Mike Wolff
Daily Lobo Columnist
Two years ago I met with a group in Ciudad Ju†rez called Voces Sin Eco (voices without eco). In the wee hours of a Sunday morning, we drove to the desert on the city's outskirts.
Then, we all picked up an iron rod with which we would poke the earth wherever it looked like someone might be buried. We spent hours spread out in a big line, covering as much area as possible.
Don Gaspar, an old man who came running every time I screamed at seeing a scatter of bones, talked to me about edible flowers in the desert.
I asked him if we were looking for anyone specific today. "My daughter," he said, and he gave me a picture of her with her profile:
"About 5'5", black hair, semi-dark skin, coffee eyes, 15 years old, last seen on her way to work."
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I thanked my lucky Ju Ju that we found no rotting dead people that day, but two weeks later Gaspar did find his daughter, although he hardly recognized her. She was one of about 300 women who have been found raped and murdered and disposed of in and around Ju†rez since 1993.
Most of these women shared a similar profile and had some relation to the bourgeoning maquila, or factory, industry.
With a population of 1.3 million that is growing by 50,000 each year because of the maquila attraction, Ju†rez and its inhabitants are experiencing an incredibly rapid and severe socioeconomic transformation.
With unemployment close to 0 percent and production skyrocketing, some call it modernity. Anyone can get a job in one of the 400 foreign-owned assembly plants for $5-$7 per day, especially women, who constitute more than 60 percent of the workforce.
For the first time, they can afford to feed their families and buy new clothes from time to time.
But with 200,000 people living in shantytowns with no basic services such as water, electricity, or sewage, others call Ju†rez a neo-liberal wasteland.
The cultural and economic transition a million people have made in Ju†rez compounded by a lack of infrastructure and inequality has laid the grounds for a potential social catastrophe. The mysterious murder of 300 women and disappearance of hundreds more is just one symptom of societal breakdown in the wake of the maquila boom.
Another symptom is the public health crisis. Desperate to attract foreign investment, Mexico offers big incentives - such as property tax exemptions and labor control - for foreign companies.
The result has been that, despite the billions of dollars in goods produced by maquilas, Ju†rez has not had sufficient tax revenue to provide infrastructure for its growing population.
Therefore, public health, pollution control, water and sewage systems, electricity and public education fall miserably below the public need.
Sharing the same air above and aquifer below, this also poses a problem for El Paso, Texas.
After looking for dead people in the desert, some Juarez photojournalists gave us a tour of Mexico 68, one of the new colonias, or shantytowns, that surround the industrial parks.
Our car overheated and stalled on a rutted dirt road. A family came to help, siphoning water from a barrel to spray on the steaming engine.
A water truck comes once a weak to fill that barrel, which is then used for drinking, cooking, bathing and cleaning. Water-born diseases are on the rise.
I looked up to see hundreds of electrical wires rigged to power lines. The wires fell to the street and connected to houses that boasted a functioning radio or light bulb. My journalist friends showed me several pictures they took of people who were toasted black while trying to "steal" electricity.
Is this all just a natural part of the modernization process? Will Mexico be like the United States or Europe after it gets over these growing pains?
After all, every great power had to fight wars and terrorize parts of their population to modernize, right? And, in the end, it was all worth it, right?
But we have not reached any end yet, so while we are still traveling, many demands still need to be made to better the lives of the earth's inhabitants - that's us and that's them.
Moreover, the human and environmental costs of the careless maquila industry are not only morally intolerable but also broadly dangerous. Corporate accountability is a must.
Questions of comments can be sent to Mike Wolff at mudrat@unm.edu.
