Returning to New Brunswick after our week in Mexico was hard, but not in the sense that returning home from a break usually is. The week that I spent in the Maquiladora region of Mexico was truly life changing.

David: a professor of labor studies, father, and a thoughtful observer, invited me to join a delegation of 8 in the Maquiladora (manufacturing) region of Mexico. The delegation included: Mary Beth, an artist, graduate student and administrator at Rutgers; Amy: a mother, nurturer, and student advisor; Lucye: a labor organizer, administrator, (translator), mother and graduate student; Ted: a husband, activist, and graduate student; Kristen: a social worker, graduate student, activist, and community builder; Morgan: a labor organizer and graduate student who loves kids, and myself.

Our delegation met in the Newark Airport and after three flights we arrived in McAllen, TX. Martha Ojeda collected us from the airport and together we drove to Rio Bravo, Mexico. Martha Ojeda has a title, it's "the Executive Director of the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras," but after our week that title seems so irrelevant. I want to say that Martha is a leader, which she is, but she is also an organizer, a mother, a worker, a woman, a Mexican, a community builder, a scholar, an activist, a revolutionary, a fighter, a lover, a destabilizer, a builder... The people who know Martha best call her "El Viento," which means the wind. During the week that we spent with Martha, she guided us through the devastations of NAFTA and at the same time shared with us her energy, sense of justice, and her ever present love.

NAFTA and its beneficiaries (including the United States Government, the Mexican Government, Mexican Unions, and Narco-Traffickers) are tearing apart Mexican communities. The Maquiladora region, which is along the Mexico and U.S. border, is the resting stop for many displaced people who are migrating to the United States towards the American dream, or returning to their pueblos after the American dream has failed them. The corporations that own the land in this border region are exploiting both the environment and its people. There are few alternatives to working for the very same factories that are destroying the community. The injustices that we saw along the Mexico and U.S. border are shameful.

Fortunately, the struggle is enduring. We met groups of blacklisted women committed to building their communities and to creating alternatives for themselves and their children. Some women organized cooperatives, others independent unions... The struggle was more obvious to me in the Maquiladora region of Mexico than it is in the U.S., and so was the strength and love and community. The workers that we met invited us into their homes, they fed us, they shared their stories, and they trusted us to join them in solidarity against the injustices that we were seeing. The 8 of us have returned home extremely affected and inspired by our week in Mexico.

Our delegation is making a presentation to share with others, organizing delegations to Mexico, exhibiting our pictures in art shows, raising money to support various community initiatives that are taking place in Mexico, and working in solidarity to maintain the struggle.

I might never fully process this experience... but I know it has changed me.

I've attached some pictures:
#1 Walk through colonia
#2 Kristen, MARTHA, me
#3 Beautiful children - raising money for their school
#4 Our delegation (my birthday breakfast)

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