EL RRUN RRUN
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LEARNING FROM OUR NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOR: MAQUILAS LEAVE MATA, WORKERS, HIGH AND DRY
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By <strong>Juan Montoya</strong><br />This Saturday's newspapers from our neighbors across the puddle in Matamoros should give us pause to ponder.<br />The lead story deals with the plight of 600 families who have fallen behind on their payments to government-subsidized housing (la INFONAVIT) and are in the process of being evicted from their apartments.<br />Almost all of them are former workers in the maquilas or were related to workers of maquilas which have left city in search of greener pastures across the Pacific (China, etc.).<br /><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR-888cv_3xQ8kImTJonqEc_PFY9ccw5ZjhLKG_-yZJbYQFp3vc26g5sPf8gkfIBTLeBq6t79Rby5kxzOb4Bhn4KnY8Tv8aN4XJgxtN2ct3lzXnya1BrtWy66wbhDwUBV0Y0nbwHzGzOY/s1600/infonavit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" gda="true" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR-888cv_3xQ8kImTJonqEc_PFY9ccw5ZjhLKG_-yZJbYQFp3vc26g5sPf8gkfIBTLeBq6t79Rby5kxzOb4Bhn4KnY8Tv8aN4XJgxtN2ct3lzXnya1BrtWy66wbhDwUBV0Y0nbwHzGzOY/s400/infonavit.jpg" width="400" /></a>At one time, the promoters of these fly-by-night enterprises hailed these employers as the salvation of the border.<br />Today, we still hear this siren song on our side of the border as economic development gurus hold yet another announcement complete with heralds and trumpets that another maquila is being lured to the border.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">On our side of the border, the main benefit, they tell us, will be rental of storage warehouses, a place for the managers to live, and the economic offshoot of having them here buying their consumer purchases.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Delphi Rimir S.A. DE CV, whose parent company, Delphi Corporation, moved its assembly of plastic bumpers to Matamoros from the Midwest and is supported by U.S. automotive parts giant Fisher Guide Division, moved into Matamoros with much fanfare only to close as production costs drove them elsewhere. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">A press release in the Delphi Automotive website from Troy, Michigan, states that: "Delphi Automotive (NYSE: DLPH), a leading global vehicle components manufacturer providing electrical and electronic, powertrain, safety and thermal technology solutions to the global automotive and commercial vehicle markets, today reported fourth quarter 2011 revenues of $3.9 billion, an increase of 6.8% over the prior year period, and fourth quarter net income of $290 million, an increase of $215 million over the prior year period."</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Before Delphi came to the border, it left behind in Michigan thousands of U.S. workers without jobs and established its maquiladoras on the border to undercut U.S. labor.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Communities from Saginaw, Michigan to Ypsilati suddenly found that the jobs that had kept entire communities alive were suddenly gone south at wages that totaled $10 to $20 a day in Matamoros when that same amount was paid by the hour to its experienced workers. And U.S. consumers were now buying cars "Made in the USA" with components made in Matamoros, Reynosa and Rio Bravo.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Componentes de Mexico was yet another company that came to Matamoros with much fanfare as did Deltronicos y Kemet de Mexico.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Now, with those giants gone elsewhere, the hangover of the maquila binge is being visited upon workers of the maquilas who committed themselves to buy their families homes based upon the wages they received from their maquila jobs.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">"We used to get as much as $1,700 pesos a week in the year 2000 (about $100 to $120 a week)," a worker told the daily. "The houses were being sold for 208,000 pesos (about US 20,000) with a 30 year mortgage. Now, the judgement documents of our eviction tell us we owe $308,000 pesos after all these years of payments that we and the companies were making. What happened?"</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">After a slowdown at the Matamoros plant, the workers salaries were reduced to paid $700 pesos (less than $70 a week), and they began to fall behind on their housing contracts.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">The crisis was not slow in coming. <em>El Porvenir</em> reported that at the beginning of 2010, unemployment and economic insecurity forced 45,000 workers with INFONAVIT contracts to give up their homes to foreclosure. Nothern Mexico states along the US-MExico border like Baja California, Sonora, Coahuila, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas make up more than half of those foreclosures. Tijuana, Juárez and Reynosa alone accounted for 15,000 homes abandoned by their owners.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">What was hailed as a dream by maquila promoters on both sides of the Rio Grande has now become the workers' nightmare. At least 600 families in Matamoros have already been ordered evicted by state courts and have run out of alternatives as more maquilas continue closing and leaving them without any hope of regaining their jobs. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">On the Delphi website, it's Social Responsibility section, states that its "Delphi volunteers recently distributed books to the children at a rural school in a poverty-stricken town in Northeast China" where its production facility moved after it left Matamoros.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">In 2006, Delphi announced plans to throw out its union contracts in Michigan and shed more than 28,000 workers as it shut down most of its U.S. operations. It also announced plans to sell or close 21 of its 29 plants in the United States.</div>And our economic-development gurus continue to put our eggs into that basket?<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6016803033174468094-7043498033440157397?l=rrunrrun.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>
