Field Trip Report/Informe del Viaje

After traveling to Nogales, Sonora with my fellow Migration and Culture class mates, I gained situated, hands-on knowledge of migration in real-world settings. In this ethnographic study, I employ Miriam Davidson’s book Lives on the Line to supplement the three key observational insights regarding the sociocultural context of Mexican migration that I gained through the Borderlinks field trip: 1) the stark economic disparity between the two border towns, 2) the impact of the maquiladoras on the border towns, and 3) the growing aggravated tension between the US and Mexican law enforcement.

My first observational finding was of the immense contrast between Nogales, Sonora, and Nogales, Arizona. While the towns were separated by nothing more than a wall, on either side, lay two completely different towns, economies, and cultures. This was evident in architecture, in color, and in commercial buildings. I saw a related visual discrepancy between the shanty towns where the workers of the maquiladoras lived and the actual maquiladoras themselves as well. In particular, I noticed how new and well kept the buildings of the factories looked in juxtaposition to the actual homes of the people who work in these factories. Seeing this obvious visual discrepancy reminded me of the excerpt in Davidson’s book, in which she describes the adverse environmental impacts of the maquiladoras on the people of Nogales, Sonora. It made me question whether the maquiladoras was having a positive impact on the people in the area, or if it was only worsening the problem. Upon further investigation, I realized the answer to this question is more complicated than I'd hoped.

Thus, the impact of the maquiladoras on the two border towns was my second observational finding. Based on our visit to Industrial Park (i.e. the maquiladoras) as well as Davidson’s book and other supplemental texts I’ve read over the course of the semester, I have found that the maquiladoras have had both positive and negative impacts on both sides of the border. In terms of the benefits, maquiladoras have definitely benefited the United States’ economy. Namely, the investment in maquiladoras has allowed U.S. companies to cut down on labor costs and increase their profit margin significantly, which, in turn, allows them to offer their products to US consumers at cheaper prices. There have also been pros for Mexico’s economy as well in that these maquiladoras help Mexico to make enough foreign exchange to participate in the global economy. Additionally for Mexico, maquiladoras help to employ hundreds of thousands of people that would otherwise be unemployed. However, these benefits do not come without a cost. Not only are the working and housing conditions (i.e. incredibly low wages, poorly made/decaying shanty homes) awful for the employees, many of the maquiladoras have been shown to have tremendous adverse effects on the environment. The latter of these effects was only reaffirmed in Jimmy Teyechea’s story in  Lives on the Line,  in which Mr. Teyechea passed from cancer after diligently devoting his life to tracing the numerous deaths related to cancer caused by environmental pollution in the Nogales area. Not unlike Mr. Teyechea’s story, there were tales of numerous needless deaths both while on the field trip and within Davidson’s book.

However, some of these deaths were less a result of environmental pollution, and more a consequence of the growing aggravated tension and militarization of the border, which was the last and perhaps most critical observation during my fieldwork i.e. the tension between the U.S. and Mexican law enforcement, and more broadly, the militarization of the border. The event which really brought this to my attention was meeting with Manuel, a former maquiladora employee and current Nogales resident, at the Jose Antonio Memorial, which was located directly across from the wall itself. Manuel told our class about a 16 year old boy who was ruthlessly shot and killed while merely walking along the sidewalk on the Mexican side of the border, by a Border Patrol agent on the opposite side of the fence. After hearing this story, and seeing the art portraying police brutality along the wall, I was immediately reminded on the story which Miriam Davidson told in  Lives on the Line  about Dario Miranda Valenzuela. Valenzuela, a father of two preschoolers, was also a victim of a notoriously trigger-happy Border Patrol agent. These stories are just two of several examples of the militarization of law enforcement in both the United States and in Mexico. As elucidated by our conversation following the meeting with Manuel, police brutality such as this is not an isolated incident; there are examples of unnecessary violence and poorly trained law enforcement officials getting away with murder all over the U.S. and the world as a whole. The Valenzuela incident, which Davidson wrote about in her book, has often been compared to the case of Rodney King, who was also a victim of unthinkable violence perpetrated by the police.