Standing on the Brownsville, Texas end of the bridge across the Mexican border, one can watch perhaps $1,000 worth of goods go by in a matter of minutes -- and that's not counting the vehicles weighing heavily on the bridge. It's only the pedestrians, mostly middle-class Mexicans, carrying the day's shopping home to Matamoros.
Clothing, groceries, and household supplies cross the bridge in staggering quantities. U.S. shoppers carry their share back across, in the form of crafts, gifts, shoes, and other items for which the strong dollar has made Mexico's prices cheap.
For all practical purposes, the Rio Grande Valley, slung between the U.S. state of Texas and the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, has had free trade for decades. Now, with "free trade" negotiations well under way, academics, workers, and consumers on both sides of the border are looking at the Valley's experience as a tool for predicting the potential impact of free trade in the rest of their respective countries.
One much-discussed aspect of life in the Valley is the presence of maquiladoras, labor-intensive factories built along the Mexican border by U.S. corporations looking for cheap labor in close proximity to the border. Publicized as a development strategy for Mexico, the 20-year program has drawn heavy criticism both from defenders of workers' rights in Mexico and from U.S. labor advocates who have watched "runaway shops" carry much-needed jobs away from U.S. cities.
The maquiladoras enjoy cheap labor, easy mobility, and extremely cheap access to water, highways, and other infrastructure. The price of all this is paid by Mexican workers, who crowd into neighborhoods built of cardboard, with mud paths for streets. In spite of Mexico's strong labor laws, which guarantee advantages such as three months' paid maternity leave, the maquiladoras have succeeded in maintaining their advantages (by requiring pre-employment pregnancy tests, for example). Stories abound of plants closing in one town and reopening somewhere up the river, often on the heels of an organizing effort.
THE EXPERIENCE OF THE Valley also warns of environmental hazards -- not only in terms of water supply and air quality, but in the working conditions of factory workers. In late September, 42 families filed a lawsuit against the Mallory Capacitor Company, a U.S. company that manufactured television components in Matamoros during the 1960s and '70s. The families now filing suit include 54 living children and two deceased children born with birth defects traced to toxic chemical exposure in the plants.
Free trade advocates in the Valley hope the agreement will stimulate Mexico's lagging economy and force infrastructural improvements, as well as open up cultural exchange between the two countries. Highways will have to be improved, along with communications, water, and electrical systems, to accommodate the increased level of manufacturing. "We're going to need a different type of infrastructure," according to Alma Guerrero-Miller, doctoral candidate in history and coordinator of the Colegio de la Frontera Norte (Northern Border College) in Matamoros.
The agreement "opens a door to the industrial world, with its regulations," Guerrero-Miller said. Mexicans will benefit by access to better-quality goods and services. U.S. workers should look at Mexico's superior labor laws and try to take advantage of the comparison with some states in the United States, she added. "I've lived in North Carolina," she said, "and there are no unions there."
Other sources in the Valley indicated Mexico's congress may soon revise those laws to the detriment of workers.
A pamphlet recently issued by the Centro de Estudios Fronterizos y de Promocion de los Derechos Humanos (Center of Border Studies and Human Rights Promotions) in Reynosa, Tamaulipas sums up the results of the 20-year effort to modernize Mexico's northern border by means of maquiladoras:
"These companies that use Mexican labor intensively in the process of assembling products completed in their country of origin have not meant in practical terms a solution to the problems of the border cities, and have only produced a population explosion, with the consequences of conflicts, among others those provoked by environmental contamination."
What does this mean for the future? Everyone seems to agree that consumers in both countries will be the immediate winners, along with the corporations that succeed in underpricing their competitors in the expanded market. Mexican wages could rise toward the level of U.S. wages, some observers say, although others point out that a factory can easily be closed in Mexico and reopened in Indonesia at the manufacturer's whim.
Cultural exchange could benefit both countries, Guerrero-Miller pointed out, shifting the balance from an overwhelming presence of Hollywood in Mexico to an increased appreciation of the rich history of the peoples of this continent.
LABOR ORGANIZERS have their work cut out for them. A series of articles in The Buffalo News last April traced the economic roots of job loss in Buffalo all the way to Mexico and its maquiladoras. "In Buffalo alone, 49 Trico [wiper blade manufacturer] workers are still unemployed as a result of the company's move to Mexico."
Women studying and organizing maquiladora workers in Reynosa reported fear of job loss and ignorance of labor laws as tremendous obstacles to betterment of workers' conditions -- obstacles U.S. organizers have been chipping away at for decades.
At the very least, the free trade agreement has awakened U.S. citizens to the conditions of maquiladora workers. Mary Day, of the Border Project in McAllen, Texas, said her office has had frequent inquiries from reporters since the agreement was given "fast track" status, waiving congressional oversight of the process. "Before free trade, you couldn't get a reporter down here," she said.
But the agreement really hasn't changed the basic need: for workers to continue learning about their rights and empowering themselves for change. "The work of this organization will go on, free trade or not," Day said.
In the global economic picture, the free trade agreement may be seen as part of a grand power shift, parallel to the consolidation of the European Economic Community. As Guerrero-Miller summed it up, "We are in a time of transition between North America and Latin America."
Citizens on both sides of the border will need to rethink the meaning of workers' rights and solidarity in this new political and economic context.
Anne Woehrle was a Washington, DC-based freelance writer when this article appeared and had traveled to the Rio Grande Valley in September 1991.
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