Reproduced
with permission for the InterAm Database
National
Law Center for Inter-American Free Trade
THE
MAQUILADORA INDUSTRY AND ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION
IN
THE UNITED STATES-MEXICAN BORDERLANDS
by
Edward
J. Williams, Ph.D.
Professor
of Political Science
University
of Arizona
Tucson
AZ 85721
A
paper delivered at a conference on "International Boundaries and
Environmental Security: Frameworks for Regional Cooperation." University
of Singapore, Singapore, June 1995. This revised* edition of paper was
presented at the annual meeting of the Latin American Studies Association,
Washington, DC, September 1995.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
1
THE
MAQUILADORA INDUSTRY AND ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION 2
The
Maquiladora Industry 2
Environmental
Degradation 4
THE
POLITICAL CONTEXT 9
National
Governments 9
The
Local Political Context 13
Environmental
Politics 16
ADDITIONAL
CONSIDERATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS 20
ENDNOTES
24
INTRODUCTION
Mexico's
economic crisis of 1994-95 promises to add another increment to the ongoing
controversies surrounding the nation's maquiladora industry located in the
United States-Mexican Borderlands. As the crisis led to a significant
devaluation of the Mexican peso, the price of Mexican labor in the maquiladoras
plummeted. Measured in U.S. dollars, the wages earned in the assembly plants
decreased by almost 13 percent by January 1995. Even after an adjustment, wages
remained 9 percent lower in April, 1995.1 Declining wage rates encouraged U. S.
and other foreign firms to expand their operations in the Mexican Borderlands.
The
last Mexican economic crisis of 1982 sparked burgeoning growth in the
maquiladora industry. That precedent indicates more of the same for the late
1990s. During the mid-1980s the assembly plants expanded at a rate of more than
20 percent per year. While still strong, growth trailed off in the early 1990s.
The expansion of the industry in the late 1990s may not equal the pace of the
mid-1980s, but early indicators promise a period of renewed growth. In the
first two months of 1995, maquiladora employment rose 9.6 percent and exports
from the assembly plants increased by 18.9 percent. In April of 1995, Mexican
authorities approved 250 new maquiladoras. By May the value added created by
the industry was running more than 16 percent ahead of the previous year.2
As
even more assembly plants come in the late 1990s, the threat to the binational
Borderlands' environment cannot be far behind, and another round of political
disputation is sure to follow. Mexico's decision makers will be in the awkward
position of encouraging maquiladora growth for pressing economic reasons, while
placating environmental critics in Mexico and the U. S. who damn the assembly
plants as polluters of the Borderlands. This paper describes and analyzes that
scenario, paying special attention to the political influences at play as the
struggle unfolds. The paper divides into several parts. Following this
introduction, the paper describes the maquiladora industry and its role in the
environmental degradation of the Borderlands. The crux of the political
analysis extrapolates from that description. It centers upon several analytical
foci. They number the national governments in each country; state and local
governments and the Borderlands electorate in Mexico and the United States; and
environmental and social action groups that relate to the Borderlands and/or
the maquiladora industry. Pursing that analysis an increment further, the final
section of the paper proposes several additional considerations and ends with a
concluding analysis designed to define the issue of the maquiladora industry's
relationship to Borderlands environmental degradation as the twenty first
century dawns.
THE
MAQUILADORA INDUSTRY AND ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION
The
Maquiladora Industry
The
cooperative effort between the U. S. and Mexico is known by several names. The
terms "Border Industrialization Program" and "Maquiladora
Program" are most frequently used. A maquiladora (or maquila) is an
assembly plant. The program is also known as the "In-bond Industry"
in Mexico, referring to the fact that goods are shipped "in-bond"
from the U. S. to Mexico and back. Finally, the term "twin plants"
depicts a relationship between an assembly plant on the Mexican side and a
smaller processing and distribution facility on the American side.
Conceptually,
the maquiladora program reflects a global trend toward new forms of productive
relationships afoot during the post-World War II epoch. The initiative is
variously called "production sharing," "co-production,"
"the global assembly line," "offshore assembly," and
"international subcontracting." Although cheaper labor costs have
always been an element of the comparative advantage of less developed nations
and technological sophistication an advantage of more developed lands, assembly
operations like those in the maquiladora program combine the two in innovative
ways.
