The Juarez Disaster
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The Juarez Disaster
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The principal reason for moving businesses to Mexico is because of ridiculously cheap labor costs, which was the main goal of the maquiladoras. A functionalist would say that the maquiladoras were intended to bring people jobs and provide lower costs. The low cost of living and the low cost of labor in Juarez is the manifest function of the whole maquiladoras system. Juarez was mainly a tourist town; they based most of their income on tourists coming to the city. The maquiladoras was aimed at bringing jobs and income to the city and bringing hope to the people who didnt have much to look forward to. This was a good system to start up because it helped the city develop into a large industrialized city, yet it was bad because it brought along latent functions such has higher crime rates, and murders.
A functionalist would probably blame the murders of the women on the industry. The maquiladoras not only brought along jobs and pay but so many people would come and go and be hired and fired that it also brought some poverty as well. The jobs that the system provided were not very high paying. The jobs paid only $2.00 an hour and if the person was skilled or had any special talents that helped on the job they may bet a pay raise up to $2.50 an hour. This may not seem like much according to American standards but for a community with such high poverty levels and low cost of living this was just enough to get you by. The maquiladoras were just American companies that were looking for a cheap way to produce goods and market them.
The maquiladoras integrated many social groups into a system. There were the workers who did hard work for little pay and then the higher ranking officials who ran the town and the system. The killing of the women was thought to be done by the higher ranking government officials or by someone who had a lot of pull with government.
These two people were socially integrated into the maquiladoras system to make it work. The city of Juarez badly needed the maquiladoras to help the economy of the city boom and to help bring people into the city. Juarez had a social need and that was the need for a business to come in and bring hope to the people and bring them something to do. The killing of the women was a very bad latent function side effect that came along with a culture of poverty.
By having the American companies move down to Juarez and start a business up is taking away many jobs that Americans could have. I dont like the fact that we have this sort of thing going on yet all companies do it because of a chance to prosper and grow. The low cost of living and cheap employees and lack of government makes Juarez an excellent city to do this in. The worst side effect is the killings. I think that you could blame the killings on the fact that the city became more industrialized and there was a complete lack of safety and security. Even the FBI official of Texas said that there was a good possibility that there is a problem with the local government being corrupt. The maquiladoras are a good system to bring to a thriving city like Juarez yet the side effects may out weigh the benefits. Your company could get a bad name such as the corporation who sent home the girl who the next day turned up missing. The police didnt even get tot the case or even file a missing persons report until over a week after the incident had happened. This just went to show that there was a lack of local government support for the safety of the young women who worked in the maquiladoras.
Some of the killings could have been prevented had the government looked at some of the social needs that the community needed. An example would be something like a neighborhood watch program, or even security guards that cared about their employees. A functionalist would have suggested something like some North Dakota businesses do is that they have a man walk with a woman to her vehicle to make sure that she makes it to her vehicle safely. I think there were several precautions that were not taken seriously that the local officials should have looked at when they