John Quinones Standup OC
The largest Mexican city on the border is Juarez, just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. Fueling the growth of both cities are assembly plants or maquiladoras which dot the Juarez landscape. NAFTA -- the North American Free Trade Agreement -- has pushed this region even further into the global economy.
Although wages in Juarez are low by US standards, they continue to attract thousands of Mexicans yearly. This growth has put an incredible strain on the resources of the region, especially water. Technically, these cities are in the middle of a desert and without water, they can't continue to grow at their present rate.
The dilemma is reaching a crisis stage, demonstrating once again the incredible challenges which must be overcome by both Mexico and the US to resolve the problems facing a binational region.
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NOT A DROP TO DRINK
Produced by Matthew Sneddon
NARRATION
Enrique Aguilar and his family live in Rancho Anapra situated several miles outside Juarez, Mexico. He has three children. No longer able to afford living in Juarez, he and his wife Aracely moved to the "ranch," as they call it, in the desert hills above the city.
Enrique Aguilar [SUBTITLES]
For three years, more or less, we lived in the colonia of Zacatecas, which is part of downtown. Then we had to move further away because what I was earning in the maquiladora wasn’t enough. We couldn't afford the rent, especially in downtown.
NARRATION
Enrique met Aracely while working at the American-owned AMF factory that makes sporting goods in Juarez. However, after 15 years, Enrique was laid off. He easily found another job earning $37 a week.
Enrique Aguilar [SUBTITLES]
In the maquiladora that I work in right now, I make around 377 pesos every week. What I'm earning is very little. There are times when the gas bill comes and our children get sick or we have to buy school supplies, or have school expenses. And it’s very difficult. We just can’t make it.
Aracely Aguilar [SUBTITLES]
The main problem here in Anapra is the water. It's the water because even though we only eat beans, soup and potatoes, if we had enough water, we would wash everything very well, vegetables and everything, and the kids would not get sick. And we wouldn't either.
NARRATION
Like everyone living in Rancho Anapra, the Aguilars have no running water. Their water is delivered once a week for free by the Juarez municipal water authority. They store the water in a pila, or cistern, that they made when they built their house.
Enrique Aguilar [SUBTITLES]
When I lived downtown, I really didn’t notice it, because we never fought for water. We just opened the faucet and the water would come out. Now that I live here, I realize that we must take care of the water. We must not waste it so much. We have to conserve and take care of it.
NARRATION
Juarez and its sister city, El Paso, Texas, are located here where the Rio Grande begins it’s journey as half of the two-thousand-mile border between the US and Mexico. The Rio Grande supplies water to basins and underground pockets of water called aquifers used by more than ten-million people on the border. However, these desert communities have begun to exhaust the Rio Grande’s capacity to support them.
El Paso and Juarez comprise one of the largest communities on earth directly divided by an international border--in this case, the Rio Grande. A major part of their economies are based on maquiladoras.
Charles DuMars
While there are other things going on, the key factors are that in the Juarez side there's a labor supply that is both talented, hardworking and able to work for low wages. On the El Paso side, they are in the business of warehousing, transporting and moving capital and money.
NARRATION
There are more than six-hundred maquiladoras in Juarez, Two-thirds of them are owned by US companies. Since the first maquiladora was built in Juarez in 1967, the population of the city has increased nearly five-fold to over one and a quarter million--making it the largest Mexican city on the border.
With El Paso’s population also growing steadily, the total population of these twin cities has now soared to about two million. The prospect of work in the maquiladoras in Juarez attracts 60,000 new immigrants every year to the city. Many move to desert communities surrounding Juarez.
Like most men in Rancho Anapra, Enrique rides a bus more than an hour every day to his job in the maquiladora district in Juarez. Enrique works on an electrical component assembly line. To earn a little extra salary, about seven dollars more each week, he works the late shift from 3 pm to past midnight.
One of the most successful maquiladoras in Juarez is the Delphi Rio Bravo One assembly plant. Delphi opened 20 years ago as part of General Motors and has since become the largest foreign employer in Mexico with more than 73,000 employees. Today, there are 18 Delphi plants operating in Juarez. The Rio Bravo One plant is one of the highest paying maquiladoras in the city.
Mike Hissam
Every year approximately 5 billion, that's billion with a "B," US built components come in through El Paso crossing into Ciudad Juarez, as well as along other cities along the border, for final assembly and for their processing. Those five billion US built components support tens of thousands of US jobs. We know that in Delphi we have a direct impact into El Paso's economy and I'm speaking here from Ciudad Juarez, because of our activity in Ciudad Juarez. We see similar statistics when we take look at Nuevo Laredo and Laredo, Texas. When we take a look at Matamoros and Brownsville, Texas, we take a look at Reynosa and McAllen, Texas.
NARRATION
While Delphi is one of the most successful maquiladoras in Juarez, its salaries of nearly seven dollars per day are much higher than average. Most maquiladoras pay employees less than four dollars per day.
Charles DuMars
On the Mexican side of the border they provide job opportunities which are tremendous as compared for example what's existing out on the campo. It's not unlike the factories in the United States in the 20s and 30s when people were so glad to have a factory job, particularly at the close of the Depression where you could go and find a job where you made a good income, but people evolved out of that. In Mexico, they seem to be locked in there. There doesn't seem to be that transition out.
NARRATION
While the maquiladoras themselves are not major consumers of water, the sixty thousand immigrants moving to Juarez every year to work in these factories are straining the city’s capacity to provide water to them.
In the expanding colonias surrounding Juarez, entire communities rely on water delivered by the city for free once a week. As many as one in four residents in Juarez has no running water and the municipal water authority has abandoned plans to provide permanent water to many of them.
