Email this page

Mexico-U.S. Border Reality Tours: Putting a Face on Trade

Typical Mexico-U.S. border maquiladora workers' housing using scrounged and recycled building materials (e.g. shipping pallets from the factories). Photo: Anne Farina Hoog

AFSC’s Austin Tan Cerca de la Frontera (Austin so Close to the Border) program organizes reality tours to the Texas-Mexico border to learn about corporate-led globalization through face-to-face encounters with maquiladora workers.

Participants witness negative impacts of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which has failed to protect the rights of workers and deliver many other promises—in the U.S. and in Mexico.  One goal of these delegations is to sensitize delegates to likely impacts of other trade agreements like the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) that extends the harmful aspects of NAFTA rather than correcting them.

Mexico-U.S. border delegation members engaging in a game organized by two Maquiladora worker organizers. The game teaches workers rights under Mexican federal labor law. Oct. 2002, Reynosa, MX  Photo: Anne Farina Hoog

AFSC’s Austin area office is planning three delegations this spring.  Organizers are excited about new possibilities to bring border lessons to the policy-making table through creating special delegations that target policy makers.  In partnership with the Texas Fair Trade Coalition, Congressional officials will be invited to join an April delegation to Reynosa in the state of Tamaulipas, Mexico.  In late May, a delegation aimed at union representatives will visit Ciudad Acuña in the state of Coahuila, Mexico.  And in early May a delegation of local high school students studying globalization will go to Reynosa.  This October 7-9 will be an open delegation to Nuevo Laredo in Tamaulipas, Mexico.

Key partner organization

Canasta Basica (basic market basket): an educational tool used by the CFO to show that Maquiladora wages do not cover the cost of a bare minimum basket of goods. The Mexican constitution mandates that one wage should meet the needs of a family of four-- including the cost of education.

The success of the Austin Tan Cerca de la Frontera is wholly dependent on a mutually respectful partnership with the Comité Fronterizo de Obreras (CFO or Border Workers Committee), which is a women-led organization whose members, simply and powerfully educate other workers on their rights under the Mexican labor law.  Delegates, led by a CFO organizer, tour the maquiladora (export factory) industrial parks and meet with workers to learn about the injustices they are struggling against—physically abusive conditions, harassment from supervisors, and inhumane wages. CFO staff and organizers describe their work and organizing strategies. Finally, the group travels to the colonias and shanty towns where most workers live for informal social gatherings with workers, their families, and friends.

Through delegation fees, Austin Tan Cerca de la Frontera is able to provide a living wage to one CFO staff person.  With the support of the CFO, workers have:

• Pressured companies to implement laws requiring safety equipment and protective clothing
• Challenged illegal layoffs and dismissals, winning legally-mandated severance pay
• Curbed pollution in their communities and in the factories
• Testified to shareholders about hazardous working conditions and labor abuses
• Build self-esteem and confidence of hundreds of workers so they can stand up for their rights.

How Austin Tan Cerca de la Frontera got started

One day in October 1999, three Mexican women maquiladora workers came to Austin to tell about their struggle for workplace justice. By coincidence, that same day the Austin Living Wage Coalition was staging a protest of sweatshop conditions in U.S.-owned plants in Southeast Asia. As the Mexican workers joined the Austin protest, an idea was born.

Only a few hours drive from Austin, on the U.S.-Mexico border, abusive conditions existed in U.S.-owned plants, similar to the conditions so far away.  Why no work for economic justice here? Why not listen to the voices of workers themselves? Why not forge direct, long-lasting links between the Austin community and those workers on the front lines. Out of these ideas the Austin Tan Cerca de la Frontera program was created.

Since 1999 these delegations have personalized the experience of globalization for about 150 Texans, with the fees used to support a grassroots organization committed to fair treatment of women and men in the maquiladoras.

More information

For more information on upcoming delegations please contact the Austin Area Office, Austin Tan Cerca program via Phone: 512.474.2399 or E-mail tao@afsc.org.