Reflections on Reynosa by Rachel Conradt-Adams   [Rachel s a third year law student at Northern Illinois University; she attended the delegation to Reynosa, Tamaulipas, October 13-15, 2006]                

I thought I was being exploited and “treated badly” by radio and television stations who paid me 16 to 23 thousand dollars a year after I graduated from Northwestern University in 1998.  I left the business and came to law school specifically because I wanted to join a less “exploitive” profession.                 I sincerely believed that until I realized the scandalous treatment and wages workers along the Texas/Mexico U.S. Border received.  The first night we were there, we visited an average “maquiladora” (Mexican factory) worker’s home.  An entire family lived in a “house” smaller than the size of my senior year studio apartment in Evanston, Illinois.                 During that night, a secret meeting of male maquiladora workers met at that home.  Those Mexican men in the maquiladoras supporting their entire families spoke matter of factly that their wages totaled 36 U.S. dollars a week converted  into American figures.  While making 36 dollars a week, one worker who spoke to us in this secret meeting spoke of nearly losing his his leg at work because a faulty safety latch fell on him, requiring about 30 stitches.  But his employer tried to avoid paying him any medical compensation or benefits.  He told of finally getting help on getting proper workers’ compensation benefits from the CFO, an organization that is made up of maquiladora workers who teach each other how to organize for justice using the law and how to receive compensation for work related injuries.                 We also toured all of the companies that unions complain have left America for “cheap” Mexican wages.  The conditions described were deplorable, and reminded me of the stories I heard in elementary school about African American slaves on southern plantations living in small cabins for their masters.  One of the workers showed us deeply mud infested yards fenced in, with mini shacks, where Mexican workers must live because they can’t afford to buy better housing or because the tiny government backed housing ties them down with lifelong debt repayment plans.                  Ironically, however, we learned that Mexican law actually offers more benefits to workers and women with children, in theory, than American laws.  But the problem, C.F.O. members explained, is enforcement.  Not just in Mexico, but the United States, laws serve no purpose unless people are aware of them.  The conditions in these factories frequently violate Mexican law.  But workers do not realize they have legal rights against these deplorable conditions, and therefore seek no recourse to enforce them.