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https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/9a5fad969008b78c51d7cfa402d7418c.mp3
ffad9dc53efceb5c1c6643a2df50bc5a
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/1c0a2dd92aa100dca833e30c719de432.pdf
3d55d64fe0e0d6cdeb865cf842872364
SOHP Interview - Bilingual
Southern Oral History Program Interview with metadata in English and Spanish
Interview number
Número de entrevista
R-0903
En: Restrictions
Es: Restricciones
No restrictions. Open to research.
Date
Fecha
2018-03-09
Interviewee
Entrevistado/a
Gist, Jacquelyn.
En: Interviewee Occupation
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Educators
En: Interviewee Gender
Es: Género de entrevistado
Female
Interviewee Places of Residence
Lugares de residencia del entrevistado
Carrboro -- Orange County -- North Carolina
Interviewer
Entrevistador/a
Kellogg, Alex.
En: Language of Interview
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
English
En: Abstract
Es: Abstracto en español
Jacquelyn Gist talks about how she came to be involved with the local government of Carrboro and how she has attempted to use her position as an alderman to build community in Carrboro. She discusses how gentrification and “studentification” is changing the socioeconomic and ethnic diversity of Carrboro, as well as how she is attempting to use her position to push back against them. She talks about her involvement in passing ordinances allowing food trucks to operate in Carrboro at a time when they were a relatively new phenomenon. She discusses the initial reservations some Carrboro and Chapel Hill residents had allowing food trucks to operate, and how the food trucks have enhanced Carrboro’s downtown life and economy over the years. She talks about the challenges local government has in attempting to resist gentrification without overstepping its power or infringing on people’s individual rights. She discusses the uniqueness of Carrboro’s sense of community and her desire to effectively manage inevitable change without losing Carrboro’s sense of community and diversity.
En: Citation
Es: Citación
Interview with Jacquelyn Gist by Alex Kellogg, 09 March 2018, R-0903, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Reference URL
URL de referencia
http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/27566
Repository
Repositorio
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
En: Themes
Es: Temas
Food; Receiving communities; Economics
En: Transcript
Es: Transcripción
Alex Kellogg: This is Alex Kellogg, today is March 20th, 2018 and I am interviewing Mrs. Jacquelyn Gist, the Alderman of Carrboro, current Alderman of Carrboro. And, and so just before we begin, do I have your consent to record this interview?
Jacquelyn Gist: Yes you do.
AK: Fantastic. So as long as we sit a little bit close to the phone it should be just fine. So to begin, in what capacity have you served the city of Carrboro in terms of your official titles, and for how long?
JG: I have been a member of the Carrboro Board of Aldermen since 1989, so 29 years (static). I’ve been a member of the Carrboro Board of Aldermen since 1989, so that’s going on 29 years.
AK: And what initially got you interested in working for local government?
JG: Well when I was little I was gonna be the first woman president. That, that’s not working out. So, I’ve always been interested in government, and I’ve always been interested in the ability of government to affect positive change. I know that sounds funny to be saying in 2018, but I’m still a believer. I believe that local government is the closest thing that we have in our society now to a direct democracy. Is this still on (static). I believe that local government, and particularly in small town, is the closest thing that we have to a direct participatory democracy, and I, I find that very exciting [00:02:00]. When I was in graduate school, I was involved with and ended up helping to coordinate the, the starting of the, of the homeless shelter, the (inaudible) which is now on Rosemary Street, actually its moving out to Homestead Road, and that kind of got me involved in how things, how things work here (static). And then I was also involved with a group called Friends of Old Carrboro, which was working on the preservation of the historic district in Carrboro. So I got, and I taught pre-school, and a lot of my pre-schoolers now live in Carrboro, so I kind of knew people that way but in a very grassroots kind of way (static).
AK: And (static) so I saw on your website that you arrived in Carrboro in the seventies or so. And in your opinion, how has the city changed in terms of socioeconomic, political and ethnic demographics? And how have the residences of Carrboro general, generally welcomed or perhaps not welcomed these changes?
JG: When I (static), I moved to Carrboro on July 4th, 1976 and there were around 5,000 people living there. Students were just beginning to move to Carrboro because of, because the rents were lower. But Carrboro was still a very very very conservative town, and there were, there, there were very conservative people on, on the board. But Carrboro began to look at economic development in a different way than Chapel Hill, and decided to put its emphasis on the arts and on things for, for older people, as [00:04:00] opposed to like kiddy bars and T-shirt shops in, in Chapel Hill. So Carrboro began to change as artists started moving there and more students started moving there. But what has happened fast forward, and I could spend two hours talking about this, over the course of the forty years that I’ve been there is there’s been extreme gentrification.
AK: Mmm.
JG: And so that has directly to do with the students, with “studentification”. There are people going in and buying up properties and turning them in, ah everybody, all the, all the students want to live in Carrboro because it’s the cool place to live, and they’re buying up properties and making them into four and five bedroom homes where they rent each bedroom bathroom combination for seven eight nine hundred dollars a month, and that’s pushing out our minority communities, our middle class. So, so we are quickly becoming gentrified, and with gentrification the percentage of the community that is, that is African-American or Hispanic has begun to drop. The, we had a great surge in the Hispanic community in the eighties and, and into the nineties, kind of following the construction boom. And so first the men came, and there were some issues surrounding that. I think anytime you have a group of young, single men living alone you’re gonna run into problems. Take a look at our fraternity houses.
AK: (laughs)
JG: It’s absolutely no different. Although because some men were brown and poor, instead of white and rich, the problems were treated differently.
AK: Mm-hm.
JG: But it was the same thing, it was getting drunk and hollering at women and getting into fights. Tell me that doesn’t happen in frat court. But when it was happening in Abbey court, they were treated as two different things, and I made that exact same statement in those words to the DTH when, when, when that was happening. And now we’re seeing our Hispanic community begin to drop [00:06:00] some, and I think that has to do with the great crackdown on migration and people becoming afraid. African commu, American community is getting priced out of Carrboro, and for a long time middle and middle-upper class African-Americans were moving to Durham anyway which they felt to be more welcoming and the schools better for African-American kids because they didn’t feel stereotyped in the Durham schools as they did in the Chapel Hill Carrboro. So I’ve seen the ethnic population in flux, and I think the past couple years its been due to studentification and due to gentrification, those two have walked along together. We’re now having in our historic neighborhoods people buying houses, I can’t believe the houses go for $400,000, but they’re older homes, they buy them for $400,000, tear them down and build a one-point-some-million dollar home on, on that lot. So, as we’ve, it’s the “SoHo Effect”. As we’ve become a cool and popular, kind of artsy place to go people want to live there, so the very people that made it cool and artsy and a fun place to live can no longer afford to, to live there. And so that trend has affected many many people. I mean it’s affecting me, I worry that I will spend my life building community and not be able to retire there. But it’s particularly affecting our minority communities. That’s the long answer.
AK: (static) And I appreciate long answers on this (laughs). Well no that’s interesting that you mention gentrification, I might actually skip ahead to a question exactly about that. So as an alderman, how is the issue of gentrification, particularly in hor, historically black communities like Northside, currently being addressed by the board? [00:08:00] And how are more expensive projects, like hotels and expensive housing like, immediately across the line in Chapel Hill, impacting Carrboro?
JG: (static) We have our own expensive ho, hotels too. I think people need to realize that we have very limited authority. That if we, there are things that we can’t do because we get all of our authority from the state. And so there are, there are lots of things we can’t do, and we live in a market economy, so we cannot, we live in a capitalistic system so we cannot say “you can only charge so much for rent” or “you can only build so big a house”, we’re not allowed to do that. One thing that happened to Carrboro was when Chapel Hill passed its no more than four people in one house, unrelated people in, in one house regulation, that, that pushed the builders and the speculators into Carrboro. And they began buying up in our side of Northside as well as, as our other downtown neighborhoods. We’re just beginning to address that, we’re looking at having our own no more than four unrelated people in one house rule. We had fought that for many years back in a different time because we believed it would be used to discriminate against same sex couples. But now that marriage equality is the law of the land, that issue wasn’t as pressing. There are other protections against that. The state also recently said that we could no longer restrict size of houses or number of rooms. We had for awhile had a, an ordinance that said you could only have so many bathrooms cause we were allowed to do that. The state took that right away from us, last year. And unless you were in an HMO or [00:10:00] historic district, which means only communities where rich people live, can put those things into place. But like neighborhoods like Lloyd Broad and my neighborhood, we don’t have a homeowners association, and we’re not a historic district, so we can’t do that. The state took away our, our ability to do that. We’re looking now at limiting the number of parking spaces, which, which we should be able to do. The other side of that coin though that you need to consider is the developers are paying a lot of money for those properties, and so why should we be able to say to an elderly retired African-American couple “you can’t sell your house and make money off of this gentrification cause we want to preserve your neighborhood.” That’s pretty patronizing, and it’s denying them the right to benefit economically in the same way the rest of the community is. So, so it’s very complicated. At, at my suggestion, and they kind of fought it a little bit, but this year our board retreat is going to center on gentrification and, and, and what to do about it. We have some members of the board that refuse to use the term “studentification”, although it’s true. I mean I love students, I was a student and I work with students, but it is the student house, it is the student housing and retired rich people who, who are changing what, what’s being built in Carrboro, it, it’s those two groups.
AK: (static) Yeah no that’s so true. I’m actually staying next year in a, one of the six-person, grandfathered in houses (laughs) and.
JG: Yeah.
AK: That should be fun, but.
JG: Be considerate of your neighbors.
AK: Exactly, yeah. I’ll definitely make sure to do that. So around 2008, 2009 [00:12:00] I understand that you were involved in making it easier for food trucks, often owned by immigrant families, to operate in Carrboro. Could you talk a little bit about I guess just the political dynamics of that? What were, why were food trucks initially an issue in the city, and what changed that allowed them to more effectively operate?
JG: (static) It wasn’t that anybody had anything against food trucks. It was that we didn’t have ordinances in places, in place to support them because it was a relatively new phenomena. And then when we realized that our ordinances were preventing that, or not enabling it, we quickly changed things in order to help. And a lot of the food trucks are owned by, by immigrants. Not all of them but a lot of them, particularly in the early days as kind of a way to get started. And so the, the food trucks have to work with property owners, like commercial property owners. The other businesses in Carrboro were really supportive in, in allowing them to, to use space and didn’t, yeah, it was fine, and it’s added to the vibrancy of, of downtown Carrboro, particularly in like, like in the evenings. Chapel, Chapel Hill was much more, there was, there was so much more stuff even we are anyway. I often say Carrboro is what Chapel Hill thinks it is.
AK: (laughs)
JG: And I have a bumper sticker that says “Chapel Hill: walking distance to Carrboro” (laughs). I think Chapel Hill was much more bureaucratic and stuffy and we were just “oh, we didn’t know we had this problem, let’s fix it” as our immigrant community was changing. Also wanted to have places where people could afford to eat.
AK: Yeah.
JG: Which is another thing food trucks do for us.
AK: (static) Yeah, I definitely rely on cheap
JG: Yeah.
AK: (laughs) taco truck food a lot of the time. I’m very thankful for that [00:14:00]. So, I guess, what is the process, do you know, and if it’s, it’s not that’s fine, the process now to start a food truck in Carrboro? How does it compare to starting a traditional restaurant in terms of expenses or taxes or health regulations or zoning permits? And have you spoken to food truck owners, specifically those owned by immigrants, about what their concerns are running their franchises?
JG: (static) Not in many many years. I’m not a food truck fan. I think they’re good for Carrboro, but I don’t like them. I think you wait in line too long, both to order and to get your food, and then there’s no place to sit. I love them for Carrboro, I don’t love them for me, and I’m glad they’re there. I know you have to have a, pass health department regulations. With us, they’re, you have to have a relationship or an agreement with the owners of the, of the property that, that, that you’re parking on. It’s a lot cheaper than opening a regular restaurant. I think there was some concern in the early days from our brick and mortar restaurants that it would have a negative impact on their business, but I think it’s been the opposite, that it’s helped to make Carrboro kind of the food destination that, that it’s become. Just kind of added to the mix.
AK: (static) Yeah, as I was researching this, for this interview I saw someone had commented on a, I think a letter written way back in 2009, about like unfair, non-tax paying competition from the food trucks for brick and mortar restaurants but, as you said it seems that there’s been more of a contribution to like the culture of Carrboro from food trucks. Is it known actually like [00:16:00], quantitatively what the economic contribu, contribution food trucks gave to Carrboro as a whole?
JG: (static) I’m sure it is (coughs). I’m a social worker not an economist. I can’t imagine that it hasn’t had a positive, they don’t pay property taxes but they do pay sales taxes like, like everybody else. And they may have individual arrangements with the companies, with the establishments where they park in their parking lot. I don’t know that for sure but I can see where there would be a little bit of rent charge that would then go towards it, but they, they pay sales tax like everybody else, or they should. And they have to follow health department regulations. So other than the brick and mortar tax, which is significant, they’re paying the same. Yeah.
AK: (static) And I guess pivoting slightly from food trucks and just, just cause this issue of gentrification is, is so big and nation wide issue, I know that, that very large, green infrastructure that had, that’s near Northside? The.
JG: The park?
AK: I think it’s the, it’s, it’s a housing development of some kind, I think it’s apartments. It, it has, it’s supposed to be like very eco friendly and has like plants growing.
JG: God I hate that thing. Greenbridge?
AK: That’s what it is, Greenbridge, I believe so.
JG: Yeah. I call it the Itha (static). I call it the “Ithacus Project” cause the guy flew too close to the sun. It’s just like, it’s just ego, it’s just progresso, bro ego.
AK: (laughs) Yeah I was just (laughs) gonna ask you.
JG: What I thought of it?
AK: Yeah, specifically like how did it come to be? Did [00:18:00], did members of the community talk with you about it? I’ve been for, for this class, I’ve been volunteering a little bit on Northside and they definitely don’t like it cause it’s right across the street but.
JG: (static) I can’t stand it. It represents the best of, or the worst of the “progressive bro culture” where you get an idea out of a textbook and think that it can immediately transplant in, into, into Carrboro. That thing is in Chapel Hill, not in Carrboro. It’s right, right on the line, it dominates our landscape, I think it’s ugly as homemade sin. But they built it to save the world. Which it didn’t. It has some moderate income housing in it that goes to the land trust. But the people who got those properties are not poor, even the one who got them through the land trust happened to be people who are at the beginning of their income cycle and are now making a lot more money than when they got them, and I have some negative feelings about that. But it’s mainly very very expensive, and very arrogant, and I think kind of leads the charge in, in gentrification. But there are many many people who would strongly disagree with me on that, and show me many many examples from Copenhagen and San Francisco and New York that prove that I’m wrong.
AK: (static) And, I guess the last question, slightly more personal but, what do you like the most about Carrboro, and what is the thing you’d most like to see change? And in addition to that, where do you see, as well as hope to see, the city moving over the next decade or so, especially with like self-driving cars and things like this, I’ve heard that’s a big conversation [00:20:00] in the board.
JG: We haven’t had that yet (static). You know that yesterday was the first instance of a self-driving car killing somebody?
AK: Oh no.
JG: Yeah, it was an Uber self-driving car that ran over somebody and killed them yesterday. So I hope that’s not coming to Carrboro soon. I hope we can find a way to prevent gentrification, and if not, I won’t be able to continue living there. I’m truly a middle class person and won’t be able to afford to live in the community that I’ve built. What I love about Carrboro is I truly truly truly feel like I live in a community. My husband and I get bored, all we have to do is walk out the door and go for a walk and within three minutes, we run into people who we know or find something interesting to do, people are kind to each other, people seem to really really care about the community. Other towns our size will try to have community meetings and get five or six people to show up, we have hundreds show up and, we have a very smart community that’s very, we have the same values, we have different ideas of how to get, of how to, of how to express those values and what those values mean, but it, you know it’s definitely a loving, caring blue bubble, and that’s what I don’t want to see change about it, and I worry that with gentrification, you know, the richer people are the more conservative, they tend to be except for some of the, you know, “progresso bros” or the trust fund. We, we have a fair number of, of “trustafarians”, trust fund radicals you know? Living the simple life on $250,000 a year, we have a fair number of them and they can be kind of obnoxious. So I think those people can buy with the rich retired people coming in. We have to make sure that we find a way to welcome them and not change ourselves [00:22:00] in their image.
AK: (static) Well, thank you for talking with me and that’s about all the questions I have. Do you have any other additional comments that you’d like to say for the project?
JG: (static) That everybody wants Carrboro to be like it was when they moved there.
AK: Mm-hm.
JG: And that it is changing. Change is inevitable, change is, and I, I hate the people that say “change is good, and change for change’s sake!” Change is gonna happen, so the key is to manage the change in a way to like hold on to your values. One of our values is having a, having a community where people from all different backgrounds live and work and hang out and have fun together. That’s what I’m worried about our losing (coughs). I’m worried about losing our, our ethnic diversity. So we, and that comes hand in hand with our economic diversity so I don’t know what the answer is to that. If I knew what the answer is to that maybe I would be the first woman president instead of an alderman.
AK: (static) Thank you so much, and I appreciate the contribution.
JG: You are welcome.
Es: Restricciones
Sin restricciones. Abierta para investigación.
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Educadores
Es: Género de entrevistado
Mujer
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
Inglés
Es: Resumen
Jacquelyn Gist habla sobre cómo ella se involucró en el gobierno local de Carrboro y cómo ella ha intentado a usar su posición como concejal a edificar la comunidad en Carrboro. Ella discute cómo la gentrificación y “estudianteficación” están cambiando la diversidad socioeconómica y etnica de Carrboro, y también cómo ella está tratando de usar su posición a empujar encontra estas fuerzas. Ella habla sobre su rol en aprobar ordenanzas que dejan a los camiones de comida a hacer negocios en Carrboro en un tiempo en que erán un fenómeno relativamente reciente. Ella discute las reservas iniciales que algunas residentes de Carrboro y Chapel Hill tenían sobre los camiones de comida, y cómo los camiones de comida han aumentado la vida y economía del centro de Carrboro en los últimos años. Ella habla sobre los desafíos que el gobierno local tiene en tratar de resistir la gentrificación sin exceder su poder ni infringir en los derechos individuales de la gente. Ella discute la unicidad del sentido de comunidad de Carrboro y su deseo a administrar de manera efectiva el cambio inevitable sin perder el sentido de comunidad y diversidad en Carrboro.
Es: Temas
Comida y alimentación; Comunidades receptoras; Economía
Es: Transcripción
Alex Kellogg: This is Alex Kellogg, today is March 20th, 2018 and I am interviewing Mrs. Jacquelyn Gist, the Alderman of Carrboro, current Alderman of Carrboro. And, and so just before we begin, do I have your consent to record this interview?
Jacquelyn Gist: Yes you do.
AK: Fantastic. So as long as we sit a little bit close to the phone it should be just fine. So to begin, in what capacity have you served the city of Carrboro in terms of your official titles, and for how long?
JG: I have been a member of the Carrboro Board of Aldermen since 1989, so 29 years (static). I’ve been a member of the Carrboro Board of Aldermen since 1989, so that’s going on 29 years.
AK: And what initially got you interested in working for local government?
