The Life and Death of a Border Town
by David Martinez, Special to CorpWatch
June 12th, 2007
In the town of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, close to the U.S. border, two streets intersect: one is called Progreso (Progress) and the other is Fabrica (Factory). They are aptly named streets because they are thoroughfares that only house manufacturing plants called maquiladoras - giant mall sized buildings ringed with fences and with guardhouses posted out front. There are no houses or shops here – indeed, the sidewalks on Progreso and Fabrica are empty, and the only noise that can be heard during a workday are the trucks that drop off supplies and pick up finished goods.
Some of the factories belong to well-known companies like Caterpillar or Sony, others to less well-known companies like Delphi. Early every morning at the beginning of the workday, special buses arrive from specific neighborhoods carrying workers, while others arrive in their own vehicles. They are smartly dressed young women and men whose jobs range from assembling videotapes to refurbishing defective machines. The factories are huge, employ thousands of workers and do brisk business. It is hard to imagine that they could ever pack up and leave, but it is a distinct possibility in the chaotic world of border economics.
The number of maquiladoras began increasing in Nuevo Laredo and other border towns after the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA was signed in 1994. At the time there was much ado about NAFTA, and "free trade" entered the popular lexicon, with its proponents claiming it would bring prosperity to the impoverished population of Mexico, and its detractors predicting doom for U.S. workers and their Mexican counterparts.
What, then, is the reality of "free trade" more than a dozen years later? Did thousands of jobs come to Mexico, as promised by the NAFTA boosters? Or was it a disaster for Mexicans, driving them deeper into poverty and dependence? The answer, as usual, is more complex than can be explained on the nightly news, and is best told in the plain words of the people who experienced it first hand.
...(snip)...
Contemporary success stories like Ramos Arizpe exist in the peaks of the waves of industrialization, while the failures like Morelos make up the valleys. Since NAFTA was signed, waves of industry have rolled across Mexico, particularly in the north of the country, creating boomtowns like Ramos Arizpe over night and then just as quickly the businesses vanish as in Morelos Coahuila. Little village pueblos have become small cities and fields of dry grass become sprawling colonias (settlements) in a few short years.
While waves come and go, they leave the workers high and dry when they break on the shore. Waste is dumped into rivers, land is developed, lives are changed, and everything is rendered more fragile, unpredictable, and ever more precarious.
To the Mexican workers leaving their jobs at the end of another day on the corner of Progreso and Fabrica Avenues in Nuevo Laredo, all of this comes as no surprise: they know that there are no guarantees and no promises of work the next day, other than those made by the factories to the market, which, like the proverbial wild goose in autumn, may take off as soon as they hear of cheaper labor somewhere else, anywhere else, on the planet. ......(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14511 
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