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"Glimpsing
the Future" Welcome to Ambos Nogales, two cities precariously on the line between North America and Latin America. If you're a Christian seeking to be true to the moral vision of Scripture, you need to know these cities. Whether you're a player in the emerging global economy or an out-of work laborer discarded in your company's mad rush for ever bigger profits, you need to know about Ambos Nogales. For Ambos Nogales is the reality behind the world's corporate glitter. It's the scar tissue underlying today's Wall Street "miracles." When you arrive in Ambos Nogales, you'll find a rusty steel wall dividing Nogales, Arizona, from Nogales, Sonora- now two cities, though historically one. You won't have trouble finding the wall, for it rises twelve feet high and snakes almost four miles through the canyons of downtown Ambos Nogales. As it climbs the hills that surround Ambos Nogales and then trails off into the desert, the wall that divides this city becomes a five-strand, barbed-wire fence. But almost four hundred U.S. agents persistently patrol the Arizona boundary between the United States and Mexico. Their mission? To ensure that this division will effectively perpetuate realities crucial to the globalization of the world's economies. The wall, of
course, is no restrictor of corporate entities, who make their own
rules. It matters only to the people-who are forever defined by
which side of the barrier they're on. Walk with me, now, through
the port of entry from the United States into Mexico. In less than
a minute, Children here often clamber to wash the windshields of cars waiting to cross back into the United States. Other times, they simply hold out their hands for loose change. If you were to stay here long, you'd find homeless kids wandering in gangs through underground sewer tunnels, often terrorizing local residents. Look around you. Those homes made of packing crates, cardboard, scrap lumber, and corrugated tin are packed together so tightly on the canyon walls that you could easily reach from one to another. Most city streets are narrow, rutted dirt paths winding up the sides of the hills. The early morning air hangs thick in the canyon. Car exhaust and wood smoke (from home heating) conspire before moving slowly up the canyon and across the border. Talk to a few folks, and you'll discover that once you've crossed to this side of the wall, the minimum wage instantly plummets from $4.75 per hour in the United States to less than $3.50 per day here. Is it any wonder that "families" suddenly become larger? The more working cousins, parents, aunts, uncles, and friends you squeeze into your two-room house, the better chance you have of paying the bills. Do you see those
children roaming the streets? They've finished their half-day in
this town's grossly over-crowded schools. By the time they're seven
or eight years old, most children are unattended. Their parents
are working ten to fifteen hours a day in foreign-owned What do their parents do? They sew women's underwear. They package surgical prep kits. They assemble electronic computer boards or power supplies. They sort coupons. They machine high-speculation antennas for the defense industry. In short, their jobs are connected to almost every aspect of your life in the United States. This is a city of desperation. Few people have the luxury to question their participation in the global economy. They may live anywhere from five feet to five miles from the United States. But, thanks to the rigid divisions enforced by that wall, they struggle to raise their families without such basic amenities as running water, sewage systems, electricity, or weather-protected homes. Cross back now into Nogales, Arizona, and take a look around you. On the surface, the people north of the border may appear to be the winners in the global economic adventure. But in reality, they are no more secure than their Latin American brothers and sisters. The paved roads, clean sidewalks, shiny fast-food restaurants, the K-Mart and the Wal-Mart-they belie the reality. For Nogales, Arizona is also a city at risk, a city whose destiny is interwoven with Nogales, Sonora, that city just across the wall. Nogales, Arizona, is a city of 22,000 people - downhill and downwind from its sister city of 350,000 to the south? Nogales has a higher particulate pollution count than any other city in the state of Arizona, including Phoenix; a city 136 times its size. Residents of Nogales have more cases of lupus per capita than in any other place in the world. There are city blocks on tributaries of Nogales Wash where as many as nineteen people have either a rare bone-marrow cancer or lupus. The health problems are incredible. Unemployment is also high here. Since December 1994, when the Mexican peso fell to half its former value, this small Arizona city has lost more than a thousand jobs. Do you see those boarded-up buildings in the commercial district near the border? Those were once family-owned businesses, stores that had operated in Ambos Nogales for generations. No one has the money now to keep them in business. For years, families divided by the border saw it as a minor inconvenience. Now, as they go about their daily business, they're confronted by suspicious and unyielding border guards. People on both sides of the border are moving ever closer to economic disaster. So crime, especially robbery, has sky rocketed. For those assigned to defend the border-and for those drug runners and smugglers who defy it-violence is endemic. Nine years ago, I moved to the Arizona-Sonora borderlands, where I helped found BorderLinks, a nonprofit organization using experiential education to help North Americans better understand the complexities of the border region. Working for BorderLinks has enabled me to establish long-term relationships with people on both sides of the border- from factory managers, politicians, and immigration officials to refugees, church leaders, and community activists. Knowing their stories and experiences is like looking through a magnifying glass at the effects of neo-liberal economic policy. Most of us in the United States are aware that the economic patterns that shape our lives are changing. We understand in some vague, undefined way that free trade, multinational (or even supranational) corporations, and hemispheric economic trading blocs now define our economics on every level from the personal to the international. We're encouraged to believe that these new economic realities are inevitable, that they will work only for the common good, and that there is some kind of inherent natural law that governs our economic interactions with one another. Here at he border
we can see more clearly the values underlying that economic paradigm.
