Welcome to the world of “Maquilapolis,” a border city where it takes an hour of drudgework inside a poisonous factory to earn enough to buy a jug of potable water. Where it takes about two hours to earn a gallon of milk. Where factory workers find bathroom breaks are few, toxins are many, and the pressure — and intimidation — are always on. It’s a place where poverty is so deep that workers are expected to be grateful for the high-end $11 a day they might earn, to give up hope of ever earning more or of ever seeking better working conditions. This daily $11 does not buy them the protection and aid of their local and national governments. In “Maquilapolis,” undertaxed and under-regulated factories operated by multinational corporations — usually through local middlemen — pollute residential neighborhoods with seeming impunity.

Yet even $11 a day can prove too high a labor cost for today’s international manufacturer. The searing new feature documentary “Maquilapolis: City of Factories” may take its name and stories from the maquiladoras, the multinational assembly plants that sprang up south of the U.S.-Mexican border in the mid-1960s and multiplied rapidly in the 1990s as a result of 1994’s North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA.) But the new global company town that “Maquilapolis” portrays is also movable. Less than 10 years after NAFTA, the maquiladoras of Mexico were already closing down as corporations began to depart for even cheaper labor in Asia, leaving behind decrepit factory sites, slag heaps of toxic material and endemic unemployment.

“Maquilapolis” is a powerful and unique film that brought American and Mexican-American filmmakers together with Tijuana factory workers and community organizers to tell the story of globalization through the eyes and voices of the workers themselves- overwhelmingly women- who have borne the costs but reaped few of the benefits.

When: Monday, August 13 @ 8 PM
Where:The Civic Media Center, 1021 W University Ave.
Donations appreciated, benefits the Civic Media Center
For more information, call 352 373 0010.

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