Cine Latino "Maquilapolis" February 7, 2007

Annelise Wunderlich listens as Vicky Funari talks about making "Maquilapolis" on February 7.

Documentary Promotoras and the City of Maquilapolis
By Angelica Marin

Following the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, multinational factories in search of cheap labor flooded Mexican cities along the U.S.–Mexico border. Places like Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez became havens for transnational companies seeking to manufacture export-oriented goods. In some cases, this new global trade system widened avenues that allowed for environmental and labor law violations, exposing workers to harmful chemicals and paying them no more than $40 a week.

Since then, academics, activists and artists have entered into endless debate about the benefits and dangers of globalizing Mexico’s economy via the maquiladora industry. Numerous reports, books and documentaries have been released that grapple with the situation from an outsider’s point of view. Rarely though have audiences learned about NAFTA and the effects of globalization from those who are most affected: the workers themselves.

However, during a showing of the documentary “Maquilapolis: City of Factories” at UC Berkeley, award-winning director Vicky Funari attempted to do just that.

Through personal video footage, “Maquilapolis” depicts the lives of factory workers, many of whom are women who migrated from the interior of Mexico to work in Tijuana ’s maquiladora industry. By making the workers part of the shooting, producing and scripting of the film, Funari and codirector Sergio De La Torre not only threw out the traditional documentary-making formula but also enabled the women to focus on the stories and issues that mattered most to them.

“No one wanted to talk about how great their lives were,” said Funari about the involvement of these women in the filmmaking process. “They didn’t see the good side to globalization; they wanted to communicate that they needed change.”

Released in 2006, “Maquilapolis” takes us up close and personal into the lives of workers. By filming their own everyday lives, the principal cast, Carmen Durán and Lourdes Luján, expose unsafe working conditions, poverty-level wages, lack of job security and uninhabitable living situations. As the film progresses, the flight of factories to lower wage countries forces the women to grapple with the unemployment and environmental contamination they leave behind. Through their struggles, they are transformed from factory workers into promotoras or community activists who stand-up to transnational companies and demand change.

In Colonia Chilpancingo, the shantytown where Luján lives, many of the residents developed chronic illnesses due to high levels of lead in the soil. Although the contamination was directly linked to the deteriorating skeleton of an old U.S. factory, the San Diego-based owner refused to clean up the toxic mess. In the end, due to the weakness of NAFTA’s environmental provisions, Mexico was left with the costly responsibility for decontaminating the site.

In a recent report by the worker advocacy group, Comite Fronterizo de Obreros, statistics showed that between 2001 and 2006, Tijuana lost 931 factories, leaving more than 150,000 workers unemployed. Although Mexican border cities witnessed a significant factory boom after the signing of NAFTA, maquiladora plants entered into a period of decline in 2001 following China ’s entrance into the WTO and the attack on the World Trade Center.

To this, one of the promotoras in the film responds, “With globalization the woman worker enters the maquiladora industry as a form of merchandise. If this merchandise is not productive or attractive to the global economy because she begins to defend her rights, then the maquiladora industry looks for this merchandise somewhere else.”

Since its release, “Maquilapolis” has been shown at colleges and universities around the country and at various film festivals around the world. It has also aired on the PBS documentary series POV and was recently picked-up by Ambulante, a traveling documentary festival in Mexico.

“We wanted to be sure that the people who would most directly relate to it would get to see it,” said Funari, “And that the people who gave their time and energy and love in making the film would have some way of using it to further their work.”

The Center for Latin American Studies screened “Maquilapolis” at UC Berkeley’s Kroeber Hall on February 7, 2007.

Angélica Marín is a graduate student in UC Berkeley’s School of Journalism.

The two presenters talk with audience members after the screening.