A few miles from the shiny factories and Mercedes Benz dealerships, the roads of Juarez, Mexico, are unpaved, leading to shacks made of cinder blocks and wooden pallets.
Those who live in the shacks work in the factories, owned by American and other foreign interests that moved to Mexico in the 1990s to take advantage of the country’s cheap labor in the wake of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
Workers in Juarez are paid about 50 pesos a day (about $5 U.S.), barely enough to put a meal of beans, rice and hamburger on the table for a family of four. And forget about affording health care or sending kids to public school. Those luxuries are well out of reach for many Juarez families, as UUPers Pamela Wolfskill and Edward Quinn found out firsthand.
Quinn, UUP’s statewide membership development officer, and Wolfskill, a Stony Brook chapter officer, traveled to Juarez in late October as part of the New York State Labor-Religion Coalition Border Witness Delegation. Members of the United Federation of Teachers, the Public Employees Federation and a group of Poughkeepsie-area high school students were part of the contingent.
“You understand why (Mexican workers) migrate to the U.S., because even if they make minimum wage here, they are making so much more than what they would make in Mexico,” Wolfskill said.
“It was an eye-opening experience,” said Quinn.
Wolfskill and Quinn spent five days in Juarez and El Paso, Texas, attempting to understand why Mexicans risk their lives to illegally cross the border for work and to stand in solidarity with underpaid Juarez factory workers. Surprisingly, most Mexicans who cross the border end up returning after a few months, bringing their earnings to their families, they said.
“The first day I arrived, I was standing in El Paso on this mountain and you couldn’t tell where El Paso ended and Juarez began,” said Wolfskill. “You have a good life or you don’t, depending on what side of the fence you were born on.”
NAFTA has played a major role in the plight of the factory workers in Juarez. Workers who once farmed for a living were kicked off their land, which the Mexican government owned but allowed them to farm. The land was sold to investors once NAFTA removed most barriers to trade and investment after its approval in 1994.
“NAFTA facilitated the shift of hundreds of factories to Juarez,” said Quinn. “The factories in Mexico operate with employees who make less per day than what U.S. workers make per hour. Juarez has 1.7 million people, a water supply expected to run out in the next few years, houses made of cardboard, bootlegged electricity, no indoor plumbing and workers who work 12 hours a day to make $50 a week.”
The Mexican workers who toil in the factories have clean, adequate working conditions. But they are paid a pittance for their work, which provokes many to make the treacherous trip across the Texas border. Border patrols are everywhere, and they are quick to turn back Mexicans trying to cross into the U.S.—a task that’s become much tougher since America tightened its borders after the 2001 terrorist attacks.
“This trip made me aware of the real story, and not the slanted views of the politicians and the media,” Wolfskill said. “We certainly got a better understanding of how NAFTA affected the Mexicans. It also made me aware of how lucky we are to have our union and seeing the battle that other workers have.”
During the trip, Wolfskill, Quinn and the Labor-Religion contingent brought school supplies to students who attended school at a house that’s been turned into a library for children too poor to attend public school. The day before they left, the contingent attended a touching church service on the border. Priests on the U.S. and Mexico sides spoke of tearing down walls and putting up bridges.
“This is not just an issue of enforcement,” Quinn said. “It’s a matter of trying to get people aware of what the real issue is and what they can do to help.”
— Michael Lisi