Borderlinks

My Mexican Experience

Return to Daijah's Home Page The borderlinks trip to Mexico was the first time I have ever experienced the third world directly. The journey revealed to me some of the biases I had about the third world. The overall conditions weren’t nearly as bad as I had preconceived it to be. After visiting a maquiladora and having lunch with a family in Nogales Sonora, I had to rethink some of my views about Mexico.
When our class went to visit a maquiladora, I was expecting conditions more like what I’ve read in some of our readings and other classes I have taken. In the borderlinks packet, the article We Are Not Machines says, “Usually, only women are hired in the maquiladoras” (17). Another article in the packet mentions “the lack of ventilation the caused people to faint . . . a lunchroom with only two tables and one microwave for up to 1,000 workers, and inflexible supervisors who often refused to let workers go to the bathroom or drink water” (21). Prior to this trip, I had just come to the conclusion that all factories in Mexico were sweatshops or something close to it who basically just hired women who are considered easier to boss around.
When our class toured Otis (the name of the maquiladora), I felt like I was stepping out of the third world and into the first world. It was very clean, modern, and the workers didn’t seem unhappy. Moreover, the factory only had a 1.4% employee turnover and the employees appear to like the company they work for. In Unions Without Borders I read about how people lost their fingers in machines where safety guards had been removed (26). At Otis, safety was very important and they even had a bulletin board up that advertised they had gone for over 2,000 days without a major accident. Another thing that surprised me was that both men and women were employed at Otis.
Unlike some of the maquiladoras I’ve previously read about, the lunchroom was big, had plenty of tables, and looked like something one would see in the United States. The amount of time employees have for lunch is comparable to the first world. Upper and middle managers get one hour while regular factory staff get a ½ hour.
The benefits an employee obtains seemed as good as what one would expect to find in the United States. They earn 15 days vacation every year for the first five years they are with Otis. I don’t remember how many vacation days they get after five years, but it is probably close to what an American receives. A person also gets one week off if he/she gets married. The benefits continue with education. Otis will pay the educational expenses for anyone who wants additional schooling and they don’t even have to sign a contract stating that they will continue to work for the company X amount of years after their education is complete. Of course, I recognize that most maquiladoras aren’t as employee friendly as this one; however, I didn’t know that ones like this even existed in Mexico.
Although Otis reminds me of something I would see in the first world, there is one thing that isn’t quite up to par and that is the wages. The starting salary is 90 pesos a day plus the occasional bonus. This is well over the minimum or average salary of other maquiladoras, but it is still not considered a livable wage when one considers how much milk and other nutritious foods cost.
When we had lunch at a Mexican family’s home, I underestimated the conditions. I didn’t expect the home to have running water and it was in a much better state than I had anticipated. The family had lived there for a while and was able to fix it up pleasantly. I was reminded of some of the families in Voyages who desire to stay in their country of origin, but work abroad with the hopes of one day returning to Tonga and building a better home.
Visiting the maquiladora and having lunch with a family in Mexico allowed me to observe first hand that the reasons people come to the United States isn’t necessarily because conditions in their home country are so terrible. But of course, this trip was limited to only a half day and selected places. I continue to be skeptical that there is a lot more to learn off Mexico as a third world society.

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