“South of the Border: The New Jersey Project Summer Institute Goes Global”
Erica G. Polakoff, Associate Professor of Sociology and
Women’s Studies
Bloomfield College, Bloomfield, NJ
For ten days this past summer, I participated in The New Jersey Project’s 2003 Summer Institute, “Crossing Borders: Multicultural Curriculum Transformation in Global Perspective.” The New Jersey Project, directed by Paula Rothenberg of William Patterson University, and dedicated to “inclusive scholarship, curriculum and teaching,” crossed national borders for the first time to collaborate with Augsburg College’s Center for Global Education (CEMAL) in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Eighteen faculty and professional educators from across the United States, the majority of whom were sponsored by their home academic institutions in ongoing faculty development efforts, joined three members of the NJ Project staff (Paula Rothenberg, Mia Anderson and Andrea Mantsios) to learn about globalization and to share our thoughts about ways to integrate a global perspective into our teaching. Collectively, our goal was to meet the academic challenges posed by the global nature of the worlds we inhabit, and to explore strategies for educating students for our global world. According to Rothenberg, “Crossing borders changes your perspective, and changing your perspective allows you to see the world differently.” The strength of the Summer Institute was in the dialectic it created between experience and scholarship. Crossing borders made our academic experiences and scholarly endeavors more meaningful; and, the knowledge we have gathered through research and study, contextualized our experience of crossing borders.
The notion and value of experiential learning derives from Paolo Freire’s philosphy of education which shapes the foundation of CEMAL’s approach. Directed by Judy Shevelev and Ann Lutterman-Aguilar, CEMAL provided us with the opportunity to witness first-hand, the impact of globalization on the Mexican people. Through their guidance and expertise, we met with extraordinary academics and activists as well as with purveyors of the global assembly line to discuss issues related to survival and the preservation of human dignity.
“No one leaves home unless they absolutely have to.”
--Margarita Salgado
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We visited Plan de Ayala, a squatter settlement in Cuernavaca, where we met with two families, Margarita Duque and Daniel Salgado, and Conce Salgado and Nabor Belez. Not unlike many campesino families, they had been forced to leave their land in the state of Guerrero, one of the poorest states in Mexico, and migrate to Cuernavaca in search of a better life. Plan de Ayala is situated in one of the deep ravines of the city, and life there is not easy. Nonetheless, the squatters slowly improved their homes; they built a school and a health clinic, and the 200 cement steps that traverse the mountainside. When the company that Daniel Salgado worked for went out of business, he lost his job as an accountant, and the possibility of a state pension. In two desperate attempts to support his family, he migrated to the United States to find work. As we were to learn over the course of the next few days, unemployment in Mexico is very high. Mexican businesses have difficulty competing with foreign transnational corporations and many families are forced to leave home to survive.
In Tejalpa, a community with sacred springs and a traditional festival celebrating the purity of the water, we met Alicia Arines, a long-time grassroots activist working with the Christian base communities. Alicia Arines is a self-taught environmental activist, feminist and indigenous rights activist. She is currently running to be the mayor of her municipality representing a new party, “México Posible.” She spoke to us about her people’s efforts to preserve their culture and traditions and to protect their water, soil and air from contamination by the factories in the new industrial park. She also told us about how eight years ago, a water park was built up on the hill above the sacred springs, which drained all but one of the springs. Two years ago, the water park closed because it was no longer financially viable, but the springs have been damaged permanently.
“Tierra si! Aviones no!” (“Land, yes, airplanes, no!”)