JG: Well when I was little I was gonna be the first woman president. That, that’s not working out. So, I’ve always been interested in government, and I’ve always been interested in the ability of government to affect positive change. I know that sounds funny to be saying in 2018, but I’m still a believer. I believe that local government is the closest thing that we have in our society now to a direct democracy. Is this still on (static). I believe that local government, and particularly in small town, is the closest thing that we have to a direct participatory democracy, and I, I find that very exciting [00:02:00]. When I was in graduate school, I was involved with and ended up helping to coordinate the, the starting of the, of the homeless shelter, the (inaudible) which is now on Rosemary Street, actually its moving out to Homestead Road, and that kind of got me involved in how things, how things work here (static). And then I was also involved with a group called Friends of Old Carrboro, which was working on the preservation of the historic district in Carrboro. So I got, and I taught pre-school, and a lot of my pre-schoolers now live in Carrboro, so I kind of knew people that way but in a very grassroots kind of way (static).
AK: And (static) so I saw on your website that you arrived in Carrboro in the seventies or so. And in your opinion, how has the city changed in terms of socioeconomic, political and ethnic demographics? And how have the residences of Carrboro general, generally welcomed or perhaps not welcomed these changes?
JG: When I (static), I moved to Carrboro on July 4th, 1976 and there were around 5,000 people living there. Students were just beginning to move to Carrboro because of, because the rents were lower. But Carrboro was still a very very very conservative town, and there were, there, there were very conservative people on, on the board. But Carrboro began to look at economic development in a different way than Chapel Hill, and decided to put its emphasis on the arts and on things for, for older people, as [00:04:00] opposed to like kiddy bars and T-shirt shops in, in Chapel Hill. So Carrboro began to change as artists started moving there and more students started moving there. But what has happened fast forward, and I could spend two hours talking about this, over the course of the forty years that I’ve been there is there’s been extreme gentrification.
AK: Mmm.
JG: And so that has directly to do with the students, with “studentification”. There are people going in and buying up properties and turning them in, ah everybody, all the, all the students want to live in Carrboro because it’s the cool place to live, and they’re buying up properties and making them into four and five bedroom homes where they rent each bedroom bathroom combination for seven eight nine hundred dollars a month, and that’s pushing out our minority communities, our middle class. So, so we are quickly becoming gentrified, and with gentrification the percentage of the community that is, that is African-American or Hispanic has begun to drop. The, we had a great surge in the Hispanic community in the eighties and, and into the nineties, kind of following the construction boom. And so first the men came, and there were some issues surrounding that. I think anytime you have a group of young, single men living alone you’re gonna run into problems. Take a look at our fraternity houses.
AK: (laughs)
JG: It’s absolutely no different. Although because some men were brown and poor, instead of white and rich, the problems were treated differently.
AK: Mm-hm.
JG: But it was the same thing, it was getting drunk and hollering at women and getting into fights. Tell me that doesn’t happen in frat court. But when it was happening in Abbey court, they were treated as two different things, and I made that exact same statement in those words to the DTH when, when, when that was happening. And now we’re seeing our Hispanic community begin to drop [00:06:00] some, and I think that has to do with the great crackdown on migration and people becoming afraid. African commu, American community is getting priced out of Carrboro, and for a long time middle and middle-upper class African-Americans were moving to Durham anyway which they felt to be more welcoming and the schools better for African-American kids because they didn’t feel stereotyped in the Durham schools as they did in the Chapel Hill Carrboro. So I’ve seen the ethnic population in flux, and I think the past couple years its been due to studentification and due to gentrification, those two have walked along together. We’re now having in our historic neighborhoods people buying houses, I can’t believe the houses go for $400,000, but they’re older homes, they buy them for $400,000, tear them down and build a one-point-some-million dollar home on, on that lot. So, as we’ve, it’s the “SoHo Effect”. As we’ve become a cool and popular, kind of artsy place to go people want to live there, so the very people that made it cool and artsy and a fun place to live can no longer afford to, to live there. And so that trend has affected many many people. I mean it’s affecting me, I worry that I will spend my life building community and not be able to retire there. But it’s particularly affecting our minority communities. That’s the long answer.
AK: (static) And I appreciate long answers on this (laughs). Well no that’s interesting that you mention gentrification, I might actually skip ahead to a question exactly about that. So as an alderman, how is the issue of gentrification, particularly in hor, historically black communities like Northside, currently being addressed by the board? [00:08:00] And how are more expensive projects, like hotels and expensive housing like, immediately across the line in Chapel Hill, impacting Carrboro?
JG: (static) We have our own expensive ho, hotels too. I think people need to realize that we have very limited authority. That if we, there are things that we can’t do because we get all of our authority from the state. And so there are, there are lots of things we can’t do, and we live in a market economy, so we cannot, we live in a capitalistic system so we cannot say “you can only charge so much for rent” or “you can only build so big a house”, we’re not allowed to do that. One thing that happened to Carrboro was when Chapel Hill passed its no more than four people in one house, unrelated people in, in one house regulation, that, that pushed the builders and the speculators into Carrboro. And they began buying up in our side of Northside as well as, as our other downtown neighborhoods. We’re just beginning to address that, we’re looking at having our own no more than four unrelated people in one house rule. We had fought that for many years back in a different time because we believed it would be used to discriminate against same sex couples. But now that marriage equality is the law of the land, that issue wasn’t as pressing. There are other protections against that. The state also recently said that we could no longer restrict size of houses or number of rooms. We had for awhile had a, an ordinance that said you could only have so many bathrooms cause we were allowed to do that. The state took that right away from us, last year. And unless you were in an HMO or [00:10:00] historic district, which means only communities where rich people live, can put those things into place. But like neighborhoods like Lloyd Broad and my neighborhood, we don’t have a homeowners association, and we’re not a historic district, so we can’t do that. The state took away our, our ability to do that. We’re looking now at limiting the number of parking spaces, which, which we should be able to do. The other side of that coin though that you need to consider is the developers are paying a lot of money for those properties, and so why should we be able to say to an elderly retired African-American couple “you can’t sell your house and make money off of this gentrification cause we want to preserve your neighborhood.” That’s pretty patronizing, and it’s denying them the right to benefit economically in the same way the rest of the community is. So, so it’s very complicated. At, at my suggestion, and they kind of fought it a little bit, but this year our board retreat is going to center on gentrification and, and, and what to do about it. We have some members of the board that refuse to use the term “studentification”, although it’s true. I mean I love students, I was a student and I work with students, but it is the student house, it is the student housing and retired rich people who, who are changing what, what’s being built in Carrboro, it, it’s those two groups.
AK: (static) Yeah no that’s so true. I’m actually staying next year in a, one of the six-person, grandfathered in houses (laughs) and.
JG: Yeah.
AK: That should be fun, but.
JG: Be considerate of your neighbors.
AK: Exactly, yeah. I’ll definitely make sure to do that. So around 2008, 2009 [00:12:00] I understand that you were involved in making it easier for food trucks, often owned by immigrant families, to operate in Carrboro. Could you talk a little bit about I guess just the political dynamics of that? What were, why were food trucks initially an issue in the city, and what changed that allowed them to more effectively operate?
JG: (static) It wasn’t that anybody had anything against food trucks. It was that we didn’t have ordinances in places, in place to support them because it was a relatively new phenomena. And then when we realized that our ordinances were preventing that, or not enabling it, we quickly changed things in order to help. And a lot of the food trucks are owned by, by immigrants. Not all of them but a lot of them, particularly in the early days as kind of a way to get started. And so the, the food trucks have to work with property owners, like commercial property owners. The other businesses in Carrboro were really supportive in, in allowing them to, to use space and didn’t, yeah, it was fine, and it’s added to the vibrancy of, of downtown Carrboro, particularly in like, like in the evenings. Chapel, Chapel Hill was much more, there was, there was so much more stuff even we are anyway. I often say Carrboro is what Chapel Hill thinks it is.
AK: (laughs)
JG: And I have a bumper sticker that says “Chapel Hill: walking distance to Carrboro” (laughs). I think Chapel Hill was much more bureaucratic and stuffy and we were just “oh, we didn’t know we had this problem, let’s fix it” as our immigrant community was changing. Also wanted to have places where people could afford to eat.
AK: Yeah.
JG: Which is another thing food trucks do for us.
AK: (static) Yeah, I definitely rely on cheap
JG: Yeah.
AK: (laughs) taco truck food a lot of the time. I’m very thankful for that [00:14:00]. So, I guess, what is the process, do you know, and if it’s, it’s not that’s fine, the process now to start a food truck in Carrboro? How does it compare to starting a traditional restaurant in terms of expenses or taxes or health regulations or zoning permits? And have you spoken to food truck owners, specifically those owned by immigrants, about what their concerns are running their franchises?
JG: (static) Not in many many years. I’m not a food truck fan. I think they’re good for Carrboro, but I don’t like them. I think you wait in line too long, both to order and to get your food, and then there’s no place to sit. I love them for Carrboro, I don’t love them for me, and I’m glad they’re there. I know you have to have a, pass health department regulations. With us, they’re, you have to have a relationship or an agreement with the owners of the, of the property that, that, that you’re parking on. It’s a lot cheaper than opening a regular restaurant. I think there was some concern in the early days from our brick and mortar restaurants that it would have a negative impact on their business, but I think it’s been the opposite, that it’s helped to make Carrboro kind of the food destination that, that it’s become. Just kind of added to the mix.
AK: (static) Yeah, as I was researching this, for this interview I saw someone had commented on a, I think a letter written way back in 2009, about like unfair, non-tax paying competition from the food trucks for brick and mortar restaurants but, as you said it seems that there’s been more of a contribution to like the culture of Carrboro from food trucks. Is it known actually like [00:16:00], quantitatively what the economic contribu, contribution food trucks gave to Carrboro as a whole?
JG: (static) I’m sure it is (coughs). I’m a social worker not an economist. I can’t imagine that it hasn’t had a positive, they don’t pay property taxes but they do pay sales taxes like, like everybody else. And they may have individual arrangements with the companies, with the establishments where they park in their parking lot. I don’t know that for sure but I can see where there would be a little bit of rent charge that would then go towards it, but they, they pay sales tax like everybody else, or they should. And they have to follow health department regulations. So other than the brick and mortar tax, which is significant, they’re paying the same. Yeah.
AK: (static) And I guess pivoting slightly from food trucks and just, just cause this issue of gentrification is, is so big and nation wide issue, I know that, that very large, green infrastructure that had, that’s near Northside? The.
JG: The park?
AK: I think it’s the, it’s, it’s a housing development of some kind, I think it’s apartments. It, it has, it’s supposed to be like very eco friendly and has like plants growing.
JG: God I hate that thing. Greenbridge?
AK: That’s what it is, Greenbridge, I believe so.
JG: Yeah. I call it the Itha (static). I call it the “Ithacus Project” cause the guy flew too close to the sun. It’s just like, it’s just ego, it’s just progresso, bro ego.
AK: (laughs) Yeah I was just (laughs) gonna ask you.
JG: What I thought of it?
AK: Yeah, specifically like how did it come to be? Did [00:18:00], did members of the community talk with you about it? I’ve been for, for this class, I’ve been volunteering a little bit on Northside and they definitely don’t like it cause it’s right across the street but.
JG: (static) I can’t stand it. It represents the best of, or the worst of the “progressive bro culture” where you get an idea out of a textbook and think that it can immediately transplant in, into, into Carrboro. That thing is in Chapel Hill, not in Carrboro. It’s right, right on the line, it dominates our landscape, I think it’s ugly as homemade sin. But they built it to save the world. Which it didn’t. It has some moderate income housing in it that goes to the land trust. But the people who got those properties are not poor, even the one who got them through the land trust happened to be people who are at the beginning of their income cycle and are now making a lot more money than when they got them, and I have some negative feelings about that. But it’s mainly very very expensive, and very arrogant, and I think kind of leads the charge in, in gentrification. But there are many many people who would strongly disagree with me on that, and show me many many examples from Copenhagen and San Francisco and New York that prove that I’m wrong.
AK: (static) And, I guess the last question, slightly more personal but, what do you like the most about Carrboro, and what is the thing you’d most like to see change? And in addition to that, where do you see, as well as hope to see, the city moving over the next decade or so, especially with like self-driving cars and things like this, I’ve heard that’s a big conversation [00:20:00] in the board.
JG: We haven’t had that yet (static). You know that yesterday was the first instance of a self-driving car killing somebody?
AK: Oh no.
JG: Yeah, it was an Uber self-driving car that ran over somebody and killed them yesterday. So I hope that’s not coming to Carrboro soon. I hope we can find a way to prevent gentrification, and if not, I won’t be able to continue living there. I’m truly a middle class person and won’t be able to afford to live in the community that I’ve built. What I love about Carrboro is I truly truly truly feel like I live in a community. My husband and I get bored, all we have to do is walk out the door and go for a walk and within three minutes, we run into people who we know or find something interesting to do, people are kind to each other, people seem to really really care about the community. Other towns our size will try to have community meetings and get five or six people to show up, we have hundreds show up and, we have a very smart community that’s very, we have the same values, we have different ideas of how to get, of how to, of how to express those values and what those values mean, but it, you know it’s definitely a loving, caring blue bubble, and that’s what I don’t want to see change about it, and I worry that with gentrification, you know, the richer people are the more conservative, they tend to be except for some of the, you know, “progresso bros” or the trust fund. We, we have a fair number of, of “trustafarians”, trust fund radicals you know? Living the simple life on $250,000 a year, we have a fair number of them and they can be kind of obnoxious. So I think those people can buy with the rich retired people coming in. We have to make sure that we find a way to welcome them and not change ourselves [00:22:00] in their image.
AK: (static) Well, thank you for talking with me and that’s about all the questions I have. Do you have any other additional comments that you’d like to say for the project?
JG: (static) That everybody wants Carrboro to be like it was when they moved there.
AK: Mm-hm.
JG: And that it is changing. Change is inevitable, change is, and I, I hate the people that say “change is good, and change for change’s sake!” Change is gonna happen, so the key is to manage the change in a way to like hold on to your values. One of our values is having a, having a community where people from all different backgrounds live and work and hang out and have fun together. That’s what I’m worried about our losing (coughs). I’m worried about losing our, our ethnic diversity. So we, and that comes hand in hand with our economic diversity so I don’t know what the answer is to that. If I knew what the answer is to that maybe I would be the first woman president instead of an alderman.
AK: (static) Thank you so much, and I appreciate the contribution.
JG: You are welcome.
Interviewee Date of Birth
Fecha de nacimiento del entrevistado
Interviewee Place of Origin
Lugar de origen del entrevistado
Interviewee Journey Coordinates
Es: Citación
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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R-0903 -- Gist, Jacquelyn.
Description
An account of the resource
Jacquelyn Gist talks about how she came to be involved with the local government of Carrboro and how she has attempted to use her position as an alderman to build community in Carrboro. She discusses how gentrification and “studentification” is changing the socioeconomic and ethnic diversity of Carrboro, as well as how she is attempting to use her position to push back against them. She talks about her involvement in passing ordinances allowing food trucks to operate in Carrboro at a time when they were a relatively new phenomenon. She discusses the initial reservations some Carrboro and Chapel Hill residents had allowing food trucks to operate, and how the food trucks have enhanced Carrboro’s downtown life and economy over the years. She talks about the challenges local government has in attempting to resist gentrification without overstepping its power or infringing on people’s individual rights. She discusses the uniqueness of Carrboro’s sense of community and her desire to effectively manage inevitable change without losing Carrboro’s sense of community and diversity.
Source
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University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
Rights
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No restrictions. Open to research.
Date
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2018-03-09
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R0903_Audio.mp3
Publisher
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<a href="http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/27566">University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.</a>
-
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/1af1c480ad43d191faa4f9c6b060548c.mp3
d40b9b0a730c33c8b740098e8640a7b9
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/2779896f67698c52d082d7374eb24f40.pdf
47399e33488b2cc17e59e40f01af7cb0
SOHP Interview - Bilingual
Southern Oral History Program Interview with metadata in English and Spanish
Interview number
Número de entrevista
R-0684
En: Restrictions
Es: Restricciones
No restrictions. Open to research.
Date
Fecha
13 April 2014
Interviewee
Entrevistado/a
Didow, Nicholas.
En: Interviewee Occupation
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Professors
En: Interviewee Gender
Es: Género de entrevistado
Male
Interviewee Place of Origin
Lugar de origen del entrevistado
North Carolina -- United States
Interviewee Places of Residence
Lugares de residencia del entrevistado
Chapel Hill -- Orange County -- North Carolina
Interviewer
Entrevistador/a
Brandt, Eric.
En: Language of Interview
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
English
En: Abstract
Es: Abstracto en español
This interview with Nicholas Didow touches on numerous topics concerning international economic development and expansion, both within a Mexican-American reference frame, as well as through a general global lens. Didow and Brandt spend a significant amount of time discussing an example personal to Didow which concerns Nike and Nike’s contract with The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Didow points to the fact that Nike originally outsourced labor but did not feel responsible for poor working conditions, saying that was up to the discretion of the third party manufactures from whom Nike was buying product. Didow continued explaining how after discussion with faculty and students at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Nike CEO Phil Knight decided to take responsibility for the conditions and labor standards enforced by the third party contract with goods providers in Southeast Asia. This lengthy example was compared to The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
En: Citation
Es: Citación
Interview with Nicholas Didow by Eric Brandt, 13 April 2014, R-0684, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Reference URL
URL de referencia
http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/19879
Repository
Repositorio
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
En: Themes
Es: Temas
Economics; Legal issues; Labor and employment; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Workers' rights and unions
En: Transcript
Es: Transcripción
Eric Brandt: This is Eric Brandt interviewing professor Nicholas Didow on NAFTA and the economics and business situation behind free trade and US-Mexican relations. Professor Didow, if you could just give me a little of your background, what you’ve studied and maybe where your international experience comes from.
Nicholas Didow: Sure. I’ll confirm here and sign anything that it is fine for my name to be identified, and for whatever I say to be attributed to me whether it makes sense or not [laughter]. It can be used anyway you want. I am a native of North Carolina; you can find my educational background online. I am in the marketing area here at Kenan-Flagler. I also overlap with consulting and I’m published in the marketing area, some in market research issues in multi-national settings, which are interesting in and of themselves. I also work a lot in economic development particularly in rural North Carolina and I have on the ground experience, particularly in China. For each of the last 18 years I have been involved in doing a preliminary feasibility study for American based companies that are thinking of possibly entering the emerging Chinese market. So, much of my globalization, and my global economy kind of thinking, has been within the context of US and the Pacific-rim. But, I also have taught a fair amount about immigration policy and immigration policy as part of the global issues. I teach the senior elective here at the business school, Global Marketing: Issues in the Global Economy. Mexico, Latin America, NAFTA, and immigration are all part of what we talk about and think about.
EB: Great sounds like you are a good professor to interview.
ND: I have opinions and am happy to share my opinions with you.
EB: Of course, no, that is what the point of it is. Awesome, I guess we could just jump in then. You mentioned you have looked a lot as US development in developing nations and rural-US interactions. Why do you believe the US likes to go into these developing nations and create business there? What are the advantages there from the US company perspective?
ND: Ya I think motivations differ from whether a company is trying to source manufacturing versus enter emerging markets. I find those to be very, very different kinds of motivations that I have seen. The manufacturing sourcing is driven by an interest in lowering the manufacturing costs, whether those are hard assets, or whether they are more typically labor costs that seem to drive the movement of business around the world [phone ringing] in the race to the bottom. Case we pause for a moment?
EB: Ya, sure [Brief break in recording]
ND: So ya, I mean manufacturing, in my observations, is that manufacturing’s movement around the globe is in fact the race to the bottom. I think there is a lot of truth to that. It follows the race to the bottom, the race to the bottom seeking the lowest manufacturing costs of all types, whatever the mix of costs that go into manufacturing must be.
