Remitting democracy? The role of migrant remittances in promoting social and political change in Guanajuato, Mexico

One of the things that Mexico had never acknowledged about my father-I insist that you at least entertain this idea-is the possibility that my father and others like him were the great revolutionaries of Mexico.Pocho pioneers. They, not Pancho Villa, not Zapata, were heralds of the modern age in Mexico. They left for the United States and then they came back to Mexico. And they changed it forever.-Richard Rodriguez. 2009. "Go North Young Man," pp. 215-216.1. IntroductionAs the popular Latino writer Richard Rodriguez notes, Mexican migrants have had a profound impact on their home country (Rodriguez 2009: 215-216). Every year migrants play an instrumental role in underwriting the economic wellbeing of the Mexican countryside by remitting billions of dollars back to their friends and family members. In fact, since 2005 Mexican migrants have sent back more than $20 billion dollars per year, accounting for roughly two percent of the country's GDP (Banco de Mexico). However, migrants also partake in the shaping of social and political norms in their hometown regions. For example, over the last decade migrants have worked closely with their hometown communities and the Mexican state in an effort to promote meaningful development in rural townships across the country. Still, the actual effect of this type of collaboration on social and political norms is not well understood.In this article I systematically analyze the nature of remittance-led development (RLD) in Mexico through an in-depth case study of El Timbinal, Guanajuato. The town of El Timbinal, which has been working with migrants on development initiatives for more than three decades, provides a particularly fruitful environment to study the effects of RLD on the ground. As I argue below, El Timbinal reveals the role of social and economic remittances in promoting political change, while at the same time illustrating the trials and tribulations of deepening democratic practices within political circles traditionally marked by patron-client relationships. The article is structured in the following manner. I open with a brief literature review, followed by an in-depth analysis of RLD in El Timbinal. Finally, I conclude by discussing several policy implications that emerge from my research in Guanajuato.2. Literature ReviewIn Mexico, few factors affect local communities more than emigration. Jonathan Fox, borrowing from Albert Hirschman's classic analysis (1970), describes the potential influence of migrants on their communities as a distinct process of exit and voice. Specifically, Fox (2007; 2008) argues that Mexican citizens faced with entrenched poverty and lack of access to political voice frequently opt to migrate or "exit" due to an inability to influence the conditions that structure their lives. However, as Fox points out, in recent decades Mexican migrants living in the U.S. have begun to exercise their "voice" in their communities of origin in the form of remittances and communal development initiatives. Fox's work implies that unsatisfied citizens have four basic options: remain faithful to the status quo (loyalty), stay and take action in an effort to improve social conditions (voice without exit), permanently withdraw (exit without voice) or withdraw with the intention of improving social conditions through migration (exit with voice). Given this, migration appears to have a potential dual effect on Mexican society, such that it first reduces social pressure on politicians and then fosters the potential for social and political change as migrants begin to remit money and ideas back to hometown communities. This relationship is depicted in Table 1.Extant research supports Fox's theoretical framework. Early research, for example, found that emigration drained local communities of their most productive citizens and workers, thus having an overall detrimental effect on local development. This body of literature depicts migration as an irrevocable form of exit that traps communities in a vicious cycle of dependency in which migrants and their families waste away precious savings on superfluous consumption (Reichert 1981; Staurt and Kearney 1981; Wiest 1979). …