Historical
trends peculiar to the Mexican-United States' border region also contributed to
the foundation of the maquiladora program in 1965. They involved a series of
initiatives pursued by the Mexican government to improve the border region
while taking advantage of its juxtaposition to the United States. As early as
1930, the maquiladora's historical antecedents began to evolve when the Mexican
government attempted to promote the industrialization and economic development
of the Borderlands through the establishment of free trade privileges in the
region. As historical antecedents, the Bracero Program and the Programa Nacional
Fronterizo (PRONAF) connected even more directly to the maquiladora
industry. The Bracero Program began during World War II. Temporary Mexican
workers (braceros) were brought to the United States to work in the
agricultural area. When the Program ended in 1964, hundreds of thousands of
Mexicans were idled, most of them residing in the border cities of Mexico's
north. In the interim and partially influenced by the Bracero Program, the
Mexican government in 1961 launched the PRONAF to promote economic development
and social improvements along the border.
From
the U. S. side, the final component of the maquiladora program evolved from
emerging production strategies. During the early 1960s American firms were
rapidly increasing their offshore assembly activity in the Far East. In 1965,
Mexico promulgated a decree facilitating similar operations in Mexico.
Environmental
Degradation
The
maquiladora industry contributes indirectly and directly to environmental
degradation in the Mexican-United States Borderlands. Indirectly, the program
forms part of a larger panoply of influences pulling migrants from central and
southern Mexico to the Borderlands, creating an overload on the region's urban
infrastructure and its fragile ecology. Directly, the assembly plants blight
the Borderlands environment through undisciplined and illegal disposal of their
waste material. Irregular dumping of hazardous and toxic wastes defines the
most egregious example of the transgression.
Population
has burgeoned in the binational Borderlands, particularly on the Mexican side.
While Mexico's rate of growth equaled 22 percent in the 1980-1990 decenio,
the eight most important Borderlands cities almost doubled that rate at 43
percent. Tijuana may well be the world's most rapidly burgeoning large city,
having grown 61 percent in the 1980-90 period.3
A
number of influences have pushed and pulled central and southern Mexicans to
the region, most importantly its relative wealth compared with the rest of the
country. In turn, the Mexican Borderland's relative wealth derives from several
influences, most importantly economic spillover from the United States. The
maquiladora program forms the richest (save the drug industry?) manifestation of
U. S. economic spillover. Potential employment in the maquiladoras defines a
significant pull factor encouraging Mexican migrants to crowd the Borderlands.
In that sense, the assembly plants explain an indirect contribution to the
area's environmental problems. They contribute to a situation composed of too
many people massing into a fragile area in a poor country whose government has
neither the financial nor human resources to construct and maintain sufficient
infrastructure and services.
More
directly, the maquiladora industry's production and irregular disposal of waste
material blights the region. The assembly plants dump everything from raw
sewage through toxic metals into the local environment.4 Numerous reports
document the industry's unsafe and illegal disposal practices. They include a
case of children being intoxicated at a dump in Ciudad Ju‡rez by sniffing green
rocks covered with a solvent containing toluene; and a maquiladora that closed
and left in an abandoned building a dozen 55-gallon drums of hazardous
material. In 1991, the Texas Water Commission claimed that only sixty percent
of the hazardous wastes going from the U. S. to Mexico were being accounted for
and returned to the U. S. The other 40 percent may be stored on the Mexican
side or disposed of illegally. In 1995 the Mexican Federal Attorney for
Environmental Protection asserted that the final disposition of 25 percent, or
13,000 tons, of hazardous and toxic wastes produced by the maquiladora industry
were not accounted for.
A
study conducted by an environmental action group in several Borderlands cities
provides additional evidence. In 1990-91 the National Toxics Campaign Fund -
Citizens' Environmental Laboratory sampled waterways in several Borderlands
cities adjacent to or near suspected assembly plants. In Tijuana, Nogales, and
Matamoros on the Mexican side the
sample
detected pollution by petroleum, naphthalene, total xylene, chromium, copper,
and other materials.5
Chronologically,
the most serious problems with hazardous and toxic wastes derive from
relatively recent times. The composition (quality) of the industry has changed
and the numbers of plants (quantity) have multiplied, thereby creating new
conditions giving rise to new problems dating from the mid-1980s. The apparel
industry defined the single major component of the maquiladora industry from
its foundation in 1965 through the mid-1970s. A problem with jean washing
contributing to water pollution surfaced in El Paso/Ciudad Juarez in the late
1970s, but the apparel industry never constituted a serious threat to the
physical environment of the Borderlands.