EB: So I guess if we talk about those costs, would we say that the primary benefit is labor costs that are being decreased? What other costs are we talking about?
ND: Ya but it’s not just labor, although those seem to be the majority of costs in some of the industries that have moved so rapidly and led like textiles and furniture and electronic assemblies as well. The labor proportion of those manufacturing costs is relatively high and that is often the case. The other driver is also regulation, environmental regulation in particular. Some of the regulatory issues overlap with labor costs because they have to do with labor standards and safety in the workplace, or not. But others have to do with environmental costs, with handling and disposal of toxic materials and recycling and more of that sector of regulation
EB: So, almost from an opinion standpoint, do you believe that it is ethical, so to speak, for these companies to go into these rural areas and take advantage of decreased regulation? Is this something that is inevitable that is going to happen, and we just have to accept it? Or—?
ND: Oh no not at all, and I think that on the one hand I can understand why this happens, why the race to the bottom happens. But there are occasionally opportunities for some of us… there are lots of opportunities to set a benchmark for how much of a bottom we will accept for various reasons. And we can do that by, some people would say, voting with our dollars in the marketplace as consumers when we make a choice. Or, there are other times when we can influence more directly which bottom we are willing to accept. Our campus has a history with Nike for example, and in determining an acceptable standard for contract manufacturing and emerging nations and labor standards that we have help Nike set in 1999 actually.
EB: So you are saying it’s almost the responsibility of the consumer to vote with their dollar and refuse to accept products that are not ethical?
ND: You know I think that’s one point of control that we as consumers have, that assumes of course you know the circumstances and logistics of the manufacturer. But I think your question was I believe, “do I believe it is ethical for companies to do that?” And my answer is no, I do not. At the same time I understand why many of them do it. This tracks with the whole emergence of outsourcing, particularly of manufacturing for companies that used to manufacture within the US that now follow the race to the bottom all around the world.
EB: So you mention it’s not ethical, and I agree with you, how can that be changed? How for instance—is it extra regulation, increased law? How do we make companies responsible for what maybe their CEOs or top managers don’t actually care about or see first hand the damages?
ND: Well ya, and I’ll challenge your strongly held belief that CEOs and top managers don’t care or don’t see, I have a little different of a perspective on that. I think that, you know, it is much easier for privately held businesses to operate in an ethical manner than publicly held businesses. I think publicly traded businesses respond all to often to the greed of the investor and the demands for dividends and appreciation. I think that one of the beautiful things about privately held businesses, most private businesses reflect the values and ethics and priorities of the primary owners. I find them much more generally moderating. But even in, so lets talk a little about publicly traded investor owned companies, again I’ll use Nike as an example because I have… [He retrieves a photo from his desk]… do you know who that is?
EB: Um, I do not.
ND: That would be Phil Knight, the founder of Nike.
EB: Wow.
ND: Do you know who that is?
EB: I’m sorry I don’t.
ND: That would be me.
EB: [laughter]
ND: Ya, it’s a little dusty. But you know, I mean again, in 1999 Nike was the focal point of misconduct, of abusive labor practices and things like that. Our campus and a number of other campuses were understandably up in arms about that. At that time one of our most beloved chancellors, Michael Hooker, who died all too early in life while he was serving as chancellor here; he found himself in the position of campus where Nike was offering the first all campus sports contract for Nike sports equipment and so forth here on UNC’s campus. The question was, whether we should partner with a company such as Nike or any other company for that matter. So chancellor Hooker charged Pete Andrews, Jim Peacock, and me to go figure this out. So we organized what became known as the Nike Seminar, which was fully supported my Phil Knight at Nike. We had complete access to Phil and others and we had access to the critics of Nike, labor unions and very strong union organizations and internal labor standards groups. It was a really amazing and thoughtful workshop, and at the start of it literally Phil Knight, in his public voice, was saying, “these are not our employees, these are not our companies, we are outsourcing. We have an assigned contract but we are not responsible for all their stuff. That is just some other company that we contract with.” To the public face he was all, “why are you criticizing us? We are just outsourcing, go talk to them, they are not our employees, not our factories, not our lines. That is why we outsource, because we don’t want to be involved in that.”
EB: So do you think that is a standard practice that companies take this approach? They say they are outsourcing so it’s almost this third party problem?
ND: At the time it was, although privately Phil was very uncomfortable with that position. And so you know, over the semester, it was also a semester where he was advised upon what we were hearing and what we were thinking, and at the end of the semester Phil showed up for the last day of class. I loved that day of the class. Eric, where it’s your turn to say “if I were head of Nike here is what I would do.” And the biggest black limousine I have ever seen in my life pulled up, and out popped Phil Knight to sit in the back on that day to take notes and listen, and he did! And the message from virtually everyone was that there is a responsibility that comes with leadership and in particular if you are an industry leader, a major market share, a major company, you have a moral and ethical responsibility. You cannot just make decisions based on the economics, you simply cannot. And so he was here at the end of April that year to hear the recommendation from students. He left, and a couple of days later his secretary called and asked if I could come up to Washington to the National Press Club on a date in early May, and to bring any of the students with me. So, I took a group of 5 students who were able, and we went up since Phil said he thought we would be interested in what he was going to do and what he was going to say. He stood up that day and he said, “We are going to change things here at Nike. We are going to be a leader; we are going to take responsibility. We are no longer going to treat these as arms length, outsource, contractual relationships. We are going to take full responsibility for what is going on.” So it was a transformational moment in the history of the company, and because of their size and leadership in apparel, athletic apparel in particular, most US companies in general. You know they started down a path that many, many other companies have now followed with corporate social responsibility with audits, with having people on the ground trying to observe and keep higher working conditions in these off-site locations. And they announced that, I think it was, maybe 8 new requirements, higher standards for minimum age of employment, maximum hours a week, pay working conditions, things like that, that hence forth immediately any contact or dealing with Nike had to meet. In typical Nike fashion, they also had flown 5 of the major of the owners of the companies from the Pacific-rim that were their partners in outsourcing, to Washington to be there to answer any questions as well.
EB: So, if I take this Nike story and I use it as almost a microcosm, correct me if I’m wrong, for all of industry you could say that initially the way that business has worked is that they would outsource, and then these third party contracts would allow these rural areas to do what they want with the labor. But now it’s the responsibility of these CEOs, such as with Nike, where they are now taking action to combat this turning a blind shoulder to outsourcing. So the way forward you could almost look at is as these CEOs are taking the net measures to ensure that their third party contacts are treating their labor responsibly?
ND: Absolutely, Absolutely.
EB: Ok, would you say maybe if I had to direct this back to a NAFTA mindset, could you say there is almost a similar situation happening within Mexico or Latin America? Or, I don’t know if you are sure about that?
ND: Wow, that’s a... I know you want to get back to that…but let me just say that sadly, sadly, sort of this path that we have talked about, that you summarized well, it now, because of the defective construction and the workers killed in Bangladesh recently, there now have been sort of similar standards for the construction of the manufacturing facility. There are now cooperative affiliations of major US companies that do outsource manufacturing around the world to establish reasonable standards and to police and monitor those and to correctively take collective action when collective action is needed. And again, there is a direct lineage between this campus and our licensing agreement with Nike to be organizing the conduct of two of those, the FLA and the WRC being the two most prevalent.
EB: So I’ll ask a tough question, when you say that there is all this action being had, it sounds great for the press. Do you think there are actually increased standards? That, in reality, all of this is happening?
ND: Yes, yes I really do. Is it enough? Is it appropriate? Some people will argue over that, but there are now, globally, there are standards, minimum standards in place that have raised the bottom to which much of manufacturing previously raced to. I think that’s a very good thing.
EB: And who hold those global minimum standards, is it an unwritten law?
ND: No, it’s two of the most remarkable self-policing associations you can imagine in your life. Even right now the two that are most prominent are the WRC, the Workers Rights Consortium, and the FLA, which is the Fair Labor Association. They are both headquartered in Washington, they were built around Nike and a couple of other pioneering companies, and they now have quite a large number of major US corporations that are part of it and again they establish and enforce what I think are for the most part very reasonable minimum standards around the world. And they police them, and inspect them, and again that whole effort broadens tragically as situations like the collapse of the building in Bangladesh, I believe it was, happen. I don’t know that there is as much, that they have been as active on the environmental side. I think the major leading issues were around the labor side and labor conditions understandably, but they have been remarkable institutions.
EB: So a negative that I guess people said were the labor conditions which seems are being addressed. From the other side, it could be argued that companies going into rural areas, Mexico, Southeast Asia, are a high positive for these areas as they are employing mass numbers. Would you agree with that statement?
ND: Ya, I understand that side of it is as well, and that is the other side of the argument. I mean the other side of the argument is that my choices as agrarian survival maybe, versus working in one of these factories—and my gosh— given the choice, I’m happy to work for minimum wages, for extensive hours under very onerous conditions. Even under those circumstances, that’s a better life for me and my family than I otherwise would have available to me. And I understand that. But for me personally, my ethics and my morality make me more comfortable with again with defining what those minimum standards ought to be. But there is that downside to it. And let’s contrast that to sort of the history of manufacturing within the US, which is as ugly a history as any of the global setting might be, both in New England with textiles and the textile industry and furniture, as well as here in the southeast and in North Carolina. You don’t have to look very far to see child labor, abusive conditions, practices among textile industries of hiring families. Well, Why do you hire families? Well, one because you have little kids who can crawl under the looms and fix ties and fix things, and you need somebody small who can get under there and do it. And secondly, if you hire a family each and everybody and each person in that family is going to be a better-behaved employee. They are going to be less likely to cause trouble, because if one of them causes trouble, you can fire the whole family. So you know, our own history is not something I think we would be proud of.
EB: But it’s improved.
ND: Yes it has.
EB: So could you say that for these other areas it starts out rough in the beginning but we are on a path to improvement?
ND: Absolutely, absolutely without fail. You want to talk about NAFTA? [laughter] I thought that was what—
EB: Well it’s interesting; it’s all related to manufacturing going into other areas. But ya, so we can refocus the conversation a little bit.
ND: We aren’t even on question one yet,
EB: It’s ok these are just my own suggestions.
ND: Is this all helpful?
EB: Yes, yes it is it gives comparison of these to compare what is happening in other areas to what is happening in Mexico—
ND: Mexico… NAFTA… the bottom line is no body knows, it’s all opinion. Who knows? Was NAFTA successful or not?
EB: So that’s the next question—
ND: Who knows? It is probably the largest naturally occurring experiment in my lifetime. Sorting out the cause and effect of NAFTA from other cause and effect factors is probably impossible to do. So you get strongly held beliefs, I have strongly held beliefs and opinions. I have opinions. But sort of sorting out what were the outcomes of NAFTA, the pros and the cons, it’s an impossible thing to do.
EB: Could you expand upon your opinions, from almost an academic, professor standpoint since you have a different—for instance, I interviewed someone else coming from more of a labor relations side of it, and they were relatively pessimistic when it comes to NAFTA, so its interesting to see the contrast from a business professor’s point of view. What do you think NAFTA has done well, and what has it not done well? And the hard questions that follows that is, was it worth it to have initiated it, and should it be a factor moving forward?
ND: Ya, ya, I’m going to take them, not particularly in the order you presented them. I’ll try to present them in more of what my understanding is a historical perspective. I’ll start by noting that NAFTA, to me, was eliminating a major collection of trade barriers from the US into Canada and Mexico, and likewise from Canada and Mexico to the US. And my historical perspective is that for the 215 years or so before NAFTA, how did the American economy grow to be the strongest economy in the world, the most vibrant, innovative, highest wealth building economy in the world? And I would argue that that happened by us having the highest strongest walls around the US that anybody could possibly build. We had all kinds of barriers to entry by any outsiders, we had protectionist measures left and right and support for export from the US to other parts of the world, but extreme protectionist measures to keep anybody else form entering the US market
EB: And that was a good thing?
ND: If you believe and value economic growth and wealth creation, yes. It was a good thing for us, was it a good thing for everybody else, absolutely not. So you know, it’s just interesting to me that sort of the whole movement of globalization of which NAFTA was the first significant step almost at this same time with the establish of the World Trade Organization, (WTO) which is just like a global epitome of NAFTA in many respects, the objective being to eliminate all of the frictions of trade between one nation and other nations.
EB: So from a naïve perspective, why would you eliminate trade restrictions? Where is the benefit?
ND: Those who argue that there is a benefit from that, they see it as enabling manufacturing to find lower cost sources. So again I would argue that the primary benefit is, for US based companies, to again race to the bottom in manufacturing costs. The primary benefit for companies located in other countries is greater access to the US market. So you have this duality of manufacturing and market access, and that is what NAFTA did to significantly eliminate barriers between Mexico, US, and Canada.
EB: So I actually found that very interesting because you mentioned both sides. But Mexico actually originally proposed NAFTA, it wasn’t the United States, so if we transition ourselves back to 1994 when it was signed, do you agree that it was more beneficial for Mexico to bring in industry than it may have been for the United States to outsource its manufacturing.
ND: No I think, you know if you want to look at it just from the economics I think it was mutually beneficial to both. Looking wholly at it, because where did the, I guess here in North Carolina, Mexico was where the textile industry and furniture industry migrated to after it left North Carolina. It migrated first to Mississippi. Why? Because of significantly lower labor costs and lower environmental regulation in Mississippi. It briefly, really interesting if you track it over time, it briefly migrated to Mississippi and then quickly migrated to Mexico, and then quickly migrated to China and Southeast Asia. And so the idea of NAFTA creating jobs and employment in Mexico for example, that was short-lived. It was so because of the attraction that followed that quickly of Southeast Asia in general, and particularly China adopting a more welcoming policy to encourage the location of manufacturing and sourcing from China that also happened around 1995, which was when China really opened itself to manufacturing from others.
EB: I never made this connection until you said it but do you think Mexico proposing NAFTA was a way for it to compete against US businesses going to China? To instead come to Mexico? It’s closer.
ND: No, nobody knew, the whole China piece was as far as I know never part of the conversation, it wasn’t even thought about because until at that point of time in the early 1990s China was still a very closed economy and the role of Deng Xiaoping as the architect of the Chinese economy was undeveloped at that time. So it made a lot of sense for Mexico to propose it, because again they would have been the logical place because of labor costs and lower environmental standards, as well as proximity to the US market for logistics of moving goods. I mean, as a strong case of Mexico to propose NAFTA, and yet there were few people in the US that realized how transformational NAFTA would be. I remember the 1992 presidential debates, that were classic between George HW Bush, Ross Perot, and this young fellow named Bill Clinton. In the debates there was a lot of discussion about NAFTA. George HW Bush’s position was the economic argument, and his summary of should the US approve NAFTA? — His opinion was, “of course, it makes the prudent thing to do.” And at the other end of the discussions was Ross Perot, and he is the one who used the expression, “if we approve NAFTA, you will hear that great sucking sound” and he used that language in the presidential debates, and that sucking sound is all the US jobs going to Mexico. And then in the middle was Bill Clinton, and Bill Clinton’s position was that on the one hand we have to recognize the global economy, we have to participate in the global economy its good for us, it’s the right this to do for us, setting aside any of the economics, it’s the right thing to do for so many reasons. And yet we also have to realize that it is going to be transformational for us in the US. We have to be smarter, we have to be more innovative, we have to be more competitive. It’s going to change the global landscape and that includes us.” And Clinton was right.
EB: So a lot of people will argue that the consequences of NAFTA, negative, or benefits, positive, weren’t necessarily foreseen. Would you argue that Clinton going into this was fully aware of what NAFTA would become and how it would do?
ND: Come on Eric, get out of here. Stop, stop that. Do I think that he had a sounder appreciation for NAFTA and the likely consequences? Yes I do. And I think George HW Bush, again, he saw it simply as the economic rational thing to do, and obviously you do that. Ross Perot saw it in terms of the loss of jobs that America would experience, and why would we do something that would be detrimental to our jobs? I think Clinton had the broader and more comprehensive view that in the global context it was time for the US to lower some of the trade barriers and remove some of the more protectionist measures and participate in the globalist economy. That almost means access to more global markets for more US firms, but at the same time it’s going to fundamentally transform the US economy once we step into this global arena, NAFTA was the first step in doing that.
EB: So I have to ask you the difficult question, but do you think it was a good idea looking back on it?
ND: Uh… Yes. Yes I do. Ya I do. Yep I do. Even, even acknowledging the historical perspective that I offered a minute ago that you know that the US economy and wealth and success that we had had as a nation for the previous 215 years or so was built in a regulatory global structure that was anything but NAFTA-like. Even saying that, you know I have a question in my final exam in my global marketing class: Issues in the Global Economy that I use often and it goes something like this “what is the theoretical basis for global trade and the global economy? Is it economics, is it morality, is it religion, is it humanity, is it ethics, what is the argument that underpins why it is a good thing that we participate in the global economy?”
EB: What do find from students more often?
ND: All of the above. What I find is that everyone starts off thinking about economics, but that is just not enough, just so clearly not enough. The argument to me, and the argument to most people who I think that think about this is that it’s all of this. Its humanity, religion, ethics, morality, and economics as well. Life is complicated; it’s just not that simple.
EB: Could be said for a lot of things.
ND: Ya.
EB: Ok, well we are approaching the end of the interview but as kind of a final wrapping up, we mentioned a lot how times change and what is needed changes. I think you said at one point that NAFTA is kind of an experiment, a large experiment. So where we are now moving forward do you think that free trade systems such as NAFTA are a way into the future as well, or that that era has passed? For instance moving into the rest of South America and free trade agreements, is that something that is likely could happen? Or is this free trade NAFTA section of history something that happened to begin the process and is now kind of in the past?
ND: Hmmm ohhh Eric. Two things, one, last October the economist had a remarkable series of articles on where is, quote ‘free trade now?’ Their argument is that through the WTO and agreements like NAFTA, that we have had about a 10-year plateau of this progression of eliminating barriers, or frictions as my friends in economics call it, between one country and another, and that it is time for another major step forward in eliminating all of these. I’ll pair that with when I, in the late 90s when I would be up in Washington and taking student groups up there for whatever reason, I would hear so many members of congress from North Carolina and elsewhere supporting free trade. They would say “I believe in free trade I’m an advocate of free trade!” and then as North Carolina and the rest of the US began to suffer job loss and some of the other negative outcomes of NAFTA and the WTO emerged as well, the language changed. What I heard then was “Well I believe in fair trade,” the language was no longer free trade, it was fair trade. For me, I do believe that moving forward with more fair trade is a good thing for everybody. I believe that moving forward with free trade, I worry that moving forward with free trade will lead to circumstances that I don’t think are right or fair. But I do believe that moving forward with fair trade would be a very good step for us
EB: Fantastic, well thank you for your time, if you would like to add anything you are more than welcome to now. Or if not, I appreciate your time, it was very insightful. Thank you again.
ND: Tell Hannah hello for me.
EB: I will
ND: She’s great
EB: Oh you do know Hannah?
ND: Everybody knows Hannah, come on.
Es: Restricciones
Sin restricciones. Abierta para investigación.
