The findings of Maria Patricia Fernandez-Kelly’s study looking into the lives of female workers employed in ‘maquiladoras’ assembly plants on the Mexican-US border provides valuable insight into the social, economic and political tensions which arose between the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s during an unprecedented period of demographic expansion (P19). She presents an interesting illustration of unemployment, economic exploitation and social upheaval and explores how female workers survive and adapt in an extreme and perilous environment. By combining a thorough literature review with extensive field-research and private interviews, Fernandez-Kelly has been able to experience first-hand what she ultimately discusses and debates in the text.
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These relationships are vital to so many Mexican women for their economic survival. Kelly undertook many forms of ethnographic research, one of which included participant observation where she was invited to seek employment and residency over a two month period. From her experience of living in Ciudad Juarez she saw how women regularly organised meetings in order to introduce new ‘Avon’ products and persuade friends and relatives to buy them. She noticed how the women appeared to be indebted to each other yet in reality, women were buying items such as facial cream because they felt they were providing the seller a personal favour (p159). Kelly summarised her point …show more content…
‘For we are sold’ contributes well to the much wider debate surrounding globalisation and capitalist manipulation and offers a startling contrast between capitalist and worker transformations on a relatively localised level. It provides the reader with an informative presentation which presents more than the mere criticism of a single inhumane example of exploitation. This criticism is completely deserved and as Fernandez-Kelly
Norma Elia Cantu’s novel “Canícula: Imágenes de una Niñez Fronteriza” (“Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera”), which chronicles of the forthcoming of age of a chicana on the U.S.- Mexico border in the town of Laredo and Nuevo Laredo in the 1940s-60s. Norma Elia Cantú brings together narrative and the images from the family album to tell the story of her family. It blends authentic snapshots with recreated memoirs from 1880 to 1950 in the town between Monterrey, Mexico, and San Antonio, Texas. Narratives present ethnographic information concerning the nationally distributed mass media in the border region. Also they study controversial discourse that challenges the manner in which the border and its populations have been portrayed in the U.S. and Mexico. The canícula in the title symbolizes “The dog days of 1993,” an intense part of summer when the cotton is harvested in South Texas. The canícula also represents summer and fall; also important seasons and concepts of that bridge between child and adulthood. She describes imaginative autobioethnography life growing up on ...
Coming from an “unconventional” background, George Saunders is readily able to relate to the circumstances the everyday working laborer goes through (Wylie). However, Saunders has an advantage to spread out his ideas and concerns about life in the U.S. via his short stories and novellas. Because of neoliberalism and capitalism and its correlation to the huge wealth gap in the U.S. Saunders focuses his protagonists’ view from a proletariat standpoint, allowing the reader to see the life of consumerism has impacted our society. Saunders does not use conventional methods to portray this reality. Instead, Saunders emphasizes on the “absence” of certain moral human characteristics in order to take the reader away from viewing into a hero’s looking glass— to set a foundation of a world where our morals become lost to our materialistic and inherent need of money (Wylie).
Naumann, Ann K. and Mireille Hutchinson, The Integration of Women into the Mexican Labor Force Since NAFTA THE AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST, June/July 1997, 950-956.
Oftentimes, societal problems span across space and time. This is certainly evident in Julia Alvarez’s How the García Girls Lost Their Accents a novel in which women are treated peripherally in two starkly different societies. Contextually, both the Dominican Republic and the United States are very dissimilar countries in terms of culture, economic development, and governmental structure. These factors contribute to the manner in which each society treats women. The García girls’ movement between countries helps display these societal distinctions. Ultimately, women are marginalized in both Dominican and American societies. In the Dominican Republic, women are treated as inferior and have limited freedoms whereas in the United States, immigrant
The articles by Meika Loe and Charlie LeDuff both exhibit how working conditions for women and minorities post-Industrial Revolution United States has not changed. Though some of what was happening at Bazooms was not the same as the slaughterhouse, both had do deal with verbal abuse, considered to be the lowest common denominator in the workplace, and fearing for your job. In today’s society, such affairs still happen within the workplace. People are viewed based on their gender or race and not their actual work ethic. Those who are illegal aliens get exploited for their status and get scrutinized for the wages being lowered since, they have little to no power cannot challenge authority. The women at Bazooms are degraded not only with the managers, but also the customers; however they can challenge authority.
