Word: maquilas
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Dates: during 2001-2001
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...have discovered that "casual Friday" in McAllen is often a dress-up workday on the other side. Around here, the most valuable asset is their flexibility. "You have to switch gears in Mexico--and not just languages. You have a behavior shift too," says Charles Taliaferro, 49, who runs maquila operations for Am-Mex Products, which makes everything from Siemens electric motors to Smead file folders. Workers cause less trouble, but their bosses have to be more considerate. "In Mexico, you're more polite, more formal," he says...
Critics point out that the Mexican maquilas have drained jobs from the U.S. side. Allen says those jobs were leaving anyway. And even though the Rio Grande Valley remains one of the nation's poorest regions, a lucrative new companion industry--logistics and technical support--has helped boost job growth 7% last year in the McAllen area, the best in Texas. The 2,000 mostly American maquila professionals who cross the bridge daily into Reynosa bring in $1 million a year in tolls alone for the city of McAllen. "If Reynosa is not doing well," says city manager Mike Perez...
...Bootleg power lines drop from overhead wires, loop down to the ground and are held in place by a rock, then snake through the sand to a house. Some wires are live, and arc and spit when it rains. The young women who live here are favored by the maquila bosses for their nimble fingers and obedience. But more than 200 women, many of them maquila workers, have been murdered since 1993--often raped, strangled and mutilated during their long, dark treks home to remote colonias. Most large maquilas have begun providing bus service, but it has failed to stop...
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