Imperial (149 page)

Now here came Perla with a big smile on her face; Matsushita had hired her; she’d make eight hundred and seventy pesos a week!

In the covert video we watch the wide street sway with a womanly stride and white storage tanks get closer and closer, then veer away; it is wonderful how briskly Perla walks! Her videos are blurrier than mine because a strand of white thread from her clothing got stuck on the lens beneath the false button and nobody noticed. The long white wall of the
maquiladora
on her left, cars on her right, all swaying back and forth, more gracefully in my male opinion than my own videos do; and presently white wall gives way to black-barred metal fence not unlike the border wall but lower and cleaner; and then after five minutes and seven seconds the security booth swims into sight. Perla obligingly gives a view through the fence from a number of angles; and then the bored belly and upraised hand of the security guard fills part of that magical rectangular world. Halfway through minute six, we see a silhouette running its hands across its head by the fence-bars; then the security guard picks up the phone. Perla paces, providing us with one view after another of the security guard; he gestures to us with kindly paternalism, flipping his head from side to side and moving his lips; he does not seem to be a bad man. What if the only reason my experiences with
maquiladora
guards had been so unpleasant was the simple fact of my own existence? And now, shortly before minute ten, Perla penetrates Matsushita, Kyushu Matsushita-Maquiladora, I mean, whose representative, Antonio Treviño, had previously informed Terrie in no encouraging tone that a visit could scarcely occur until we’d called Fred in San Diego; and a courtyard swims toward us, slightly off level, with a lovely blackish-green fan-shape of a tree to the right; and then that flicks away as we trudge down an arid concrete space with a wall on our left; one of this wall’s numbered doors is open; and we abruptly flick inside, with long white incandescent tubes almost horizontal above us and human beings passing with great busyness. The righthand wall contains glossy dark rectangular windows which reflect the incandescent lights; and on the left there are open whitish rooms. Perla turns left. We see a row of what might be pool tables; slowing her step, Perla nears them; they are ordinary long tables with metal chairs along them. The button camera now pauses to afford us an interesting view of a pillar whose notice is almost entirely out of the frame; Perla’s errors are frequently the opposite of mine; and here she has positioned her hidden eye too low. Whatever the notice says is blurred to illegibility. She steps back and it is now all there, but still illegible. No one is in the room. Brave Perla ventures into another empty room, and from the quick, choppy quality I can tell that she is not supposed to be here. Then she returns to the hall of windows, one of which she approaches until her silhouetted reflection is pierced by the horizontal spears of many reflected light-tubes. What lies within this window’s world? At minute twelve, second fifty-five, we see the holy of holies: the production floor. Perla’s silhouette looms over everything like the Virgin of Guadalupe. Far below her shoulders, human outlines move in and out of receding rows of mechanical bays, everything dwindling infinitely like the perspective in two opposed mirrors. A woman nears us and gazes at us, but we cannot see much about her except that she is a woman. Then suddenly a pointing brawny fist intercepts the frame; Perla is being sent about her business! Dutifully, the camera goes down the hall, into another room where no cameras are supposed to be, past a double row of clean metal lockers, then out to the main corridor again. Here’s another window; once more the production line fills the world. More figures flash by us. Perla’s silhouette raises its phony résumé folder in simulated bewilderment. The button camera swerves back into the room of many tables. We are now making significant inroads on minute fifteen. Perla’s spectacles magnify themselves into hugeness as they arc past us; then another young woman, pretty and slender, passes us and offers us her back two tables down; it is time to fill out job applications. Fifteen seconds before the commencement of minute twenty-two, the other woman turns round, rises, and brings her application to Perla’s table, evidently requesting help; her face is silhouetted but she is even more evidently well proportioned. Then a man and a woman, both young, each bearing folders, walk toward us and vanish. The woman’s lovely brown hands flex upon the foregrounded table for awhile; then the woman who’d passed by with the man returns, and this time we can see that she is also pretty, if not as slender as the first one. So what? They are both merely applicants. Perla’s yellow pencil wiggles in the foreground; the slender woman has gone back to her table and bows over the application like a dutiful schoolgirl. More people pass in and out. A plump woman whose badge flaps on her chest comes to fill up our world, extending a hand and a paper. This is the first inside employee whom we have clearly seen, and she does not in the least fit Señor A.’s indictment’s profile. At 26:37, Perla offers us a view of her application, which I suppose might be capable of some kind of digital enhancement so that we could actually see what it says; ten minutes later it has been completed (the slender woman is still struggling), and the button camera rears up to lead us back down the hall of glossy black windows. At 36:47 two pretty, slender young women in blue smocks, therefore presumably employees, pass by; to me they do seem to fit the profile. Perla enters another room where more young women, and one man, are all sitting at tables and filling out papers. A busy rainbow doubtless conveys promotion or information on a great video screen. Are they all applicants? At a quarter past thirty-nine minutes, Perla’s application papers magically extend themselves forward at the desk of a pleasant, decidedly plump, middle-aged woman whose face looks friendly and nice. The mummery with pens and documents continues; then she is finished and says goodbye to the slender woman, who continues to pore over her application; at 52:16 three young women in blue smocks rush by us in the hall of windows; a frame-freeze reveals one to be distinctly fat; the middle girl, blurred although she is, would not seem to be conventionally pretty. More peeks through the tinted windows show more blurred figures; then at 53:27 two closed double doors sport red and yellow warning signs, but Perla wisely leaves those alone (an alarm might have sounded) and provides us an interior view of an immaculate, even rather plush, ladies’ room; I feel pleased with Matsushita. The camera ascends stairs, passes down an empty corridor to more of the double doors with red and yellow warning signs; gives us a long view of a notice board, swivels furtively to reveal workers in an open doorway (we can’t make out their shapes distinctly), swivels past a well-stacked girl in worker-blue, and then brings us back into one more window-framed view of the production line, which looks as clean and modern as any science-fiction spaceship. At 57:47 we see two of these workers more clearly than before; it remains difficult to say whether they are men or women, but from the way in which they stand lounging and chatting, they are probably men (whom we will see more identifiably at 1:35). In the background a pale-clad female figure is definitely not wearing any miniskirt. Then the camera swivels back down the hall, where another applicant approaches us with a folder in her hand; she is beautiful, but the problem is that all Mexican women are beautiful.

