WOMEN ON THE BORDERÕS
Executive
Director
December 9-16, 2007
The invitation came because of our experience in evaluating the impact of globalization of the economy at the U.S.-Mexico Border, specifically its effects on working women and their families. An intense week of lectures, meetings as well as more informal opportunities to learn first hand about the complex social and economic pressures on Panama City since its emergence into ÒdemocracyÓ following the official termination of U.S. occupating at the end of the last century.
There is no doubt that in the last two decades, the entire world has undergone dramatic social, political and economic changes because of legal and political agreements designed to enhance liberalized international trade and global economic growth.
Some parts of the world saw more explosive growth in the 90s, such as Mexico, under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and more recently the Central American region through the Central American and Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). Panama itself underwent explosive urban growth in the decade leading up to phasing out of control by non-Panamanian governments into the hands of Panamanians.
Explosive metropolitan urban growth, as witnessed in places like the U.S.-Mexico Border, can bring profit and modernization. It can also produce varied human challenges involving movements for identity and self-determination, for a more participatory democracy and for equality and justice as the society changes. In addition urban growth can exacerbate previously existing conditions such as povery, human health concerns, environmental destruction and public safety. For example, at the Mexican border the intensification of industrial growth intersected with organized crime. The result was a decade of prosperity for the foreign investors coming into Mexico under the privileges of NAFTA, but a spike in domestic violence and a disturbing number of murders of young women and girls accompanies by a systematic failure of the government to respond to the demand for justice for the victims and their families.
Executive Director Arriola participated in the Study Space I program to Panama City. She came away with many questions about what exactly has happened to and for working women and working poor families in Panama. The city was filled with hundreds of new highrise buildings, as many foreign banks that appeared to provide a comfortable and safe offshore account for investors from around the world. While the city appeared exciting and modern, surrounded by unspeakable beauty in the surrounding rainforest and mountains, there was clear evidence of economic disparities among people who are living in squalor in segregated sections of the city.
As a direct contrast to the Mexican border, it did not appear that there were any maquiladoras per se, thus no systematic means of employing the local human resources in the name of assembly production for export processing. However, the only direct comparison to the kind of involvement of local people in the service of the globalized economy that Panama is now a part of, is in the extensive examples of low wage service jobs for hotels, restaurants, clubs, as well as extensive use of local labor, which appears not to be unionized at all, for construction.
A more extensive commentary on a trip intended to immerse the traveler in an examination of the environmental as well as social, economic and political questions about Panama and its people is in progress.
Photos from the trip are available at: PANAMA PHOTO GALLERY