Maquiladoras  

Over 11,500 Maquiladoras, Spanish for U.S.-owned and -operated assembly factories in Mexico, are located along the 2,100 mile border with the United States. Tijuana, at the western end of the U.S.-Mexican border, alone has 4,000 Maquiladoras, employing nearly 1 million workers and producing goods whose value-added was over $7 billion a year in 1998. The importance of these products  -- almost half consisted of textiles and consumer electronics -- were only second to oil in the Mexican economy.

Look at a National Geographic map and read an article about the border in south Texas. What's happening along the New Mexico-Mexican border? Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, has the largest concentration of Maquiladoras. The photos below were taken in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Check an atlas for its location. Mexican towns all along the border, called fronterizos ("the frontier" in Spanish), employ almost half a million workers in such factories. The Maquiladoras account for about half of Mexico's almost $150 billion annual exports, mainly to the USA.

Wages are so inadequate that most workers cannot afford to their own vehicles. The Maquiladoras provide free buses to transport their Mexican workers from various parts of the city. In 1995, hourly labor costs in manufacturing were $17.20 in the United States, $7.71 along the US border, and $1.51 in Mexico. By 1997, Maquiladora workers earned an average of $5 - $7 a day plus benefits. In Metamoros, across from Brownsville, TX, a family of four needs 193 pesos a day to reach a minimum standard of living. Based on pay slips collected from a sample of Maquiladora workers, a majority took home less than 55 pesos, or 29% of what a family of four needs for its basic needs! By 2002 with an economic recession in the USA and much of the rest of the world, some 250,000 factory workers had lost their jobs in Mexico. Since 2000, more than 5000 mostly US-owned assembly-line factories in Mexico had moved to China. In Juarez, a beginning machine operator earns less than $8 a day, whereas the counterpart worker in China makes only $2 a day! AlliedSignal's top executive, Lawrence Bossidy, personally took home a bigger paycheck than the company's entire Mexican workforce. He made 6,765 times as much as the average maquiladora worker -- and 1,000 times more than the average US factory worker.

What affect has the U.S. border and the Maquiladoras had on the standard of living of people who live in Mexico's northern states? Check your answer by looking at the relative deprivation map of Mexico. Many factories (over 300 in just two years, 2002-2003) that located in Mexico during the 1980s and 1990s for low wages are in 2003 relocating to Asia. An entry-level machine operator in Juarez makes $8 a day while the same job in a Chinese factory fetches only $2. And in China there are no unions, whereas there are in Mexico. The World Trade Organization regulates global trade but only as it affects the interests of investors and manufactures, not of workers and the environment. There is no free trade!

Maquiladora workers live in very poor housing, in housing they've built themselves, or in government-built housing. Photos were taken in Ciudad Acuna, Mexico. Housing for Maquiladora workers is partially paid for by a tax on the Maquiladora factory owners. Read about the employment problems in Juarez, Mexico, across from El Paso, Texas, during the U.S. recession and anti-terrorism efforts along the border in 2002.