For too long, debates over international trade have been dominated by corporate elites and economic ideologues, rather than rooted in the experiences of ordinary people. 

The Trade Stories Project allows people who have been affected by policies and institutions like NAFTA and the WTO to share their views on a matter crucial to the global economy. 

This includes displaced workers, farmers, small business owners and immigrants who have been typically excluded from the trade debate.

Martha Cecilia Miker Palafox

Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico

Martha is a Professor-Investigator at The College of the Northern Border.  Her research focuses on working conditions in the maquiladoras.  

Hear part of Martha's story...

“The government rightly believes that if they regulate too much, companies aren’t going to come here.  They’re thinking about the tens of thousands of jobs that have been created here with the help of foreign investment, that the state would not have been able to create on its own.  But they’re not thinking about the quality of the jobs that are being created. 

“They sell the conditions here as very favorable for business.  The results for the city, and really for the whole country, have been the very high social costs that come with all these processes.  All of the different indices that you might look at, especially the violence here, are related to these problems. 

“You can see it in the fact that there are about 400,000 young people here, which is about a third of the total population, who do not have a secondary-school education.  They have to work to survive, and this is basically an army to work in the maquiladoras.

“The majority of the revenue that the city gains for public use is spent in bettering the industrial zones.  While they’re investing so much in industrial resources, they’re not investing in social resources.  For example, a lot of single mothers come to work in the maquilas, but they haven’t set up systems of daycare.  They haven’t arranged the school day to allow for parents’ work hours.  So it ends up that the kids probably aren’t in school, and end up getting into trouble.

“What you see is a kind of social immobility problem, especially for families.  Kids aren’t able to achieve a better life for themselves.  They aren’t able to go to high school.  It becomes a vicious circle of poverty.”