My Trip to Nogales Mexico

By Elisa Maldonado

The field trip to Nogales Sonora, Mexico, was an unforgettable experience. It reminded me of my own experience and what my mother went thru when she lived in Mexico. In this paper I will integrate both these experiences to explain some aspect of the difficulty of life on the border.

My mother migrated into the U.S at the age of 18. By age of 20 she met my father and married him, having three children. When I was little my father abandoned our family and my mother was forced to raise us alone. My mother decided to return to Mexico, the only place here she could provide a meal to her children and was allowed to work. My mother would work every day and also on the weekend a factory known as a “maquiladora” on the Mexican side of the border. These are foreign owned companies that established operations in Mexico, but they are not required to provide insurance or benefits for their workers. Therefore, when we arrived at the maquiladoras on our field trip, I was excited and wanted to know more about it. After reading Maria Torres article “We are Not Machines”, I thought to myself, no wonder my mother decided to cross the border. The rate of pay at that time (1980s) was $3 dollars a day. Even through my mother put all her effort into work she couldn’t provide us with a decent home and a decent meal. This lack of decent housing is one of the examples we were able to see in Mexico. Just as Torres article, we observed that many home had an outdoor toilet, had no potable water, or electricity, no side walks, and no infrastructure.

            Therefore, my question was, if all of these important foreign-owned assembly plants such as, General Motors, Zenith, and AT&T are established in Mexico, what happen to the money? Doesn’t it help the economy in Mexico? Well, maquiladora do not contribute with local tax which means that the city of Nogales does not have adequate funds to build the roads, housing and other needed infrastructure. The manager at the maquiladora state that they pay their employees more than the minimum wage that is $5 dollars in Mexico, so they pay their employees $7 dollars a day. But that she forgot to say was how much money they take away from the workers and how much money will their employees have by the end of the week. Because of this many people are forced to leave their native country.

            Due to this my mother also decided to return to the U.S. therefore, when my little sister was born. My mother left her in the care of my grandmother and went north, with her other three children, to see if she could make a better life for us. Although, we were U.S. citizens, we weren’t allowed to cross the border without our mother. Therefore, we were forced to cross the border like undocumented people. My brother and I were carried by smuggler known as coyote, who took us to a remote location where we had to squirm under a fence. There my mother, my siblings and I were picked up by a car where they were going to take us to Arizona. Eventually, we made it across the border.

            I’m writing this story because of a reason. The reason is that I would like for everyone to understand that people cross the border not because of stupidity, but because of necessity. The economy in Mexico is so poor that many are forced to leave. At our visit to Gruopo Beta, the migrant assistance organization in Nogales, Sonora Mexico, we met one such family that tried to cross the border. One of the girls in that family was young, she was only 19 years old and her brother was only 12. They were accompanied by their aunt and uncle and were on their way to join the girls’ father already in Florida. Unfortunately, they didn’t make it across the border and the coyote left them stranded in the desert. Lucky for them the U.S. border patrol found them. It’s sad because there is so much that people don’t know about immigration and the outcomes for migrant. As the article “Altar” states, if the economy of Mexico does change then the people would be going south. The article also helps us understand the circumstance many people are faced with. Fore example, some people will only walk three to four hours while others will walk three to four days. Leaving them with blisters and swelling feet, and some will take off their shoes and walk barefoot. (Miller Todd) These are only some examples of what people go through when crossing the border. These are only survivors of the desert, in 1995, 2000 would-be migrants died trying to cross the desert and the rate has increased since then(Nevins Joseph)