At 1:03:05, Perla scores her great coup, breezing her way directly into the production area. A big-breasted, darkfaced female figure approaches us beneath that row of white light-tubes; on our right, the mysterious production bays now resemble nothing so much as the banks of slot machines of Las Vegas. At 1:03:15 we glimpse a line of blue-clad female workers, who are, in the words of two women whom I later asked,
not obese but normal.
None wear miniskirts. A plump-bottomed woman walks away from us; then the camera pans to another line of women, who again seem
not obese but normal.
The closest of the women in 1:03:35 might be stocky; some are wearing miniskirts.

Perla shut down her wire and reported: It’s totally changed, even the way they treat the people, the age, the pregnancy test. There are people who are there who are pretty big. They even have music playing in the halls. But also there are several different Matsushitas.

As for me, I was very happy. As far as we could tell from a one-hour video, Matsushita currently offered positions in conditions which were not degrading to women. And the button camera had finally proved itself.

“AND THEN SHE DIDN’T GET THAT OFFICE JOB”

Regarding sexual exploitation in general, I eventually concluded that pressure inflicted by management was probably even more pervasive in Mexico than in the U.S.

Referring to the production line itself, Señor A. had said, and I think he was correct: That’s where the people are the most closed, and they won’t talk about it. But there’s definitely a lot of sexual pressure there. What you have to understand is that the sexual pressure an attractive woman feels comes from her co-workers.

I asked the haggard blonde at Pancho’s bar in Mexicali: If a
maquiladora
manager asked you to sleep with him, what would you say?

Thrusting out her chin, she said: It hasn’t happened to
me.

Then she said: Every time they make a pass at me, I stop them cold.

What if the manager said, do it or else?

I would get another job.

But then she said: Once you’ve reached thirty-five or forty, it’s hard to find another job in Mexicali. You’ve got to have a high school diploma.

What about the other girls in the
maquiladora
? What do they do in that situation?

