Thursday night Monroy and Cruz gave a presentation to about fifty people at Studio 34, near the IWW office in West Philly. Using a PowerPoint presentation to illustrate their testimony, they spoke for two hours about the poverty, repression, and environmental health disasters that NAFTA is causing in Mexico's industrial belt. Photos of poverty-stricken "colonias" (slums), polluted waterways, deformed animals and dangerous factory conditions demonstrated the dire situation that Mexican workers and their families face on a daily basis. The corporations responsible for causing and perpetuating these conditions have names and addresses, and the speakers did not hesitate to name them. Chief among them was Michigan-based Key Safety Systems, global leader in the production of airbags, seatbelts and other automotive safety equipment. Ironically, conditions in and around their factories are among the most dangerous in Mexico. "We make thousands of seat belts every day," explained Cruz. "That means every day we save thousands of lives. Yet we are sacrificing our own lives to the factory. They are killing us." Monroy corroborated this declaration with evidence that chemicals admitted to have caused cancer, miscarriages and children born with brains outside their heads, continue to be used without adequate safety equipment. Air filters that have turned solid black from paint vapor are simply "shook out" instead of replaced. Meanwhile workers paid poverty wages ("salarios de hambre") that require a factory worker to spend three hours to earn what an undocumented immigrant worker in Los Angeles makes in twelve minutes. The speakers explained how these conditions make massive immigration across the border to the United States inevitable. All of the claims Monroy and Cruz made were meticulously documented. "The research is all there", said Monroy. "The laws are just not being enforced."
Tags: IWW
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