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Analysis Of Metales Y Derivados By Lourdes

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Throughout the documentary, Lourdes fights to clean up the 6,000 tons of lead slag at the abandoned factory, Metales y Derivados (De La Torre & Funari, 2006, 27:02). When the factory was shut down, toxic chemicals “like sulfuric acid, cadmium, plastic, and lead” (De La Torre & Funari, 2006, 27:52) were left exposed to the elements and the surrounding community. To clean Metales y Derivados, it would take millions of dollars—money that the promotoras and Mexican government does not have (De La Torre & Funari, 2006, 29:30). Lourdes’s effort does pay off to some extent: once international media picked up the story, the Mexican government and the US Environmental Protection Agency provided her environmental justice group with US$65,000 to begin …show more content…

She believes that the cheap labor model of the maquiladora industry can be ethical. That idea is not guaranteed—the hierarchal structure of the factories is a strong force. They provide jobs to those who are in need; “maquiladoras changed everything because they paid better wages than the rest of Mexico” (De La Torre & Funari, 2006, 1:48). By accumulating workers and treating them like commodities, maquiladoras continue the cycle of abuse and degradation of their workers. The ideology and hierarchy that surrounds maquiladoras is a long way from change “since to treat a disposable worker as if she were not disposable would be silly and irrational” (Wright, 2006, p.5). In the factory setting, there is no motion to change the status of women. The status quo is essential for its operation. The “flexible Mexican male worker only materializes in tandem with the inflexible female one” (Wright, 2006, p.52). While men are dependent on female workers, they also institute concepts that keep them in a devalued space. This is an elevation of the agent (men) over female agency. In the factories, men are seen as capable of flexible trained work and women are divorced from the ability of their bodies. Wright (2006) identifies this structure this as “the prosthetic body of supervision” (p.46). The emphasis on the male mind gives man purpose in the maquiladoras; women have “accepted man’s sovereignty… [and] emerged as the inessential” (Beauvoir, 2011, p.160). Female identity is reconfirmed through the factories’ “macho culture” (Wright, 2006, p.55) and their perceived lack of trainability and value in the

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