LINK: http://rrunrrun.blogspot.com/2012/01/learning-from-our-next-door-neighbor.html
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MATAMOROS: COLONIZATION AND REMOVAL OF NATIVE TRIBES
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<em>(Editor's Note: The following narrative on the founding of Matamoros, because of its length, will be posted in three parts. It originally appeared in the Bravo and we translated it for our Spanish-challenged readers.)</em><br />"Mi Matamoros Querido"<br />PART 2<br />By <strong>Oscar Treviño Jr. </strong><br /><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">The Spanish Crown formed the Internal Provinces Command in 1776 due to the constant attacks by marauding bands of Indians (natives) of the Plains, Comanches, and other tribes who resisted the efforts of the government to colonize them.</div>Nuevo Santander formed part of the command and a demarcation line was formed to cordon the colonies from the attacks.<br /><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">The colonization of Nuevo Santander was based on the establishment of "Ayuntamientos," (a political jurisdiction roughly equal to a county), so that each town could name a mayor, a prosecutor, and two council members (regidores).</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">The evangelization and conversion of natives was entrusted to Franciscan monks from the College of the Propagation of the Faith based in Guadalupe, Zacatecas. In 1793, the priests Francisco Pueyes and Manuel Julio Silva arrived and at once proposed that the name of the community be changed to "Nuestra Señora de Refugio de los Esteros," partly because the inhabitants called it "El Refugio" or "Villa del Refugio."</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibmkaRsHBDvwKjs0uXHbd2FPhHs_aJLtHUvgAicBlWcu_J_t07ofQ2f-PA72Alq-mqvjy1jTWEgmkJW2reSkn36z5-onMrnx632fCs4r6BP7LU1DC9ZwkOqV7-WIgfvjuyJSe3QF2toQY/s1600/mexico.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" gda="true" height="201" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibmkaRsHBDvwKjs0uXHbd2FPhHs_aJLtHUvgAicBlWcu_J_t07ofQ2f-PA72Alq-mqvjy1jTWEgmkJW2reSkn36z5-onMrnx632fCs4r6BP7LU1DC9ZwkOqV7-WIgfvjuyJSe3QF2toQY/s320/mexico.jpg" width="320" /></a>The Huastecos and the Olives who had been transported here from Florida, strongly resisted colonization and fought against both the local inhabitants and the domesticated natives. They were summarily exterminated.</div> (The name Tamaulipas is derived from Tamaholipa, a Huasteca term in which the tam- prefix signifies "place where." As yet, there is no scholarly agreement on the meaning of holipa, but "high hills" is a common interpretation. <br />However, a native population of Tamaulipas, now extinct, was referred to as the "Olives" during the early colonial period, which is a likely Spanish transformation on holipa... source: Wikipedia)<br />The native prisoners were exchanged at a rate of 60 to 80 natives for a horse. After the Crown â€" whose policy forbade slavery â€" discovered that this trade was being allowed in Nuevo Santander, it charged José de Escandón y Helguera and tried him to Juicio de Residencia (Trial by Residence?) in 1767. Despite this fact, he still retained the governorship of Nuevo Santander. Escandón died four years later but was vindicated by the honors granted him in Spain upon his death.<br />The Franciscans, meanwhile, decided to change the center of the town to a higher elevation due to the chronic flooding of the Rio Grande and it was moved two blocks to the south, where it currently exists.<br />They used the traditional town layout used in their native Spain: the cathedral toward the east, a plaza, the government building housing the cabildo to the west, and prominent businesses and citizens to the north. They christened the new layout as "Congregación de Nuestra Señora Refugio."<br />They also brought a patron saint, a virgin originally named "Nuestra Señora de Refugio de los Pecadores," (Our Lady of the Refuge of Sinners), but removed the word "sinners" since everyone had converted to Catholicism.<br />The Plaza de Armas, now known as "Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla", was a very important place because that's where "La Picota" was placed. This consisted of a large stake upon which were impaled the heads of natives who resisted the authority of the Crown. There was also a type of wooden platform where public executions would take place.<br />It was called "plaza de armas" because the authorities would call out the inhabitants in case of an indian attack, raiders, or foreigners. They would hand out weapons to the inhabitants that showed up to defend the town or go after the raiders.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>(<em>Next: Matamoros comes into existence</em>)<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6016803033174468094-5977875155792095677?l=rrunrrun.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>
LINK: http://rrunrrun.blogspot.com/2012/01/matamoros-colonization-and-removal-of.html
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