Mono-culture is valued over diversity. Concentration of wealth is
treasured more than an equitable distribution of resources. Global competition among workers has won out over sustainable ages in local economies. Economic growth has triumphed over environmental protection. And unbridled business opportunities always in out over democratic institutions. These values are so much a part of our day-to-day lives that we rarely question their validity. For example, one block south of the port of entry in Nogales, Sonora, old school buses regularly fill with shoppers lucky enough to have documents to cross legally into the United States. These buses, their sides emblazoned with advertisements, are headed for the Safeway, Wal-Mart, and K-Mart in Nogales, Arizona. No one who has the ability to cross the border would think of shopping in Nogales, Sonora. They know that they can buy better-quality goods at a lower price on the U.S. side of the border. Mexican teenagers and families with young children crowd the McDonald's, Burger King, and Jack in the Box, all within three blocks of the border, day and night. These are signs of what Quaker philosopher and local rancher Jim Corbett has called "monoculture," a term once used for the mo st destructive kind of agriculture but now suitably relevant to our entire economic system. We hardly notice the irony when Mexicans living a subsistence lifestyle cross the border in order to buy cheap goods at Wal-Mart, goods which were made by Mexicans for less than a living wage in Mexico. We're not even surprised to learn that in South Tucson, a community that is primarily Mexican- American, a family-owned Mexican restaurant was recently torn down to make way for a Taco Bell. All of us, all over the world, face a daily advertising barrage from multi-national corporations, encouraging us to have the same needs, brand loyalties, and economic aspirations. Such a culture is the foundation of the global economy. Unless vast numbers of us agree to participate in the monoculture, many corporations will find the continued growth of markets and profits impossible. Another fundamental value of the global economy is the perpetuation and expansion of the unequal distribution of wealth. In the world of free trade, borders are critical because they control the movement of people. Borders incarcerate communities of desperation whose citizens are willing to work for slave wages. It is no coincidence that at the same time the United States, Mexico, and Canada signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the U.S. government doubled the number of Border Patrol agents in the Tucson sector and guilt the steel wall that runs through the center of downtown Nogales. The correlation between "free trade" and an increasingly militarized border reveals the folly of "trickle-down economics." Corporations and free-trade economists would have us believe that competition for labor will eventually elevate the wages and standard of living of workers everywhere. But for that to be true, workers must be able to move from place to place in search of better living conditions and a higher wage. And there must be an appropriately finite supply of labor. Neither condition exists here on the border. Indeed, the U.S. Border Patrol, acting as an agent of the new economic order, has become more vigilant than ever in stopping the free movement of workers. To maintain Mexico's "advantage" in the global economy, we're told, Mexicans must remain in Mexico. And they must be desperate enough to work for below-poverty wages. Profits for international investors are the driving force of the global economy. The standard wage in the maquiladora industry in Nogales, Sonora, is roughly twenty-five pesos for a ten-hour day. At the current rate of exchange, that's less than $3.50 per day. One group that helps new maquiladora operations get started in northern Sonora advertises that the average U.S. corporation will save more than $25,000 per direct employee in its first year of operation in Mexico. The cost to the workers, of course, is unimaginably high. Several years ago, I had a conversation with a Mexican man at a church potluck in the border city of Agua Prieta, Sonora. Manual was in his mid-fifties and had retired due to medical problems the year before. He began work in 1967 at one of the first U.S. maquiladoras to open in Agua Prieta. At the time, it was possible to support his wife and two infant daughters on his salary, while his wife stayed home to care for their children. They lived what he considered a middle-class life, simple by U.S. standards, but one in which their basic needs were met. By the early
1990s, he was disabled, with only a partial income. His wife and
two adult daughters were working in maquiladoras. Although he had
built his own home, and it was already paid for, his family, with
slightly more than three incomes, found it impossible to make ends
meet. Profits of foreign corporations operating in Mexico have increased dramatically. But the buying power of a minimum wage salary there hasn't even come close to keeping up with inflation. At the time I talked with him, Manual and his family, despite the income from three jobs, were still dependent on weekly food baskets from their church. The global economy
depends on pitting workers against one another as a way of maximizing
corporate profits. In the world of free trade, corporations move
manufacturing facilities from country to country at the drop of
