Enlaces News (January 2004)

Challenges and Opportunities for Transnational Organizations:
Reflections on Mexican Federations in Chicago

Amy Shannon and Oscar Chacon

Mexican immigrants in Chicago have more than a decade of experience with an innovative form of grassroots organization known as Hometown Associations or “Clubs.” These clubs got their start as social organizations, organizing soccer tournaments, dances and picnics. They also function as mutual assistance societies, playing a key role in helping immigrants adjust to life in the United States. Hometown Associations also engage in a range of economic assistance activities within the immigrant community and directed at their home communities. In recent years, many clubs have linked together to form statewide Federations.

In Chicago, there are now 13 such Federations according to the Mexican Consulate. Unfortunately, concrete membership numbers are hard to come by. Most of the Federations leave the question of membership to their affiliated clubs. A club may have only a few members, or it could have several hundred. In addition, there does not appear to be a standard policy across Federations (or even within a Federation) on the requirements for Club membership. Some clubs meet only a few times a year. Others may meet weekly.

We believe the Federations have enormous potential to make a difference in promoting a better future for Mexicans living in Mexico and the United States. However, in order to achieve this potential they will need to develop home-grown solutions to a number of organizational challenges.
In 2001, five of the Hometown Association Federations, representing community associations from the states of Zacatecas, Michoacán, Durango, Oaxaca and San Luis Potosí; joined together with the Jesus Guadalupe Foundation and Enlaces América, the International Program of Heartland Alliance for Human Needs and Human Rights to develop a pilot leadership training program designed to make hometown association more effective and better able of making positive impacts in their communities in the United States, as well as in Mexico.

Over the past two years, as we have moved through two cycles of the leadership training initiative, we have had the opportunity to accompany several of the Mexican Federations as they continue their transition from a relatively informal set of primarily social organizations, to more complex networks and institutions. This document sets out some preliminary reflections on the challenges and opportunities facing the Federations of Mexican hometown clubs over the coming years as they continue to seek a role in building healthy communities in Mexico and the United States.

ARTICULATING A POLITICAL AGENDA

The new Mexican immigrant-led organizations (clubes, comites, Federaciones, etc) that have emerged over the past decade are developing a political agenda that is unique to them and that is not easily slotted into existing silos. Just to give an example, the organization representing Duranguenses in Chicago, Durango Unido, is deeply concerned about local primary school education and gang violence, but it also cares about access to health care in Durango, as well as the impact of trade policies on small farmers. Other organizations have mobilized constituencies concerned with the right to vote in state, local and Federal levels in Mexico, while at the same time pressing the state government of Illinois to provide drivers’ licenses to undocumented immigrants.
These multi-layered political agendas draw their logic from a commitment to fostering the well-being of communities--both in the United States and in Mexico. They do not map neatly onto the agendas either of US-Latino organizations, traditional U.S. immigration advocacy organizations, the Mexican government, or of Mexican civil society organizations, although they may share common concerns with any or all of these groups. Finding allies and working in coalition will require frank and on-going discussions of interests and the development of strategic alliances, rather than a simple adherence to a ready-made political agenda.

ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND RESOURCES

At the same time as they evolve a political agenda, the Mexican immigrant-led organizations are experimenting with new organizational structures and governance mechanisms that do not directly replicate existing models of “non-profits” in the United States or Asociaciones Civiles in Mexico, nor of quasi-governmental organizations, nor of advocacy groups, although they have elements in common with all of them. Assuming that these organizations should evolve into traditional non-profit forms may be counterproductive to their long-term success. Indeed, one of the sources of HTA resilience is the direct participation of members in core activities such as organizing collective remittances.

One of the most serious challenges in the future of these new associations is the need, on one hand, to significantly increase available human and financial resources for the whole array of institutional, philanthropic and organizing activities they want to carry out, while, on the other hand, maintaining the current, close ties to membership. Some set of strategies for raising funds from within the communities will be critical for ramping up a political agenda for HTAs. However, it is possible and perhaps even imperative for Foundations to play important catalytic roles- particularly in helping organizations to build capacity and strengthen leadership skills. Foundations can also support efforts directed to systematize the experiences of Mexican clubs and/or federations so that lessons can be learned and shared among organizations.
To date, there has been a dramatic gap in resources from funding agencies. A disproportionate amount of funding goes to agencies acting on behalf of immigrants rather than to the immigrant-led organizations themselves.

