Caught in a Trap: Mexico's Maquiladora Workers

In Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America, 
J.C. Chasteen states that some strategies of neoliberalism, such as promoting free trade and attracting transnational companies to Latin America have not always benefited those countries (322). In fact, they sometimes had disastrous effects (322; 334). Mexico is an example of what can go wrong when workers in a poorer, less industrialized nation are employed to produce items for export to a richer, more industrialized one like the United States. Indeed, most of the benefits and little of the costs are incurred by the transnational companies that use such labor to produce their goods.

Matt Rosenberg (geography.about.com/od/urbaneconomicgeography/a/maquiladoras.htm) describes the Mexican “maquiladoras”, assembly or manufacturing plants, that supply parts and products for export to the U.S. as well as their workers. According to him, the growth of the maquiladoras in Northern Mexico began slowly in the 1960's and accelerated after the 1993 passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which greatly decreased taxes and custom fees. U.S. and other foreign-owned corporations owned quickly seized a chance to maximize profits by operating below the U.S.-Mexican border. Currently, there are over 1 million workers in over 3,000 plants located in Northern Mexican border cities such as Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez, and Matamoros; 90% of the electronics, clothing, appliances, furniture, etc. from these maquiladoras are shipped to the U.S. Their workers are mostly single women, who make as little as 50 cents an hour, working ten hours a day, six days a week, under “sweatshop” conditions. They often live in shantytowns where buildings lack electricity and running water.

As Elyse Bolderstein notes in her “Environmental Justice Case Study: Maquiladora Workers and Border Issues”, these people often labor under hazardous conditions (www.umich.edu/~snre492/Jones/maquiladora.htm#solutions). In her survey of maquiladora workers, 20% mentioned work-related illnesses, 40% inadequate safety training, and 53% a lack of information regarding hazardous substances encountered on the job. In 40% of the plants there was no management-worker health and safety commission although required by Mexican law.

Workers and their communities also suffer other ill effects from unregulated maquiladoras. According to Bolderstein, women plant workers are more likely to have low-birth-weight babies compared to their counterparts employed elsewhere. More disturbingly, the number of anencephalic babies, those born with incomplete brains, was higher in Metamoras, a popular site for maquiladoras. Furthermore, due to lax Mexican environmental laws and poor enforcement, the border area has become the most polluted part of Mexico, with high levels of lead in Tijuana's water and pollution of the Rio Grande. This pollution spills over into the U.S., particularly the border cities of San Diego and El Paso.

While Bolderstein recommends organized protests, petitioning government, unionizing maquiladora workers, and toxic waste clean-up for the maquiladora problem, another solution may be at hand. Recently, China has become a tough competitor to the Mexican maquiladoras as the assembly and manufacture of consumer goods shift to the Asian continent. While the job loss is real, the change may allow Mexico to find an alternative to the maquiladora.

Source of image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/37degrees/3481734401/in/photolist-cLAucQ-75DrN-75DtY-75Dv6-6iECeX-6iEJAa-6iJUcN-6iENkt-6iJXwU-qqqrGZ-pvK1eB-a1mvXS