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The Case of the Mesoamerican People's Forum Katherine MA Reilly

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The Case of the Mesoamerican People's Forum Katherine MA Reilly Open Networking in Central America: The Case of the Mesoamerican People’s Forum by Katherine M. A. Reilly A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of Political Science University of Toronto © Copyright by Katherine M. A. Reilly 2010 Open Networking in Central America: The Case of the Mesoamerican People’s Forum Katherine M. A. Reilly Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of Political Science University of Toronto 2010 Abstract This dissertation considers the case of the Mesoamerican People’s Forum (MPF), a Central American ‘cousin’ of the World Social Forum, and manifestation of the Global Justice Movement. It argues that the MPF cannot be adequately understood as a transnational social movement or as an ‘open space.’ Rather, it is best understood as a political playing field on which the leaders of locally rooted social movements contested the future of the Central American left within an uncertain and changing political context. Based on extensive ethnographic field work and grounded analysis, it argues that well- placed actors within forum spaces can best be thought of as ‘mediators’ between state and society. The emergence of de facto federated governance structures in Central America, plus weak democratic institutions, have placed new pressures on mediators. Leaders within the Central American left find that they need to build up and/or maintain power bases to shield their positions within an uncertain political environment. They mobilize people to participate in transnational forum spaces because of the legitimating benefits, but shape networked flows within these spaces to limit the potential for networking to erode established positions. Thus I ii iii conclude that openness is neither the condition nor the objective of social forums, but rather a pawn strategically deployed or retracted in the course of networked interactions. The work advances thinking about the nature of collective political subjectivity in an era of transformationalist globalization. It also argues in favor of critical realist perspectives on collectivization in a post-development, globalizing world. Specifically, scholars can best advance an ‘epistemology of the south’ by promoting and protecting cognitive justice, which in turn can be achieved through the use of realist approaches that serve to uncover the practices of power at work within networked spaces. Acknowledgments Projects of this magnitude are necessarily the product of an extended network of individuals and a lifetime of learning. I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to the many people who have helped me along the way, and to especially thank those who have played a significant role in bringing this particular work to fruition. First and foremost, this work would not have been possible without the wisdom and collaboration of literally hundreds of MPF participants, organizers and leaders in Panama, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico. The stories and insights shared during field research are as precious and unique as the individuals who revealed them. I have borrowed your words and woven them into a tapestry of my own design. I hope that the result resonates with your experience and in some small way contributes to the realization of your aspirations. The various stages of this project have benefitted from the generous financial support of the Ontario Government Scholarship Program (OGS), the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Project Open Source / Open Access (POS/OA) at the University of Toronto, the International Development Research Council (IDRC), and PEO International. I am especially indebted to Fundación Probidad, El Salvador, Sula Batsu, Costa Rica and Cholsamaj, Guatemala for providing me with homes-away-from-home during field research. Finally, thank you to the Centre for Inter-American Studies and Program (CEPI) at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) for providing me with a Ford Foundation research fellowship to write up my initial findings. Each member of my dissertation committee has contributed in a unique way to both my personal growth and the success of this project. To my supervisor, Ron Deibert, thank you for giving me the space to explore, and for your patient, clear, and steady bearing as I did so. You have both kept me on track and allowed me to wonder, and, in the process have taught me to iv v become an independent intellectual, for which I am immensely grateful. To Ana Maria Bejarano and Matt Hoffman, thank you for your warmth and caring, and for your moral and intellectual support in moments of both crisis and curiosity. I feel extremely lucky to have worked with each of you over the past four years. To my internal examiner Courtney Jung, thank you for coming along at just the right moment, and for being exactly who you are. Finally to my external examiner Laura Macdonald, thank you for providing the insightful comments