ORGANIZATIONAL CAPACITY: TRANSLATING ECONOMIC POWER INTO POLITICAL POWER

Organized groups of Mexicans including the Hometown Clubs and Federations are attracting a lot of attention lately. The Inter-American Development Bank has realized that migrants are the largest source of income in many poverty-plagued localities. In fact, the magnitude of remittances exceeds the total amount of Overseas Development Assistance from all sources. Indeed, remittances have overtaken tourism as Mexico’s second largest source of foreign exchange. Suddenly, agencies are taking a much greater interest in immigrant organizations, particularly hometown associations. With this newfound recognition comes a risk. Development agencies, donors, and even governments may develop a set of expectations for transnational community organizations that far outstrips their current institutional capacities. We believe that funders and potential partners must meet the organizations where they are organizationally, not where we might wish they were. In fact, at least in Illinois, all of the Federations, including the largest ones, operate with a purely volunteer staff. When interviewed, most of the leaders point to burn-out and over-commitment as their most pressing problems. Building capacity at all levels continues to be a pressing need for these organizations.

As they develop organizational strategies that cross borders, the new transnational organizations are also inserted in very specific political realities in states and cities in the United States. Just as the different political contexts of Oaxaca and Michoacan create different opportunities for organizing, so do those of Chicago and Los Angeles. It will be important to continue to examine transnational organizing experiences in their specific contexts rather than assuming that the experiences from one locality can be applied to another.

REMITTANCES: NEITHER SILVER BULLET NOR A FACTOR TO DISMISS

The Inter-American Development Bank projects that cash remittances from migrants in the United States to their countries of origin in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean will total more than $300 billion over the next ten years. Experts estimate that Mexicans alone sent more than $12 billion last year. Most of the discussion of remittances has centered around two issues: the use of collective remittances for community investment and mechanisms for reducing the cost of sending remittances.

Collective remittances in particular have captured a great deal of interest, because they can be used as tools for building transboundary communities. However, it is important to situate collective remittances in a policy and economic context. At most, collective remittances might represent 1% of the total of remitted funds. Even if this amount were to double or triple, it would still be a tiny percentage of the capital needed to revitalize local economies. Worse yet, when viewed in the shadow of economic policies that have systematically dismantled funding for agriculture and small to medium-sized enterprise, the impacts of collective remittances could be lost all-together.

In contrast, we believe that the role of migrants as consumers (both in the US and via their remitted dollars in their home countries) has received little attention. Migrants from Central America and Mexico have a combined purchasing power in excess of $200 billion annually in the United States in addition to the many billions they send home. The effects of individual remittances are widely debated. Many studies refer to the fact that the vast majority of remittances go toward immediate consumption, rather than investment in productive assets. Thus remittances are dismissed as leading to a loss of productive capacity in the home country without bringing long-term economic benefit. Anecdotal evidence does indeed suggest that migration may re-shape consumer preferences toward the international brands favored by the migrants. But this trend also offers a significant opportunity to channel the enormous buying power of migrant communities toward more sustainable consumer patterns.

FINDING STRATEGIC ALLIES

If transnational communities are to achieve their ambitious and complex agenda, they urgently need to seek out and strengthen their alliances with different types of organizations. This process must take into account the reality that each group will bring its own interests to the table.

· Government: There is a tendency among Mexican hometown organizations to see the government as the principal ally. This could limit these groups as they develop allies in other sectors
· Civil society organizations in the country of origin- to date this is a huge gap (with a few exceptions)
· Traditional Latino organizations
· Other sectoral interest organizations: labor unions, environmentalists, etc
· Academics: There is an urgent need to accompany the lived experiences with a process of analysis and reflection.

In addition, there is another, ever-growing, group of potential allies for the Mexican immigrant groups: other organized migrants. Without diminishing the importance of creating strong organizations within the Mexican immigrant community, many leaders are becoming aware that they share many common experiences and interests with organized groups of Latin American immigrants from other countries. In particular, groups of Central American immigrants could be new allies, but there are also organized groups of immigrants in Chile (Peruvians); Brazil (Bolivians and Uruguayans); Costa Rica (Nicaraguans), just to name a few. Identifying the points of intersection with existing advocacy groups will be important to building political power. However, it may also be useful to strengthen ties with other groups of organized immigrants, especially as the Mexican groups consider advocacy positions around supra-national policy issues such as trade agreements. ¦