The journey home can be compared to
any empty boat coming ashore for many women in Ciudad Juarez, a northern city
in Chihuahua that borders the Rio Grande River.
Here, since the passing of the North American Free Trade Alliance in
1994, maquiladoras have been rising from the ground bringing many low wage
workers, most of the women, flooding to the area in search of opportunity. The NAFTA agreement was the United States’
cunning attempt at exploiting a changing national Latin American identity. Fresh off of many catastrophic economic
events brought in by surging prices for natural resources, fighting for
indigenous land, and widespread unemployment and impoverished families due to
governments defaulting on loans, the then nationalist Mexico was in search of a
new identity. Seemingly out of the blue,
many neoliberal leaders began popping up (disguised once as nationalist
leaders) looking to take control of the throne and reap the rewards. Their goal: to create a free market system
much like the United States. The problem: it benefitted mostly the middle to upper
classes and went harshly against the poor as they saw their situations worsen.
In order
to have items built close to home and enjoy the profits that came from cheap
labor, the United States passed NAFTA along with Canada and Mexico. Ever since its inception, there has been a
constant and eerie trend that can be seen happening along the U.S.-Mexico
border towns that are home to many of these cheap labor factories called
maquiladoras. As stated earlier, the
main demographic these factories employ are very poor women. They are subject to less than adequate
conditions as far as health is concerned, and they are also known to be
sexually abused, assaulted, and harassed constantly. Unfortunately, that is the least of their
concerns. The trend that I spoke of
earlier comes in the form of murder. Many
of these women are abducted, killed, and raped while returning home from their
day’s work at the maquiladoras. I had a
professor that had a first-hand glimpse into the problems affected areas such
as Ciudad Juarez and the details he shared with our class were astounding. Grieving mothers, distraught families, and
decapitated bodies all formed the thesis for his presentation. One pervasive questions held true to all
involved in putting a stop to this violence; who continues to do it and why?
As many
of you may have continually heard on the news, cartels are running rampant in
Mexico, inflicting violence and terrorizing entire areas through their drug
funded ventures. Many believe cartels
are a major problem in the violence happening in Ciudad Juarez as many of the
tactics used to kill hold true such as being hung publicly from a bridge or
being burned alive as you are tied together head first into a garbage can. Little girls returning from work very late at
night being abducted and brought into the sexual slave trade. The families continue to protest and cry for
help as the local government and police forces due little to uncover the
mysteries that plague the town while seemingly containing major evidence that
could be used to catch the criminals and bring restitution to the victims and
their families.
At one
point, an open market may have seemed conducive to Mexico and signing a major
agreement with a prospering nation was one step closer to the change they had
visualized for so long. Unfortunately,
this idea only benefitted a portion of the population and left the poor worse
off than before. The maquiladoras
brought the opportunity that some had proposed, but it also brought the
opportunity for the cartels to wreak havoc on a town that has been named as the
“most violent outside of a war zone.”
Mexico has since lost its’ neoliberal identity and regained much of what
is lost in its’ nationalist identity.
Let us hope and pray that this new regime can help Mexico see better
days.
http://www.pasocsociety.org/article2.pdf
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2002/05/work-and-die-juarez
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