CHAPTER 9 TRANSNATIONALISM AND THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF MESOAMERICA 363resulted in the creation of a new type of industry: export manufacturing plants,
known as maquiladoras.Maquiladoras are spread throughout several regions of the
Third World, including Latin America and the Caribbean. Among other places, they
are located in the north of Mexico, particularly near the border with the United
States, and are a relatively new development in Guatemala (since the mid-1980s).
The maquiladora industries rely on migrants, some of whom are trying to im-
migrate to the United States, and others who are simply moving in search of jobs
within their own countries. Most of the workers in these plants are women (over 85
percent). Women are considered by employers to be more docile and less inclined
to protest and unionize (for a discussion of women in the labor force in Mesoamer-
ica, see Chapter 12). In fact, owners assume that women will accept lower wages and
harsher conditions than men, and will have fewer options than men. Components
of goods are sent from developed countries to these Third World countries, and
maquila factories assemble them into finished products to export back to the send-
ing country (for example, the United States or South Korea), where they are finally
sold.
Countries in the Third World are often eager to attract such foreign investments
because they bring jobs to their countries. For that purpose they offer potential man-
ufacturers not only an unlimited supply of labor but also different incentives in the
form of tax exemptions. Labor comes in part from the rural areas, but mostly from
the overpopulated urban centers. The conditions in these plants are often poor, not
only by U.S. or other developed countries’ standards, but by local standards as well.
Women are paid little (as low as one or two dollars a day); are forced to work over-
time; and are not allowed sufficient breaks, even when they are pregnant or breast-
feeding. To signs of unionization, companies respond by threatening with closure of
the plants. Indeed, they frequently close and move to new locations. Mesoamerican
peoples, native and mestizo alike, have painfully linked themselves directly to the in-
ternational arena through these export-processing enterprises.DISTRIBUTION AND CONSUMPTION
This section will be concerned with distribution and consumption, with an empha-
sis on periodic markets and the culture of marketing.Trade and Markets
Anyone traveling in Mexico and Central America will retain vivid images of the large
array of colorful goods that are sold in local markets. These open markets comprise
a regional commercial network with larger principal centers at greater distances
from each other and smaller marketplaces in between. New markets continue to be
created, in part, as a response to population increase in the region and, in part, to
improved transportation infrastructure. Rural markets were an important part of
pre-Columbian economies, and the frequency and number of them increased as
colonial authorities would ask—often demand—Indians to hold plazas in places that
would serve the Spaniards better (Figure 9.3).