We also visited San Salvador Atenco (30 kms. from Mexico City), where community members spoke with us about their efforts to save their communally-held land from Mexican President Vicente Fox’s plan to build a new airport there. We toured the land and discovered that when Fox had sent “inspectors” to Atenco to do a feasibility study, they drained the lake that had been used to irrigate the fields. Then Fox declared the land a “wasteland” and therefore a suitable location for the airport. He offered the people seven pesos per square meter of land (equivalent to about US$0.70!) The people resisted. They discovered that the water table below their land was one of the best in Mexico. They drilled wells in seven locations in order to irrigate their fields. Members of the community marched in protest to the Presidential Palace in Mexico City. The community gained a great deal of support from people throughout Mexico who joined in its struggle. When government forces took several members of the community hostage, the community responded by taking hostage an equal number of government officials. When all of the hostages were released, Vicente Fox yielded to the community, but the people remain vigilant. One of the oldest representatives spoke to us in Nahuatl, one of Mexico’s indigenous languages. One of the youngest representatives, 22-year-old América, spoke eloquently of her people’s struggle for land and dignity.
We spent one morning at the luxurious home of a North American businessman from South Bend, Indiana, Juán Cintrón, the President of the Bendix corporation—a business he inherited from his father. Cintrón, who has lived in Mexico since 1972, began his lecture by informing us that he donated money to education and health projects. (“But don’t ask what kind of clinic it is, I just send the money.”) He enthusiastically defended the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and refused to address some of the more compelling critiques we had heard previously in a lecture by Mexican economist, Alberto Arroyo. According to Cintrón, NAFTA has created a greater flow of money and goods between the United States and Mexico. In addition, 1-1.5 million new jobs in export production have been created in Mexico as a result of NAFTA. While he acknowledged that the poorest areas of Mexico have not benefited, Cintrón assured us that “other areas of Mexico have.” Cintrón supported efforts to improve the educational system because as he pointed out, “Education is a political tool” and “you control and rule by keeping people ignorant.” Yet he would not address the fact that the overwhelming majority of new workers in the factory jobs created as a result of NAFTA are young teenaged women who must forego their education in order to support their families. For many of us, Juán Cintrón represented a good example of how and why “good intentions” simply are not good enough.
We visited a Canadian-owned swimsuit factory “Phantom” in CIVAC, the industrial park on the outskirts of Cuernavaca, and spoke with its General Manager, Gabriel Hidalgo. We understood that this was one of the better-run factories specializing in export processing production. Workers at Phantom have a starting daily salary of 35 pesos (equivalent to $3.50), but several workers earn 55 pesos per day (or $5.50). A day’s work there consists of 10 hours which includes 30 minutes for lunch and a 5-minute break in the afternoon. Workers are allowed two additional 5-minute breaks during the day, but their efficiency coefficient suffers if they take those breaks, and their pay may be docked as a result. Engineer Hidalgo mentioned that this company is having a difficult time competing with other companies, and recently he had to lay off 300 workers. One company that paid its workers less than Phantom, already left Mexico in search of even cheaper labor in China.
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Although minimum wage in Mexico is 38 pesos for a 9-hour day, according to stipulations in NAFTA, foreign-owned industries operating in Mexico can pay workers less than minimum wage. (Also, they do not have to abide by environmental or occupational safety and health regulations; they get a 10-year tax holiday, pay no import or export duties, and can outlaw labor unions.) Although the average age of workers at Phantom is 22 years old, at many other factories in industrial parks or free trade zones throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, the overwhelming majority of workers are 15-year old girls.
In small groups, we trekked through the main market in Cuernavaca where we conducted a market analysis, calculating the cost of basic goods for the average Mexican family. Guided by the faculty from the Center for Global Education, we learned to take into account the minimum wage in Mexico and the hours worked by the average Mexican laborer. Then we determined what these figures would translate into for the average North American worker earning minimum wage in the U.S. For example, 0.5 kilos of black beans (about 1 lb.), cost 15 pesos (or at the current rate of exchange, approximately US$1.50); a Mexican laborer earning minimum wage would have to work 3.6 hours to earn enough to buy those beans. If U.S. minimum-wage workers in the U.S. had to work 3.6 hours (at US$5.65 per hour), they would be paying US$20 for the same item. The equivalent cost for U.S. workers for 1.5 dozen eggs would be over US$13. A toothbrush would be US$24; a box of disposable diapers would be US$91. Many North Americans believe that the salaries low-wage workers in Mexico (or in Haiti or the Philippines, for example) earn, are sufficient to cover their expenses because “everything costs less there.” Because of the rate of exchange, for those of us earning dollars, almost everything is cheaper. But it is not so for the Mexican worker earning pesos. Furthermore, Mexico, which used to be self-sufficient in basic foodstuffs, now imports more than 70% of all of its goods.
