At the crossroads: challenges and opportunities of union organizing in the Mexico-US border

This essay examines recent labor and political struggles by maquila and agricultural workers in northern Mexico to establish independent unions. For several decades, assembly plants and agro-export enclaves have been at the center of economic and regional development along the Mexico-US border. Capitalizing on geographical proximity, and economic and commercial ties, multinational companies have created flexible production and labor regimes with the support of the Mexican government and official unions. From a critical political economy perspective, we contend that the production regimes of these twin export industries along with the weakening of the state and traditional patronage-based business unions have created the conditions for the re-emergence of independent labor unions as arenas in which workers mobilize not only for labor demands but also for human and citizenship rights. Focusing on labor strikes by maquila workers in Tamaulipas and farmworkers in Baja California, we analyze the goals, organizational strategies, and political discourse of these recent union campaigns and the structural barriers they confront. The Mexico-US border, we contend, is a fruitful terrain to analyze the challenges and opportunities that independent unions confront in an era where traditional forms of labor organizing are in decline while alternative forms for labor mobilization are still in flux.