Beginning
in the 1980s, however, electronics, chemical, and furniture industries moved to
the area, posing the threat of environmental pollution. The electronics plants
multiplied rapidly, and by the early 1980s electronics eclipsed apparels as the
largest component of the industry. From 1979 through 1985, the number of
apparel plants in the industry shrunk by 10 percent to 108, while the numbers
of electronic equipment and electronic component plants increased by 40 and 60
percent, respectively, to a combined total of 274. By the early 1990s, the
electronics industry came to dominate the Borderlands assembly plants. In a
study of Tijuana, Ciudad Ju‡rez, and Monterrey, electronics installations
accounted for 65 percent
of
all maquiladoras and fully 80 percent of all assembly plant employment in those
three important cities.6 The electronics component of the maquiladora industry
introduced significant new threats of environmental degradation. The industry
employs large volumes of
industrial
solvents in its productive process, the most serious menace to surface and
ground water in the binational Borderlands.7
Though
never looming so large as electronics, the chemical industry also moved to the
Borderlands in the late 1980s. Only three plants existed in 1985, growing to 51
by 1989 and more than doubling to 110 by 1992 and continuing to grow
thereafter. From January 1992 to January 1995, employment in the chemical
plants grew from just over 8000 to more than 11,600. The chemical industry
poses obvious environmental dangers, eliciting damnation and vigilance from
environmental activists in the Borderlands.8 Finally, significant segments of
California's furniture industry moved to the Mexican Borderlands. The U.
S.-owned furniture plants fled newly enacted restrictions on the use of
solvent-based paints and requirements to install spray chambers to contain
fumes.9
In
addition to qualitative changes in the industry, its ever-growing size also
creates new challenges to the Borderlands environment. As Table One indicates,
the industry's most significant spurt of rapid expansion covers the mid-1980s.
Following the initiation of the nation's economic crisis and the devaluation of
the peso beginning in 1982, relative wages in Mexico plummeted, catalyzing a
period of rapid expansion that continued until the last years of the decade.
As
the numbers of assembly plants and workers multiplied in the Borderlands in the
context of national economic depression, the threat of environmental
degradation increased substantially. In the first instance, more plants spelled
more waste materials. In 1990, Mexico's Secretary of Urban Development and
Ecology estimated that more than 1,000 maquiladoras may generate hazardous
waste materials.10 Secondly, more workers implied increased strain on already
inadequate infrastructure. Finally, Mexico's economic crisis of the 1980s
compounded the misery of the Borderlands. Especially scarce resources in an
already
TABLE
ONE
Plants
and Employees in the Maquiladora Industry: Selected Years
Year
Number of
Employees
Plants
(Annual average)
1965
3,000*
1970
160
20,300
1975
454
62,200
1980
620
119,600
1985
760
212,000
1990
1818
441,000
1995
2136
497,000
(February)
----------------
*
Rounded to closest 100. Sources: Leslie Sklair, Assembling for Development:
The Maquila Industry.... (San Diego, CA: Center for U. S.-Mexican Studies,
University of California, 1993, pp. 54, 63, 68, 241; Ellwyn R. Stoddard, Maquila:
Assembly Plants in Northern Mexico. (El Paso, TX: Texas Western Press,
1987), p. 24; and "Maquila Scoreboard", Twin Plant News (El
Paso), February, 1995, p. 41
relatively
poor country left precious little to satisfy the needs of Borderlands cities
for sewage systems, potable water, housing, transportation, etc.
Hence,
the Borderlands' environment suffered devastating degradation in the 1980s,
bringing the region to the cusp of catastrophe. A now famous report issued by
the Council on Scientific Affairs of the American Medical Association in 1990
posited "the major factors affecting environmental health in the border
area are water and air pollution." In another
frightening
declaration the Council's report charged that "the border area is a
virtual cesspool and breeding ground for infectious diseases."11
Another
period of rapid assembly plant growth threatens in the mid-1990s. The political
forces affecting the Borderlands will significantly influence the environmental
impact of the maquiladora industry.
