2008 Woodie Awards
Tijuana factory workers discuss globalization issues with CSUSM community
Jackie Carbajal
Issue date: 2/26/08 Section: News
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There are currently about 4,000 maquiladoras across the Mexican border. Eighty percent of the labor force in maquiladoras (factories) are women. Women are often preferred over men because they are "cheap, docile and have agile hands." The average maquiladora worker receives $11 per day.
"We are simply objects of labor," said a factory worker in the film.
To create the film, filmmakers collaborated with factory workers in Tijuana, community organizations in Mexico and the United States to illustrate globalization through the eyes of the women at the center of the industry. The film focuses on the devastating impacts of globalization on its factory workers and the environment.
Filmmakers provided the women with cameras and taught them how to shoot. For five years the women documented their daily lives. The film concentrated on the abandoned factories and toxic waste products dumped throughout the community.
"Tijuana is nobody's trashcan," exclaimed one frustrated worker in the film.
Although 'Maquilopolis' stresses the fact that globalization provides corporate freedom to move around the world in pursuit of cheap labor and lenient environmental regulations, it also shows that workers can organize ways to demand appropriate law enforcement successfully.
In the film, many of the women were fighting back against the companies they worked for. Carmen Durán and her coworkers filed suit against Sanyo Electric Company for their entitled severance pay when the company abandoned their factory in Tijuana and moved to Indonesia. At the end of the film, their case settled and they received severance pays ranging from $1000-$2000.
After the screening, CSUSM faculty member, Dr. Ranjeeta Basu, introduced De La Torre and three promotoras to a round of applause from the lecture hall. The featured guests were met with a multitude of questions stemming from the film.
Director Sergio De La Torre served as translator for the promotoras.
Many students placed blame on the Mexican government for its lack of initiative on the issue and asked why certain laws were not in place to prevent businesses from contaminating the environment.
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