Maquilapolis City of Factories 2006
Distributed by California Newsreel, Order Dept., PO Box 2284, South Burlington, VT 05407; 877-811-7495 (toll free)
Produced by Vicki Funari and Sergio De La Torre
Directed by Vicki Funari and Sergio De La Torre
DVD, color, 68 min.
College - Adult
Business, Economics, Environmental Studies
Date Entered: 02/16/2007
ALA Notable: ALA.gif
Reviewed by Michael J. Coffta, Business Librarian, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania
Maquilapolis is a provocative and emotionally stirring expose of working conditions in Mexico’s maquiladoras, a word that has come to mean a new breed of factory that have become commonplace in Mexico. Foreign companies come for the tax breaks and cheap labor, and the Mexican government welcomes the inflow of capital. The conditions in these factories leave much to be desired. The workers are put in a quandary; the wages are relatively reasonable and few workers have complaints about the work itself. It is the exposure to contaminants that has called this predominantly female workforce to object and in some cases unify.
A group of these female workers were given video cameras to record daily life and document the consequences of exposure to lead and other toxins. The film does a superb job in demonstrating how globalization improves people’s lives on the surface but has an unfavorable underbelly, in the form of dangerous abandoned factories and waste sites, the lack of union representation, and the negligence of management in dealing with the problems of the workers.
Many documentaries of this sort emphasize the personal impacts of a problem and underemphasize the larger issues that shape these personal impacts. I have never seen a documentary that has done a better job of relating the personal to the global. The film deals with broader and philosophical questions in addition to examining the particular and peculiar. One interviewee asks the question, who is worse, “the one who pays for the sin, or the one who sins for pay?” Maquilapolis simply cannot help but have a profound impact on the viewer.
My only criticism is the fairly frequent use of high frame rate filming as a visual stunt. In the assessment of this reviewer, it is fairly drawn out and visually unappealing. This, however, is a minor detail and does not diminish the overall power of this work.
I give an enthusiastic recommendation for Maquilapolis all audiences concerned with globalization. It should be counted among the elite works on the subject.