Imperial (152 page)

This concludes the so-called investigative aspect of my story, which is to say the chronicle of hasty interviews, often unwillingly given, and shallow forays into the closed worlds of the
maquiladoras.
Oh, I have a few more button-camera videos weighing down the hard drive of my computer; I’ve done Óptica Sola more than once from the outside; I’ve wandered past the gate and into the introductory labyrinth of loading docks at Kimstar, where Salvador worked; and so what? I didn’t learn any secrets. In Mexicali I never got inside the Parque Industrial Nelson, the Desierto Industrial Parque, the Parque Industrial Pimas, or any of the other Parques Industriales which marched on and on to the southeast. I tried and tried; I accomplished what I could; someday I’ll try again, not only because I want to be of service to people but also because (why not admit it?) any little stroll with the button camera is an adventure. My walk from the Motel Lizvan, a clean and private establishment which sold vaginal lubricant at the office window, to the Philips
maquiladora
facade, was only about two minutes; but in the night time, with the button camera peering from a rolled-up plastic bag because my bluejeans were too sopping wet to encase fragile electronics, and the reason for
that
was that both Terrie and I were burning, itching, headachy and nauseous from our unauthorized exploration of Metales y Derivados, so I’d seen fit to wash my jeans in the shower, the two minutes seemed longer in that cool dark night of palm trees, sand and dust, a night which was almost bereft of humanity although glowing with traffic, including two great trucks without insignia which rolled slowly past me on Insurgentes as if they were heavily laden, then turned down a dirt road. In the button-camera video, the night is corrugated with scan lines, and the lights glowed like pears, jellyfish and almost-frozen white explosions which lurched from side to side. Hugging pale walls and gratings, I presently approached something which shone like a great blue television in the darkness. First came a fence with parked cars behind it, and a white ball of coldly slobbering light atop it; then the fence became translucent corrugated skeleton-bars in the night and the blue and white television swayed in and out of view, with another whitish sun hovering to the left of it. Rounding the corner and coming to the beginning of the narrow sidewalk in front of Philips, I met a darkskinned dirty man who hunched beneath a tree; he was silent. From under the long white overhanging facade of Philips, light spilled down on the sidewalk. Ahead was another white jellyfish of glare. I walked toward it until the button camera became entirely dazzled for a moment; then the blue television filled my eyes, framed by its lurching dark gratings. What it really was was a window, of course, a long barred window of blueness, with yellow-white blobs of light on its surface; and within stretched a vast blue-washed factory world empty of everything but pallets and mysteries; then came the chroming plant, Baja Platinadora; and far away the security guard from Kimstar had left his box and sat beneath a tree, watching me. I got as close as I dared, which proved not to be close enough for the button camera to see anything but darkness . . .

Covert photo taken with disposable camera inside Kimstar
maquiladora,
Tijuana

What else goes on in the
maquiladoras
? Señor A. insisted that in some establishments it is permissible to use crystal meth because it increases productivity; the police cannot search within a factory’s gates. He likened the drugs in these factories to a duty-free shop at the airport. This could easily be another of his speculative exaggerations; on the other hand, he assures me that one of his clients was a mother whose son became a drug addict after working at such a place. I would have liked to investigate this, and discover whether the atmosphere in that
maquiladora
was simply lax or whether it actively encouraged methamphetamine use. Señor A. also claimed that workers frequently stole the crystals used in computer manufacture and sold them to other
maquiladoras;
I would have enjoyed meeting these free marketeers. Amelia Simpson at the Environmental Health Coalition in San Diego told me that she’d documented many cases of
maquiladora
restrooms being so inadequate, and time to use them so restricted, that some women wore diapers rather than waste their one half-hour break standing in line for the toilet, and other women developed kidney infections from holding their urine too long. None of the workers I interviewed ever said any such thing; I frequently asked about the bathrooms and heard no complaints. This does not signify that I’ve proven or disproven anything, only that my sample remains necessarily small. Amelia Simpson gave me the name of such a factory, and I promised to send Perla there with the button camera later this year. This factory is further alleged to employ lead solder and to withhold masks from its workforce, which is primarily female, so that one can imagine lead being transmitted to the next generation in breast milk. Who knows? If Perla were able to steal an inch of solder for testing, then perhaps this
maquiladora
could be exposed and lives saved.

Restroom im unnamed
maquiladora
in Mexicali; photo taken covertly by worker with disposable camera

