For whom the Taco Bells toll - Popular responses to NAFTA south of the border

This article explores recent forms of Mexican popular nationalism in the wake of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Drawing on ethnographic research in a colonia popular of Mexico City, I maintain that analyses of nationalism and dass, including within critical theory, should re-examine cultural questions pertaining to national sovereignty within contemporary globalization. Responses to the Free Trade Agreement among the urban poor in Mexico, for instance, indicate a growing disparity between elite and popular perceptions regarding issues such as democracy and nationalism. Although grassroots leftist politics in the last two decades have been successful in overcoming a previous neglect of daily needs and realities for the poor, the article also argues that recent popular social movements have too often ignored debate on questions of transnationalism and nationalism.