José A. Muñoz

The EZLN (Zapatista Army of National Liberation) uprising in Chiapas, Mexico, in 1994 took advantage of many political opportunities in an economic and politically liberalizing state. Most significantly, the negotiation and passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) generated issues over which to mobilize and created political openings in the system to support mobilization. While NAFTA highlighted the dark side of globalization with its negative effects on living conditions in southern Mexico, it also ushered in political reforms that protected human rights and brought great international attention to Mexico. Many nations were watching to see whether Mexico had reached economic and political maturity. Taken together, these political opportunities provided the context for the EZLN to mobilize as a political movement.

This article undertakes a multivariate analysis of political participation among Mexican American immigrants. Traditional forms of participation such as registration and voting are not adequate tests of civic engagement for a population including 7 million noncitizens. Rather, this article examines nonelectoral participation including attending a meeting or rally, volunteering for a campaign, or donating money to a political cause. This research employs a national sample of Mexican Americans, including immigrants and noncitizens, and the models reveal that Mexican American immigrants are politically active. The authors find that the foreign-born are not less likely to be active than native-born respondents and, furthermore, among the foreign-born, noncitizens are just as likely to participate as naturalized citizens. Although traditional SES variables remain important, language fluency, percentage of life in the United States, and immigrant attitudes toward opportunities in the United States contribute additional predictive capacity to models of political participation among Mexican immigrants.