Imagine being employee number 101 out of 1001. Now imagine working on an assembly line in a hot room filled with 1000 other women frantically assembling products for first world countries to use for ten seconds before discarding for a newer version. This job pays enough for you to get by but living in a third world country with low pay isn’t easy. What many people don’t understand is that the cost of production in a third world country is more inexpensive than it is in America. Hiring women to work in horrid conditions decreases employee loss because they are not rambunctious like men. “Life on the Global Assembly Line” by Barbara Ehrenreich and Annette Fuentes clearly illustrates the hardships women go through for U.S. corporation production. Corporate powers have resorted to building production plants in third world countries to save money. U.S. corporate powers take advantage of third world
Nevertheless, Cisneros’s experience with two cultures has given her a chance to see how Latino women are treated and perceived. Therefore, she uses her writing to give women a voice and to speak out against the unfairness. As a result, Cisneros’ story “Woman Hollering Creek” demonstrates a distinction between the life women dream of and the life they often have in reality.
No place to work? No means through which to provide for your family? These were the issues facing the individuals in northern Mexico during the 1900s. Many people were without jobs, having no way to provide for their family. They looked high and low, but the job market was sparse, and if there were jobs available, they probably required a specialized skillset that the people didn’t have. In order to solve this problem, Mexico and America jointly began the formation of the first maquiladoras. We will determine the effect that maquiladoras have had on the history of Mexico by looking at when and why they were first started and what have been the positive and negative effects of them.
Having discussed the Mexican Revolution in brief, it is appropriate to turn to the first actor in the revolutionary drama: the Mexican worker. The process of rapid economic development under Porfirio Diaz beginning in the 1890s had created the country’s first significant industrial working class. Alicia Hernandez Chavez notes that railroad workers, for example, numbered in the tens of thousands by 1910, whereas they had not existed before the creation and expansion of the industry (MBH 173). The arrival of the streetcar, now found in a number of major Mexican cities, created another skilled working-class occupation that did not exist before. In the two decades before the outbreak of the revolution, a modern textile sector also emerged. It reached six hundred and six thousand workers, many concentrated in large factories producing cloth for domestic consumption (MBH 173). Mining, a boom-and-bust industry that dated from the colonial period, recovered and expanded considerably thanks to the railroads. In 1910, miners numbered almost a hundred thousand in Mexico (MBH 173). They lived in mining camps and towns found largely in the Mexican north. More generally, various mass consumer goods were increasingly shifting to small-scale factory production, including items like soap, candles, beer, furniture, soft drinks, cigarettes, meat, and baked goods.
The documentary tells the story of globalization from personal perspectives Carmen and Lourdes and a dynamic group of Mexican maquiladora workers who work towards creating solutions to the complexities of life in a globalized and polluted city. Each having the opportunity to tell their story and representation. The implications of liberty and freedom say to have implicated neoliberal practices which are proven false through this documentary.