THE
POLITICAL CONTEXT
Political
decision makers in Mexico and the United States significantly influence the
issues surrounding the maquiladora industry and environmental degradation in
the Mexican-U. S. Borderlands. This discussion centers upon several forces and
influences engaged in the decision making arena. In Mexico and the U. S. they
include the national governments; the local political context; and
environmental and social action groups concerned with the maquiladora industry
and/or environmental issues. As the political influences and forces are
discussed, their connection to the maquiladora industry and/or environmental
issues is highlighted.
National
Governments
National
governments in both Mexico and the United States value and cultivate the
maquiladora industry, although the industry assumes more importance and
receives more attention in Mexico. In the United States, any significant threat
to the continued existence of the maquiladora program faded in the late 1970s,
diminished further in the 1980s, and definitively passed from the realm of
possibility in 1994--the year the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
took effect and the year the Republican Party took over the U. S. Congress.
Labor
unions and their allies opposed the assembly plants from the inception of the
program in 1965, but U. S. unions have lost significant political punch over
the years as membership has diminished and public opinion has turned against
organized labor. The NAFTA forms only the most recent in a series of
humiliating defeats for Big Labor in the
U.
S.12
The
analysis of the U. S. national government's position on environmental
degradation and its application to the maquiladora industry is a trifle more
complex. One set of facts denies any move to regulate the maquiladora industry
from the U. S. side. Laissez faire doctrines dominate Washington
as the Congress grows overtly hostile to environmentalism.
On
the other hand, in 1995 the United States and Mexico are putting into place in
the binational Borderlands innovative arrangements to deal with waste water,
potable water and other environmental initiatives. The binational Border
Environmental Cooperation Commission (BECC) and the North American Development
Bank (NADBank) plan to initiate their first programs in 1995. They have no
competence to regulate assembly plants, but their presence in the Borderlands
forms part of a larger panoply of forces and pressures designed to discipline
errant practices leading to environmental degradation and to clean up the
damage once it is done.
On
the Mexican side, the interplay of contradictory proclivities also reveals some
degree of complexity. The Mexican government's position on the maquiladora
industry grows increasingly definite, but its stance on the issue of
environmental protection betrays ambivalence and ambiguity. From its origins
through the mid-1980s, Mexican policy makers depicted the assembly plant
industry as a necessary evil designed to assist Mexico's economy on the
margins, but not to be programmed as an integral element of a long-term economic
strategy. That prejudice have been gradually replaced by a sympathetic posture
for several reasons. Economic crises have dragged on or been replaced by new
emergencies. The experiences of Asian nations like South Korea and Taiwan
utilizing assembly plants as a vehicle for industrial take-off have been
well-advertized. Furthermore, the ideology of Mexico's decision-making elites
has evolved to a posture more in turn with private sector initiatives. Hence,
the maquiladora industry is now a "priority sector" of the economy.
It is prized, nurtured, and protected.
A
profile of the industry in 1995 demonstrates the rationale for the
maquiladoras' importance to the Mexican economy. With over 500,000 workers, the
assembly plants account for about 25% of employment in the nation's
manufacturing sector. As Mexico's economic crisis took its agonizing toll in
1995, the maquiladora industry proved to be one of the few areas of the Mexican
economy enjoying growth. In 1994, the industry earned Mexico nigh on to $6 billion
in foreign exchange, well above tourism earnings and approaching petroleum
export earnings of about $7 billion, long Mexico's primary earner of foreign
exchange.13
Given
the industry's economic clout, the Mexico City government is quick to discipline
local forces who might threaten it. In the 1990s, the Federal government jailed
a Matamoros labor leader and rebuked a PANIsta official in Ciudad Juarez for
transgressing the inviolability of the maquiladora industry.
If
that part of the equation is clear, the Mexican central government's position
on environmental control assumes more complexity. It relates to both will and
capacity. Will defines the more difficult analytical component of the mix. In
reviewing Mexican environmental reform and the NAFTA, the leading authority
posits the parameters.14 On the optimistic side of the ledger, recent
"policy measures, viewed as a package, are substantial.... Mexican
officials believe that they have amply demonstrated their commitment to
environmental protection...in the spirit of the NAFTA." On the other hand,
environmentalists continue to question Mexico's policy reforms.
