Anakena Paddon

Maquilapolis – Documentary Response

            I had seen various documentaries on maquiladoras, most of them focusing on the exploitation of the women in the factories, but this was the first film I had watched that showed a possibility for empowerment for these women.

The film began with Carmen, who discusses her situation living in the Tijuana neighborhood of Lagunitas, with a view of the factories, only a few hundred meters away. She began working there at age 13 and was raising 3 children on her own, while working mostly night shifts at the factories.  Carmen’s situation seems to be for the most part representative of the lives of other women in Lagunitas, who are struggling to provide for multiple-children families on under minimum wage. On top of the stress of finding food, clean water, and minimal health coverage (from the hazards induced by the factories’ pollution), the women are also now faced with the challenge of maintaining their jobs. The cheap labor that was once what attracted all these international companies to Mexico is not being competed for in Indonesia and South-East Asia, where the labor is even cheaper.

Being let off at any moment from a factory is obviously a precarious environment to be living in, especially when the multinational companies do not respect the basic rights of employees, such as payment of severance fees. In order to counter these injustices, a group of women in the Lagunitas neighborhood and the surrounding slums joined forces to become promotoras, or women who promote the knowledge of workers’ rights to make changes in their lives. It is a huge responsibility, and frustrating, since they hardly ever get direct contact with any major representative of the company, but are instead left to fight and endure months of paperwork, jumping through hoops at every stage of the process. As Carmen and her colleagues said “what little you know, you pass on”, and they have to “defend whatever right is being violated”.

Unfortunately, even though Carmen and the other women did eventually receive their due severance pay, and a higher figure than anticipated, it does not compensate for the years of breathing in toxic fumes, for the diseases and disfigurements that their children are born with (anencephaly, hydrocephalus, skin allergies…) and have to live with, for the abusive employers and the precariousness of their life conditions.

At several points in the film, the women discuss the employment laws in Mexico, which in theory allow for labor unions and workers’ rights, but in reality are either ignored or not respected. The documentary closed with the lingering question of who was to be held responsible for the corruption and disrespect of these laws – is it the US and their multinational companies for pressuring the Mexican government? Or is it the Mexican government’s fault for caving to bribery and profit?

To me the urgency of this matter, of the fact that people, regardless of their nationality, age, gender, whatever, people are living in such dangerous conditions as neighboring an abandoned lead factory does not really justify this hot-potato game of pass-the-blame between the US/Mexican government and the multinational companies. Above laws protecting workers’ rights are human rights, and theirs are being violated.

Although the documentary did show inspiring aspects of their daily life, for example the ability for these women to stand up to ‘The Man’ and win (I especially thought the scene where they are giggling about “a huge factory CEO being intimidated by a group of 5 women” was touching, because they were just beginning to realize the amount of influence they could have), it does seem like the forces to quell them are over-powering and that they have a long, hard struggle ahead of them, with close to no support. Will they continue the fight? When will things begin to change, and factories stop being on the look-out for the cheapest human labor available?