In terms of the media, men are both seen and heard much more than women are. Women’s biological events are typically not studied into vast detail. Furthermore, women of color are severely unnoticed in psychology research (30). An area in which women go especially unnoticed is domestic work. There are numerous women who immigrate from the Caribbean, Latin America, and other developing countries, to North America. Upon entering North America, these women work in areas where they provide domestic work, such as child care, until they can earn a green card. Matlin (2012) reports further, “They may be expected to work every day—with no time off and no health insurance—for a fraction of the minimum-wage salary. Many of the women report that their employers insult them, do not let them leave the house, and treat them much like modern-day slaves” (226). While this situation sounds like something that would occur in a third world country, it is occurring right in our own backyards. In addition to domestic work, numerous women and their families become involved with garment work. Many women go unnoticed working in sweatshops, where there are numerous labor laws regarding wages and working conditions violated daily. These sweatshops occur all over the world, from North America to Latin America. Matlin recalls a story from one of her students, saying, “Several months later, Ling’s mother began to work on a garment, without asking for the supervisor’s permission. The supervisor then punched Ling’s mother in the chest, and the family called the police to report the assault. The manager then fired the entire family” (226). It is shocking that women go unnoticed and unreported in these unethical and disturbing conditions. In addition to this, women often go unnoticed in health care. Throughout history, women have often been
With concern over global warming growing, people are starting to turn a more serious eye toward cleaner sources of energy. Instead of solar power making a comeback as the ideal form, we are seeing a growth in the use of wind power. Wind farms are beginning to crop up all around the country. This new trend has gathered significant attention. Questions are being raised concerning the effects wind farms may have, from critics and supporters alike. Michelle Nijhuis, in the article “Selling the Wind” discusses the arguments on behalf of and in opposition to the increasing use of wind power, addressing what the consequences may be on the United States.
The contrast between the Mexican world versus the Anglo world has led Anzaldua to a new form of self and consciousness in which she calls the “New Mestiza” (one that recognizes and understands her duality of race). Anzaldua lives in a constant place of duality where she is on the opposite end of a border that is home to those that are considered “the queer, the troublesome, the mongrel and the mulato” (25). It is the inevitable and grueling clash of two very distinct cultures that produces the fear of the “unknown”; ultimately resulting in alienation and social hierarchy. Anzaldua, as an undocumented woman, is at the bottom of the hierarchy. Not only is she a woman that is openly queer, she is also carrying the burden of being “undocumented”. Women of the borderlands are forced to carry two degrading labels: their gender that makes them seem nothing more than a body and their “legal” status in this world. Many of these women only have two options due to their lack of English speaking abilities: either leave their homeland – or submit themselves to the constant objectification and oppression. According to Anzaldua, Mestizo culture was created by men because many of its traditions encourage women to become “subservient to males” (39). Although Coatlicue is a powerful Aztec figure, in a male-dominated society, she was still seen
Blurb: Women across Mexico have taken to the streets to publicly march and declare their stance against the ongoing corruption and abuse they have suffered during the decade-long war on drugs. On the eve of el Dia de Los Muertos this year, countless mothers, sisters, and friends, took to the streets to chant “ni una mas” (not one more) in protest of the number of women who have been kidnaped, raped, tortured, and murdered during the war on drugs. The time for women to integrate into the security sector, government, and peacebuilding efforts is now. http://ebuddynews.com/mexican-women-protest-violence-impunity-day-dead/ Ni Una Mas: Women’s’ Voices Matter in Mexico’s War on Drugs. “The war on drugs has normalized misogynistic violence” said
“Inequality, conflict, and regulatory corruption are all part and parcel of capitalism, history has borne this out numerous times unless someone steps in to break them up, monopolies are the natural result of unbridled capitalism.” Author John Perkins, also known as the ‘economic hitman’ describes his role as a highly paid professional who helped the U.S. cheat poor countries around the world out of trillions of dollars by providing them more money in which they could not pay back and later, taking over their economies in exchange of natural resources such as oil. In the epilogue of his book “Confessions of an Economic Hitman” he expresses his thoughts on taking ownership and changing the system by avoiding products that were manufactured by overworked laborers by developing boycotts to end labor standards and the promotion of it. Even though their is obvious economic growth in the U.S., Grassroots boycott can affect the policies of multinational corporations by avoiding products that are made by mistreated workers and help reduce self-destruction of the overall global empire because people who live in poverty do not benefit from a “voluntary trade,” the ecosystem is dying out, and greed is built in the system of the third world.