Woman in Juarez Maquila plant / Juarez, Chihuahua
Banks lend money to Americans to buy homes they can’t afford. The homeowners live in a dream bubble, the American Dream bubble. The lenders sell their paper and ride off into their millionaire dream. Everyone’s dreaming.
In Juarez they’re dreaming too.
Leave your little town in the state of Vera Cruz. Go to el norte and get a job in the assembly plant. Si se puede. Assemble hair dryers. Save your money. Pool your resources. Live the life, go to the mall, take care of your kids. The Juarez version of the (north) American Dream. Labor’s dream. The Juarez dream.
Up north, the loan that got sold gets sold again. The house that was the dream needs to be paid for. It needs to be sold again. It was just a dream. Next chump, please. Step right up…right here…into the dream.
How could that frenzy last?
The mortgage doubles. You lose your job or never found one in the first place. You keep consuming. They tell you you need to keep consuming. You spend like it’s your duty. Yahoo. Perpetual Christmas. Santa is watching.
You start to spend less.
Maria Sotelo Ramirez assembles less hair dryers. Takes home less of that twenty five bucks a week. Dreams less.
Her boss – an American company- cuts the shifts from three to one and cuts that one by a third.
Global economy. You get Nafta-ed good!
We are the world. We are one. It’s true but that’s not a good thing.
Everyone is hanging on now. Welcome to the circle jerk…again.
The bill has arrived. It has everyone’s name on it.
Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from Frontera NorteSur an online newspaper at New Mexico State University.
For the full article: http://www.nmsu.edu/~frontera (click on Commerce)
In a reversal of a job growth trend that held for much of 2007, export
manufacturing plants in Ciudad Juarez have dismissed significant numbers
of workers in recent months. According to El Diario de Juarez, 9,089
maquiladora workers lost their jobs during the last four months, including
5,802 in the months of the November and December. Overall, the layoffs
lowered employment in the local maquiladora industry from 243,845 workers
last November to 238,043 in December.