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Profesores
Es: Género de entrevistado
Hombre
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
Inglés
Es: Resumen
La entrevista con Nicholas Didow toca muchos temas relacionados con el desarrollo y la expansión económica internacionales, dentro del marco de referencia Mexicano-Americano, así como a través del marco global. Didow y Brandt hablan por largo tiempo sobre una experiencia de Didow con un contrato que Nike tenía con la Universidad de Carolina del Norte. Didow señala el hecho de que Nike originalmente había subcontratado trabajadores, pero no se sentía responsable de las condiciones de precariedad, argumentando que eso estaba a discreción de la empresa a la cual Nike le estaba comprando el producto. Didow continúa hablando de cómo después de discusiones con profesores y estudiantes de la Universidad de Carolina del Norte, el presidente de Nike, Phil Knight, decidió hacerse responsable de las condiciones y los estándares laborales implementados por las empresas subcontratistas, contratando a mejores proveedores en el sudeste asiático. Este largo ejemplo fue comparado con el TLC y los Estados Unidos y la dificultad de subcontratar empresas manufactureras, así cómo la ética y los estándares morales que los presidentes de las empresas deben de tener cuando llevan a cabo negocios en el siempre creciente mercado internacional. Al avanzar la entrevista, Brandt cuestiona el apoyo de Didow al TLC e investiga las intenciones originales tanto de México como de Estados Unidos al idear el tratado en 1994 bajo la administración de Clinton. Hacia el final de la entrevista, Didow, aunque titubeante, sigue apoyando el TLC y lo que ha logrado, al proveer trabajos y el crecimiento de la economía internacional de negocios, que está ahora demasiado entrelazada entre México y los Estados Unidos.
Es: Citación
Entrevista con Nicholas Didow por Eric Brandt, 13 Abril 2014, R-0684, en Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, SouthernHistorical Collection, Wilson Library, Universidad de Carolina del Norte en Chapel Hill.
Es: Temas
Economía; Asuntos legales; Derechos de los trabajadores y sindicatos; Trabajo y empleo; Universidad de Carolina del Norte en Chapel Hill
Es: Transcripción
Eric Brandt: This is Eric Brandt interviewing professor Nicholas Didow on NAFTA and the economics and business situation behind free trade and US-Mexican relations. Professor Didow, if you could just give me a little of your background, what you’ve studied and maybe where your international experience comes from.
Nicholas Didow: Sure. I’ll confirm here and sign anything that it is fine for my name to be identified, and for whatever I say to be attributed to me whether it makes sense or not [laughter]. It can be used anyway you want. I am a native of North Carolina; you can find my educational background online. I am in the marketing area here at Kenan-Flagler. I also overlap with consulting and I’m published in the marketing area, some in market research issues in multi-national settings, which are interesting in and of themselves. I also work a lot in economic development particularly in rural North Carolina and I have on the ground experience, particularly in China. For each of the last 18 years I have been involved in doing a preliminary feasibility study for American based companies that are thinking of possibly entering the emerging Chinese market. So, much of my globalization, and my global economy kind of thinking, has been within the context of US and the Pacific-rim. But, I also have taught a fair amount about immigration policy and immigration policy as part of the global issues. I teach the senior elective here at the business school, Global Marketing: Issues in the Global Economy. Mexico, Latin America, NAFTA, and immigration are all part of what we talk about and think about.
EB: Great sounds like you are a good professor to interview.
ND: I have opinions and am happy to share my opinions with you.
EB: Of course, no, that is what the point of it is. Awesome, I guess we could just jump in then. You mentioned you have looked a lot as US development in developing nations and rural-US interactions. Why do you believe the US likes to go into these developing nations and create business there? What are the advantages there from the US company perspective?
ND: Ya I think motivations differ from whether a company is trying to source manufacturing versus enter emerging markets. I find those to be very, very different kinds of motivations that I have seen. The manufacturing sourcing is driven by an interest in lowering the manufacturing costs, whether those are hard assets, or whether they are more typically labor costs that seem to drive the movement of business around the world [phone ringing] in the race to the bottom. Case we pause for a moment?
EB: Ya, sure [Brief break in recording]
ND: So ya, I mean manufacturing, in my observations, is that manufacturing’s movement around the globe is in fact the race to the bottom. I think there is a lot of truth to that. It follows the race to the bottom, the race to the bottom seeking the lowest manufacturing costs of all types, whatever the mix of costs that go into manufacturing must be.
EB: So I guess if we talk about those costs, would we say that the primary benefit is labor costs that are being decreased? What other costs are we talking about?
ND: Ya but it’s not just labor, although those seem to be the majority of costs in some of the industries that have moved so rapidly and led like textiles and furniture and electronic assemblies as well. The labor proportion of those manufacturing costs is relatively high and that is often the case. The other driver is also regulation, environmental regulation in particular. Some of the regulatory issues overlap with labor costs because they have to do with labor standards and safety in the workplace, or not. But others have to do with environmental costs, with handling and disposal of toxic materials and recycling and more of that sector of regulation
EB: So, almost from an opinion standpoint, do you believe that it is ethical, so to speak, for these companies to go into these rural areas and take advantage of decreased regulation? Is this something that is inevitable that is going to happen, and we just have to accept it? Or—?
ND: Oh no not at all, and I think that on the one hand I can understand why this happens, why the race to the bottom happens. But there are occasionally opportunities for some of us… there are lots of opportunities to set a benchmark for how much of a bottom we will accept for various reasons. And we can do that by, some people would say, voting with our dollars in the marketplace as consumers when we make a choice. Or, there are other times when we can influence more directly which bottom we are willing to accept. Our campus has a history with Nike for example, and in determining an acceptable standard for contract manufacturing and emerging nations and labor standards that we have help Nike set in 1999 actually.
EB: So you are saying it’s almost the responsibility of the consumer to vote with their dollar and refuse to accept products that are not ethical?
ND: You know I think that’s one point of control that we as consumers have, that assumes of course you know the circumstances and logistics of the manufacturer. But I think your question was I believe, “do I believe it is ethical for companies to do that?” And my answer is no, I do not. At the same time I understand why many of them do it. This tracks with the whole emergence of outsourcing, particularly of manufacturing for companies that used to manufacture within the US that now follow the race to the bottom all around the world.
EB: So you mention it’s not ethical, and I agree with you, how can that be changed? How for instance—is it extra regulation, increased law? How do we make companies responsible for what maybe their CEOs or top managers don’t actually care about or see first hand the damages?
ND: Well ya, and I’ll challenge your strongly held belief that CEOs and top managers don’t care or don’t see, I have a little different of a perspective on that. I think that, you know, it is much easier for privately held businesses to operate in an ethical manner than publicly held businesses. I think publicly traded businesses respond all to often to the greed of the investor and the demands for dividends and appreciation. I think that one of the beautiful things about privately held businesses, most private businesses reflect the values and ethics and priorities of the primary owners. I find them much more generally moderating. But even in, so lets talk a little about publicly traded investor owned companies, again I’ll use Nike as an example because I have… [He retrieves a photo from his desk]… do you know who that is?
EB: Um, I do not.
ND: That would be Phil Knight, the founder of Nike.
EB: Wow.
ND: Do you know who that is?
EB: I’m sorry I don’t.
ND: That would be me.
EB: [laughter]
ND: Ya, it’s a little dusty. But you know, I mean again, in 1999 Nike was the focal point of misconduct, of abusive labor practices and things like that. Our campus and a number of other campuses were understandably up in arms about that. At that time one of our most beloved chancellors, Michael Hooker, who died all too early in life while he was serving as chancellor here; he found himself in the position of campus where Nike was offering the first all campus sports contract for Nike sports equipment and so forth here on UNC’s campus. The question was, whether we should partner with a company such as Nike or any other company for that matter. So chancellor Hooker charged Pete Andrews, Jim Peacock, and me to go figure this out. So we organized what became known as the Nike Seminar, which was fully supported my Phil Knight at Nike. We had complete access to Phil and others and we had access to the critics of Nike, labor unions and very strong union organizations and internal labor standards groups. It was a really amazing and thoughtful workshop, and at the start of it literally Phil Knight, in his public voice, was saying, “these are not our employees, these are not our companies, we are outsourcing. We have an assigned contract but we are not responsible for all their stuff. That is just some other company that we contract with.” To the public face he was all, “why are you criticizing us? We are just outsourcing, go talk to them, they are not our employees, not our factories, not our lines. That is why we outsource, because we don’t want to be involved in that.”
EB: So do you think that is a standard practice that companies take this approach? They say they are outsourcing so it’s almost this third party problem?
ND: At the time it was, although privately Phil was very uncomfortable with that position. And so you know, over the semester, it was also a semester where he was advised upon what we were hearing and what we were thinking, and at the end of the semester Phil showed up for the last day of class. I loved that day of the class. Eric, where it’s your turn to say “if I were head of Nike here is what I would do.” And the biggest black limousine I have ever seen in my life pulled up, and out popped Phil Knight to sit in the back on that day to take notes and listen, and he did! And the message from virtually everyone was that there is a responsibility that comes with leadership and in particular if you are an industry leader, a major market share, a major company, you have a moral and ethical responsibility. You cannot just make decisions based on the economics, you simply cannot. And so he was here at the end of April that year to hear the recommendation from students. He left, and a couple of days later his secretary called and asked if I could come up to Washington to the National Press Club on a date in early May, and to bring any of the students with me. So, I took a group of 5 students who were able, and we went up since Phil said he thought we would be interested in what he was going to do and what he was going to say. He stood up that day and he said, “We are going to change things here at Nike. We are going to be a leader; we are going to take responsibility. We are no longer going to treat these as arms length, outsource, contractual relationships. We are going to take full responsibility for what is going on.” So it was a transformational moment in the history of the company, and because of their size and leadership in apparel, athletic apparel in particular, most US companies in general. You know they started down a path that many, many other companies have now followed with corporate social responsibility with audits, with having people on the ground trying to observe and keep higher working conditions in these off-site locations. And they announced that, I think it was, maybe 8 new requirements, higher standards for minimum age of employment, maximum hours a week, pay working conditions, things like that, that hence forth immediately any contact or dealing with Nike had to meet. In typical Nike fashion, they also had flown 5 of the major of the owners of the companies from the Pacific-rim that were their partners in outsourcing, to Washington to be there to answer any questions as well.
EB: So, if I take this Nike story and I use it as almost a microcosm, correct me if I’m wrong, for all of industry you could say that initially the way that business has worked is that they would outsource, and then these third party contracts would allow these rural areas to do what they want with the labor. But now it’s the responsibility of these CEOs, such as with Nike, where they are now taking action to combat this turning a blind shoulder to outsourcing. So the way forward you could almost look at is as these CEOs are taking the net measures to ensure that their third party contacts are treating their labor responsibly?
ND: Absolutely, Absolutely.
EB: Ok, would you say maybe if I had to direct this back to a NAFTA mindset, could you say there is almost a similar situation happening within Mexico or Latin America? Or, I don’t know if you are sure about that?
ND: Wow, that’s a... I know you want to get back to that…but let me just say that sadly, sadly, sort of this path that we have talked about, that you summarized well, it now, because of the defective construction and the workers killed in Bangladesh recently, there now have been sort of similar standards for the construction of the manufacturing facility. There are now cooperative affiliations of major US companies that do outsource manufacturing around the world to establish reasonable standards and to police and monitor those and to correctively take collective action when collective action is needed. And again, there is a direct lineage between this campus and our licensing agreement with Nike to be organizing the conduct of two of those, the FLA and the WRC being the two most prevalent.
EB: So I’ll ask a tough question, when you say that there is all this action being had, it sounds great for the press. Do you think there are actually increased standards? That, in reality, all of this is happening?
ND: Yes, yes I really do. Is it enough? Is it appropriate? Some people will argue over that, but there are now, globally, there are standards, minimum standards in place that have raised the bottom to which much of manufacturing previously raced to. I think that’s a very good thing.
EB: And who hold those global minimum standards, is it an unwritten law?
ND: No, it’s two of the most remarkable self-policing associations you can imagine in your life. Even right now the two that are most prominent are the WRC, the Workers Rights Consortium, and the FLA, which is the Fair Labor Association. They are both headquartered in Washington, they were built around Nike and a couple of other pioneering companies, and they now have quite a large number of major US corporations that are part of it and again they establish and enforce what I think are for the most part very reasonable minimum standards around the world. And they police them, and inspect them, and again that whole effort broadens tragically as situations like the collapse of the building in Bangladesh, I believe it was, happen. I don’t know that there is as much, that they have been as active on the environmental side. I think the major leading issues were around the labor side and labor conditions understandably, but they have been remarkable institutions.
EB: So a negative that I guess people said were the labor conditions which seems are being addressed. From the other side, it could be argued that companies going into rural areas, Mexico, Southeast Asia, are a high positive for these areas as they are employing mass numbers. Would you agree with that statement?
ND: Ya, I understand that side of it is as well, and that is the other side of the argument. I mean the other side of the argument is that my choices as agrarian survival maybe, versus working in one of these factories—and my gosh— given the choice, I’m happy to work for minimum wages, for extensive hours under very onerous conditions. Even under those circumstances, that’s a better life for me and my family than I otherwise would have available to me. And I understand that. But for me personally, my ethics and my morality make me more comfortable with again with defining what those minimum standards ought to be. But there is that downside to it. And let’s contrast that to sort of the history of manufacturing within the US, which is as ugly a history as any of the global setting might be, both in New England with textiles and the textile industry and furniture, as well as here in the southeast and in North Carolina. You don’t have to look very far to see child labor, abusive conditions, practices among textile industries of hiring families. Well, Why do you hire families? Well, one because you have little kids who can crawl under the looms and fix ties and fix things, and you need somebody small who can get under there and do it. And secondly, if you hire a family each and everybody and each person in that family is going to be a better-behaved employee. They are going to be less likely to cause trouble, because if one of them causes trouble, you can fire the whole family. So you know, our own history is not something I think we would be proud of.
EB: But it’s improved.
ND: Yes it has.
EB: So could you say that for these other areas it starts out rough in the beginning but we are on a path to improvement?
ND: Absolutely, absolutely without fail. You want to talk about NAFTA? [laughter] I thought that was what—
EB: Well it’s interesting; it’s all related to manufacturing going into other areas. But ya, so we can refocus the conversation a little bit.
ND: We aren’t even on question one yet,
EB: It’s ok these are just my own suggestions.
ND: Is this all helpful?
EB: Yes, yes it is it gives comparison of these to compare what is happening in other areas to what is happening in Mexico—
ND: Mexico… NAFTA… the bottom line is no body knows, it’s all opinion. Who knows? Was NAFTA successful or not?
EB: So that’s the next question—
ND: Who knows? It is probably the largest naturally occurring experiment in my lifetime. Sorting out the cause and effect of NAFTA from other cause and effect factors is probably impossible to do. So you get strongly held beliefs, I have strongly held beliefs and opinions. I have opinions. But sort of sorting out what were the outcomes of NAFTA, the pros and the cons, it’s an impossible thing to do.
EB: Could you expand upon your opinions, from almost an academic, professor standpoint since you have a different—for instance, I interviewed someone else coming from more of a labor relations side of it, and they were relatively pessimistic when it comes to NAFTA, so its interesting to see the contrast from a business professor’s point of view. What do you think NAFTA has done well, and what has it not done well? And the hard questions that follows that is, was it worth it to have initiated it, and should it be a factor moving forward?
ND: Ya, ya, I’m going to take them, not particularly in the order you presented them. I’ll try to present them in more of what my understanding is a historical perspective. I’ll start by noting that NAFTA, to me, was eliminating a major collection of trade barriers from the US into Canada and Mexico, and likewise from Canada and Mexico to the US. And my historical perspective is that for the 215 years or so before NAFTA, how did the American economy grow to be the strongest economy in the world, the most vibrant, innovative, highest wealth building economy in the world? And I would argue that that happened by us having the highest strongest walls around the US that anybody could possibly build. We had all kinds of barriers to entry by any outsiders, we had protectionist measures left and right and support for export from the US to other parts of the world, but extreme protectionist measures to keep anybody else form entering the US market
EB: And that was a good thing?
ND: If you believe and value economic growth and wealth creation, yes. It was a good thing for us, was it a good thing for everybody else, absolutely not. So you know, it’s just interesting to me that sort of the whole movement of globalization of which NAFTA was the first significant step almost at this same time with the establish of the World Trade Organization, (WTO) which is just like a global epitome of NAFTA in many respects, the objective being to eliminate all of the frictions of trade between one nation and other nations.
EB: So from a naïve perspective, why would you eliminate trade restrictions? Where is the benefit?
ND: Those who argue that there is a benefit from that, they see it as enabling manufacturing to find lower cost sources. So again I would argue that the primary benefit is, for US based companies, to again race to the bottom in manufacturing costs. The primary benefit for companies located in other countries is greater access to the US market. So you have this duality of manufacturing and market access, and that is what NAFTA did to significantly eliminate barriers between Mexico, US, and Canada.
EB: So I actually found that very interesting because you mentioned both sides. But Mexico actually originally proposed NAFTA, it wasn’t the United States, so if we transition ourselves back to 1994 when it was signed, do you agree that it was more beneficial for Mexico to bring in industry than it may have been for the United States to outsource its manufacturing.
ND: No I think, you know if you want to look at it just from the economics I think it was mutually beneficial to both. Looking wholly at it, because where did the, I guess here in North Carolina, Mexico was where the textile industry and furniture industry migrated to after it left North Carolina. It migrated first to Mississippi. Why? Because of significantly lower labor costs and lower environmental regulation in Mississippi. It briefly, really interesting if you track it over time, it briefly migrated to Mississippi and then quickly migrated to Mexico, and then quickly migrated to China and Southeast Asia. And so the idea of NAFTA creating jobs and employment in Mexico for example, that was short-lived. It was so because of the attraction that followed that quickly of Southeast Asia in general, and particularly China adopting a more welcoming policy to encourage the location of manufacturing and sourcing from China that also happened around 1995, which was when China really opened itself to manufacturing from others.
EB: I never made this connection until you said it but do you think Mexico proposing NAFTA was a way for it to compete against US businesses going to China? To instead come to Mexico? It’s closer.
ND: No, nobody knew, the whole China piece was as far as I know never part of the conversation, it wasn’t even thought about because until at that point of time in the early 1990s China was still a very closed economy and the role of Deng Xiaoping as the architect of the Chinese economy was undeveloped at that time. So it made a lot of sense for Mexico to propose it, because again they would have been the logical place because of labor costs and lower environmental standards, as well as proximity to the US market for logistics of moving goods. I mean, as a strong case of Mexico to propose NAFTA, and yet there were few people in the US that realized how transformational NAFTA would be. I remember the 1992 presidential debates, that were classic between George HW Bush, Ross Perot, and this young fellow named Bill Clinton. In the debates there was a lot of discussion about NAFTA. George HW Bush’s position was the economic argument, and his summary of should the US approve NAFTA? — His opinion was, “of course, it makes the prudent thing to do.” And at the other end of the discussions was Ross Perot, and he is the one who used the expression, “if we approve NAFTA, you will hear that great sucking sound” and he used that language in the presidential debates, and that sucking sound is all the US jobs going to Mexico. And then in the middle was Bill Clinton, and Bill Clinton’s position was that on the one hand we have to recognize the global economy, we have to participate in the global economy its good for us, it’s the right this to do for us, setting aside any of the economics, it’s the right thing to do for so many reasons. And yet we also have to realize that it is going to be transformational for us in the US. We have to be smarter, we have to be more innovative, we have to be more competitive. It’s going to change the global landscape and that includes us.” And Clinton was right.
EB: So a lot of people will argue that the consequences of NAFTA, negative, or benefits, positive, weren’t necessarily foreseen. Would you argue that Clinton going into this was fully aware of what NAFTA would become and how it would do?