Francisco Nunez is the head of the Juarez municipal water authority. He oversees the delivery of water pulled from wells which is then loaded into semis that service smaller trucks, to transport the water directly to families living in colonias.
Francisco Nunez
The name of this colonia is El Retiro and it is one of the poor colonias here in Juarez. It is surrounding Juarez and we have a high density of population here. We bring them, once per week, the service of water. The wages of the people it's so low, that it is not easy to deal with these low wages here. Because it doesn't cover their needs. You know, their primary needs. And the water is one of these primary needs.
NARRATION
For the Aguilars, getting the water solves their first problem. The second problem is keeping it safe and clean. Enrique has to spend many hours every week cleaning the storage drums with clorox. It is a time consuming and a daunting task. But, the cost of not cleaning, is higher still.
Enrique Aguilar [SUBTITLES]
Most people use the water from the barrels for drinking and cooking. And they can get sick. There’s a lot of sickness because of that. It could be cholera or other dangerous illnesses. We managed to buy these barrels
with a cover and we always try to keep them clean so that the water stays pure.
Aracely Aguilar [SUBTITLES]
Personally, on two occasions I have seen children who had stomach parasites and that is because they don't boil the water or because the barrels are dirty.
NARRATION
Often, the constant vigilance required to live a healthy life in the distant colonia seems overwhelming.
Aracely Aguilar [SUBTITLES]
How do I feel? I feel very sad. Very sad because it is very hard, very difficult. I get sad and I cry because I see that he cannot stand it any more. Because at night when we talk, he cries. And he asks, "What am I going to do? It's very hard for me. I won’t be able to come through for you and the children." He thinks about it so much, his heart aches. And I see him get upset and he cries. I don't know what to do or say. And I just tell him that "God will provide, Flaco. God will provide."
NARRATION
Nothing dramatizes the difference between Mexico and the US more than how they consume water. El Paso residents use parks, swimming pools and water parks. All that Americans expect from a city.
While the average American uses more than 250 gallons of water per day, the average resident of El Paso uses about 170. The average resident in Juarez uses less than 90 gallons per day.
For Juarenses like the Aguilars, it is even less than that.
Charles DuMars
On the American side, it never occurs to you that you won't get it. It never occurs that it won’t be at a price...that it’s something that people can afford, some small percent of their disposal income. You always have enough for your subsistence needs. That's not a question. On the Mexican side, just the opposite is true. If you put a water park in rural Juarez, there would be people there with buckets and pails capturing every bit they could and showering and using it. Because they don't have enough for their subsistence needs. So they ask themselves these questions. Not am I going to have enough for my hot tub, will my child get sick from the water that comes out of that pipe. Will there be enough to wash so that I'm not embarrassed when I go into town to my job. And can I count on government to get me that water on a regular basis.
NARRATION
Despite their differences in water usage, El Paso and Juarez share a critical problem. They're running out of water. In 15 to 25 years, the underground aquifer that supplies the majority of the area’s water will be exhausted. The expanding population in both cities has surpassed the Rio Grande’s ability to replenish it.
To stem depletion of its water resources, El Paso has successfully implemented harsh water conservation policies and reduced residential consumption. The city already takes almost half of its water from the Rio Grande and continues to purchase agricultural lands throughout the valley for their water rights.
But as the population of the twin cities’ continues to grow, it won’t solve the problem.
Charles DuMars
If El Paso is going to live off the economic value generated by the maquilas and the massive populations, they will have to make some kind of accord to treat water for Juarez, to share some of the water supply they have, to come up with a regional water plan across the border that protects the quality and conserves basically the future of it, but both sides, both sides will have to realize that it is, it is limited in supply.
NARRATION
In Rancho Anapra, Aracely’s concerns remain focused on maintaining a household with no running water and barely enough income to make it to the end of the week.
Aracely Aguilar [SUBTITLES]
We're thinking about extending ourselves a little bit more. We considered that I should work two days during the week, Saturdays and Sundays, in the maquiladora where they will pay me 350 pesos for Saturday and Sunday, its 12 hours, working 12 hours. It's very difficult. Very, very difficult with just his salary to try to support three children.
NARRATION
But if Aracely is to earn the additional 35 dollars per week working in the maquiladora, then Enrique will have to care for their three children on the weekend alone.
Aracely worries because Enrique already has to spend most of his free time cleaning and preparing their water containers and expanding their small house.
Enrique Aguilar [SUBTITLES]
My hopes are to have the best house I can, and for them to keep going
to school as long as they can. I'll help them with schooling for as long as I can.
Aracely Aguilar [SUBTITLES]
It makes me very happy, because I know that it's mine, everything here is mine. And I know that some day we will have water. We'll have paved roads and there will be more transportation and more stores. That’s the hope that we have.
NARRATION
The struggle of the Aguilars has become the struggle of the entire region. The shared dream of economic prosperity on the border is threatened by dwindling resources.
Charles DuMars
There are limits to the water supply. You cannot build a regional economy and invite people to live there if the amount of people you expect to come and you invite to come is larger than the long term regional water supply. The human limit on the capacity to live without basic, fundamental life sustaining resources is real and people will leave. They will do something else. They will move to the United States, legally or illegally. They will go to another part of Mexico or they will seek out and find a better life. So, there are human limits that are real that must be respected and there are water limits that must be respected. And we’re not really taking care of either one right now.
NARRATION
Here, on the Rio Grande, on the border between the US and Mexico, those upstream in the US will always be inextricably linked with those downstream in Mexico.
Charles DuMars
There’s a dicho in Mexico, a saying. They say, "El agua va por abajo por el esfuerzo de la naturaleza y por arriba por el esfuerzo del dinero." Water goes downstream for the force of gravity and nature. But it goes upstream by the force of money.
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