The Online Store’s mission is two prong: to provide vital income for marginalized artisans around the world and to increase understanding and activism of U.S. consumers about unfair trade practices and the fair trade alternative.
In support of our educational mission, the Online Store now offers the documentary MAQUILAPOLIS, a riveting documentary that follows the lives of factory workers in Tijuana and documents the effects of NAFTA on Mexico’s economy and environment. Carmen works the graveyard shift in one of Tijuana’s maquiladoras, the multinationally-owned factories that came to Mexico for its cheap labor.
As Carmen and a million other maquiladora workers produce televisions, electrical cables, toys, clothes, batteries and IV tubes, they weave the very fabric of life for consumer nations. They also confront labor violations, environmental devastation and urban chaos — life on the frontier of the global economy. In MAQUILAPOLIS, Carmen and her colleague Lourdes reach beyond the daily struggle for survival to organize for change.
As they work for change, the world changes too: a global economic crisis and the availability of cheaper labor in China begin to pull the factories away from Tijuana, leaving Carmen, Lourdes and their colleagues with an uncertain future.
Buy it here! http://store.gxonlinestore.org/maquilapolis.html