ND: Come on Eric, get out of here. Stop, stop that. Do I think that he had a sounder appreciation for NAFTA and the likely consequences? Yes I do. And I think George HW Bush, again, he saw it simply as the economic rational thing to do, and obviously you do that. Ross Perot saw it in terms of the loss of jobs that America would experience, and why would we do something that would be detrimental to our jobs? I think Clinton had the broader and more comprehensive view that in the global context it was time for the US to lower some of the trade barriers and remove some of the more protectionist measures and participate in the globalist economy. That almost means access to more global markets for more US firms, but at the same time it’s going to fundamentally transform the US economy once we step into this global arena, NAFTA was the first step in doing that.
EB: So I have to ask you the difficult question, but do you think it was a good idea looking back on it?
ND: Uh… Yes. Yes I do. Ya I do. Yep I do. Even, even acknowledging the historical perspective that I offered a minute ago that you know that the US economy and wealth and success that we had had as a nation for the previous 215 years or so was built in a regulatory global structure that was anything but NAFTA-like. Even saying that, you know I have a question in my final exam in my global marketing class: Issues in the Global Economy that I use often and it goes something like this “what is the theoretical basis for global trade and the global economy? Is it economics, is it morality, is it religion, is it humanity, is it ethics, what is the argument that underpins why it is a good thing that we participate in the global economy?”
EB: What do find from students more often?
ND: All of the above. What I find is that everyone starts off thinking about economics, but that is just not enough, just so clearly not enough. The argument to me, and the argument to most people who I think that think about this is that it’s all of this. Its humanity, religion, ethics, morality, and economics as well. Life is complicated; it’s just not that simple.
EB: Could be said for a lot of things.
ND: Ya.
EB: Ok, well we are approaching the end of the interview but as kind of a final wrapping up, we mentioned a lot how times change and what is needed changes. I think you said at one point that NAFTA is kind of an experiment, a large experiment. So where we are now moving forward do you think that free trade systems such as NAFTA are a way into the future as well, or that that era has passed? For instance moving into the rest of South America and free trade agreements, is that something that is likely could happen? Or is this free trade NAFTA section of history something that happened to begin the process and is now kind of in the past?
ND: Hmmm ohhh Eric. Two things, one, last October the economist had a remarkable series of articles on where is, quote ‘free trade now?’ Their argument is that through the WTO and agreements like NAFTA, that we have had about a 10-year plateau of this progression of eliminating barriers, or frictions as my friends in economics call it, between one country and another, and that it is time for another major step forward in eliminating all of these. I’ll pair that with when I, in the late 90s when I would be up in Washington and taking student groups up there for whatever reason, I would hear so many members of congress from North Carolina and elsewhere supporting free trade. They would say “I believe in free trade I’m an advocate of free trade!” and then as North Carolina and the rest of the US began to suffer job loss and some of the other negative outcomes of NAFTA and the WTO emerged as well, the language changed. What I heard then was “Well I believe in fair trade,” the language was no longer free trade, it was fair trade. For me, I do believe that moving forward with more fair trade is a good thing for everybody. I believe that moving forward with free trade, I worry that moving forward with free trade will lead to circumstances that I don’t think are right or fair. But I do believe that moving forward with fair trade would be a very good step for us
EB: Fantastic, well thank you for your time, if you would like to add anything you are more than welcome to now. Or if not, I appreciate your time, it was very insightful. Thank you again.
ND: Tell Hannah hello for me.
EB: I will
ND: She’s great
EB: Oh you do know Hannah?
ND: Everybody knows Hannah, come on.
Interviewee Date of Birth
Fecha de nacimiento del entrevistado
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Title
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R-0684 -- Didow, Nicholas.
Description
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This interview with Nicholas Didow touches on numerous topics concerning international economic development and expansion, both within a Mexican-American reference frame, as well as through a general global lens. Didow and Brandt spend a significant amount of time discussing an example personal to Didow which concerns Nike and Nike’s contract with The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Didow points to the fact that Nike originally outsourced labor but did not feel responsible for poor working conditions, saying that was up to the discretion of the third party manufactures from whom Nike was buying product. Didow continued explaining how after discussion with faculty and students at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Nike CEO Phil Knight decided to take responsibility for the conditions and labor standards enforced by the third party contract with goods providers in Southeast Asia. This lengthy example was compared to The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
Source
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University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
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No restrictions. Open to research.
Date
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13 April 2014
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R0684_Audio.mp3
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<a href="http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/19879">University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.</a>
-
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/9b81ad0eac189ece4cd8a1116b1d922a.mp3
baaa8af05b9df2eef2f2e09639f0622a
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/4b32be068c448ebb4b98317254f26920.pdf
1a90f5c54667d582aa3f9b17170dc71d
SOHP Interview - Bilingual
Southern Oral History Program Interview with metadata in English and Spanish
Interview number
Número de entrevista
R-0683
En: Restrictions
Es: Restricciones
No restrictions. Open to research.
Date
Fecha
28 March 2014
Interviewee
Entrevistado/a
Cravey, Altha J., 1952-
En: Interviewee Occupation
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Professors
Interviewee Date of Birth
Fecha de nacimiento del entrevistado
1952
En: Interviewee Gender
Es: Género de entrevistado
Female
Interviewee Places of Residence
Lugares de residencia del entrevistado
Chapel Hill -- Orange County -- North Carolina
Interviewer
Entrevistador/a
Brandt, Eric.
En: Language of Interview
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
English
En: Abstract
Es: Abstracto en español
The interview was conducted with Altha Cravey, an expert on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). She discusses its effects on labor relations and it how it can be damaging to communities within Latin America, specifically Mexico. The interview covers NAFTA’s original goals, from both the United States and Mexican perspectives, and transitions into covering labor effects on both sides of the border. Cravey talks extensively about labor unions, their power in Mexico, and the difference between unions in Mexico and the United States. She discusses the challenges and successes of instances of immigrants forming unions in the United States, and addresses the difficulties that must be overcome to achieve any successful change regarding NAFTA and poor labor conditions. The interview further transitioned into a discussion of the steps necessary to enact change, and the difficulties with implementing change. Cravey continually mentions retroactive change is not typically successful, and that there needs to be an overall change in the mentality of large business and policy makers to consider the environmental and human right impacts of free trade proposals. The interview concludes with Cravey comparing the United States to the British Empire at its height, and the challenges it faced when its empire eventually dismantled over a lack of resources and newfound independence and sustainable vigor.
En: Citation
Es: Citación
Interview with Altha Cravey by Eric Brandt, 28 March 2014, R-0683, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Reference URL
URL de referencia
http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/19876
Repository
Repositorio
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
En: Themes
Es: Temas
Economics; Citizenship and immigration; Labor and employment; Workers' rights and unions
En: Transcript
Es: Transcripción
Eric Brandt: So my name is Eric Brandt and I am interviewing Ms. Altha Cravey today, and we will be talking about my project on NAFTA. Um, so just a little background, just tell me a little about your background and involvement concerning NAFTA or Latin American Affairs.
Altha Cravey: Yes, I have expertise on NAFTA and Mexico um, I wrote a dissertation on the Maquila, um, the Maquila industry at the US/Mexico border and turned that into a book called Women and Work in Mexico’s Maquilas. I just have a great interest in US. Mexico relations as well so NAFTA’s been an interest of mine for a long time, even before I was an academic.
EB: Great, so I guess in our topic today I was looking at focusing a little more on labor relations, what NAFTA’s done, and I guess when we start out, so I’ve been interested in the first side of it, the beginning of NAFTA, and I noticed that Mexico proposed NAFTA, actually originally, and I was very interested in maybe what do you believe was Mexico’s initial intentions in proposing NAFTA? Do they think that it would have created more labor jobs, or did they foresee the negative influences coming as much?
AC: Uh, I think Mexico certainly, not monolithic, but the people who were in charge of that discussion certainly thought Mexico could benefit, and they saw themselves as getting left out of the free trade agreement with Canada that came a few years before, and definitely wanted to be part of this trade block that was emerging, they didn’t want to be left out. They saw it as a way to gain investment and be part of a regional trade group.
EB: Ok, so it was essentially to kind of increase their economic output and input, ok. So in terms of the original goals, do you think, at least from the United States’ point of view, because I’m interested in the difference, where might have the United States’ goals and Mexico’s goals differed, in terms of economic growth or increasing jobs or industry.
AC: Uh, where might the two countries’ goals have differed? The big difference is for me, is that Mexico has a lot more labor, that they have a lot of people working as peasants, particularly before NAFTA. So a different kind of composition, even though as a highly and, uh highly developed in terms of actual capacity, Mexico was just like the US, they still had this enormous agricultural sector, and an enormous proportion of the population that depended on self sufficient agriculture. So, very different social situations in terms of entering into an agreement that would harmonize conditions between the two countries. So very distinct social implications that hurt many more people in Mexico. Though people in the US were hurt as well, from my perspective [chuckle].
EB: Ya, ya, I actually read a little about the union workers, how they were talking about how NAFTA had taken away all of their bargaining powers.
AC: Right, and the industrial sector that was sacrificed, people knew this going in. We’re kind of in a place that was interesting to think about because South Carolina and North Carolina have the textile and industries that were going to be the hardest hit in the US. So US negotiators saw that as a reasonable sacrifice, and apparently Mexican negotiators saw sacrificing the peasantry as reasonable as well and well-paid industrial workers, but I think they, in social terms and in environmental terms they sacrificed a lot more than US negotiators.
EB: Ya, of course, so I guess referring to the social sacrifices, the way I see it, it’s decreased labor conditions and pay, and increased immigration. Where do you see.. why do you think all of the labor conditions decreased so severely? Where have these companies maybe taken advantage of the free trade and labor offered by Mexico?
AC: Well two years before NAFTA was signed, NAFTA kind of locked things in that were already happening, two years before it was signed they changed the constitution so that the Ejido lands could be purchased and sold and so that commodified land that was protected from capitalism market and so I think, rather than changing things dramatically, NAFTA really locked things in so that any investor in Mexico would know that there was a stable investment climate. But the kind of [inaudible] for peasantry, had already happened a couple years before that, and labor conditions had already begun to be eroded through the Maquila that I mentioned before. The labor conditions at the US/ Mexico border, and the whole Maquila model of… changing the rules of the game... attracted so much money that that became a kind of distinct development model from an ISI [Import Substitution Industrialization], import-substitution model that created the Mexican miracle in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, a very distinct development model. They went to something that was 180 degrees different, with the Maquila model in a different distinct part of the country, and it was so successful in bringing in capitalist development and money and creating jobs, but the, but jobs with a lower, I would say, a much lower quality of life and no, mostly absent union protections. That also had already happened, but NAFTA locked that into place.
EB: And, what do you think forced that change? Was it the global environment all-changing toward industry? Or why was Mexico so interested in bringing in these Maquilas?
AC: A lot of things happened in 1964 when the Maquila program began. One thing that happened in the US was that we ended the Bracero program in 1960. We deported a lot of Mexicans and refused to bring in a lot of Mexicans that were coming in seasonally. So there is a long history of migration flows you have to understand to understand the kind of agreements that go on. But that’s part of it. So, I think the US and Mexico were both afraid that those braceros who were almost entirely men, who were now at the northern edge of Mexico, that there would be political problems, especially in the 60s with the lot black and brown power movements and all this. So the Maquila was part of an idea to tap down political protest and put people to work. But it was also a logical idea that um... that we in the US we changed the value added, the um, we changed… I can look it up… we changed the rules of production, or we weren’t going to change tariffs on anything allowing factories in Detroit and such to move to Mexico or wherever or Puerto Rico or Taiwan around that same time. Mexico saw that as a great opportunity to bring those factories from Detroit and not let them to go Singapore, Taiwan and Puerto Rico. So that was all happening in the 60s as an early wave of globalization that um… doesn’t matter what that rule was but uh… of course energy costs were higher in Detroit, if you could pack up your factory and move it to Nogales or Tijuana, you could save energy costs. The Maquila magazines in the 60s were claiming that you could pack up your factory. You could hire your management company and save $25,000 per person by bringing your factory to Mexico. A highly educated workforce who was very attractive to the model and of course it grew in the 60s and 70s but it really took off in the 80s and 90s. As I said was locked in by these larger agreements of NAFTA.
EB: Ya, so I guess you kind of hit on it, but it seems very attractive for the companies to move down. They save money, create jobs in Mexico, so I guess where does the problem come in, how does this really hurt the labor. From the outside perspective, it seems they are creating jobs, why would we prevent that?
AC: It was very successful at creating jobs, ironically with the Maquila, the jobs went to women, and especially at the outset was about 80-90% females so they could pay much less. Unions and companies were hostile, the whole set up was hostile to unions, unions had been very strong in the central part of Mexico. So it created a model, of development, of growth, that improved the GDP created jobs, but drastically undercut the position of workers, destabilized gender relationships in good and bad ways, destabilized generational relationships because children were going to work to support parents, and created all sorts of environmental damage.
EB: So, I guess maybe, we can get into this later, but what could be a solution because Mexico would like to bring jobs in and yet to do that its really difficult because these large industries come in, so I don’t know if you’ve thought about it, but how could it be adapted? How could NAFTA be changed to bring jobs in, yes bring the industries in, but also provide fair pay and provide fair conditions? Is it even possible?
AC: I think it is but you have to turn it around. You have to start out with the dignity and fairness of workers in mind, and that means workers have to have a voice of some sort. Unions aren’t perfect but that’s one way to think about it. Unions allow, of course historically in Mexico they were part of the corporate model, so they aren’t the same kind of unions we have here or they have in Europe but they are much more hierarchically tied into the government itself. They aren’t perfect. But I think if you want that, you have to start with that at the outset, with a respect for human life and human dignity, and human voice in some kind of union type of arrangement. And also you have to have respect for the environment too. And with NAFTA both of those things were tacked on too after the fact because of protest, but with weak enforcement, as we’ve seen documented in the 20 years of NAFTA.
EB: Yes, I wish we could convince these CEO’s to have more concern but of course we know it is difficult to change entire industry perspectives.
AC: And there have certainly been a lot of interested efforts with that regard and fair trade and all kinds of interesting experiments but they end off being kind of reformist and the CEOS even think about keeping two books to present one face to the public and one face to their accountants. Ya.
EB: Um, do you think public pressure, well in the turn of the century Americans per se have more of a liberal human rights perspective going forward—Do you think that would help influence companies to have a more human rights activist mind going forward, or are they indifferent to public pressures?
AC: I think you’re right in identifying another important aspect. It can be totally dominated by corporate press, but free press is helpful. So um, and that in turn will ensure that human dignity is respected and individuals are respected whether they are workers or peasants or indigenous farmers or... and environments will be respected as well
EB: Yes I also think that is a huge problem, the environment. I think I read something about the pork industry moving down to Mexico and they just destroy the environment. So I’m not sure how we go about attacking that, is that more regulation to force them to respect the environment? Is there a way to keep these industries from going into Mexico and taking advantage of a lack of regulation?
AC: Only if we start with that at the very onset. And there is a NC connection there with Smithfield foods and Veracruz and the outbreak of the disease that some have traced from Smithfield foods to Veracruz. So I think yes, we have to start with a different; with those basics if we want to end up there and not just have a kind of reformist approach.
EB: Um, you mentioned labor unions, do you know if labor unions in Mexico have any power or how the union system in Mexico is organized at all cause I’m not familiar with—
AC: —Historically it has had a lot of power. So during the years of the Mexican miracle, uh when their growth rates were so high in the 40s 50s and 60s they literally had, they were one, sort of like one branch of the government. Another branch was the peasantry and rural, so that was pretty much undercut with the shift to neoliberal capitalist approach, the export oriented approach that started with the Maquila. So now they are pretty weak, but there are interesting kinds of cross-border efforts that should be part of our solution and part of something we are looking at. Because investments flow easily across the border so we have to create ways in which workers can talk to each other, and back each other up.
EB: So even segueing off of that, when immigrants come to the United States, do you know if there is any way for them to join a union? I’m sure it’s incredibly difficult perhaps for an immigrant society to form a union. Also keeping in mind many workers are often-times illegal, I don’t know if there are any methods for them to unionize or form and fight for better rights within the US.
AC: Ya, really good question, all these are good questions.. [laughter] But a historian who used to work here wrote a book called Maya of Morganton. He is a labor historian and he investigated this question in the poultry industry. Some Guatemalans who came up to Florida had such a sense of collective solidarity that when one of them had a problem and walked out, they all walked out, so he studied that action and much more about their connections and reasons for being there. But apparently, [it was an even more] unusual action as most of them weren’t documented. But apparently once you make that challenge, you are legally protected during the court process trying to get a union. They weren’t successful getting a union, but were certainly successful at backing each other up. So there have been, I think there are a lot of emerging examples like that. FLOC, the Farm Labor Organizing Committee has successfully organized the… uh… the Mount Olive Pickle company, they had consumer boycott for a long time where they would boycott the pickles, and after a period of years Mt. Olive decided to give in and go with the cross border union effort and respect and improve their conditions slightly so people would buy more pickles. They also did it with Campbell Soup, I think in Ohio, so there are lots of interesting examples emerging, that the group, one of the groups that’s quite interesting is in Immokalee Florida. The coalition of Immokalee workers.
EB: You mentioned that.
AC: They are very active and anyway, they are a group to keep an eye on, but I think there are a lot of interesting experiments like that actually. In spite of the fact they are very vulnerable. In the US, in North Carolina, we have children undocumented harvesting tobacco because the new deal labor laws do not apply to agricultural workers which was a racist law then, but stays on the books because large white farms in the south argue that they wouldn’t have the workers in the 40s if agricultural workers were protected by the New Deal… So we exempted child labor for those practices.
EB: So that’s very interesting, that makes sense at least moving forward. Unions are a way to fight and improve conditions. Um, I guess if I was to play devil’s advocate I would say if the unions come in and start to fight for better wages and conditions, what would prevent a company from moving to Southeast Asia perhaps?
AC: That would be fine. That’s the world we live in right now, that capital can move and labor can move but not as easily.
EB: Which I would say makes it more difficult.
AC: It does but, that’s exactly where we are, we have created the conditions where its very easy for capital to move and increasingly difficult for labor to move and to assert the right to a healthy workplace. So that’s really why we need labor unions that can speak to each other and work across borders. So if they do move to Southeast Asia or an employer moves, there is at least communication to say ‘expect or consider this, this is the chemical they use...’
EB: I was wondering if there was a way to create a committee to maybe manage these labor unions across borders, that helped communicate between labor Mexican unions and cross border to American unions as well. But then again I don’t know the logistics behind creating one or if that would be possible.
AC: As long as you had enforcement mechanisms and wasn’t just pieces of paper like labor and environmental agreements.
EB: They don’t hold as much weight as we would hope.
AC: Right but you think that’s the approach that has to go forward if we want humane working conditions in our own country or in Mexico. We have to start with that, not end with that or tack it on.
EB: I don’t mean to transition subjects so rapidly but, do you think that many of the workers perhaps from Mexico that come to the United States don’t know English perhaps as well as they could, do you think that hurts them in terms of fighting for their own rights, and negotiation?
AC: Definitely it does, and it plays into all sorts of hierarchies within social networks that someone may speak a little better English than someone else, and make them look bad on the job and make themselves look good. There are a lot of language skills, created a lot of tensions and difficulties. I don’t think I got the question you posed, I got distracted but uh..