Some of them do it out of necessity; otherwise they’ll lose their jobs. If a girl goes out with the boss, it’s just because that way she’s going to get more money.

I’ve heard that on field crews, when a girl sleeps with the foreman in exchange for easier work, the other girls are sometimes jealous. Is it that way in the
maquiladora
?

No, she said wearily. They don’t get jealous . . .

Magdalena Ayala Márquez, also of Mexicali, was still more forthright.

How often do the bosses ask to sleep with the female
maquiladora
workers, and do the women have to do it? I asked her.

It does happen lots, Magdalena replied. Where I have work now, I have a daughter, nineteen years old, pretty,
muy bonita,
she laughed, and my daughter is studying computers. At the assembly line one of the supervisors was offering her a job in the office but he was offering her to go out to dinner and like that. Sometimes she would say yes, just to go along, but when the man said, get serious, then she said, no, no, I don’t want to go out with you. And then she didn’t get that office job. When it’s a young pretty woman they get a lot of sexual harassment. One of the supervisors asked me: Do you have a daughter working here? Yes, I said, do you see the prettiest girl here? That’s her. He said to me: I’ve seen that prettiest girl; I’ve already located her. And then I started feeling anxious.

How about you?

No. I’m old now, said Magdalena. (She was forty-six.) They want the young pretty girl without experience.

“NOW IT’S DONE ALMOST ALWAYS”

What about the bloody tampon? Was that a myth? None of the people I interviewed in 2004 had ever heard of it in their workplaces. The dapper reporter believed that
the maquiladoras used to be harder in the nineties. That’s what they told me.
Señor A. was sure that they were no better.

And once again I find Señor A. very plausible. He stated: The
maquiladoras
started the fashion of testing the blood and urine samples of women. Now it’s done in Tijuana’s industries almost always. But this is when you join, not every month.

As for termination due to pregnancy, most of the workers I interviewed, and certainly almost all of the women, had a story to tell, although it had always happened to someone else. For example, Magdalena Ayala Márquez brought to mind the tale of a friend (evidently not a close friend since Magdalena remembered her as
Maggie something
) about whom the story went: She went to the
maquiladora
doctor and found out she wasn’t covered by the insurance anymore so she was basically fired.

Magdalena said that this occurred at a
maquiladora
called Rogers Terminados,
²⁸³
seven or eight years ago. That lapse of time was typical, which I found somewhat comforting. Pregnancy-caused firings were well known, but they hardly happened every day.

The most unpleasant establishment in this regard as in several others was Formosa. After an hour inside (complete with button-camera footage she was so proud of that as soon as she had rushed happily back to the car, she handed the digital video receiver to me, inadvertently unplugging it while it was still on and thereby losing her video forever), Perla told me this:

I got as far as the infirmary where the doctor told me to take off my clothes, so when I was left alone to undress, I left. They all spoke very rudely. The woman who interviewed me told me that they would have to do a pregnancy test and the cost would come out of my paycheck: three hundred pesos! They said I must wear shorts or skirts below the knee. They offered three hundred pesos to work seven in the morning until seven at night. Lunch would cost ten pesos eighty. If I had to do anything during work time, I must take the whole week off. The week I went back, I’d have to work double time. If you get pregnant, you lose your job.

“IT’S GOOD, MORE OR LESS”

Well, so what? By now I’d come to realize that the effect of the
maquiladoras
was, like most effects, ambiguous. Once upon a time, searching for Barrio Chilpancingo, Terrie and I followed a yellow truck which said
CORROSIVE
. (You can find trucks carrying carcinogenic materials easily, insisted Señor A., who might or might not have been exaggerating as usual. Two years ago, the Secretary of Health announced that more than forty percent of Tijuanos over sixty get some kind of cancer. Right now, though, when you’re not sixty, you can’t detect it.) Mabuchi and Panasonic were soliciting workers. We found our way again: Turn right at Industrial at the big white factory with concertina wire around it and the pipes sticking out of it, then down past Grupo Bafar; down the hill past Tobutsu and Sparkletts. I remember more pipes peeping from Tocabi, and Sano or was it Sanyo on the left.