Delegations
Produced by our friends at Austin Tan Cerca de la Frontera (ATCF) in solidarity with the Comite Fronterizo de Obrer@s based in Piedras Negras (Eagle Pass, TX), the delegation is a weekend educational experience.
A group of 10-12 delegates ride from Austin to the border, meet organizers and learn about the industry methods and how it affects workers’ lives.
The delegates tour maquiladora industrial parks and see where U.S. companies that produce thousands of consumer goods have outsourced production and assembly.
The delegates are taken to workers’ homes and neighborhoods. Over a shared meal, workers and delegates learn about each other. Workers reveal details about safety and toxicity in the workplace, about abusive and harassing supervisors, about the pressures put on them to meet impossible production quotas.
On a typical delegation there is a “basic market basket” workshop, where it becomes clear that maquiladora wages aren’t enough to feed a family.
By going to their homes the delegates observe the impoverished living conditions that are the day to day reality of a typical maquiladora worker.
A few weeks after the delegation, there is a meeting to reflect on what they learned from the experiential learning experience of hearing about life under NAFTA directly from a maquiladora worker.
Read delegation stories and other border stories.
Contact Austin Tan Cerca de la Frontera to attend a delegation.
Tucson-based Borderlinks offers delegations to the Arizona-Sonora region and inside Mexico, which focus on issues surrounding immigration.
