News-Sentinel.com

Thursday, 03/18/1999

NAFTA

Residents live in poor conditions at border

By LYNNE McKENNA FRAZIER of The News-Sentinel
and DEBORAH MARTINEZ of Southwest Texas State University



News-Sentinel photo by C. Somodevilla
Colonias Shanty towns of piecemeal shacks sit on the constantly growing outskirts of the bo-rder town of Matamoros, Mexico. These "colonias" accommodate the huge numbers of workers who move from the interior of the country to the bo-rder region for work in international factories, or maquiladoras.

MATAMOROS, Mexico — In search of work and prosperity, thousands of Mexicans are moving to northern Mexico border areas but find themselves living in squalor in one of hundreds of shantytowns.

On one side of the flat plains of the northern Mexican city of Matamoros are video stores, nightclubs and movie theaters. On the other side are shantytowns.

They straddle the border and stretch along the invisible boundary line that becomes more blurred with time and population shifts.

Called colonias, a Spanish word that means subdivisions in unincorporated areas without city utilities, shantytowns are characterized by high population and poverty.

They become breeding grounds for disease and illness, carried back and forth across the border as residents work and return home.

Deeply rutted dirt paths frame clusters of huts and outhouses built from rotten plywood. Blankets and trash bags are used for windows. The floors are dirt.

The tiny boxes are built by squatters whose annual income ranges between $7,000 and $11,000, according to a 1998 report by the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts.

A 1996 Water Development Board survey identified about 1,500 colonias with a population of about 344,000 residents.

In some colonias, the state has installed municipal water, and many people have potable water. Others stretch garden hoses from house to house, according to the comptroller's report.

If the land is needed by the government, the squatters must move on. Some colonias are owned by developers who sell immigrants small lots on contract.

Matamoros recently demolished a colonia that stood in the way of a planned highway, the Mexican expressway that will connect with Interstate 69, according to Domingo Gonzalez.

Gonzalez, a native of Brownsville, Texas, has waged a campaign against what he considers environmental and labor abuses by maquiladoras. He accuses the maquiladoras of creating a climate of poverty.

"This is the kind of development you get from low-wage jobs," he says during a jolting drive through the colonias of southwest Matamoros.

Others disagree. The border plants pay wages two or three times higher than the Mexican minimum wage, although much lower than U.S. wages, they say. Colonias are the exception, not the rule, they say.

But the scope of the shantytowns is undeniable. And their growth is unabated.

According to Gonzalez, one colonia went from bare land to 2,000 residents in seven months.

And although the residents lay only squatter claims, the city provides some bare necessities. Lots are strangely neat squares. Children attend elementary schools, although Gonzalez said those are strained.

In more established areas, where families like Francisco and Maria Gabriela Torres live, one or two rooms have been added onto some huts. Residents' old cars and trucks lurch along the rutted roads. Electricity has been extended into the colonia and some shanties sprout TV antennas from their roofs.

The Torres family has a palm tree in their tiny lawn, one they brought from their family home in Veracruz.

Although some people label these neighborhoods as maquiladora communities, John Sargent, an assistant professor of international business at the University of Texas-Pan American in Edinburg, said maquiladoras and the NAFTA agreement should not be blamed for the squalor.

Many of the workers come from central Mexico, leaving decent homes and parental support in search of a grand life. When they arrive on the border they initially have to do the best they can.