Apr
22
Globalized Factories in Mexico
April 22, 2008 | | Leave a Comment
By Wanching (Week 10)
In my last post “Across the US/Mexican Border”, I talked about how Mexicans are desperate to cross the border illegally hoping their great American dream will one day come true. However, many end up being poor and exploited, feeling out of place and void of hope.
Sad enough for these illegal immigrants, but those who choose to remain in Mexico aren’t much better off either. Under the tide of globalization, many are exploited by transnational corporations that invest in numerous “sweatshop factory” to take advantage of the cheap Mexican labour force.
Mexican photojournalist Julian Cardona, who has chronicled the journey of illegal Mexican migrants for over a decade, presented his latest photography series at the first installment of the Real World Lecture Series on 26 February 2008 in the Ragan Theater of the Utah Valley State College.
According to Cardona, nearly 200,000 young men and women are currently employed in the so-called “globalized factories” in Juarez, a small town where he comes from. Most of them are paid only US$5 per shift for positions that would earn US$30 per hour in the US. What’s more, Mexicans are so desperate to earn this meager income to sustain their life that they have overlooked the improvement of basic infrastructure and education. Paved roads and running water are almost non-existent, said Cardona.
By devoting all their energy into working for the “globalized factories”, many of these young people have given up their hope of higher education which, ironically, is the very thing that can lift them from poverty. According to Cardona, the average education level of citizens in Juarez is 7.7 years. With the constantly expanding lower class, drug dealers, traffickers and all other kinds of criminals are found just about everywhere.In the photo exhibition, a section called “Casa de la Muerte”, or the House of the Dead, at least seven people, including three US citizens, were killed in one house. Police believed that local criminal rings were the culprits, and the xenophobia causing such violence has alarmed US Immigration and Customs enforcement agencies.
The sad fact is that, many of these “globalized factories” are in fact products of free trade agreements that the US has signed with Mexico over the years. During the debate over the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, advocates assured the US and Mexican public that that the agreement would greatly alleviate unauthorized migration by increasing unemployment opportunities in Mexico and closing the gap between US and Mexican wages. The trade agreement was meant to help Mexicans develop their economies. However, whether consciously or unconsciously, these US corporations turned out to be at least partly responsible for the poverty Mexicans face today.
According to a report on Global Exchange, an NGO based in California, the value of the Mexican minimum wage dropped 20 percent in the first decade after the agreement was signed, and the price of bread rose more than 500 percent. The increase in Mexican poverty has led to a drastic increase in internal migration, especially from the countryside to the city, aggravating problems of its own.
On the economic side, Jim Hightower, an US activist, suggested that huge agribusiness operations in Mexico, many owned by US investors, now control Mexican agricultural production and pay farmers less than US$2 per hour. Since the North American Free Trade Agreement was passed, there has been a flood of business bankruptcies and takeovers in Mexico as aggressive US chains have started to move in one after another. US corporations now control 40 per cent of the country’s formal jobs, with Wal-Mart being the No. 1 employer.
His findings support Cardona’s argument that, contrary to public belief, living expenses in Mexico are roughly 80% to 90% of that of the US. There really are no justification to exploit Mexican workers by claiming that they can live on US$5 a day.
