Borderlinks Field Trip
Eric Border's BorderLinks Field Trip Report
The Borderlinks fieldtrip to Nogales, Mexico was mind opening and intriguing. Several stereotypes that I once had were proven wrong and learning about U.S. involvement in Nogales’ economy was very interesting. The two key aspects that impressed me the most were that not all people that live in Mexico want to come to the United States and U.S. companies have exploited and manipulated the Mexican labor force.
“Mexican immigration has been represented almost entirely in alarmist imagery” (Chavez 260). This quote from Leo R. Chavez’s “Covering immigration: Popular Images and the Politics of The Nation” helps describe the mentality of the average U.S. born citizen. Through negative images in the media and by word of mouth, most U.S. citizens, at one time including myself, think that all the people in Mexico want to come to our country. This is not true. While visiting a family in Mexico, they spoke of how they did not want to migrate to the U.S. They had some family in the U.S. that were working and that was their only reason for even contemplating the decision to go to the U.S. The family spoke about how other family members would go to the U.S., not to live, but to make money to send back to their family that was still in Mexico. The family we visited spoke about how strong their family ties are and being with family would be the only reason to cross the border. Crossing the border is very dangerous and the family said that this was another reason to not leave their home and make the journey to the U.S.
The U.S.’s involvement in Nogales’ economy was more negative than I imagined. U.S. companies built factories in Nogales because it was cheaper to produce things there. Tens of thousands of people from Nogales and the surrounding areas came to work at these factories. This was not so bad until a recession hit the U.S. economy and several companies pulled out of Nogales, leaving the workers with no job and obviously, no income. The U.S. companies did the same thing to their workers that other countries historically did to their colonies for centuries. “English economist John Stuart Mill reasoned that colonies should not be thought of as civilizations or countries at all but as ‘agricultural establishments’ whose sole purpose was to supply the ‘larger community to which they belong’” (Collins 76). This article by Frances Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins entitled “Why can’t people Feed Themselves” shows that larger powers have been using and abusing weaker societies for their own gain since the beginning of colonialism. Great Britain used the U.S. when it was first being colonized to grow and produce what they wanted when they wanted it, no matter what the cost or the effect on the people that lived in the colonies. The U.S. people got fed up with that and rebelled. Now what U.S. companies are doing to the Mexican people and the factories that they built is almost the same thing but this time it is sanctioned by trade agreements like NAFTA. I thought that even though U.S. companies were buying cheap labor, it still helped out the people that lived in that area. I now know that U.S. companies just wanted to exploit and use the people for a profit.
The Borderlinks fieldtrip was an experience that will stick with me forever. I went on the fieldtrip with no expectations and I left with knowledge and a new view of the world. I learned that money is not the key ingredient to happiness.