In
that sense, the economic crisis of the mid-1990s gives pause. The political
feasibility of environmental projects stands inversely related to the condition
of the economy. Hard economic times are not propitious for environmentalists. A
former director of Mexico's National University's Ocean Science Institute
reflects the point in declaring "you cannot worry more about the monarch
butterfly than people who don't have enough to eat. We have to develop our own
regulations and standards." To the point, the NAFTA does not compel
tri-national standardization of environmental regulations. Mexico enjoys
flexibility to move toward less rigorous standards. Indeed, President Ernesto
Zedillo did exactly that. In mid-1995 he announced reforms that discontinue
environmental and public health impact statements from small businesses engaged
in activities considered to be relatively benign.15
Beyond
the uncertain will of the Mexican government to press the maquiladora industry,
the nation's capacity is clearly lacking. To be sure, Mexico has achieved some
success in upgrading its capacity in recent years. For example, the number of
field inspectors almost doubled during the previous sexenio (six year
presidential term, 1988-94). But, the program remains inadequate. It is
"grossly under-funded," with "very modest allocations to
environmental enforcement," and the "numbers of [field inspectors]
are a fraction of what is necessary to police environmental practices
nationwide." In the Borderlands, funding
"scarcely
covers salaries, much less operating expenses, for those handling inspections,
data analysis, and enforcement."16
By
way of redeeming qualities, however, it should be recalled that Mexico is part
of the Borderlands BECC and NADBank initiative that promises a new presence for
the repair and preservation of the area's environment. Without exaggerating the
will or the capacity of the new institutions, they form part of a series of
measures that define a significant new binational Borderlands departure in a
geographic region that is beginning to assume the embryonic form of binational
space.
Binational
environmental activist groups comprise another component of that larger
movement. They are discussed anon, but a sense of the comprehensive context
first calls for a description and analysis of the local political context.
The
Local Political Context
Although
the ingredients of the compound differ from the national political context, the
local scene counts the same mix of positive and negative responses to the
maquiladora industry and a similar ambiguity on issue of Borderlands
environmental degradation. If anything, state and local governments tend to be
more supportive of the maquiladora industry than their national counterparts.
And, in that vein, they evidence less zeal in their opposition to environmental
degradation that may be connected with the assembly plants.
The
maquiladora industry enjoys significant local support on both sides of the
boundary line in the binational Borderlands. On the United States side,
traditional local business elites coalesce with a newly evolved
"transnational capitalist class" to support the industry. The
traditional merchants wax prosperous as the Mexican Borderlands expand their
populations. Increasingly large numbers of Mexicanos cross the line to
shop, many of them maquiladora workers who spend significant percentages of
their wages in U. S. Borderlands cities. An early study by Mexico's Banco
Nacional de Comercio Exterior estimated that 60 to
75 percent of maquiladora wages were spent on the U. S. side.17 It is no wonder
that Nogales, Arizona merchants have worked with the local maquiladora
association and U. S. Immigration and Naturalization Service officials to
institute a special program to facilitate granting crossing (shopping) cards to
assembly plant workers.
The
Borderlands "transnational capitalist class" is a product of the
maquiladora industry. It is mostly composed of Americans, but includes
Mexicans. The group counts an assortment of entrepreneurs, developers,
executives, managers, bankers and brokers who work in the industry or who
service it. These men and women obviously owe their livelihoods to the assembly
plants, and they doggedly support the maquiladora industry on the local,
national, and international scenes.
The
traditional commercial groups and the newer interests affiliated with the
maquiladora industry count comparatively few members, but they exercise significant
political influence in the Borderlands. They are relatively rich,
well-educated, and sophisticated in a socio-economic and political milieu
characterized by poverty, ignorance, and political authoritarianism and/or low
levels of political mobilization.
Extrapolating
from the influence of the local elites associated with the maquiladora industry
and the semi-authoritarian nature of the Mexican political system, state and
local government in Mexico mirrors strong support for the maquiladoras. Mexican
state and local government reflect the hierarchical characteristics of the
general system. The state governor is the President's man; he hues to the line
dictated from Mexico City. The same norms inform the relationship between the
governor and the local presidente municipal. Therefore, state and
local governmental relations with the industry generally reflect the national
position. If anything, they may be even more supportive and less critical,
given the influence of the local elites and the significance of the maquiladora
industry in the local economies. One study, for example, proposes that 45
percent of the workforce in Nogales, Sonora is directly or indirectly tied to
the maquiladora industry.18
The
local population plays a negligible role in the balance of political forces.
