What is the connection between NAFTA and the murders of maquila women

in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico?

A summary of the new publication "Working to Death: Gender, Labour, and
Violence in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico" by Shae Garwood.

By Janice Duddy

Garwood, Shae. "Working to Death: Gender, Labour, and Violence in Ciudad
Juarez, Mexico". Peace, Conflict and Development, an Interdisciplinary
Journal. Issue 2. December 2002

Since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was initiated in
1994, 238 women have been murdered in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. About a third
of these murders fit similar patterns: the victims worked in the
maquiladoras or assembly factories, their bodies were found raped,
disfigured, and decaying in the garbage-strewn desert just beyond the
maquila industrial parks on the outskirts of the city. "This US-Mexico
border town has become an export-processing zone, turned conflict zone,
where women workers are devalued and literally discarded. A critical look
into the violence is particular important during a time when increasing
trade liberalisation is expanding the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA)-like conditions of ciudad Juarez throughout the Americas" (2).

But what are the connections between these murders and NAFTA and
development? Shae Garwood uses a framework, introduced by Caroline Moser
but expanded upon by the author, to shed light on the intersections among
gender, labour, and violence. By examining the situation in Ciudad Juarez
through this framework the author hopes to "provide lessons for those
interested in fostering development in a way that values peace, human
rights, and dignity for workers on the global assembly line" (3).

Currently, there are over 3,000 maquiladoras in Mexico, that employ over 1
million people. As of 1999, Ciudad Juarez was home to 289 maquiladoras,
employing approximately 215,000 people. "increased population in border
cities, downward pressure on real wages, economic insecurity and poverty
all contribute to the networks of violence in Ciudad Juarez. Maintaining
physical boundaries by the US Border Patrol, as well as discursive ones by
the media constructing Mexicans along the border as a source of 'cheap
labour,' serves to legitmise those boundaries, limiting people's mobility,
while moving good freely across borders" (6).

Garwood states: "The relationship among cultural, structural, and physical
violence is complex in the case of the sexual violence in Juarez. Maquila
workers embody a particular form of structural violence due to their
position in the technical and productive order (evidenced by their lack of
access to medical care, potable water and sanitation, as well exposure to
dangerous working conditions) and are also subject to cultural violence as
maquila managers and politicians ascribe them with particular identities
laden with assumptions about their worth, value, and respectability.
Construction of these particular and subordinated identities in Ciudad
Juarez facilitates and legitimises physical violence, and also constitutes
a form of representational violence in and of itself" (6-7).

Many of the economic and political elements of gender violence are related
to trade liberalization. Since NAFTA was implemented the economy has seen
a real downturn in terms of production, wages, and employment, which
includes the devaluations of the peso and a 22 percent drop in real wages.
Women working in the maquiladoras earn abominable wages, hourly wages that
are less than those who work in the service industry or those who are
self-employed. Hiring practices within the maquiladoras tend to be very
narrow, using a restricted concept of women and women workers. As the
author states "One Mexican primer for firms locating in the maquiladoras
claimed that, 'from their earliest conditioning women show respect and
obedience to authority, especially men. The women follow order willingly,
accept change and adjustments easily and are considerable less demanding'.
Regardless of the ways in which the discourse in manipulated, it is used
to justify recruiting and hiring women and then also used to justify not
training them and relegating them to limited roles as low-paid temporary
workers" (10).

Also gendered identities, meanings, and representations of who a
maquiladoras worker is, bound with representation of worth value and
respectability have placed these women in a very dangerous position.
Because the murders have been classified, by the media, as public violence
women have been encouraged to retreat to their homes under the supposed
supervision of men. This does not acknowledge the private acts of violence
committed in women's homes, which still constitutes the majority of sexual
violence. It also suggests that women who have to leave their homes for
employment are in some way "inviting sexual attacks and possibly murder
upon themselves by not observing 'traditional' domestic roles and staying
within the confines of the domestic or private sphere" (16). In addition,
there has been a discursive connection made between women who work in the
maquiladoras and prostitution - thus further reducing their respectability
and making it that much easier to blame them, not the larger political,
economic, and societal issues, for these crimes.

In her conclusion the author states:

"In November 2002, world leaders met in Quito, Ecuador for the Seventh
Summit of the Free Trade of the Americas Act (FTAA) to develop plans to
extend NAFTA-like provisions to 34 countries. Not surprisingly, the
murders of maquila women in Juarez were not discussed at the Summit. The
sexual violence in Cuidad Juarez is not simply an impediment to economic
and political development, but is linked to these processes of change,
mandating that the processes themselves undergo gender analysis. The
sexual violence in Ciudad Juarez is a brutal illustration of the
importance
of incorporating gender analysis in trade negotiations and considering the
gendered outcomes of economic and political policies and how they affect
the lives of women and men on the global assembly line, both in material,
as well as discursive or representational ways" (18-19).

To view the article, please see:
http://www.peacestudiesjournal.org.uk/docs/Working.pdf

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