EB: [laughter] That’s ok. I guess, so when workers come to the US as well, I’m not exactly sure how the process works, so I know for instance NAFTA has promoted free trade, which shifts many industries into Mexico, so why has there been the opposite, where many Mexican laborers are coming to the US instead of industries going into Mexico?
AC: The industries that went to Mexico were not efficient, and were never going to be, not for all the workers that were dislocated or lost their livelihoods. That was just never possible even though it was argued. The other part of the answer, the main part in my view was that rural Mexico basically emptied out, that it was impossible to, there was kind of social reproduction squeeze in that tortillas got much more expensive at the same time corn from your small plot was bringing in a much lower price, and so pretty much you might leave someone at home, and pick out certain people in you family or household to go earn money in Raleigh, NC. Those remittances would keep the family and community alive. Now the whole development model in Mexico has, depends on, those remittances. If you look globally, I think it’s second, the Philippines is first in terms of relying on remittances, so there is kind of an approach of exporting migrants that you know keeps families afloat, and also the GDP intact.
EB: Ya actually that is something really interesting we saw when we were in Mexico in small towns. We saw many of the males had left and left towns of basically women and children as the men were working in Texas in construction, sending back remittances. It was an interesting dynamic.
AC: Did you talk about the hometown associations, where there’s hundreds of hometown associates between Mexico? They started out as kind of an informal thing and there are hundreds that might link a town in New Jersey to a town in Puebla for an example to send back remittances, but for collective purposes. For example the one in Puebla, Alex Rivera did a film about it, where they sent back some stuff for a clinic and sent an ambulance and built a ball park all for making money in NJ, and through these collective works, but there’s hundreds of them that link towns and then the Mexican government got involved and said if you do it through the government we’ll match each dollar with a dollar from federal government and from your state, so they have been able to do a lot more. So I’m just saying that they’re aware that they depend on these remittances and that they want to channel them to public works. If you look at the hometown associations they can’t quite be as explicit about it, it makes the US government mad. But everybody in Mexico knows they obviously need those remittances.
EB: Ya and those are all obviously very helpful. So, I guess it seems like a fairly positive effect of the transition of workers. Where do you think the balance is in terms of NAFTA has obviously done very poorly in terms of creating labor conditions and pay, but is it almost worth it for to create these job opportunities so that they can then send back these remittances? I don’t know what the trade off would be.
AC: It’s.. I think it’s almost worth it from a US viewpoint because it’s so hard to make the suffering visible, a lot of it’s hidden to us. The pain and suffering of divided families, of injured workers and shortened lifespans, death on the border, rape on the border. Just the pain and suffering is so remote for us that it almost begins to look worth it. But if you are in touch with those experiences, of what the human cost is, it really doesn’t look worth it, to me. But it’s an interesting question because, because I think, yes, public is coming around to the idea that we need immigration reform, but congress had not come around to that. Partly because of these contradictions that in the last 20 years, of and partly through NAFTA, that immigration has expanded so much that they, immigrants themselves have become, what’s the word for that… they have become the kind of target, we blame them for all of our woes. Of course they are not responsible for our woes they are just trying to make a living. So.. what was the question? Sorry I got distracted again [laughter]
EB: I guess asking about the balance between the positive sides of NAFTA and the negative sides, and almost how to reconcile between the two. Also where, maybe if I had to ask the tough question, is NAFTA worth it? And if tomorrow we could just eliminate it, where do we? For instance if it was brought to the table again, do you believe it should be renewed and continued, or should it be eliminated?
AC: Well I think you need to start thinking a little more historically here, maybe overstepping my interview a little, but I think it would be helpful to say NAFTA was a particular moment, the US saw NAFTA as a way to create the kind of logic they needed at the Gaft negotiations, and they wanted to show the US so it helped to push that free trade model forward to the global level, and then they could spin out CAFTA and they could push for the free trade agreements with Columbia and South Korea and on and on. So it’s much, it’s really a historical global moment, NAFTA is. We cant certainly go back and know what might have happened if we hadn’t signed it.
EB: Is it a moment that you think has passed that we should now change?
AC: Oh yes! I think, I think, I think well in Latin America, well the free trade model we are moving beyond that in Latin America. The US is not ready to move beyond that but there are a lot of experiments happening in Latin America and the Caribbean that recognize those costs because those environment and social costs are much more clear to environmental politicians and you know, ordinary people, then they are to us politicians. So they are starting to create, I think, experiments that we can learn from that move us into the future. But understanding the history that we have seen and you know what the costs of the free trade model are. I’m not sure what they will be but I think we can learn form some of the things that are happening in Latin America.
EB: Ya, so looking into the future the way I foresee at least, the next step would be to create industry and business in Central America and Mexico that is not reliant on exporting goods back to the United States or somewhere else. Now I don’t know what that would take but if perhaps we could go to metropolitan Mexico and create industry that was self sustainable and they could see in Mexico, for me that is the next step to create product and sell back to Mexico. Maybe the lack there could be the infrastructure or just the capital to create this. But maybe that is the next step, I don’t know how.. this isn’t much of a question, just a comment, but I don’t know how that looks going forward, if creating industry that is self sustainable in these communities in Mexico and into South America is the answer. But I don’t know how to go about doing that. Maybe you could tell me how you feel about this, but we have NAFTA so far in terms of Mexico. Perhaps we eliminate now the industries that are already in Mexico, I doubt they would close their factories now, maybe they would be forced to sell within Mexico.
AC: Ya I think the geography of all those questions is pertinent. Who has the power to shape the conditions? And in particular countries, in particular neighborhoods, in this global environment that we’ve created that we have right now? A different model would be to look at say, in southern Mexico the Zapatistas, you know creating their own autonomy and creating self sufficiency within their space other models would… so what you were just describing seems like what Mexico did in the 40s with import substitution industrialization. I mean they, they had oil, they nationalized the oil, and created powerful industries. Where am I going with this? Let me think for a second. From here, we definitely don’t want to go back to that but I think we can learn from that and some of the East Asian development. The East Asian tigers for example, at the very moment when Mexico was turning to this free trade export model, they were sort of combining ISI with some of the export, and some of the connections to globalization. So I think to further experiment, my own view, is that different experiments will emerge in different places but the capitalist environment that we have, the global capitalist environment is not going to disappear overnight. We aren’t going to wish it away, so I think it’s more productive to look at particular experiments and places where people are trying things out and figuring out whether they want to slow migration down. Where you visited, whether they want to assert this right to stay home or assert the right to migrate for some people, the right to stay home. Whether they want to build a self-sufficient model in their neighborhood or in their state or region, or where they want some kind of mixed model and what their values are in that place. My own view is there is going to be a lot of experimentation in the near future. Another point I would make is, we haven’t talked about the, the kind of geopolitical role that the US has as kind of a leader, and I think, I think we have got to come to terms with the fact that we don’t have that same position. The US does not have that same position. We have had this global influence, but we can’t maintain the empire that we have been running. And somehow we, in our next steps in this country, we have to figure out how to gracefully take that empire apart while respecting humans and respecting the environment. That is going to require a lot of smart people in different fields. But if we don’t figure out how to gracefully take that apart, it’ll come apart is some unfortunate way.
EB: Ya, I guess as like a final question, do you see projects like NAFTA expanding into, I know, you mentioned in Central Mexico and South America, do you foresee NAFTA or similar projects with the us expanding throughout South America? Or do you think—
AC: I think that’s over. In South America there has been this effort of neo-extractivism going back to the colonial model of bringing in mining companies, powerful mining companies from Canada and powerful companies form the mining, and powerful agricultural interests and agribusiness interests, and they are taking advantage of the weakest people and so there is this tremendous push back from indigenous groups, from working people, from environmentalists, and awareness that if they don’t push back, that that neo-extractivism is the next, the next kind of imperialism that [phone ringing] privatization in oil and gas privatization. I think most, well, I think in Latin America, sorry for that phone, I think they are more aware that, that this moment of deepening capitalism through this neoliberal model, that the US is still pushing, that it is over in Latin America, and that they are going to figure out different kinds of experiments. They have also suffered not just the deepening of capitalist relations, but they have suffered just unspeakable violence related to the cartels and drug cartels that have something to do with these capitalist flows. I think there is something new emerging, but I don’t know what it is.
EB: It’s tough to predict, we can have this conversation in 10 years again.. but thank you, I guess, is there anything else you would like to add before we end?
AC: Oh, well I just appreciate this opportunity. When I was talking just then about the empire I should probably elaborate and say that 100 years ago, a little more than that, when the British Empire was at its height, I think they faced some of these same questions. They pushed free trade in the way that the US pushed NAFTA, and pushed free trade and the Washington consensus. We were, the US was able to push those things when we were powerful, but Great Britain learned how to back away from some of that and learned that they couldn’t keep their colonies forever.
EB: I mean ya, even on that vein, it’s very interesting you said that because how that ended was in multiple wars across the world fighting for independence, now I don’t know if that can be applied to the same extent, but maybe if we take it too far it can lead to similar type revolutions, maybe on a small scale. It would be very interesting to see, because there was a relatively large collapse with the British Empire.
AC: Right and we’ve seen these resource wars in the Middle East so I think that is a good point. That certainty if we get a lot of smart people together in the US to decide we don’t want to produce wars or to participate in these ongoing wars, and endless wars, especially preemptive wars and all the rest. We have to think hard about what the near future is and how we get there and have it create a humane near future. But it’s really been a pleasure talking with you.
EB: So if it’s ok with you I’ll use this interview, I just need you to sign one more thing saying that’s ok. This is just essentially releasing this so I can put it in the records.
Es: Restricciones
Sin restricciones. Abierta para investigación.
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Profesores
Es: Género de entrevistado
Mujer
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
Inglés
Es: Resumen
La entrevista fue llevada a cabo con Altha Cravey, una experta en el Tratado de Libre Comercio de América del Norte (TLC). Ella discute los efectos del tratado en las relaciones laborales y cómo puede ser dañino para las comunidades dentro de América Latina, específicamente en México. La entrevista cubre los objetivos originales del TLC, desde la perspectiva tanto de los Estados Unidos como desde México, para después pasar a cubrir los efectos en el trabajo en ambos lados de la frontera. Cravey habla extensamente acerca de los sindicatos laborales, su poder en México y la diferencia entre los sindicatos en México y en los Estados Unidos. Ella discute los retos y los éxitos de los casos de sindicatos formados por inmigrantes en los Estados Unidos, y habla sobre las dificultades que deben ser superadas para lograr cualquier tipo de cambio exitoso relacionado con el TLC y las condiciones precarias de trabajo. La entrevista después da paso a la discusión de los pasos necesarios para lograr un cambio y de las dificultades para implementar el cambio. Cravey menciona continuamente que el cambio retroactivo normalmente no es exitoso, y que se requiere que suceda un cambio general en la mentalidad de los grandes negocios y de los que hacen las políticas para que consideren los impactos medioambientales y en los derechos humanos de las propuestas del comercio de libre tránsito. La entrevista concluye con Cravey comparando a los Estados Unidos con el imperio británico y los retos que enfrentó el imperio cuando eventualmente se desmanteló debido a la falta de recursos y las independencias de las colonias.
Es: Citación
Entrevista con Altha Cravey por Eric Brandt, 28 Marzo 2014, R-0683, en Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, Universidad de Carolina del Norte en Chapel Hill.
Es: Temas
Economía; Ciudadanía e inmigración; Trabajo y empleo; Derechos de los trabajadores y sindicatos
Es: Transcripción
Eric Brandt: So my name is Eric Brandt and I am interviewing Ms. Altha Cravey today, and we will be talking about my project on NAFTA. Um, so just a little background, just tell me a little about your background and involvement concerning NAFTA or Latin American Affairs.
Altha Cravey: Yes, I have expertise on NAFTA and Mexico um, I wrote a dissertation on the Maquila, um, the Maquila industry at the US/Mexico border and turned that into a book called Women and Work in Mexico’s Maquilas. I just have a great interest in US. Mexico relations as well so NAFTA’s been an interest of mine for a long time, even before I was an academic.
EB: Great, so I guess in our topic today I was looking at focusing a little more on labor relations, what NAFTA’s done, and I guess when we start out, so I’ve been interested in the first side of it, the beginning of NAFTA, and I noticed that Mexico proposed NAFTA, actually originally, and I was very interested in maybe what do you believe was Mexico’s initial intentions in proposing NAFTA? Do they think that it would have created more labor jobs, or did they foresee the negative influences coming as much?
AC: Uh, I think Mexico certainly, not monolithic, but the people who were in charge of that discussion certainly thought Mexico could benefit, and they saw themselves as getting left out of the free trade agreement with Canada that came a few years before, and definitely wanted to be part of this trade block that was emerging, they didn’t want to be left out. They saw it as a way to gain investment and be part of a regional trade group.
EB: Ok, so it was essentially to kind of increase their economic output and input, ok. So in terms of the original goals, do you think, at least from the United States’ point of view, because I’m interested in the difference, where might have the United States’ goals and Mexico’s goals differed, in terms of economic growth or increasing jobs or industry.
AC: Uh, where might the two countries’ goals have differed? The big difference is for me, is that Mexico has a lot more labor, that they have a lot of people working as peasants, particularly before NAFTA. So a different kind of composition, even though as a highly and, uh highly developed in terms of actual capacity, Mexico was just like the US, they still had this enormous agricultural sector, and an enormous proportion of the population that depended on self sufficient agriculture. So, very different social situations in terms of entering into an agreement that would harmonize conditions between the two countries. So very distinct social implications that hurt many more people in Mexico. Though people in the US were hurt as well, from my perspective [chuckle].
EB: Ya, ya, I actually read a little about the union workers, how they were talking about how NAFTA had taken away all of their bargaining powers.
AC: Right, and the industrial sector that was sacrificed, people knew this going in. We’re kind of in a place that was interesting to think about because South Carolina and North Carolina have the textile and industries that were going to be the hardest hit in the US. So US negotiators saw that as a reasonable sacrifice, and apparently Mexican negotiators saw sacrificing the peasantry as reasonable as well and well-paid industrial workers, but I think they, in social terms and in environmental terms they sacrificed a lot more than US negotiators.
EB: Ya, of course, so I guess referring to the social sacrifices, the way I see it, it’s decreased labor conditions and pay, and increased immigration. Where do you see.. why do you think all of the labor conditions decreased so severely? Where have these companies maybe taken advantage of the free trade and labor offered by Mexico?
AC: Well two years before NAFTA was signed, NAFTA kind of locked things in that were already happening, two years before it was signed they changed the constitution so that the Ejido lands could be purchased and sold and so that commodified land that was protected from capitalism market and so I think, rather than changing things dramatically, NAFTA really locked things in so that any investor in Mexico would know that there was a stable investment climate. But the kind of [inaudible] for peasantry, had already happened a couple years before that, and labor conditions had already begun to be eroded through the Maquila that I mentioned before. The labor conditions at the US/ Mexico border, and the whole Maquila model of… changing the rules of the game... attracted so much money that that became a kind of distinct development model from an ISI [Import Substitution Industrialization], import-substitution model that created the Mexican miracle in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, a very distinct development model. They went to something that was 180 degrees different, with the Maquila model in a different distinct part of the country, and it was so successful in bringing in capitalist development and money and creating jobs, but the, but jobs with a lower, I would say, a much lower quality of life and no, mostly absent union protections. That also had already happened, but NAFTA locked that into place.
EB: And, what do you think forced that change? Was it the global environment all-changing toward industry? Or why was Mexico so interested in bringing in these Maquilas?
AC: A lot of things happened in 1964 when the Maquila program began. One thing that happened in the US was that we ended the Bracero program in 1960. We deported a lot of Mexicans and refused to bring in a lot of Mexicans that were coming in seasonally. So there is a long history of migration flows you have to understand to understand the kind of agreements that go on. But that’s part of it. So, I think the US and Mexico were both afraid that those braceros who were almost entirely men, who were now at the northern edge of Mexico, that there would be political problems, especially in the 60s with the lot black and brown power movements and all this. So the Maquila was part of an idea to tap down political protest and put people to work. But it was also a logical idea that um... that we in the US we changed the value added, the um, we changed… I can look it up… we changed the rules of production, or we weren’t going to change tariffs on anything allowing factories in Detroit and such to move to Mexico or wherever or Puerto Rico or Taiwan around that same time. Mexico saw that as a great opportunity to bring those factories from Detroit and not let them to go Singapore, Taiwan and Puerto Rico. So that was all happening in the 60s as an early wave of globalization that um… doesn’t matter what that rule was but uh… of course energy costs were higher in Detroit, if you could pack up your factory and move it to Nogales or Tijuana, you could save energy costs. The Maquila magazines in the 60s were claiming that you could pack up your factory. You could hire your management company and save $25,000 per person by bringing your factory to Mexico. A highly educated workforce who was very attractive to the model and of course it grew in the 60s and 70s but it really took off in the 80s and 90s. As I said was locked in by these larger agreements of NAFTA.
EB: Ya, so I guess you kind of hit on it, but it seems very attractive for the companies to move down. They save money, create jobs in Mexico, so I guess where does the problem come in, how does this really hurt the labor. From the outside perspective, it seems they are creating jobs, why would we prevent that?
AC: It was very successful at creating jobs, ironically with the Maquila, the jobs went to women, and especially at the outset was about 80-90% females so they could pay much less. Unions and companies were hostile, the whole set up was hostile to unions, unions had been very strong in the central part of Mexico. So it created a model, of development, of growth, that improved the GDP created jobs, but drastically undercut the position of workers, destabilized gender relationships in good and bad ways, destabilized generational relationships because children were going to work to support parents, and created all sorts of environmental damage.
EB: So, I guess maybe, we can get into this later, but what could be a solution because Mexico would like to bring jobs in and yet to do that its really difficult because these large industries come in, so I don’t know if you’ve thought about it, but how could it be adapted? How could NAFTA be changed to bring jobs in, yes bring the industries in, but also provide fair pay and provide fair conditions? Is it even possible?
AC: I think it is but you have to turn it around. You have to start out with the dignity and fairness of workers in mind, and that means workers have to have a voice of some sort. Unions aren’t perfect but that’s one way to think about it. Unions allow, of course historically in Mexico they were part of the corporate model, so they aren’t the same kind of unions we have here or they have in Europe but they are much more hierarchically tied into the government itself. They aren’t perfect. But I think if you want that, you have to start with that at the outset, with a respect for human life and human dignity, and human voice in some kind of union type of arrangement. And also you have to have respect for the environment too. And with NAFTA both of those things were tacked on too after the fact because of protest, but with weak enforcement, as we’ve seen documented in the 20 years of NAFTA.
EB: Yes, I wish we could convince these CEO’s to have more concern but of course we know it is difficult to change entire industry perspectives.
AC: And there have certainly been a lot of interested efforts with that regard and fair trade and all kinds of interesting experiments but they end off being kind of reformist and the CEOS even think about keeping two books to present one face to the public and one face to their accountants. Ya.
EB: Um, do you think public pressure, well in the turn of the century Americans per se have more of a liberal human rights perspective going forward—Do you think that would help influence companies to have a more human rights activist mind going forward, or are they indifferent to public pressures?
AC: I think you’re right in identifying another important aspect. It can be totally dominated by corporate press, but free press is helpful. So um, and that in turn will ensure that human dignity is respected and individuals are respected whether they are workers or peasants or indigenous farmers or... and environments will be respected as well
EB: Yes I also think that is a huge problem, the environment. I think I read something about the pork industry moving down to Mexico and they just destroy the environment. So I’m not sure how we go about attacking that, is that more regulation to force them to respect the environment? Is there a way to keep these industries from going into Mexico and taking advantage of a lack of regulation?
