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Movie poster for "Maquilapolis: City of Factories"

As the concept of globalization has become a common topic of conversation these days, students' interest in social issues, both locally and internationally, becomes more and more visible. The successful showing of the documentary "Maquilapolis: City of Factories" at University of Washington Tacoma last week is evidence of such interest.

An overwhelming audience of close to 300 people attended the showing at the Longshoremen's Hall on March 3. It was "a huge turnout," according to student Star Murray, who led the presentation. The screening was sponsored by the Latino Student Organization and the ACLU Chapter at UWT in hopes of educating students about how factory work is affecting workers in Mexico and what effect that has on Americans.

"This is much more than we expected," Murray said as she thanked the audience for their patience while some technical difficulties were attended to.

Once the film was underway, the audience was taken to the city of Tijuana, known by many as Maquilapolis, just across the border from the United States. Maquilapolis, Spanish for "city of factories," is literally a city of 4,000 factories employing 1 million workers. Ninety percent of these companies are American-owned.

The story begins with Carmen, a single mother working the night shift in one of the factories in the area. After working a graveyard shift, she picks her children up from her ex-father-in-law's house and walks with them to her home.

Her home is a small structure she built from recycled garage doors, as are many of the homes here. The town has no electricity or sewage lines. She heats water for the children's bath over an open fire in her front yard.

Carmen suffers from kidney damage and lead poisoning from years of exposure while working with toxic chemicals. She earns six dollars a day for working in the factory.

This is not a story about victims. This is a story about fighters. Carmen, along with several of her colleagues, have banded together to take on these corporations for polluting their land and water and violating their labor rights.

This film will inspire and move you. It's a story of ordinary women coming together to seek out what is rightfully theirs: the right to live and work in a safe and secure environment.

Once the film ended, co-director Sergio De La Torre was present to answer questions from the audience. Of the 14 women featured in the film, only one was living with her husband. When IAS Junior Joelle Arkin asked where all the fathers and husbands were while this was going on, De La Torre explained that drugs were a big problem in the area. Many mothers refused to stay with their husbands because of their substance abuse.

Arkin said later that it was a situation similar to what we see in the United States, "a breakdown in families."

Later, when asked what his motivation for the film was, De La Torre answered simply, "I was raised by a working singlemother."

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