a hat, constantly looking for the most favorable wage For example, in December 1993, General Electric was operating two plants in Nogales, Sonora. One manufactured all of G.E.'s extension cords for the United States. It was operated by a man I knew to be one of the most responsible maquiladora managers in Nogales. He was creative in offering low-cost benefits that he knew could make a difference in his employees' lives, showers, purified water, laundry, a savings plan, and a cafeteria. In January 1994, General Electric closed the plant, citing the high cost of labor. The average employee in the plant cost G.E. $1.26 per hour, including all benefits and taxes. G.E. began subcontracting its work through a Taiwanese businessman operating in the Philippines, where labor cost just 27 cents per hour and could be hired seasonally. The irony is inescapable. Mexican workers, accused by organized labor of stealing jobs in the United States, had now lost those same jobs to Filipino workers desperate enough to work for an even smaller pittance. The same mentality affects the power brokers' thinking about environmental protections. They argue that environmental protections are a luxury that first requires a substantial period of economic growth. In other words, the more successful the economy, the more money there will be, later on to clean up the mess industrialization has made. Yet, after thirty years of maquiladora operation in the city of Nogales, Sonora, the environmental cost of unregulated industrialization and its accompanying population explosion is staggering. Frankly, if the experience of Ambos Nogales is any indication, vague promises to "someday" clean up the environment messes that inevitable arise in the rush to a global economy mean nothing. The residents of Ambos Nogales know that no matter what the political rhetoric may be, a commitment to resolve environmental problems will always take a back seat to economic opportunity. Pause for a moment-and think about those nineteen people on a single block in Ambos Nogales who have contracted rare environment-related diseases. Can you begin to understand the trepidation of those who live on the border? Fears grow even larger when you factor in the new buzzword of those who negotiate free-trade treaties: the "harmonization" of standards. The theory is that it is unfair for one country to impose more stringent requirements on imported goods than other countries. What it means, in practice, is that regulations of diverse areas regarding worker safety, environmental protection and consumer safety are brought into conformity. Too often, "harmonization" will mean lowering the higher standard, rather than raising the lower one. So hard-won battles for environmental and worker protection in one country or local community can-and will-be lost in an effort to advance corporate profits. Managers in Nogales' blue-chip company maquiladoras claim their companies hold their Mexican plants to the same standards as their company's operations in the United States. Yet such responses miss the point. Shouldn't the residents of Nogales have some voice in determining the environmental laws and policies that are needed in their own community? What if, given the devastation that's already been experienced, an even more stringent standard is needed? And who enforces company-adopted standards? Certainly not the Mexican government. At the time NAFTA was being negotiated, there were only two Mexican officials to enforce environmental and worker-safety standards for all the businesses and industry in the entire state of Sonora. Multinational corporations have become supranational corporations, far beyond the purview of any government. The resulting free-for-all defies everything we've learned since the Industrial Revolution about the need to define acceptable standards within which we expect businesses to operate. Not only are there no democratic governmental institutions anymore that might enact and enforce such standards, but our governments have now become beholden to those very corporations and directed by their desires. The value system underlying the global economic enterprise is determined by supranational corporations which have no allegiances to local communities or even nation states. Policies supporting those values are implemented by institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and by the politicians and governments who are held for ransom by the economic power of those institutions. The bottom line for the people of the sister cities of Ambos Nogales-and eventually for all of us-is that the shapers of the global economy have neither the interest nor the experience to make the moral and ethical determinations that are needed to sustain us and our communities in the new world order. Even worse, those very institutions perceive it to be contrary to their interests to even begin to think along those lines. The void created by the supranational corporations' lack of commitment to a sustainable future presents a bold challenge to church activists and grass-roots community organizers across the Americas. Jim Corbett calls the process of confronting the global economy "hallowing our life support systems." And he suggest that the more we are able to reconnect with the basic necessities of life and where they come from, the more the practice of living will itself become holy. Jesus said that no one can serve both God and money. In an economy that honors only the latter, in a corporate system willing to enslave neighbors, divide cities, and destroy creation for the sake of ever greater profits, Christian communities need to rediscover what it means to be the people of God. As daunting as the task will be, it's also exciting. Nothing since the Industrial Revolution has provided such a clear and overwhelming challenge. Clearly, the time has come to rethink how we will choose to be in community with one another-not just locally but globally. Years ago, I memorized a poem though I've long since forgotten its author. One line goes, "Thank God our time is now, when wrong comes up to meet us everywhere, never to leave us till we take the longest stride of soul we ever took." The wall that tears through Ambos Nogales may not fall soon. The divisions that breed human desperation-and corporate profits-will not be foiled first thing tomorrow. And hearts that worship capitalism rather than God may not be transformed as hastily as we would hope. But surely the time has come for all of us to take that "stride of soul" that will set our feet in a new direction, discovering together the journey that Christ himself has set before us. Rick Ufford-Chase is one of the founders of BorderLinks and currently serves as the International Director. Used by permission from The Other Side magazine. January-February, 1997. For subscriptions or more information visit their website at: http://www.theotherside.org or call 800-700-9280.
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