AC: Only if we start with that at the very onset. And there is a NC connection there with Smithfield foods and Veracruz and the outbreak of the disease that some have traced from Smithfield foods to Veracruz. So I think yes, we have to start with a different; with those basics if we want to end up there and not just have a kind of reformist approach.
EB: Um, you mentioned labor unions, do you know if labor unions in Mexico have any power or how the union system in Mexico is organized at all cause I’m not familiar with—
AC: —Historically it has had a lot of power. So during the years of the Mexican miracle, uh when their growth rates were so high in the 40s 50s and 60s they literally had, they were one, sort of like one branch of the government. Another branch was the peasantry and rural, so that was pretty much undercut with the shift to neoliberal capitalist approach, the export oriented approach that started with the Maquila. So now they are pretty weak, but there are interesting kinds of cross-border efforts that should be part of our solution and part of something we are looking at. Because investments flow easily across the border so we have to create ways in which workers can talk to each other, and back each other up.
EB: So even segueing off of that, when immigrants come to the United States, do you know if there is any way for them to join a union? I’m sure it’s incredibly difficult perhaps for an immigrant society to form a union. Also keeping in mind many workers are often-times illegal, I don’t know if there are any methods for them to unionize or form and fight for better rights within the US.
AC: Ya, really good question, all these are good questions.. [laughter] But a historian who used to work here wrote a book called Maya of Morganton. He is a labor historian and he investigated this question in the poultry industry. Some Guatemalans who came up to Florida had such a sense of collective solidarity that when one of them had a problem and walked out, they all walked out, so he studied that action and much more about their connections and reasons for being there. But apparently, [it was an even more] unusual action as most of them weren’t documented. But apparently once you make that challenge, you are legally protected during the court process trying to get a union. They weren’t successful getting a union, but were certainly successful at backing each other up. So there have been, I think there are a lot of emerging examples like that. FLOC, the Farm Labor Organizing Committee has successfully organized the… uh… the Mount Olive Pickle company, they had consumer boycott for a long time where they would boycott the pickles, and after a period of years Mt. Olive decided to give in and go with the cross border union effort and respect and improve their conditions slightly so people would buy more pickles. They also did it with Campbell Soup, I think in Ohio, so there are lots of interesting examples emerging, that the group, one of the groups that’s quite interesting is in Immokalee Florida. The coalition of Immokalee workers.
EB: You mentioned that.
AC: They are very active and anyway, they are a group to keep an eye on, but I think there are a lot of interesting experiments like that actually. In spite of the fact they are very vulnerable. In the US, in North Carolina, we have children undocumented harvesting tobacco because the new deal labor laws do not apply to agricultural workers which was a racist law then, but stays on the books because large white farms in the south argue that they wouldn’t have the workers in the 40s if agricultural workers were protected by the New Deal… So we exempted child labor for those practices.
EB: So that’s very interesting, that makes sense at least moving forward. Unions are a way to fight and improve conditions. Um, I guess if I was to play devil’s advocate I would say if the unions come in and start to fight for better wages and conditions, what would prevent a company from moving to Southeast Asia perhaps?
AC: That would be fine. That’s the world we live in right now, that capital can move and labor can move but not as easily.
EB: Which I would say makes it more difficult.
AC: It does but, that’s exactly where we are, we have created the conditions where its very easy for capital to move and increasingly difficult for labor to move and to assert the right to a healthy workplace. So that’s really why we need labor unions that can speak to each other and work across borders. So if they do move to Southeast Asia or an employer moves, there is at least communication to say ‘expect or consider this, this is the chemical they use...’
EB: I was wondering if there was a way to create a committee to maybe manage these labor unions across borders, that helped communicate between labor Mexican unions and cross border to American unions as well. But then again I don’t know the logistics behind creating one or if that would be possible.
AC: As long as you had enforcement mechanisms and wasn’t just pieces of paper like labor and environmental agreements.
EB: They don’t hold as much weight as we would hope.
AC: Right but you think that’s the approach that has to go forward if we want humane working conditions in our own country or in Mexico. We have to start with that, not end with that or tack it on.
EB: I don’t mean to transition subjects so rapidly but, do you think that many of the workers perhaps from Mexico that come to the United States don’t know English perhaps as well as they could, do you think that hurts them in terms of fighting for their own rights, and negotiation?
AC: Definitely it does, and it plays into all sorts of hierarchies within social networks that someone may speak a little better English than someone else, and make them look bad on the job and make themselves look good. There are a lot of language skills, created a lot of tensions and difficulties. I don’t think I got the question you posed, I got distracted but uh..
EB: [laughter] That’s ok. I guess, so when workers come to the US as well, I’m not exactly sure how the process works, so I know for instance NAFTA has promoted free trade, which shifts many industries into Mexico, so why has there been the opposite, where many Mexican laborers are coming to the US instead of industries going into Mexico?
AC: The industries that went to Mexico were not efficient, and were never going to be, not for all the workers that were dislocated or lost their livelihoods. That was just never possible even though it was argued. The other part of the answer, the main part in my view was that rural Mexico basically emptied out, that it was impossible to, there was kind of social reproduction squeeze in that tortillas got much more expensive at the same time corn from your small plot was bringing in a much lower price, and so pretty much you might leave someone at home, and pick out certain people in you family or household to go earn money in Raleigh, NC. Those remittances would keep the family and community alive. Now the whole development model in Mexico has, depends on, those remittances. If you look globally, I think it’s second, the Philippines is first in terms of relying on remittances, so there is kind of an approach of exporting migrants that you know keeps families afloat, and also the GDP intact.
EB: Ya actually that is something really interesting we saw when we were in Mexico in small towns. We saw many of the males had left and left towns of basically women and children as the men were working in Texas in construction, sending back remittances. It was an interesting dynamic.
AC: Did you talk about the hometown associations, where there’s hundreds of hometown associates between Mexico? They started out as kind of an informal thing and there are hundreds that might link a town in New Jersey to a town in Puebla for an example to send back remittances, but for collective purposes. For example the one in Puebla, Alex Rivera did a film about it, where they sent back some stuff for a clinic and sent an ambulance and built a ball park all for making money in NJ, and through these collective works, but there’s hundreds of them that link towns and then the Mexican government got involved and said if you do it through the government we’ll match each dollar with a dollar from federal government and from your state, so they have been able to do a lot more. So I’m just saying that they’re aware that they depend on these remittances and that they want to channel them to public works. If you look at the hometown associations they can’t quite be as explicit about it, it makes the US government mad. But everybody in Mexico knows they obviously need those remittances.
EB: Ya and those are all obviously very helpful. So, I guess it seems like a fairly positive effect of the transition of workers. Where do you think the balance is in terms of NAFTA has obviously done very poorly in terms of creating labor conditions and pay, but is it almost worth it for to create these job opportunities so that they can then send back these remittances? I don’t know what the trade off would be.
AC: It’s.. I think it’s almost worth it from a US viewpoint because it’s so hard to make the suffering visible, a lot of it’s hidden to us. The pain and suffering of divided families, of injured workers and shortened lifespans, death on the border, rape on the border. Just the pain and suffering is so remote for us that it almost begins to look worth it. But if you are in touch with those experiences, of what the human cost is, it really doesn’t look worth it, to me. But it’s an interesting question because, because I think, yes, public is coming around to the idea that we need immigration reform, but congress had not come around to that. Partly because of these contradictions that in the last 20 years, of and partly through NAFTA, that immigration has expanded so much that they, immigrants themselves have become, what’s the word for that… they have become the kind of target, we blame them for all of our woes. Of course they are not responsible for our woes they are just trying to make a living. So.. what was the question? Sorry I got distracted again [laughter]
EB: I guess asking about the balance between the positive sides of NAFTA and the negative sides, and almost how to reconcile between the two. Also where, maybe if I had to ask the tough question, is NAFTA worth it? And if tomorrow we could just eliminate it, where do we? For instance if it was brought to the table again, do you believe it should be renewed and continued, or should it be eliminated?
AC: Well I think you need to start thinking a little more historically here, maybe overstepping my interview a little, but I think it would be helpful to say NAFTA was a particular moment, the US saw NAFTA as a way to create the kind of logic they needed at the Gaft negotiations, and they wanted to show the US so it helped to push that free trade model forward to the global level, and then they could spin out CAFTA and they could push for the free trade agreements with Columbia and South Korea and on and on. So it’s much, it’s really a historical global moment, NAFTA is. We cant certainly go back and know what might have happened if we hadn’t signed it.
EB: Is it a moment that you think has passed that we should now change?
AC: Oh yes! I think, I think, I think well in Latin America, well the free trade model we are moving beyond that in Latin America. The US is not ready to move beyond that but there are a lot of experiments happening in Latin America and the Caribbean that recognize those costs because those environment and social costs are much more clear to environmental politicians and you know, ordinary people, then they are to us politicians. So they are starting to create, I think, experiments that we can learn from that move us into the future. But understanding the history that we have seen and you know what the costs of the free trade model are. I’m not sure what they will be but I think we can learn form some of the things that are happening in Latin America.
EB: Ya, so looking into the future the way I foresee at least, the next step would be to create industry and business in Central America and Mexico that is not reliant on exporting goods back to the United States or somewhere else. Now I don’t know what that would take but if perhaps we could go to metropolitan Mexico and create industry that was self sustainable and they could see in Mexico, for me that is the next step to create product and sell back to Mexico. Maybe the lack there could be the infrastructure or just the capital to create this. But maybe that is the next step, I don’t know how.. this isn’t much of a question, just a comment, but I don’t know how that looks going forward, if creating industry that is self sustainable in these communities in Mexico and into South America is the answer. But I don’t know how to go about doing that. Maybe you could tell me how you feel about this, but we have NAFTA so far in terms of Mexico. Perhaps we eliminate now the industries that are already in Mexico, I doubt they would close their factories now, maybe they would be forced to sell within Mexico.
AC: Ya I think the geography of all those questions is pertinent. Who has the power to shape the conditions? And in particular countries, in particular neighborhoods, in this global environment that we’ve created that we have right now? A different model would be to look at say, in southern Mexico the Zapatistas, you know creating their own autonomy and creating self sufficiency within their space other models would… so what you were just describing seems like what Mexico did in the 40s with import substitution industrialization. I mean they, they had oil, they nationalized the oil, and created powerful industries. Where am I going with this? Let me think for a second. From here, we definitely don’t want to go back to that but I think we can learn from that and some of the East Asian development. The East Asian tigers for example, at the very moment when Mexico was turning to this free trade export model, they were sort of combining ISI with some of the export, and some of the connections to globalization. So I think to further experiment, my own view, is that different experiments will emerge in different places but the capitalist environment that we have, the global capitalist environment is not going to disappear overnight. We aren’t going to wish it away, so I think it’s more productive to look at particular experiments and places where people are trying things out and figuring out whether they want to slow migration down. Where you visited, whether they want to assert this right to stay home or assert the right to migrate for some people, the right to stay home. Whether they want to build a self-sufficient model in their neighborhood or in their state or region, or where they want some kind of mixed model and what their values are in that place. My own view is there is going to be a lot of experimentation in the near future. Another point I would make is, we haven’t talked about the, the kind of geopolitical role that the US has as kind of a leader, and I think, I think we have got to come to terms with the fact that we don’t have that same position. The US does not have that same position. We have had this global influence, but we can’t maintain the empire that we have been running. And somehow we, in our next steps in this country, we have to figure out how to gracefully take that empire apart while respecting humans and respecting the environment. That is going to require a lot of smart people in different fields. But if we don’t figure out how to gracefully take that apart, it’ll come apart is some unfortunate way.
EB: Ya, I guess as like a final question, do you see projects like NAFTA expanding into, I know, you mentioned in Central Mexico and South America, do you foresee NAFTA or similar projects with the us expanding throughout South America? Or do you think—
AC: I think that’s over. In South America there has been this effort of neo-extractivism going back to the colonial model of bringing in mining companies, powerful mining companies from Canada and powerful companies form the mining, and powerful agricultural interests and agribusiness interests, and they are taking advantage of the weakest people and so there is this tremendous push back from indigenous groups, from working people, from environmentalists, and awareness that if they don’t push back, that that neo-extractivism is the next, the next kind of imperialism that [phone ringing] privatization in oil and gas privatization. I think most, well, I think in Latin America, sorry for that phone, I think they are more aware that, that this moment of deepening capitalism through this neoliberal model, that the US is still pushing, that it is over in Latin America, and that they are going to figure out different kinds of experiments. They have also suffered not just the deepening of capitalist relations, but they have suffered just unspeakable violence related to the cartels and drug cartels that have something to do with these capitalist flows. I think there is something new emerging, but I don’t know what it is.
EB: It’s tough to predict, we can have this conversation in 10 years again.. but thank you, I guess, is there anything else you would like to add before we end?
AC: Oh, well I just appreciate this opportunity. When I was talking just then about the empire I should probably elaborate and say that 100 years ago, a little more than that, when the British Empire was at its height, I think they faced some of these same questions. They pushed free trade in the way that the US pushed NAFTA, and pushed free trade and the Washington consensus. We were, the US was able to push those things when we were powerful, but Great Britain learned how to back away from some of that and learned that they couldn’t keep their colonies forever.
EB: I mean ya, even on that vein, it’s very interesting you said that because how that ended was in multiple wars across the world fighting for independence, now I don’t know if that can be applied to the same extent, but maybe if we take it too far it can lead to similar type revolutions, maybe on a small scale. It would be very interesting to see, because there was a relatively large collapse with the British Empire.
AC: Right and we’ve seen these resource wars in the Middle East so I think that is a good point. That certainty if we get a lot of smart people together in the US to decide we don’t want to produce wars or to participate in these ongoing wars, and endless wars, especially preemptive wars and all the rest. We have to think hard about what the near future is and how we get there and have it create a humane near future. But it’s really been a pleasure talking with you.
EB: So if it’s ok with you I’ll use this interview, I just need you to sign one more thing saying that’s ok. This is just essentially releasing this so I can put it in the records.
Interviewee Place of Origin
Lugar de origen del entrevistado
Interviewee Journey Coordinates
Dublin Core
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Title
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R-0683 -- Cravey, Altha J., 1952-
Description
An account of the resource
The interview was conducted with Altha Cravey, an expert on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). She discusses its effects on labor relations and it how it can be damaging to communities within Latin America, specifically Mexico. The interview covers NAFTA’s original goals, from both the United States and Mexican perspectives, and transitions into covering labor effects on both sides of the border. Cravey talks extensively about labor unions, their power in Mexico, and the difference between unions in Mexico and the United States. She discusses the challenges and successes of instances of immigrants forming unions in the United States, and addresses the difficulties that must be overcome to achieve any successful change regarding NAFTA and poor labor conditions. The interview further transitioned into a discussion of the steps necessary to enact change, and the difficulties with implementing change. Cravey continually mentions retroactive change is not typically successful, and that there needs to be an overall change in the mentality of large business and policy makers to consider the environmental and human right impacts of free trade proposals. The interview concludes with Cravey comparing the United States to the British Empire at its height, and the challenges it faced when its empire eventually dismantled over a lack of resources and newfound independence and sustainable vigor.
Source
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University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
Rights
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No restrictions. Open to research.
Date
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28 March 2014
Format
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R0683_Audio.mp3
Publisher
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<a href="http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/19876">University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.</a>
-
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/ec8d8ef4a8685fe52b38302bc1748a3e.mp3
82ea8a3c4e1df2bd1faaf03ce86b01a0
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/e4c1c7f91288bb914181e965412b9a26.pdf
8f2e6cb56786b45987cd48a98b9cf7ea
SOHP Interview - Bilingual
Southern Oral History Program Interview with metadata in English and Spanish
Interview number
Número de entrevista
R-0690
En: Restrictions
Es: Restricciones
No restrictions. Open to research.
Date
Fecha
08 April 2014
Interviewee
Entrevistado/a
Kinnaird, Ellie.
En: Interviewee Occupation
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Legislators; Mayors
Interviewee Date of Birth
Fecha de nacimiento del entrevistado
1931
En: Interviewee Gender
Es: Género de entrevistado
Female
Interviewee Place of Origin
Lugar de origen del entrevistado
United States
Interviewee Places of Residence
Lugares de residencia del entrevistado
Carrboro -- Orange County -- North Carolina
Interviewer
Entrevistador/a
Lodaya, Hetali.
En: Language of Interview
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
English
En: Abstract
Es: Abstracto en español
Ellie Kinnaird discusses various interactions she has had with undocumented workers and Hispanic immigrants, first as mayor of Carrboro, North Carolina, and then as a North Carolina State Senator. She gives opinions on the general shift in attitudes of elected officials towards these communities in North Carolina. She has worked issues related to voter IDs and driver’s licenses. Kinnaird describes the emphasis that elected officials place on whether working with a particular population or addressing a particular issue will get them elected, as well as the relationship between the state of the economy and the reception immigrants are given in North Carolina. She recounts a trip she took to Mexico with the Center for International Understanding. Lastly, Kinnaird describes her frustrations with policies such as 287 (g) and Secure Communities, and her eventual decision to leave the legislature. She thinks the business community must play a key leadership role for attitudes towards immigrants and undocumented workers to ever change in North Carolina.
En: Citation
Es: Citación
Interview with Ellie Kinnaird by Hetali Lodaya, 08 April 2014, R-0690, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Reference URL
URL de referencia
http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/19873
Repository
Repositorio
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
En: Themes
Es: Temas
Citizenship and immigration; Economics; Integration and segregation
En: Transcript
Es: Transcripción
Hetali Lodaya: This is Hetali Lodaya. I’m interviewing former Senator Ellie Kinnaird, on April 8th, 2014, at the Chapel Hill Public Library. If you could just start by giving a brief background on your career in North Carolina, specifically the points at which you touched on issues of immigration in this community?
Eleanor Kinnaird: Well, of course I’ve lived here since 1964, so I have seen many, many changes. I have-the first change that would relate to immigration is that I was the mayor of Carrboro from 1987 through ‘95. And that was a period when there was a great influx of nondocumented, undocumented workers into our area through construction, because of so much economic activity, and so we had a great influx of workers. Who-many of whom settled in Carrboro. We did have some friction, which actually came about a little bit later, in which construction workers would gather on a street and wait to be picked up by worker-by employers. And it was in an African American neighborhood, so that caused some friction there. And that has been ongoing off and on for a number of years. And of course what they finally decided was they had an accommodation with the neighborhood, in which they restricted the hours that the undocumented workers waiting–we assume they’re undocumented workers–waiting–and they lived in apartments very close by there, and pretty much filled those apartments. And the neighborhood-and the accommodation was that they would limit the number of hours that the workers could stand there waiting for people to pick them up. That was later overturned, none of this was when I was the mayor, I mean, the labor part, because of-this is a right to peaceably assemble, many people said, and that they weren’t really causing trouble. I actually drove by that area every day on my way to Raleigh, and they did not cause a problem. There was not litter, they were not confronting people, they were just there. But it was a large group. It could be as many as forty people. And I think that was intimidating to some of the people who lived around there. As I say, it was an African-a historically African American community, with some mix of students, but for the most part that’s what it was. So there was that friction, and now I think they are trying to find a place-I’m trying to think of where it is-Main Street, where they will congregate, waiting to be picked up-picked up by the employers. I got more directly involved when I went to the senate in 1996. By this time it was a state-wide issue. And at first, everybody was very friendly. There was boom time, economic needs for workers, for-for workers who would work for low pay, low skill jobs, so they were very much welcomed into the state. I also represented Chatham county, which had a very large influx, because Siler City had a large chicken processing plant, so they had-they started a Hispanic center there, El Vinculo Hisp-I don’t, I think that’s the name of it. So I represented that area, and was very familiar with them, attended a couple-they had a couple festivals, Hispanic festivals, and at that time, El Pueblo was a very large festival. And it had moved actually from Chapel Hill, to I think the fairgrounds in Raleigh. I haven’t seen much about it there. People were actually very interested in welcoming this Hispanic, kind of large Hispanic community, both in places like Siler City. Oh no, they had no problem, Siler City. This was a very lower middle class white town, and when the influx of the workers came in, the migrant workers-not migrant workers, the workers for immigrating, because migrant workers are of course farm workers, and that’s a different category, and I do have something interesting about that one later on, in the legislature, which I want to come back to-but what happened was the entrenched, long serving government in Siler City was responding to their constituency, their citizens, who were beginning to get very upset over this large influx. So, they decided they would send out a flyer to all of the immigrants, and they were pretty much in neighborhoods where they could be located easily, about how to behave in Siler City.
