sostiene lo contrario, que estos cambios permitieron meter en la agenda política temas fundamentales como la política migratoria, los derechos humanos y la cooperación para el desarrollo.