Oaxaca, Mexico – Mornings are warm here in the capital city of the southern Mexican state of the same name. Mid-day is hot, driving the gringos to seek cool drinks in the shade, hydrating frut juice if they´re smart – most drink beer.
Oaxaca (pronounced wa-HA-ca) is 5,000 feet above sea level, yet it is still ringed by mountains that trap a gaseous brown slab over the city. Rain falls June through August; February is parched and dusty. The Rio Atoyac is diminished to a discolored ooze sliding through a weedy ravine by the big Abastos market.
Oaxaca contributed one of Mexico´s best presidents – Benito Juarez – and one of its worst – Porfirio Diaz – but Oaxaca is among the poorest of the 30 United States of Mexico and has one of the highest percentages of indigenous citizens. There are few “Mexicans” here; most identify as Zapotec or Mixtec (pronounced MISH-tec), but Oaxaca is home to over a dozen other indigenous groups.
Sounds good when it´s written in the tourist brochures, less so when it´s the subject of intra-Mexican prejudice. Tall, pale northern Mexicans derisively dismiss all southern Mexicans as “Oaxacas.” The Oaxacas go to northern Mexico to sneak across the U.S. border. Why go to the U.S. for work? “Help wanted” signs dot the storefronts in Colonia Reforma in Oaxaca. The jobs advertised are waiters, cooks, janitors – same as an illegal might get in the U.S. but pay about $4.50 per day, as much as an illegal immigrant can earn in an hour in the U.S., even at under-the-table, sub-minimum wages.
The headlines on the newsstands this week lament the deaths of 65 Mexican coal miners. Smaller print tells how the victims´ families have to fight with the mine owners just to get them to recover the bodies of their husbands and sons. Trade your life for $4.50 a day? Go north, young hombre.
For all the complaining Americans do about illegal Mexicans, we do find things for them to do. Sneak a few hundred onto the 12-hour shifts at the meat-packing plants so a Smithfield Farms ham will sell for a few cents cheaper than the competition or the executives can have fatter bonus checks. Why not? It´s the free market, free trade, the global economy.
The free market is nowhere as ruthless as along the border. I paid $700 for round-trip airfare from the northern U.S. to southern Mexico. An illegal worker will pay as much to a coyote for a one-way trip from Mexicali to Phoenix and he´ll walk through the desert, then ride crammed in the back of a steaming panel truck with 20 other travellers.
We were promised something different. Twelve years ago, we were told the North American Free Trade Agreement would level the playing field, that thngs would improve for Mexican workers (although American workers would have to make “temporary” concessions), that the new, improved NAFTA-ed economy would give Mexicans a living wage south of the border. It hasn´t worked out. Mexican prices rose while wages stagnated, the peso collapsed and “recovered.” In the first eight years after NAFTA, 400 maquiladora factories on the U.S.-Mexican border shut down as corporations chased ever-cheaper labor to Asia.
President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who negotiated NAFTA for Mexico, left the country. His brother was mysteriously murdered and many in Mexico would like to see the ex-president tried for corruption. He hides out at Harvard. Subcomandante Marcos, the skimasked leader of the Zapatistas, whose “post-modern” revolution was launched Jan. 1, 1994 (the day NAFTA went into effect) is still around. He was in Oaxaca a few weeks ago, speaking in the zocalo, the city´s central square. He identified the candidates of the three main political parties for the upcoming presidential election as “lo mismo” – the same. Any hopes Marcos has for Mexico´s future are invested in the people. Whether those hopes or those people can sustain Mexico remains to be seen.
South of the Border
Oaxaca, Mexico – Mornings are warm here in the capital city of the southern Mexican state of the same name. Mid-day is hot, driving the gringos to seek cool drinks in the shade, hydrating frut juice if they´re smart – most drink beer.
Oaxaca (pronounced wa-HA-ca) is 5,000 feet above sea level, yet it is still ringed by mountains that trap a gaseous brown slab over the city. Rain falls June through August; February is parched and dusty. The Rio Atoyac is diminished to a discolored ooze sliding through a weedy ravine by the big Abastos market.
Oaxaca contributed one of Mexico´s best presidents – Benito Juarez – and one of its worst – Porfirio Diaz – but Oaxaca is among the poorest of the 30 United States of Mexico and has one of the highest percentages of indigenous citizens. There are few “Mexicans” here; most identify as Zapotec or Mixtec (pronounced MISH-tec), but Oaxaca is home to over a dozen other indigenous groups.
Sounds good when it´s written in the tourist brochures, less so when it´s the subject of intra-Mexican prejudice. Tall, pale northern Mexicans derisively dismiss all southern Mexicans as “Oaxacas.” The Oaxacas go to northern Mexico to sneak across the U.S. border. Why go to the U.S. for work? “Help wanted” signs dot the storefronts in Colonia Reforma in Oaxaca. The jobs advertised are waiters, cooks, janitors – same as an illegal might get in the U.S. but pay about $4.50 per day, as much as an illegal immigrant can earn in an hour in the U.S., even at under-the-table, sub-minimum wages.
The headlines on the newsstands this week lament the deaths of 65 Mexican coal miners. Smaller print tells how the victims´ families have to fight with the mine owners just to get them to recover the bodies of their husbands and sons. Trade your life for $4.50 a day? Go north, young hombre.
For all the complaining Americans do about illegal Mexicans, we do find things for them to do. Sneak a few hundred onto the 12-hour shifts at the meat-packing plants so a Smithfield Farms ham will sell for a few cents cheaper than the competition or the executives can have fatter bonus checks. Why not? It´s the free market, free trade, the global economy.
The free market is nowhere as ruthless as along the border. I paid $700 for round-trip airfare from the northern U.S. to southern Mexico. An illegal worker will pay as much to a coyote for a one-way trip from Mexicali to Phoenix and he´ll walk through the desert, then ride crammed in the back of a steaming panel truck with 20 other travellers.
We were promised something different. Twelve years ago, we were told the North American Free Trade Agreement would level the playing field, that thngs would improve for Mexican workers (although American workers would have to make “temporary” concessions), that the new, improved NAFTA-ed economy would give Mexicans a living wage south of the border. It hasn´t worked out. Mexican prices rose while wages stagnated, the peso collapsed and “recovered.” In the first eight years after NAFTA, 400 maquiladora factories on the U.S.-Mexican border shut down as corporations chased ever-cheaper labor to Asia.
President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who negotiated NAFTA for Mexico, left the country. His brother was mysteriously murdered and many in Mexico would like to see the ex-president tried for corruption. He hides out at Harvard. Subcomandante Marcos, the skimasked leader of the Zapatistas, whose “post-modern” revolution was launched Jan. 1, 1994 (the day NAFTA went into effect) is still around. He was in Oaxaca a few weeks ago, speaking in the zocalo, the city´s central square. He identified the candidates of the three main political parties for the upcoming presidential election as “lo mismo” – the same. Any hopes Marcos has for Mexico´s future are invested in the people. Whether those hopes or those people can sustain Mexico remains to be seen.
© Mark Floegel, 2006