Although in transition to a more dynamic mode, the Mexican political
participant is more potential than actual. Authoritarianism runs deeply in the
political culture. The government rules the official party. Almost half the
population is below the legal voting age of 18. Potential voters do not
participate. For the 1989 elections, for example, nigh on to 50 percent (45.7)
did not register and of registered voters almost 50 percent (45.6) failed to
vote. Particularly in the burgeoning Borderlands cities, many potential
political participants are transients with no interest in local political or
physical environment.19
On
the U. S. side of the binational Borderlands, the political potency of the
local populations is a trifle higher, but still not very significant.
Mexican-Americans compose majorities in the Borderlands on the American side.
They are poor and unschooled, not the socio-economic makings of effective
political participants.
Most
residents of the U. S. Borderlands rank relatively poorer than their
countrymen. San Diegans define the only exception. From San Diego looking east,
border peoples suffer from increasing poverty. At the far east of the
Borderlands, Mexican-Americans in the Lower Rio Grande Valley in Texas rank
with the poorest people in the country year in and year out. Borderlanders are
also relatively unschooled. A recent survey showed Mexican Americans advancing
beyond the high school level at about one half the rate of Anglo-Americans.20
It
is not surprising that poverty stricken, poorly educated Mexican Americans do
not mobilize politically, nor do they demonstrate much interest in
environmental issues. The most comprehensive survey of Latinos yet undertaken
reflected the differences between Mexican- American and Anglo-American
political participation the 1988 elections. Seventy percent of Anglo-Americans
voted in the presidential election, but only 49 percent of Mexican- Americans.
About the same differences existed in the level of voting for the House of
Representatives, 61 to 39 percent, respectively.21
Given
their relative poverty, Mexican-American Borderlanders do not place much
emphasis on the environment. In a list of eight public policy areas,
Mexican-Americans ranked "improving the environment" below the median,
behind socio-economic priorities like crime control and drug prevention, public
education, health care, and child care services.
Environmental
Politics
Environmental,
labor, and social action groups concerned with the problem of the maquiladora
program's ruination of the Borderlands' environment obviously define a much
purer position than national or local governments. They are dedicated to
terminating the irregular dumping of hazardous and toxic wastes in the
binational Borderlands.
While
their mission is clearly defined, an analysis of their political capabilities
implies a degree of uncertainty. Environmentalists wax infinitely more
influential than they did a generation ago when Rachel Carson launched the
movement with the publication of Silent Spring (1962), but they
may not be so puissant as they were in the early 1990s. Their sometime
collaborators in the labor union movement unquestionably wane in power. The
political punch of social action groups varies according to time, place, and
purpose.
Environmentalism
defined the socio-political movement of the 1980s and the early 1990s in the
United States. Though behind its U. S. counterpart across the board, the
Mexican movement evolved at about the same time. Both attracted the young,
idealistic, and enthusiastic. The U. S. movement multiplied its membership, its
financial resources, and its political influence during the 1980s. National
environmentalists first seriously connected with the Borderlands in the late
1980s as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into negotiation.
Their considerable public relations and mobilization skills contributed
significantly to encouraging the Clinton Administration to negotiate the environmental
side accord to the NAFTA in 1993.
As
noted previously, the Republican Party's victory in the 1994 elections presaged
political attitudes less sympathetic to environmentalists' political designs. A
similar re-evaluation may well be afoot in Mexico. Hence, the overall political
punch of the environmentalists in the national political arena appears to be
declining in the mid-1990s.
With
that point posited, environmentalists and other social action groups are alive
and well in the binational Borderlands. They stand more influential than at any
time since the definition of the boundary line in the mid-nineteenth century.
Reflecting larger trends that apply to a continuum of cultural, social,
economic, and political initiatives, environmentalists have connected to a
growing focus on the Borderlands in both Mexico and the United States. The
number of environmental organizations in the Borderlands numbers in excess of
200. Environmental mobilization is certainly the most visible of the new
movements in Borderlands politics.
