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A funeral director Ramírez is removing the body of a woman from the back seat of a blue car. Her husband and two daughters took her to the doors of Hospital 66 in Ciudad Juárez. He’s dead. He’s still wearing street clothes, gray knitwear and a T-shirt. His name was Gregoria, he was 56 years old and worked at Electrolux, a maquiladora factory. [expressão usual no México que designa empresas que importam materiais sem o pagamento de taxas e cujos produtos não são vendidos no país] American capital, which did not interrupt its activities despite the emergency decree of the Government of Mexico. These huge sheds, with thousands of workers, stretch across the border between the two countries and represent one of the most feared sources of the coronavirus. In Ciudad Juárez alone, there are some 320 factories of this type, which employ approximately 300,000 people. Many stopped the machines, but some still resist. They are closing due to deaths.
Electrolux announced that this week it would not open its doors. It is too late for Doña Gregoria. His body on Saturday passed from the family car to the funeral vehicle, which headed towards the crematorium. The health authorities of the Mexican state of Chihuahua do not respond to the irregular transfer of the body from one vehicle to another, in the middle of the street, under strong sunlight, with the help of her husband, who covers himself only with a thin mask. Everyone knows that Covid-19 took it. The funeral home guarantees that you have the death certificate. The daughters, who also wear masks, ask the journalist to distance themselves from them. “We can infect you.” On Facebook, others will later say that the entire family is infected and ask for a prayer for this worker whose portrait they post. On Monday, hundreds of workers protest outside some maquiladoras to stop their activities and pay 100% of their wages.
Ciudad Juárez, with 1.3 million inhabitants, is the paradise of these companies, mainly North American, but also European, that settled in Mexico in search of cheap, almost slave labor. Raw materials arrive from the United States and assembled parts return to the United States – they can be bank ATMs or the guts of a computer, vehicle parts, telephone sets, or home appliance wiring. Three shifts of eight hours each to avoid interrupting production, day or night, at 215 pesos per day (approximately 48 reais). Old buses pick up workers in their neighborhoods and, crowded on the trip, drop them off at the companies and head home.
There is nothing that deserves the name of a union in Ciudad Juárez. Workers are unaware of their most basic rights, they are easy prey for corporate greed and today they are more exposed than ever, even if the government has decreed the closure of industries. If they request to suspend activities, they are threatened with dismissal. If, despite everything, they insist on staying at home, as the health authorities and television insistently demand, the company shows them a document in which their voluntary resignation appears and they sign like lambs. They are coins that you can not do without. Or they receive a bonus of 100 pesos that they will spend the afternoon at home without making noise.
In a white protective suit, with a mask and gloves, a labor lawyer works outside Edumex, where 6,000 employees make filters, gruel and parts for household appliances. “Don’t sign the voluntary resignation! The Ministry of Labor has already said that as long as the national emergency is extended, the layoffs will be null. A very strong recession is coming, guarantee what is yours! Don’t just sign up for the check they show you! Don’t be stupid, don’t listen to what the human resources people say, nobody has a document that says that the activity is allowed in the company. It’s easy to master it, but trust me, if the company shows you a document like this, they’ll go to jail. That role does not exist. “Susana Prieto, a well-known activist lawyer in Juárez, goes from one company to another, records videos with her cell phone and publishes them on networks where they are already seen by thousands of followers. She teaches them how to legally pressure the company, because the workers hardly distinguish a street protest from a strike. “Get organized, create a WhatsApp group, use the phones for what they serve!” Unity is strength is a phrase with little depth in these warehouses.
The lawyer’s voice is hoarse, but his spirit is high. She was also a makeup artist to pay for her studies. Is a rare warning. The maquiladoras are the landscape that parents and children see here, and the same as grandchildren will see. The social elevator is blocked. And the coronavirus is not going to help change that. Unlike. “In Mexico, the condition of origin is largely inherited. And those who overcome it do not get very far on the social scale. If you were born on the wrong side of the stairs, an epidemic crash like this will only increase social immobility, ”says Roberto Vélez, executive director of the Espinosa Yglesias Study Center.
About 40% of the Mexican population is in the first or second echelon of a total of five floors. Only 50% of those born on the first floor improve their condition, but it is unlikely that half of them will reach the next; the other half will go up a bit more. “Two or three people out of 100 reach the highest level, and that is a middle class. The accident in the crib is what determines your destiny, not the effort ”, says Vélez based on studies from the center he directs.
This Monday morning, employees of plants 1 and 2 of Electrocomponents protest that the maquiladora closed its doors for a week, but only wants to pay them 50% of the salary. The dilemma of these employees is perverse: working with the coronavirus next door or quarantining at home without a burden on your pocket. It is the same deadly equation that captures 60 million poor people across Mexico. And many seem to say: rather dead than dismissed.