At the Center for Global Education, we met with Mexican activists Irene Ortiz and Alfredo Dominguez, who are involved in labor struggles to improve the working conditions imposed upon Mexican workers by NAFTA, the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO. We heard a lecture by Alberto Arroyo, an economist who has written extensively about the impact of NAFTA on the Mexican economy. In spite of the fact that Mexico has abided by the regulations stipulated in NAFTA, the Mexican economy has had a growth rate of less than 1% over the past two years. Part of the explanation can be found in the fact that of the billions of dollars earned by foreign (primarily U.S.-based) transnational corporations, little has been reinvested in Mexico. We also learned about Vicente Fox’s Plan Puebla-Panama—a plan to create an industrial “free trade” zone or corridor from Puebla, Mexico all the way south to Panama.
“(Collective) identity is the best antidote to consumerism, individualism and death; it is the way to create a new world, not just to change the old one.”
--Nadia Alvarado
We also heard from activists Nadia Alvarado, Erika Donoso, Pepe Montes, Juliana Quintanilla, Rev. Jorge Sosa and Hipólito Morales, who are working to combat racism, sexism, and homophobia and to put an end to human rights abuses in Mexico. Anti-racism activist, Nadia Alvarado spoke about how indigenous people of the Americas are often represented as “a ruined, ancient people or as a curiosity to attract tourism.” She talked about the African roots of many people in Mexico and how African-Mestizos “are losing their traditions and imitating models that they do not need and that are imposed upon them.” Her analysis of development models was chilling. She stated that “the model of development” that is used “is about breaking social ties and leaving people with no sense of their own identities.”
We spent a very productive morning with Carmen Granados, a social worker who is educating people about health issues, including alternative therapies. Granados works with members of indigenous peoples to analyze gender relations in their communities. She explained that the cosmology or world view of the people of indigenous communities is totally different from the western world view. Later, in response to our questions, she also discussed the problems of child prostitution, domestic violence, family planning and reproductive health care, and the impact of globalization on the health care system.
We saw a slide presentation by Cathy Good, a North American anthropologist whose work with indigenous communities in the late 1980’s and early 90’s helped to avert the building of a major hydro-electric dam which would have destroyed those communities. She argued against what many perceive as the inevitability of corporate capitalism and globalization.
In our “spare time” some of us visited the ruins of Xochicalco, in the state of Morelos, which was founded by the Olmecs and flourished as a center for culture and science between 600-900 A.D. We visited the museums, gardens and cathedrals of Cuernavaca; we listened to Mexican jazz or went salsa dancing on a “night off.” No one got much sleep. The Center for Global Education was the perfect place for staying up late and talking about what it’s like growing up in Wisconsin, North Carolina or Texas and what it’s like teaching at Portland State University, Oregon, or at West Valley College, California or at Caldwell College, New Jersey. It was also perfect for making new friends and planning future projects. Even though studying in Mexico was only one experience of crossing borders, I am certain that the members of this Summer Institute will return to the classroom reinvigorated and better informed. We are better positioned to help guide our increasingly diverse student populations and, perhaps, our colleagues, in traversing cultural borders of all kinds. As Mia Anderson of the NJ Project noted, “global peace depends on mutual understanding,” and that requires bridging cultural divides. Indeed, in addition to learning about the impact of globalization on real people in Mexico, we learned about each other and ourselves, about human dignity and the necessity to create a new vision for a new world.
About The New Jersey Project:
www.wpunj.edu/icip/njp
About the Center for Global Education:
www.augsburg.edu/global
About sweatshops in Latin America and elsewhere: National Labor
Committee: www.nlcnet.org
About the impact of NAFTA and other Free Trade agreements: Alianza
Social Continental/Hemispheric Social Alliance:
www.asc-hsa.org
