ABSTRACT
In what has been labeled the "developing world," progress and development are often symbolically linked with consumption icons from the "first" or "developed" world. In Mexico, a country whose largest source of income is remittances sent by migrant workers laboring in the United States—surpassing revenues generated by the oil industry and tourism—small and medium-sized towns often positively perceive the construction of an international supermarket chain or the establishment of a transnational corporation as a constructive step on the road toward Western-style modernization. The sociospatial processes and impacts embedded in the embrace of such economic practices have been labeled in various ways, in line with those defining these phenomena. Characterizations include phrases such as "the power of commercialization," "globalization and its homogenizing effects," and "economic development" (Amin 2002; Castells 1989; Sassen 1996). Regardless ofwhich conceptualization scholars choose, the reasons for the perceived benefits of "Wal-Martization" in Mexico cannot be isolated from the material realities of some of the economic and political shifts that have occurred during the last thirty years (Dezalay and Garth 2002). The arrival of transnational corporations has occurred in tandem with rapid and unfettered urban growth that has resulted in an urbanization rate of 80 percent, a figure higher than that of the United States (Barajas and Zamora 2002; Camp 1996; LaBotz 1995). The neoliberalization of Mexican political and economic life, which has strongly encouraged first-world consumption patterns, has also led to the decentralization of the Mexican government, effectively undoing the ties between municipal, state, and federal levels of government that were so strong during the seventy-year "perfect dictatorship" of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Babb 2001; Middlebrook 2002). The complexities and idiosyncrasies touched on above are imbricated in the proliferation of Wal-Mart stores in Mexico and provide an informative lens through which to analyze how a seemingly sacred site such as the Pyramid of the Sun (Figure 16.1) can become a backdrop for a global mega-retailer.