Were there cases of covid-19 in this maquiladora? They are not sure, some say there are two, others say three. “But we do know people with similar symptoms. Some received a seven or 14-day permit. “Is it because of these suspicious cases that the company decided to close this week?” No, I think it was because inspectors from the Ministry of Health came on Friday and said that the work being done here It is not essential. But if they reopen the following Monday, the vast majority will return to work. There is a lot of corruption here, companies show money and nobody does anything to them. They abuse the ignorance of people, “says an employee who hides his identity.
Light eyes with long painted eyelashes is the little you see on the face with the mask of a 28-year-old pregnant woman. She does not want to give the name, nobody does. You cannot play with food. He is seven months old and spent March without work, when the government decreed the emergency and ordered the protection of the most vulnerable. But this Monday morning, it was his turn to go back to work. Absurd: the pregnancy is not over. Neither diabetes nor hypertension. She has two children, she needs the money, so if the company closes and pays only half, she prefers that it remain open. I’m not afraid? All the fear in the world, but resign. The family is waiting at home for the mother, not the coronavirus, but …
The National Council of Maquiladoras, the Index, says that 70% of the factories are closed in Ciudad Juárez, that the majority followed the government’s rules. The index is the voice of companies and exposes the difficulties of an industry in which it is not easy to work from home. It does not set a date for a return to normal, but they are waiting for the United States to revive the economy. They know that this is a highly contagious region in Mexico, but they say they are preparing “with all the protocols, masks, gloves, healthy distance.” Although they recognize the difficulty of buying all this material now: “There is a shortage internationally, it is true, but here there is a lot of creativity, it is easy to make a mask,” says Fabiola Luna, manager of one of these maquiladoras and member of the national council of the index. . “This is not easy for the company, the accounts do not close, we depend on foreign investment. This is a business and it is urgent that the economy reactivate, “he says. “The president said that if work in the United States begins again, here in Juárez you can authorize the activity,” he adds. But in Juárez, the deaths will be counted by hundreds in a few weeks.
“In the United States, the companies stopped, but here they don’t care, they are Mexicans, what difference does it make. When they have one or two dead, they close for a few days, they say it is to disinfect, and then the workers return, they think they will not be infected. Or give them a bonus. Could it be that they are not infected with the voucher? Jokes the labor lawyer. “And what does the government do? He said he cared for the poor, because here are the poor, it is a crime what they are doing to them. “
The Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador ordered the suspension of non-essential activities, but the measures to guarantee its fulfillment are conspicuous by the absence. Occasionally they seem to ask companies not to be bad, to meet their demands. Are they forcing to close, are there penalties? You ignore yourself. In the maquiladoras, people continue to die with their boots on.
A handful of workers shield themselves from the sun with an umbrella during the protest in Eletrocomponents 1 and 2. If the company had opened today, they would be working less than a meter from each other. A strip attached to the floor indicates that they should not go beyond that distance, as if the coronavirus respected it. Just a few days ago, they were given the fragile masks they wear, without gloves, and the electrical cables they make pass from one to the other, in chains. “They also told us that in the bus that takes us, only one person would travel every two seats, but they did not send enough trucks and in the last one we had to stack as much as we could, because otherwise we would have been without coming to work,” says one from them.
Occasionally, applause is heard at the rally of workers when lawyers speak to them about their rights. Everyone gathers to listen to the person wearing a talking mask. But most would have been inside if the company had opened this morning. That is certainly the reason why the demonstration is so numerous. He caught them behind closed doors and took the opportunity to protest against halving the salary. “One hundred percent, one hundred percent,” they sing. Dry coughs of all kinds are also heard. Hardly anyone seems to be very aware of the danger.
What does the employer say about the deaths that are occurring in the maquiladoras? Fabiola Luna repents. “It is necessary to define what is an essential activity and establish all the safety protocols, but we cannot carry out controls during the 24 hours of a worker’s life. They will or will not take protective measures, but if they do not take them seriously or do not take responsibility, we can do little. Do you know the case of Doña Gregoria? She died this weekend. He worked at Electrolux, he was 56 years old, his makeup artist had not closed. These situations are going to happen and the industry tries to contribute, but how do we do it with asymptomatic patients? There are things that cannot be controlled or prevented, “he says. None of the companies mentioned in the report wanted to comment on the crisis.
Dona Gregoria’s family transferred the body from one car to another and headed towards the crematorium. It was not the only death on Saturday at Hospital 66. In the afternoon, other family members expected the funeral home vehicle to leave the health center with the new covid-19 deceased, when a van arrived with a musical group that gave thanks. to God and sang. hallelujahs and other preaching through loudspeakers. The arrival of Los Angeles de Juárez was announced. They are children dressed in white robes, with their faces and hair also painted white and with huge wings and plastic feathers that the wind does not silence. They are perched on chairs and are balanced so as not to fly away with the increase in the Biblical gale. They have some signs: “In front of the covid-19, faith and hope”; “Let us humble ourselves so that God saves our land.” Neither of them wears a mask, not even those who huddle in the prayer van. As this article is being written, official figures say Ciudad Juárez has 29 deaths. There will be many more when the country reaches the peak of the disease. Not even the angels will be able to say that they ignored the danger that was forming in the frontier industrial department stores.
