ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the social costs of crisis and structural adjustment in the Eighties were compounded by the policies adopted by the Salinas administration to secure the North American Free Trade Agreement. In the case of rural society, however, the worst may be yet to come, since the fall implications of carlos Salinas's moves to restructure Mexican agriculture will work themselves out during the Zedillo sexennial. Commentators who interpreted the result as a ringing endorsement of neoliberal policies seem, however, to have little justification for doing so. Developments with regard to international migration have, however, provoked new contradictions which are exacerbating intra-communal tensions. Roger Rouse's analysis of the cultural politics of class transformation within the Aguilillan "transnational community" reveals what he terms a kind of "bifocality" among Aguilillan men. The chapter also presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book.
