Michelle Haberland
Tulane University

The American textile and garment manufacturing industries began in the Northeast over a century ago. Since that time, these industries have moved south in an effort to undermine organized labor and to find less expensive labor costs. This overall trend southward began in the Northeast in the early 1930s, when large textile and garment companies considered a move to the South, where labor costs were less expensive and where the obstacles brought about by organized labor could be avoided. Industrial capi talists looked at the Piedmont region of the South as an opportunity to make their industry more efficient and profitable. A few decades later, the textile and garment industries were again heading south, this time to Mexico.

The expansion of textile and garment manufacturing industries into Mexico in the decades after World War II resulted in profound changes in the ways in which certain Mexican societies ordered themselves. The introduction of maquiladora industry to commun ities from the Yucatan to the border regions brought with it changes in the ways that men and women thought of themselves. Their understandings of the roles prescribed for them changes as maquilas brought increased occupational opportunities for women. The increasing feminization of the labor force brought with it a change in the roles for women in Mexican society. With the opening up of the maquila factories, women were no longer "marginal" workers in capitalist production. Instead, women with jobs a ssembling garments and manufacturing textiles assumed jobs that were central tp production and, in so doing, they assumed (at least in part) the traditional roles of men.

This experience of women workers challenged a traditional understanding of marianismo, of women's role in Mexican culture. Women experienced increased power from their wages and some engaged in collective action. However, these experiences were not cons tant. Instead, women workers in the garment industries tended to be most resistant to worker organizations when compared to those in the electronics maquilas. Employers hired women workers because they could be paid less than men workers and because wom en workers were presumed to be more docile than men. And women workers in the garment factories tended to be the lowest paid of maquila workers and the least collectively organized. In addition, they were typically older and more frequently married than their counterparts in the electronics industry.

As Mexico becomes increasingly industrialized, the feminization of the industrial work force becomes more important, both domestically and abroad. Labor leaders in the United States, as well as governmental committees, have noticed and criticized the dev elopment of maquiladoras in Mexico for its reliance on anti-union activities and cheap labor. Underneath this discourse, however, lies a gendered understanding of Mexico's history and a gendered evaluation of its workers.

United States government and trade union publications highlight the American reaction to the development of maquiladoras in Mexico. Initially, US labor leaders embraced the textile and garment industries' expansion into Mexico, viewing it as an opportuni ty to expand union membership. However, that optimistic sentiment changed with the passage of time and labor leaders today oppose this expansion for a variety of reasons. The power dynamic that existed prior to the implementation of NAFTA used a gendere d discourse that directly related opposition to the maquila industries to the feminization of the Mexican maquiladora work force.

A comparison of the images of women industiral workers in the United States and those in Latin America reveals a gendered duality. Although labor organizations in the US recognize and endorse women's double role as producer and consumer, they reject a si milar role for Latin American women. Women industrial workers in the US appear to be responsible for both wage-earning and directing family consumption. Labor leaders use this to their advantage and feature women workers as the rank and file of the anti -import movement, thus highlighting a gender-specific power women workers possess. The combination of their roles of industrial and household worker reflects an acknowledgment of the critical role women have come to play in the United States labor moveme nt. Furthermore, the household is a source of power for women industrial workers in the United States. Interestingly, household work is yet another source of exploitation for Latin American women. The anti-import movement further exploits Latin America n women workers by focusing on the ways in which maquiladora workers are victimized by their employers, by their own governments, and by US companies.

All in all, organized labor's press disempowers, exploits, and devalues the role of maquiladora women. The assessment of women industrial workers in Mexico that appears in the pages of labor union journals reveals nothing about the power these women wiel d. Unlike the scholarship on maquiladora women, the literature of the US labor movement has not come to see these workers as anything other than victims of industrialization. AS scholars uncovered a developing worker consciousness among women maquilador a workers in Mexico from the 1970s through the 1990s, the perspective of labor leaders virtually remained the same in the last few decades. The ideological foundation of their activities and evaluation of labor organization in Latin America is reminiscen t of the early scholarship with its emphasis on exploitation and victimization. US labor leaders see maquiladora women workers as temporary and secondary components of the Latin American labor force. Labor leaders refuse to challenge the patriarchy of t he maquiladora system. Efforts to incorporate Latin American women workers in the trade union movement do not coincide with similar efforts to address the needs of women workers. United States' efforts at labor organization in Mexico are a gendered set of phenomena that reveal assumptions about women maquiladora workers that further oppress, rather than liberate, women workers from the bonds of patriarchy and capitalist exploitation.