The article for today comes from The Arizona Daily Star: Maquiladoras in Global Squeeze. By W.J. Hennigan.
When you read a newspaper from a border state you always get a tale of two cities, at least. In this article, what we are getting is a tale of three countries, feeling the effects of both globalization and economic crisis. The Maquiladoras, in Nogales, AZ are losing ground. Nogales is city known for its Maquiladoras – factories in which mostly Mexican workers receive materials/products form a particular country and then assemble goods to ship back to where the materials/products came from for retail. We’re talking everything from notebooks to airplane parts.
The reason Nogales is losing ground is that the work is being shipped to China, where labor is cheaper. Obviously, this is an interesting article to look at on Labor Day. For many reasons. Mostly, because the nature of our work is changing and we are in a state of, often painful, transition.
So many mornings, when we pick up the paper, or get online, it feels like the world is suffering a long, hard ache. Like the heartache after a serious relationship has broken (the feeling of not wanting to move-on, not wanting another lover, wanting still to linger in the comfort of a familiar bed, in familiar arms); or like a growing pain; or like the homesickness of migration. But this is the nature of change.
A year ago, when we voted in a new president in for the United States, we were calling for change. Change is happening all over the world now – in healthcare, in the car industry, in the book industry, in politics, in technology, in foreign trade, in the stock market, and in Nogales. It’s everywhere and sometimes it hurts. And before we can see any kind of light, we’ll have to whether the tides of change and tread through the transition.
There’s a country song by John Rich called Shuttin Detroit Down. It’s a song about the working man. One verse reads:
Because in the real world they're shuttin' Detroit down,While the boss man takes his bonus paid jets on out of town. DC's bailing out them bankers as the farmers auction ground. Yeah while they're living up on Wall Street in that New York City town,Here in the real world they're shuttin' Detroit down.
The situation in Nogales isn’t all that different.
The question that rises out of all of this is: What’s next? Because hopefulness for the future is also part of the nature of change. Yes, there’s always the chance that it will all turn out worse, but perhaps it will be better than we know; more than we know. Perhaps we are shuttin’ Detroit down to make room for a revolutionary kind of transportation that doesn’t rely on fuel and thereby changes our entire global/political dynamic. Perhaps the Maquiladoras will shut down and perhaps Hispanics will have a better tomorrow – better than those grueling days, and the pains of putting together someone else’s goods for preposterously little pay. Anything is possible. That’s the great part about the brink of change.
