Austinist Film Review: Maquilapolis

Maquilapolis ("City of Factories")
Regal Metropolitan, Theater 12, 7pm

Carmen Durán lives in Tijuana, where, like most women in her neighborhood, she works in a maquiladora: one of over 800 factories owned by the countless multinational corporations that flocked to Mexico following 1994’s NAFTA treaty in search of cheap labor.

The maquiladoras—where workers manufacture everything from TV components to pantyhose for about $6 a day—sit in hillside clusters towering over Carmen’s village, spewing toxic sludge that permeates the air and washes down into local streams, causing widespread birth defects and mysterious skin maladies.

Inside the maquiladoras, workers endure a host of repugnant conditions, from lead exposure to constant harassment and labor violations. Outside the maquiladoras, they return home to care for their families in neighborhoods almost completely lacking in infrastructure, where houses are constructed from recycled American garage doors and hastily rigged clumps of electrical wires sizzle in contaminated puddles of runoff. When Carmen’s employer moves to Indonesia in search of even cheaper labor, the corporation neglects to dispense federally mandated severance pay to its workers. Mexico’s government and Tijuana’s Labor Arbitration Board habitually ignore such violations.

Maquilapolis, a documentary collaboration between filmmakers Vicky Funari and Sergio de la Torre and the featured maquiladora workers—who filmed much of the movie's footage themselves—captures the events that ensue as Carmen and her friend Lourdes work as promotoras, grassroots activists who organize meetings to help fellow maquiladora workers assert their rights. “We are promoters of the law,” explains Carmen. “What little you know, you pass on. I can’t stay quiet anymore. I have to defend whatever right is being violated.” Maquilapolis follows Carmen’s determination to track down her severance pay and Lourdes’ campaign to make the government clean up the lead waste dump—illegally left behind at a former factory site—that pollutes their town.

One of the movie’s strongest features is that it’s largely self-shot by Carmen and Lourdes, who lead viewers on an intimate tour of their homes, neighborhoods, and daily routines, as well as their face-offs with unctuous corporate lawyers and the frustrating Labor Arbitration Board. Though they’re often sick from chemical exposure, bullied and ignored by the corporations, discouraged by the government, and busy taking care of their families, Carmen, Lourdes and their promotora colleagues stay shrewd and sharp-eyed—and their efforts begin to draw international attention.

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