Zapata Army of National Liberation
arose in the Mexican state of Chiapas,
partly in response to fears about NAFTA’s
impact at home. The increasing social
tensions contributed to a liberalizing of
Mexico’s political system, as the long-
reigning Institutional Revolutionary
Party (PRI) gave up some of its hold on
power. But the tensions also contributed
to continued heavy immigration, legal
and illegal, to the United States.
By the late 1990s, people from
Mexico were by far the largest group of
foreign-born people in the United States.
Seven million people living in the United
States in 1997 had been born in Mexico;
the next largest groups of foreign-born
people, Filipinos and Chinese, numbered
only 1.1 million each. Mexicans also far
outstripped other Hispanic foreign-born
groups. Cubans, the next largest Hispanic
foreign-born group, numbered 913,000;
Dominicans 632,000; and Salvadorans
607,000.
El Norte
Even more than in the past, the U.S.-
Mexico border region in the late 20th
century took on the distinctive character of
an extra-national region, one that tran-
scended national boundaries. In this region
it became increasingly common for work-
ers to commute from Mexico every day to
work in jobs in the United States, then
return home to Mexico at night. Many
Mexicans laboring in various fields—
including construction, service, and agri-
culture—came to prefer this arrangement
because higher U.S. wages buy more in
Mexico, where prices are lower. Others did
it because they preferred Mexican culture;
still others saw no significant differenceA CHANGING COMMUNITY 199Mexican workers in a foreign-owned factory, or maquiladora, in Mexico (Corbis-
Bettmann)The Rapid Growth of Mexican Border Towns, 1970–1990