So send me another ten thousand dollars, quick! Maybe I could do it for seven or for twenty. Now here came Power Sonic up the hill; that was the place where Germán used to get his acid treatments at company expense (shall I throw an “allegedly” in there for legal reasons?); we drove up the highway, with hillside
colonias
left and right; then on a raw-ochered hill which was graffiti’d, a lovely brown girl in white shorts and a white tanktop, her bobbed black hair shining, strode across the naked earth. From around the corner came a smell of solvents; then I saw the
maquiladora
with blue tanks down in the gorge. The immense blue and white cube of AOL Systems Mexico, a gas station, mountains in the distance—don’t tell me Tijuana wasn’t pretty! My eyes were watering but maybe it was my imagination. We then turned right onto Pacífico, ascending a hill toward an immense gate as we passed the white cube of Kyomex on the left. I remember Ensenada and Pacífico. Up high, another Kyomex and a splendid view of striped hillsides and far
colonias
as we drove along the parking lot of Robinson and Robinson regaled us, Terrie laughing and joking with Perla; then came many tall cylindrical tanks, the smell of solvent more and more sickening. For a second I thought I would vomit. I recollect an endless gate with black glass and white factory cubes behind. Then we parked and waited for Perla to come out. Once I went outside, and the wind was blowing; I couldn’t smell solvent anymore. Well, so they offered Perla another job! Which chemicals? I’d told her to ask. The guy replied to her: I don’t know. A lot.—As for Perla, she couldn’t smell any. What should the perfect spy do? Pay Perla for a week, while she works at Power Sonic and makes videotapes of acid-burned people working without masks, or of well-masked people without acid—why assume the worst? Maybe Germán’s a liar; or maybe Power Sonic, like Matsushita, has cleaned up its act. If not, pay Perla to smuggle out chemical samples (good thing
she’s
reproduced!).

What
is
the secret? There may be no secret, no horrid one, anyway. I credit myself with being an empathetic and experienced interviewer; therefore, much of what I believe to be true may actually be true. While the stories of Germán and Lourdes can by no means be twisted into glowing encomiums to the
maquiladoras,
the tale of the bloody tampons and Señor A.’s thriller-chiller about Chinese slaves can’t be substantiated, either; the plain truth is that most of the workers I met, not least the man with the black cough, expressed satisfaction with the factories in which they were employed. Isn’t so much of the interest which other people’s lives hold for us based on the divergence between their and our expectations? In Tecate, a lady who lived in a shack on that border-facing dirt road called Avenida México and had labored for the
maquiladoras
until she got old considered herself
pretty normal economically.
She had raised eleven children.—If you’re talking about jobs, she went on, my son was working for a factory and it closed. It took him a month to find another job. I’ve lived here for four years and finally I’m going to build a bathroom . . .—And on Northside we would have thought it intolerable to live bathroomless and overshadowed by that ghastly metal wall thirty paces from the front door, a wall which went on infinitely. But the old woman, who needless to say was not as old as she looked, was kept company in her home by three images large and small of the Virgin of Guadalupe; her water jugs and bare rafters were ordinary to her, and her
maquiladora
work had been the same, until she lost her youth and became the dependent of her children. (From eighteen to thirty you can find work in a factory, she said philosophically.) Although she herself wasn’t given a
quinceañera,
since her mother had been a single parent, she had managed to provide that experience for the first four of her six daughters.—And now I have appliances, she said. My new washer is less than a year old.—Her television had been bought with her labor in a
maquiladora.
(By the way, in 2003 fifty percent of all the TVs purchased in Canada, Mexico or the U.S. were made in Tijuana.) No, they were not enthusiastic, those factory hands (who is?); yes, they did often seem strangely unwilling to talk, a phenomenon which I interpreted, based on my prior experience in this region, as being predicated on distrust or fear, depending on the individual.

The
maquiladoras
are ripe for their own César Chávez, of whom many Mexicans have never heard. The haggard blonde in Mexicali said to me: The other day some lawyers and union reps came over and the bosses threw them out.

Of course, if the concessions which the new Chavistas squeezed out of them became too costly, the
maquiladoras
would doubtless up stakes to China, imitating Metales y Derivados if they needed to, leaving behind poisonous holes in the ground.

That is one reason no revolution is imminent. The other is this: I mostly reject the Marxist notion of false consciousness; I believe that a worker can think for himself, and if he doesn’t claim to be exploited, why then, he probably isn’t. MEXHON Honeywell on Insurgentes:
SOLICITA PERSONAL
, work to start immediately, and chances are that some new arrival from the south will be thrilled.
SE SOLICITA PERSONAL
at AMAG;
SE SOLICITA PERSONAL FEMENINA
in Los Pinos Industrial Park; and the tall white towers of a landscape more than boring and less than ghastly bewildered me. At three in the afternoon, a stream of women poured out of Los Pinos; they assembled medical instruments, they said. Were their lives as sad as the Circus Vásquez Brothers’ blue tents and grubby elephants? I don’t believe so. They were smiling and giggling; they liked the work, they said.

A man was waiting for his wife to get off work at the Philips Plant Number Two; he stood on a shady part of the concrete sidewalk. When she came, young and pretty in her business clothes, they embraced, then walked hand in hand across Insurgentes and up the steep hillside toward their
colonia.

I do think that the
maquiladoras
sometimes show a shocking disregard for people’s health; the subtle effects of chemical exposure over time and the generally low level of education among
maquiladora
laborers conspire together to be accomplices in the endangerment of human beings for the sake of a few extra pesos.

The
maquiladoras
are a necessary evil, and perhaps not even as evil as I believe. But if their windows were less dark and their gates guarded less unilaterally, if button cameras became unnecessary as a means of verification, they would definitely be better places.

THE CHOICE OF SERGIO RIVERA GÓMEZ