Power and Nonprofit Organizations: North American Charity Organizations in a Mexican Town in the Border Region

This article asserts the implications that networks forged by transnational civil society have had for the development of a Mexican town in the Mexican-U.S. border region. It identifies a new type of immigrant migrating from north to south that consists of middle-class North Americans who must work in Mexico in order to survive. They deterritorialize the strong U.S. tradition of founding nonprofit organizations and reterritorialize this tradition in their host country, Mexico. The article concludes that these transnational organizations have acquired increasing economic and political power within the Mexican village, to the degree that the government authorities have to rely on them in order to compensate for the lack of social and cultural development programs.