The
most provocative and significant manifestation of those trends centers upon the
growth of binational environmental (and human rights) organizations in the
Borderlands. Binational cooperation amongst environmentalists began in the early
1980s, but the several enterprises moved into a new stage with the broaching of
the NAFTA. The NAFTA riveted attention on the environmental degradation of the
Borderlands, sparking the formation of national and Borderlands organizations
and linking a number into effective examples of international cooperation.
A
complete catalog of those binational organizations is beyond the ken of this
essay, but a listing of several across the U. S. border states serves to
capture the point. In Texas and Mexico's state of Nuevo Le—n, the Texas Center
for Policy Studies has joined with Bioconservaci—n of the state capital
of Monterrey to pursue the Binational Project on the Environment. In New
Mexico, the research and policy-oriented International Transboundary Resources
Center (Centro Internacional de Recursos Transtfrontorizos)
works with like-minded Mexican colleagues in several locations. In Arizona, the
Border Ecology Project assumes a leading role in the binational Red Fronteriza
de Salud y Ambiente. In California, finally, the
San Diego Environmental Health Coalition cooperates with the Tijuana-based ComitŽ
Ciudadano Pro Restauraci—n del Canon del
Padre on a series of environmental issues.22
On
both side of the international boundary line, environmentalists engage in
numerous activities. They collect data and monitor air and water standards.
They support community Right to Know initiatives; they network with like minded
groups; they lobby nationally and transnationally. And environmental groups also
generate funds for local environmental
remediation.
Many of those initiatives relate directly to the region's maquiladora industry.
Public
health advocates, labor unions, social action groups, and human rights
activists also lend their support to discipline the maquiladora program in the
binational Borderlands. Public health advocates frequently work closely with
environmentalists in the area of environmental health. The newly-minted United
States-Mexico Border Health Foundation reflects a significant success in the
health field. It should be functioning by 1996.
Organized
labor is also active in the Borderlands. Frustrated by its inability to defeat
the NAFTA, the American Federation of Labor/Congress of Industrial
Organizations (AFL/CIO) has launched a campaign to organize the maquiladoras in
the Borderlands. It works with the Frente AutŽntico del Trabajo
(FAT), a small, independent Mexican labor movement. While not directly focused
upon environmental issues, the AFL/CIO-FAT
coalition
contributes to an atmosphere designed to discipline the assembly plants by
focusing public attention on their activities.
Of
the several social action groups concerned with the maquiladora program, the
binational Committee for Justice in the Maquiladoras (CJM) is by far the most
significant. The CJM counts a coalition of unions, religious groups, human
rights activists, public health interests, and environmentalists. It pursues a
wide ranging strategy that includes picketing and demonstrations, letter
writing campaigns, lobbying and testifying before legislative and
administrative bodies, and organizing stockholders of companies active in the
maquiladora
program.
The CJM concentrates on measures to implement new policies governing working
conditions, safety standards, and, of course, environmental protection.
Binational
human rights advocates also play a role in the coalition of forces that buffet
the industry. Of the several organizations, the best known is the American
Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and their Mexican co-religionists, the Amigos.
Among other initiatives that impact the maquiladoras, the AFSC organized the ComitŽs
de Apoyo (Support Committees) for workers in the assembly plants
in the lower Rio Grande Valley cities of Reynosa and Matamoros. The ComitŽs
assist the maquiladora workers to organize.
Public
health, labor, social action, and human rights advocates do not always center
their attention on the environmental issues that form the focus of this
analysis, but they contribute to a milieu of vigilance in the Borderlands. Like
the environmentalist groups, they act as a countervailing power to the
significant influence wielded by the maquiladora industry in the binational
Borderlands. In that sense, they connect to a larger political context that
operates in the Borderlands to counter environmental degradation perpetrated by
the assembly plants.
Beyond
the immediate political milieu, several other factors play into that scenario.
The final section of this paper posits and analyzes them.
ADDITIONAL
CONSIDERATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS
Several
changes in train in the maquiladora program and/or the Borderlands pertain to
an analysis of the assembly plants' connection to environmental degradation in
the region. Perhaps most importantly, a heightened awareness of the assembly plants'
contribution to the blight of environmental degradation in the Borderlands has
increased across the board, from Washington and Mexico City to Brownsville and
Matamoros. Therefore, the industry polices
itself
more effectively than in years past. Furthermore, meaningful infrastructural
improvements are building in the Borderlands with the promise of more to come.
