| This dissertation examines contemporary anti-poverty programs in Mexico, with particular attention to how program objectives and implementation strategies are framed. It argues that developments in Mexican anti-poverty programs from the 1990s to 2000 are deeply shaped by neo-liberal influences arising broadly from Mexican State policy and, more specifically, from international financial institutions. The net result is that within Mexican policy and state programs the poor are no longer viewed as “passive victims” but rather as “active agents” or as individuals capable of being so. The dissertation focuses on the extent to which the new anti-poverty programs can be understood as promoting a new “cost effective” form of regulation of the poor. Within the new anti-poverty framework the poor are largely responsible for regulating themselves, while state policies and programs provide the vocabulary, values, start-up funds and administrative controls to encourage this increased self-regulation. The values, assumptions and concepts behind the new anti-poverty programs mark a shift in perception from the previously held notion of the poor as “children” needing to be rescued by the paternalistic state to the poor as “adults” with rights, which should be exercised in the service of making choices to escape poverty. If the poor fail in this effort, it then becomes their fault. The dissertation examines the following Mexican programs: the tortilla food program, “community kitchens” (DIF-Copusi), and the parallel efforts to develop “Solidarity enterprises” (FONAES), and the Program for Education Health and Nutrition (Progresa). |
