Please join us for our first presentation of the year next Wednesday, October 15th in SS 401. Chad Broughton, Senior Lecturer in Public Policy Studies at Chicago, will be presenting his paper ‘Padre Mike and the Rise of Reynosa, Tamaulipas’.The abstract for the presentation is below and two chapters from his book Boom, Bust, Exodus: The Rust Belt, the Maquilas, and a Tale of Two Cities are attached. To facilitate constructive feedback, we ask that you try and read these before the talk. Food will be provided, we hope to see you there!

This article chronicles the rise of Reynosa, Tamaulipas, a border city on the fringes of American consciousness, and yet where much of the hemisphere’s stuff is made. The border boomtown—just across the Rio Grande from its sister city McAllen, Texas—is the consummate neoliberal city, a global production center where northern capital meets southern labor in the maquiladora. Texan Mike Allen, a priest-turned-power broker, almost single-handedly propelled this sleepy petroleum town into a frenetic, sprawling city that bustles with hard-laboring migrants and throbs with the energy of commerce, legal and illegal. Dubbed “Nafta Man” by Time for his savvy bilingual and bicultural deal-making, the story of Mike Allen and his organization, the McAllen Economic Development Corporation, offers a window into the dynamics of burgeoning second-tier cities that are absorbing the rural displaced. This account, based on historical and ethnographic research, explores the making and ethos of the brave new urban world at the U.S.-Mexico border.