that inspired the Epilogue to this work. This work has also benefitted from the contributions of several very special individuals. Thank you to Dickson Eyoh and Richard Stren for starting me off on the right foot and for providing guidance throughout the process. Thank you to my ‘Ad Hoc Dissertation Committee’ of Kemly Camacho, Leslie Chan, Janet Conway, Ricardo Gomez, Jaime Lopez, Juliana Martínez Franzoni, and Mark and Tonya Surman for providing inspiration and for being sounding boards, critics and friends over the past six years. An enormous and well-deserved thank you to Maria José Arce, Anaily Castellanos, Rebecca Schild and Barry Reilly for providing such excellent transcription and editorial support. And thank you especially to Neilan Barnes, Kim Carter and Elisabeth King whose energy, intelligence and good taste have made this process more interesting, more productive, more rewarding and more fun. Finally, I would not have achieved this milestone without Wayne Carrigan, who has been by my side during every moment of this process, or my parents Lorna and Barry Reilly, to whom I dedicate this work. If they gave out PhDs for love and support, each of you would be getting one as well. Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgements iv Preface xi Chapter 1: Introduction 1 1 Questioning Openness 1 2 Historical Backdrop: Social Forums and the Search for New Organizational Models 4 3 The Case of the Mesoamerican People’s Forum: Key Findings 8 4 Defining Key Terms: Openness, Globalization and Development 17 4.1 Openness 18 4.2 Globalization 20 4.3 Development 23 4.4 The Global Justice Movement 27 5 Introducing the Arguments to Come 29 Chapter 2: Literature Review 31 1 Cosmopolitan Camp 33 2 Culturalist Camp 39 3 Vanguardist Camp 46 4 Summing Up: Analysis of the Literature 52 Chapter 3: A Constitutive Approach: Theoretical and Methodological Framework 57 1 A Constitutive Approach 60 1.1 Constitutive Implications for Thinking about Mobilization 64 1.2 Constitutive Implications for Collective Identity 67 2 Research Design 73 2.1 Philosophical Commitments 73 2.2 Grounded Theory Approach 80 2.3 Data Gathering and Analysis 86 2.4 Presentation of Results 89 Chapter 4: Context 93 1 Central America’s Changing Political Economy 94 2 Civil Society Responds to the Peace Process 103 3 Civil Society Contemplates New Modes of Organizing 107 4 Conclusions 113 vi Chapter 5: History of the MPF 120 1 Initial Forums 121 2 The MPF and the CAFTA 125 3 The MPF after CAFTA 135 4 Conclusions 139 Chapter 6: An Insider View of the MPF 141 1 An Insider Perspective on the Constitution of the MPF 142 2 Analysis of Objectives 147 3 Analysis of Experiences and Characterizations of the MPF 151 3.1 Participants 152 3.2 Organizers 156 3.3 Leaders 158 4 Conclusions 163 Chapter 7: Constitutive Forces: An Outsider View of the MPF 168 1 Valued Identities, Trajectories and Activities 170 1.1 Re-Radicalization of the Left 173 1.2 Reorientation of Associational Politics 179 1.3 Reconciling Identity-Based Positions 184 1.4 Summing Up: Clashing Values within the MPF 190 2 Key Sites of Power for the Enactment of Values within the MPF 193 3 Impacts on Cognitive Justice 206 4 Conclusions 211 Chapter 8: Conclusions 213 1 Implications 217 1.1 Implications for Development Thinking and Research 217 1.2 Implications for Thinking about Global Processes 224 2 Extensions and Applicability 228 2.2 Limitations and Extensions 228 2.3 Potential Applications and Future Research 230 Epilogue 234 Appendices 238 Bibliography 245 vii List of Tables Table 1: Analysis of Literature Review and Foundations for Alternative Position 51 Table 2: From Research Protocol to Presentation of Results 90 Table 3: Characterization of Central America’s Political Economy 115 Table 4: Constitution of the MPF 146 Table 5: Enacting Values 207 viii List of Figures Figure 1: The ‘Three R’s’ of Intellectual Accountability 84 Figure 2: Personal Diary for Memoing 88 Figure 3: Example of Sorting Exercise 89 Figure 4: The Structure of the Comité Mesoamericano in its Ideal Conception 130 Figure 5: Enactment of Political Subject Debate 133 Figure 6: Representation of the Comité Mesoamericano in Practice 198 ix Appendices Appendix 1: Breakdown of Interviewees 238 Appendix 2: Chronological List of Social Forums and Related Events 239 Appendix 3: Detailed Depiction of Mesoamerican People’s Forum Events 241 Appendix 4: Key MPF Actors through Time 244 x Preface Since 1996 I have been involved in international ‘development’ networks headed by Western institutions oriented towards ‘resolving problems’ in Latin American countries, first with the Center for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean (CERLAC) at York University, then with the Organization for American States (OAS) in Washington, D.C., and finally with the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in Ottawa. The networks I worked in each had a strong research focus, and all were (or were becoming) very self-conscious about their use of information and communications technologies (ICTs), often because we were actively trying to figure out how to use them.
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