The
industry has become more responsible in the 1990s. The area-wide Border Trade
Alliance (BTA) takes a leading role in educating and encouraging the industry
to improve its environmental policies and programs, including disposing of
hazardous and toxic wastes. Local maquiladora associations in the Borderlands
also exert pressure on their members to pursue more responsible environmental
practices.
A
part of the explanation for the positive advances stems from more effective
education. In the 1980s, many plant managers remained ignorant of the
consequences of their actions and unaware of legal norms governing the use and
disposal of waste materials growing out of an agreement between the U. S. and
Mexico in 1987. Dick Kamp, a leading Borderlands environmentalist, reports good
results from informational seminars conducted with the maquiladora association
in Agua Prieta in the Mexican state of Sonora, across the line from Douglas,
Arizona. Educational programs have also improved the capabilities of the U. S.
Customs Service and its counterpart, the Mexican Aduana.23
The
companies are responding. Worker education helps by training workers in the use
of protective clothing and safer work habits. More companies are returning
their hazardous and toxic wastes to the U. S., as required by law. In an
important initiative, General Motors
is
installing in the mid-1990s water treatment facilities in its 35 plants in
Mexico, more than half of them in the Borderlands.24
Expanded
enforcement plays into the improving scenario. While still far short of the
personnel needed for frequent and effective vigilance, Mexico's inspection
corps has more than doubled to over 400. The inspectors are also more competent
than previously, having received training by the U. S. Environmental Protection
Agency. A maquiladora manager in Nogales, Sonora reports unexpected visits from
Mexican inspectors, "sometimes even twice a month." Those practices
define a significant change from times past.25
New
infrastructure in the Borderlands also forms part of the equation. While not
directly germane to the issue of hazardous and toxic materials, new waste water
treatment plants are under construction in San Diego (on the U. S. side) and
Nuevo Laredo (on the Mexican side). More cogently, treatment facilities for
hazardous and toxic wastes are also building on both sides of the boundary
line. Newly developing industrial parks also connect directly to the issue of
hazardous and toxic wastes. Most of the new facilities under construction
provide processing facilities on property for many types of waste materials.
Furthermore, industrial parks lend discipline to the continuum of maquiladora
operations. All
of
the parks posit rules and regulations, and all provide a context for peer
re-enforcement of legal and informal norms governing correct conduct.26
Finally,
new financial institutions offer some additional promise of effective
environmental management and clean-up in the binational Borderlands. The BECC
and NADBank constitute far from perfect institutions, and their basic funding
of $3 billion and claims of leveraging additional funding for a total of $9
billion remain a trifle uncertain and/or hyperbolic. But they certainly go far
beyond the near vacuum of financial resources for environmental programs that
existed in the 1980s and early 1990s. Moreover, the economic crisis has
catalyzed the Mexican government to levy substantial taxes on the maquiladora
industry for the first time. The Secretary of Hacienda (Treasury) cast
regulations in 1995 to implement 1994 legislation designed to levy corporate income
and/or assets taxes on the industry. Some of those funds are destined to return
to the Borderlands communities that house the maquiladoras.27
In
conclusion, two major contradictory trends influence the maquiladora industry's
contribution to environmental degradation in the binational Borderlands on the
eve of the twenty-first century. On the one hand, Mexico's economic crisis and
concomitant wage depression invites another round of significant growth for the
industry. Additional assembly plants promise the threat of more waste material
contaminating the Borderlands environment. On the other hand, the mid-1990s
presents a more mature Borderlands scenario than the mid-1980s when
undisciplined dumping ravaged the region. The NAFTA has mobilized potent political
opposition amongst sophisticated environmentalists. They convinced the
governments to negotiate a side agreement to the free trade treaty specifically
given over to environmental protection. Private companies appear to be more
responsible. Most importantly new social action, political, and financial
organizations and institutions are in place in the binational Borderlands. They
promise to manifest permanent vigilance and to undertake ongoing policies and
programs to repair the damage of the past and avoid the depredations of the
future.
ENDNOTES