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As my jeep navigated the rough roads on
the outskirts of dusty Juarez - a thriving city of over one million
people just south of the Rio Grande - there was a sense of
anticipation among my comrades of Solidarity and Mexico's
Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT). Guided by Jean, a nun from El
Paso, Texas, we were on our way to interview a Catholic priest who
works undercover in one of the local maquiladora plants.
His church was a modest structure in
the middle of a large dirt lot. A handful of vehicles were parked
along the side, and children of all ages were playing between the
cars and the church. It had the feeling of a community center in
this neighborhood of closely compressed apartment dwellings and tiny
houses. People were continuously flowing in and out of the church as
we were led to the tiny residence of the padre where we would wait
while he was located.
The Padre was a young man with an air
of sturdiness and humility. His presence was that of a simple man of
firm conviction. He seemed unsure of the reason for our presence and
offered no introduction beyond inquiry into the nature of our visit.
Later we would realize that this was due to the importance of keeping
his activities secret from the owners of the plant where he worked.
As we began to converse with him, we assured him that we would use
neither his name, nor the name of his plant, in any of our writings
concerning his activities. Slowly he opened to us. The following is
based upon the facts he related to us in response to our questions.
Looking to Liberation Theology as his
inspiration, he holds Jesus as a revolutionary who was sent to
advocate and liberate the poor. Following these footsteps, the Padre
decided not to limit his experiences to the confines of his church,
but to go out into the factory which is the center of life for a
growing number of Mexican workers living along the border, forsaking
the easier life of the common priest for the grueling existence of
the maquiladora worker.
Monday through Friday the Padre
commutes 45 minutes each way to work by bus. Work for the first
shift begins at 6:00 AM and continues until at least 3:30 PM.
Workers who are even a few minutes late are denied work for the day
and sent home without pay. Approximately 500 workers work this shift
in the windowless buildings, without air-conditioning, the the middle
of a hot desert. Their work consists of a single motion repeated for
nine and one half hours: a physically debilitating process which
often leads to carpel-tunnel syndrome.
In the evening there is another shift
of approximately 350 workers. Some families have workers working
both shifts who rarely see each other due to these schedules. A
single 15 minute period is allocated for lunch. This forces 500
employees to leave their posts, wait in line, obtain their food,
consume it, and report back to their posts, all within 15 minutes.
In such conditions workers have little time to wash workplace
chemicals from their hands and to force down the often rancid company
supplied food purchased by the employees at high prices. Recently
there have been repeated rashes of food poisonings at these
factories. Newspapers which have reported this phenomenon have been
suppressed. Workers who reveal their discontent are discharged by
their employers. There are only two toilets in the Padre's factory.
Employees are allowed only five minutes to relieve themselves. The
conditions are unsanitary and the lines are always long.
Less than 10% of the workers are
members of unions. This fact alone makes it nearly impossible for
workers to strike. Compounding the problem is that most of these
workers are members of the official CTM union which is a component of
the Mexican Government and clearly in the pocket of the ruling class.
Workers bringing their grievances to the union are routinely
betrayed and discharged. The union always takes the side of the
employer and functions more as a method of keeping the workers in
their place than performing as their instrument in negotiating fair
contracts and providing a mechanism for redress of grievances.
Wages are miserably low. The salary
range is 100,000 pesos to 150,000 pesos per week. In U.S. dollars,
this is equivalent to an hourly wage ranging from 70 to 105 cents per
hour. On this wage workers must pay rent, buy clothes, and procure
food for themselves and their families. This is far below the needs
of even the smallest of Mexican families. The result is that even
children are being driven into the factories while both the mother
and father work. Children as young as 13 years old may be found
working. This is a clear violation of typically unenforced Mexican
law which requires that children be at least 16 years old before
being permitted to work in these factories.
Just as child labor laws are not
enforced, neither are environmental laws. Pollution along the border
is getting so bad that a growing number of Mexican babies are
literally being born without brains; not to mention a collection of
other birth defects. Most of this toxic waste is the output of
factories owned by U.S. firms and resulting from chemicals brought in
from the United States. Much is simply trucked in from the United
States and dumped along the Mexican side of the border. All over the
poor sections of Juarez and the countryside, large chemical waste
drums can be found salvaged by Mexican families and reused as water
drums. From these contaminated drums children are being fed
carcinogens and other toxic chemicals.
To the best of his knowledge, the Padre
is the only priest in Mexico working under over in the maquiladoras.
The former bishop approved of his activities, but as of yet it is
not clear whether the more conservative new bishop approves of his
mission. In the future, the Padre plans on building a workers'
center to help educate workers about their situation and organize
themselves.
The work of the Padre and others
concerned with the Mexican worker is important to all workers of
North America: Canadian, U.S. and Mexican. The impending North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) will throw us all into
competition for wages and jobs. It is only by defending the wages
and working conditions of those in the position of the greatest
weakness that the jobs and wages of all of us can be defended. So
long as there is opportunity for greater exploitation, international
capital will exploit it. Thus we are all victims of the exploitation
of the Mexican workers. For this reason we must all oppose NAFTA,
but we should oppose it with the knowledge that the forces behind it
are great and that its implementation may be inevitable. In
preparation for its passage we must demand that Mexican workers be
guaranteed the same work conditions existing in the U.S. along with
the same minimum wages. We must also demand that corporations
operating in Mexico adhere to environmental standards equivalent to
U.S. standards, at a minimum. Finally, we must build relations
between the workers of all three nations so that we may work in
concert to better our position in the struggle against the
multinational corporations depending upon our divisions to exploit us
and drive down our wages by threatening to move our industry to ever
safer grounds for exploitation.
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