From the Border Report #5

As the border tour sponsored by human rights programs moved to Tucson and Nogales on Saturday, we had the privilege of meeting Teresa Leal, who coordinates and operates the Nogales museum and several other important local community activities. Teresa in is a member of the Opata Native American tribe, that has about 5,000 members, even thought tribe was officially declared extinct by the US and Mexico in the 1970s. Teresa also explained to me that her grandfather was Chinese, who went to Mexico after working on the transcontinental railroad in the US.

We toured the border in the Nogales area in the evening, meeting two border patrol officers along the way who warned us that “bodies would be flying across the border” tonight—an expression that meant they were expecting border crossers tonight in the area we had traveled to. The border/fence here divides a bustling business and residential areas right in half, unlike the San Diego area where, until recently, little development has occurred on the immediate US side.

The Nogales area has been affected negatively by NAFTA, but this is a region that has been a pawn of globalization for decades. The first maquiladoras were constructed on the Nogales Sonora (Mexico) side of the border in the 1960s. By the 1970s, there were over 60 maquiladoras in the area! The owners were Canadian, Korea, Japanese, Chinese, and US companies. The idea was to assemble parts on the Mexico side, with finishing touches done in warehouses on the US side, so products might be labeled “assembled in Mexico, made in the USA.”  Initially 90% of those hired in the maquiladoras were women; today the figure is about 70%. All sorts of products are assembled in the maquiladoras: electronics, luggage, machinery, just about anything.

bh