HL: Wow.
EK: And they told them their children had to be dressed when they went outside, no chickens in the front yard, they had to fix their screen door if it broke, and that sort of thing. Well, that upset the liberals in Chatham County, of which there are a lot. Not necessarily in Siler City, they happen to be closer to Chapel Hill. So they got very upset, and so they objected to the town government in Siler City about this, and then somehow the people in Siler City decided they needed to really confront this, so they invited David Duke, who was head of the KKK at one time. So they had a rally, in Siler City, I believe it was, where David Duke came with all of the KKK types, and confronted the liberal types. I’m sure the Hispanics were nowhere to be seen, because they didn’t want to get involved in this. So there was that, when I was representing Chatham County early on. But other things were happening, people were welcoming them, and El Pueblo started, a big festival for celebrating the Hispanic community that was coming in. In the legislature, we actually required that ballots be printed in Spanish, and that the matricula consular would be allowed to be used for identification anywhere, including driver’s licenses. [pause] But then of course the economy began to go bad. There was an increasing reaction, and at the same time, these anti-immigrant groups were beginning to set up shop and became very active. What’s the name of that-I’m mixing up with (7:43) but-ALIPAC is a very, very hostile to immigration group, and they’re alive and well today, and you can look on their-their website, and they’re constantly trying to do that. That came out of a person who was a representative of a Senator from Alamance County, Hugh Webster. And he began really this anti-Hispanic drumbeat, and his intern at the time, or his assistant, went off to start ALIPAC. It has been very active ever since. Of course, in the meantime, with the economy going down, you began to get friction everywhere. Friction in the poultry industry between low income workers and the undocumented, friction in the hog industry, friction in the fact that construction had suddenly completely stopped because the housing bubble went, so you have a lot of people there, people were no longer needing a lot of maids and service workers in the hotels, so all of a sudden, everything changed. And all those people who’d been welcomed in as workers, who had set up businesses in Siler City, were changing radically. And they became very hostile, and this really showed in the legislature. So, we go from welcoming all these folks with ballots printed-ballot instructions printed in Spanish, and the matricula consular being used as-to saying, no, we’re not even going to let these folks get driver’s licenses. That was the most severe punishment that the state could have placed on these undocumented workers. And then things really began to get bad. The sheriff in Johnston County, the sheriff in Alamance County, and it began to be a campaign problem. Because the Democrats who were in power were seeing this tide turn, and so they began ramping up the anti-immigration rhetoric and campaign material. And of course, by that time, people couldn’t drive in the-and the sheriffs were beginning to stop people, the horror stories began. We had, in Alamance County, we had a family stopped and the children were left on I-whatever that major highway is, 85, I think it is-all night long. We had people stopping cars on checkpoints that were obviously aimed at Hispanics, and then another thing cropped up, and this was really bad. The 287 (g). This was a program in which sheriffs could stop people on any pretext, and that’s what was happening, on any pretext, book them for whatever it was, and not only-you know, if it was no driver’s licenses. Because by this time, you’ve got this large population who couldn’t get driver’s licenses, but had to get to work, had to get their children to the doctor, had to take them to school, and they were being stopped. And so the sheriffs then would not only say, you don’t have a license, show up in court two weeks from now, they were taking them to jail. Now if you and I get stopped for not having a license, we get a notice to go to court, we don’t go to jail. This was a very discriminatory practice. And, in addition the 287 (g) meant that the sheriffs would get paid for the people to be in their jail who could be then deported. I tried year after year after year to stop the legislature from giving them money! They gave them $100,000 to the sheriff’s association to carry out the 287 (g). Then there’s another program which even Orange County, liberal Orange County got into, and I’m trying to think of the name of that one.
HL: Not Secure Communities?
EK: Yes, Secure Communities. Even Orange County got that. And I don’t think that was publicized very well, or I think people in Chapel Hill would have been very upset, that our sheriffs did that, and that did the same thing, that allowed them to stop on any pretext, take these folks to jail, get paid a per diem for every one that they had, and then they’d be turned over and deported. So what had been a welcoming community in North Carolina all of a sudden became not only a hostile one, but one aggressively acting against these folks. So then when the campaigns came around, by this time the United States had gotten into this very hostile aggressive stance against them, and when people run for office, they hire consultants. And these consultants go around the state, and they might do Ohio in part of the year, and North Carolina another, and Texas another, and they decided that the tide had turned and the polls showed that there was a great anti-immigration sentiment in the state of North Carolina. So they advised those folks running for office, and I’m talking about–these are my colleagues. And I kept arguing against that and said look, you just don’t do that to these people who are actually contributing to our economy. James Johnson at the school of business-if you don’t know that name, you really do need to know him, of course-did a large study that showed how much they added to our economy, and how we needed them. And of course in the future, as the United States’ population grows older, and our birth rate goes down, we’re going to need workers to take care of all those older folks. But nothing was rational in this argument, and so what they did was they began-everybody began campaigning on an anti-immigrant, anti-undocumented worker platform. Actually, it backfired in two places. One of them was David Redwine, was running for the house from the ocean, from the beach, from the coast. And they depend on heavily on immigrant workers in the-in the shellfish, in the fishing industry. So what happened was, these campaign consultants did a one-size-fits-all, they ran an anti-immigrant campaign for him, and he lost. Because what they needed was more to keep their, their economy going, these workers, and same thing happened with another person. So the hostility towards these folks was rampant in the legislature. And I pleaded and begged with my colleagues, my Democratic colleagues-please don’t run these campaigns, these anti-immigrant campaigns. And one of them was actually a minister, and I said to him, how can you do this? You’re a minister! And he said, well, I gotta get elected, and this is a big issue. So it just flipped, a hundred and eighty degrees. And those who were welcomed all of a sudden just were, were the real object of hostility and aggression in order to get elected and to me that was very-that was very sad. I think that the matricula consular is actually still on the statues. But nobody pays any attention to it, and of course the DMV can no longer issue those. Now, nationwide, there is a move to undo that. And I’m hoping that someday we in-but we’re so conservative. The one thing is that the business people maybe want that driver’s license back for their workers, and they may be able to influence the Republicans, that would be my hope. Now, I’m going to go back to migrant workers. Migrant workers in North Carolina are treated very, very badly as we know. In the past, now, it’s shifting now, because the population is shifting to urban centers, but in the past, especially Eastern North Carolina farmers, had a great deal of power-still do-and there are all these groups that are trying to work with migrant farmers, like the Episcopal Farmworkers Group, and all these groups, and all they want are sanitation, protection from pesticides and being sprayed with all of these things, a place that’s clean to wash their hands in the fields, toilets, and decent living in the barracks that they live in. Year after year after year we-this was introduced. And interestingly, the only thing that went through was from a hog farmer in Duplin County, or a man who represented hog farms in Duplin County, of all places-and soybean farmers-was that each person coming in was required to have a clean mattress. I mean, the only thing, you know, it’s just-and we had to fight to get that through. But then there was a caveat, if they turn it in, and there was anything on it, they lost the money for that and they had to pay it back or something. It was-it was really-so what we saw reflected in the greater population was concentrated in the legislature. And maybe some local governments, I don’t know. And it’s there to this day. I don’t think it’s turned around. Because of course in the meantime we have a second recession, and that just really did it. Now, the one thing that happened though, the 287 (g), we gave them $100,000, I tried to keep that from getting in the budget, because I was chair of JPS, Justice and Public Safety, the appropriations that appropriated the money. Well, I lost on that one. I think then it went down to $50,000 the next year, because the economy was beginning to sink, and finally when the Republicans went in, they got rid of the 287 (g) money. So, at least-but the harassment goes on. I just heard from our federal clinic that our Chapel Hill-now I don’t know this for a fact, I have to follow up on it-that they may have been doing some checkpoints. Now that federal clinic takes all comers, and that’s largely Hispanic. You walk in the-in the waiting room, it looks like Little Mexico. And so we still have a cluster. I don’t know what happened in Siler City because I’ve asked about that, a couple times-the chicken processing plant closed. But in the meantime, they had set up quite a little community there. They had restaurants, and they had lots of things for the Hispanic community. And it was very well established in Siler City. There’s a clinic there, a mental health clinic. But I don’t know what’s happened, and that might be something worth following up to find out what’s happened to that. If you go to-I think it’s Vincula-does that sound right? Vinculo Hispano?
HL: I think so.
EK: You can find out whether that Hispanic population has left Siler City.
HL: Sure. Going back to your experiences in the legislature, as different pieces of legislation are brought forward, for example, when you last year introduced a piece of legislation trying to again have a tax identification number as a way to get a driver’s license, when there’s opposition to these policies, is there a broader theme in which that opposition is couched? Is it the economy, is it about immigration, what-what terms do, do elected officials that are opposed to these things talk in?
EK: Getting elected. It’s very simple. It has nothing to do with logic, it has nothing to do with facts, it has nothing to do with moral issues. Are you going to get elected or not elected if you introduce it? So, you can introduce something, and brave souls do, but unless their leadership is going to accept it, it’s not going anywhere. It won’t even get assigned to a committee. Because it’s poisonous for a campaign. Now, if you lived in a community and represented a community which was majority immigrants, that might work, but remember they don’t vote. So they can’t help you. Even though it may be the morally right thing to do, even though you believe that ethically it’s the right thing to do, it won’t make no difference whatsoever.
HL: So do most elected officials view immigrants in North Carolina, do you think, as their constituents, or as constituents that they should care about?
EK: There’s a difference between a constituent and a voter. Elected officials are about voters, and they count. And they court potential voters, but if they’re not voters, they’re not even going to pay any attention. Oh, they might go to the festival, because, you know, that looks good, but they’re simply not going to respond in any way to help them.
HL: And do you feel that this attitude has changed significantly, specifically in elected officials, from when you first came to the state legislature to, you were talking about downturns in the economy in the past couple of years? Did that attitude change very perceptibly?
EK: Radically. It was the most obviously thing you could-as I say, you’re counting votes, and the only thing that would turn this around is the business community. And the business community is very closely tied to the Republican Party. It used to be tied to the Democratic Party, when they were in power, but they’re not in power anymore. If the business community-and by the way, there’s a Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, there’s another Hispanic business group, I can’t think, I just heard about it last week-I’ll give you another instance of this. I was-when I was working in the building that the Justice Center is located in in Raleigh, they had a very large-and they still do, a large Hispanic services. I don’t know exactly what it is, but-and so there was a woman there whom I knew, because I saw her on a daily basis. When I very first went into the legislature, and to the Senate-and at that time, as I say, people were embracing and welcoming the Hispanic population-and the president pro tem, Marc Basnight, wanted a Hispanic liaison. So he asked around if anybody knew anybody who would be good. So I said, oh yes, Mattie Laszlo Chatterdon is wonderful. She’s from Peru, not Mexico, but nevertheless she had close ties with the Hispanic community, because that were her job at the Justice Center. And so I introduced her to Senator Basnight, and she was hired, and she was there until the Republicans took over. And in the meantime, the Democrats, even though they had sort of turned their back on it, on the Hispanic population, they still, you know, were friendly with Mattie and whatnot, and she would try-she would be a liaison for people who-Hispanic people who needed help. And since she was in the president pro tem’s office, she had access to a lot of power. And-but of course, as soon as the Republicans came in, she was let go. And so I just saw her the other day, she doesn’t have a job. So the radical change could slowly be changed if the economy improves to the point where we need those workers again. And it’s beginning to pick up. Construction is beginning to pick up. And construction owners need people to drive their trucks. And if they get-if they’re in danger of getting stopped, and losing the license, and the truck is in the middle of the road someplace, when the police confiscate it, they’re going to be pretty upset. So what they are going to do as helping their business, possibly get together with the Republicans and say-now, they did do something last year, and I’m trying to think of what it was. They did do something once. Last year. Because the business community needs these workers. I know that they raided, about six years ago I think it was, they raided the hog processing plant at Smithfield, or it’s the one on the coast, can’t remember which. And there were a lot of undocumented workers. And I don’t know how that came out. It’d be interesting to find out how that came out. Presumably, there were other workers, you know, who took those jobs. One of the things is that I know that the working conditions are very bad, in those processing plants, both the chicken processing and the hog processing plants, I do know that there’s a lot of competition at the bottom for jobs. Do we know how many American workers are put out of work? We don‘t know. But that would be an interesting thing to find out. What happened when all those Hispanic workers, undocumented workers were let go doing the raid, and who-was it African-Americans that took their jobs? What the advocates for Hispanics have been saying all along is nobody wants these jobs. Well, maybe that’s not the case. It does drive down wages, we know there’s wage theft, that’s a big problem with the Hispanic undocumented population, who is-who are taking these construction jobs, taking these jobs. In the meantime, a lot of the construction jobs that lead to small businesses like painting, and remodeling, have been established by Hispanics, I don’t know whether they’re documented or undocumented, they do drive trucks. So there is a-a class of workers, business owners, that have set up here. Both in Siler City that I used to represent-it wasn’t that long ago, I actually had Chatham County just until last August-and these small businesses are-whether they’re still striving or not. But I know I see around here-of course we didn’t go through the economic boom in or-recession in Orange County as badly, but-I see a lot of Hispanic painters, you know, trucks with Hispanic names on them and all Hispanic workers, and to this day, in this area, you will see landscapers, gardeners, and [pause] people in probably the back room of dishwashers in restaurants, that sort of thing. So we still have a population. I don’t know how much it’s diminished, but I do know that the legislature at this point will do nothing until the business community says they need these workers. We need for them to have driver’s licenses. So when that will happen, I don’t know.
HL: So the business community is obviously one stakeholder group, and there’s others, there’s nonprofits, and foundations that do advocacy work, there’s students that do advocacy work, that kind of thing. What-do you think those groups have been effective at engaging with the legislature over, sort of, your time? Do you think they can be effective?
EK: Remember voters. That’s the only thing that counts. They were very helpful when people embraced and welcomed Hispanics, oh yeah. All the non-profits, they were there. Business community was there, everybody was on board. But until it becomes something that the business community wants-but then you have things like ALIPAC. And if you haven’t looked at that website, you really need to look at it. It is juts full of venom and hate. Their goal is to have no immigration whatsoever, and to get rid of it, all of the undocumented workers and Hispanic workers. And residents in the state of North Carolina. I do know one thing that happened when I was on the board of an organization which helps women with-prisoners with children and the children of prisoners. My friend, who served on the board with me, was-is the public health director in Alamance County. And they came in and she was put on suspension from her job, along with another person, for treating undocumented people. And she got her job back, I think the nurse did not, though. So this type of attitude was spreading, and that was Alamance County, where of course the sheriff is now, right now, being investigated by the Justice Department. So these things are just reflect the attitude of the economic need for what are essentially throwaway workers. You know, we embrace them when we need them, and then we just throw them away and treat them badly when we don’t, with 287 (g), and all of the things like the checkpoints and I know that it’s a serious problem with families, where they even are afraid to drop their children off to school. Of course we have buses, I don’t know why they would drop them off anyway, that’s another story.
HL: North Carolina’s been in the national media a lot for issues relating to immigration, things like voter ID, things like access to drivers’ licenses. Do you think that affects how the legislature and elected officials in North Carolina approach these issues, talk about these issues, deal with them?
EK: Nope. The only thing they care about is getting elected. If you don’t have a constituency that can vote for you, then, you know, I mean. This isn’t to say that there aren’t some compassionate people. But the fact is, you can introduce all the bills you want, but if you’re leadership thinks it’s going to harm your, your caucus, there’s nothing, they’re simply not going to even assign it to a committee. Now, interestingly, we do have a very powerful Republican majority leader, Tom Apodaca, and he has prevented the worst of the bills that would be punitive from coming through. And, I forgot about that. Tom Apodaca has just-when the Democrats were in power, we kept all those anti-immigration bills from coming through. And the other one was of course with our, they could, Hispanic, undocumented people could go to community college. And then of course they could go to community college because that’s the law, but what they can’t do is get in-state tuition. So several of the students approached me before I left the legislature-in fact, one of them ran for student body president-and they wanted me to get an appointment with Jim Johnson to see if he would help them get this in-state tuition. Of course, he doesn’t do that, he’s a scholar, a researcher, he doesn’t do that. But I got the meeting, and they were pleased. Oh, the other thing-this is happening before I left, and boy, I thought this was a really bad move. Those students and those people were advocating for getting undocumented people licenses, driver’s licenses, got a bill, and they got some Republicans, and they worked on it, and I saw them week after week after week meeting with legislators trying to get the bill through. But it was draconian. Sure, they could get the driver’s licenses. But if anybody got caught without a driver’s license, they went to jail, they were put up for deportation, I mean it was-I said, you know, you don’t want that compromise, that’s not worth it, and they said it’s worth it to us to get these driver’s licenses. Now the fact-I think it got assigned to a committee, whether it got a hearing or not I don’t know, but I saw them there week after week after week meeting with all of these legislators. And so perhaps they were able to get through to enough people that-things that are tough take maybe ten years to get through-that maybe in a few years they might be able to turn the driver’s licenses issue around and be able to get licenses and several states have done it. I’ve forgotten where they are now, I think one was Arizona or New Mexico, one of those places that are so hostile.
HL: Absolutely. Talking a little bit about your own personal experience, so you had mentioned that you went on one of the trips, one of the first trips with the Center for International Understanding to communities in Mexico. Can you talk a little bit about that and how it shaped your, just, view on what you were to do as an elected official related to these issues?
EK: Well, that was the time when the Hispanic population was welcomed by the business community. And so there was a lot of interest. And of course it was almost the most sudden thing that happened, I guess this is after NAFTA-this happened because of NAFTA. All of a sudden in our towns and cities and rural areas, just lots of Hispanic people we had never seen before. And we all said, where are these people coming from? Well, they were coming up to work, of course, because of NAFTA, had taken their work away and a lot of the farm bill problems is that they lost the ability to make money on their farms. And so people began getting really interested. And of course the Center for International Understanding was one of the very first to pick up on this. So they invited various people from various careers and representatives, we had people from, I think, Duke Health, we had educators, we had a police officer from Cary, we had a-several, I think, there were four of us in the legislature, and what they wanted to show us was where these folks that all of a sudden appeared in great quantity in our streets and our towns, where they were coming from. And so that’s what we did, we went to the areas where they were coming from. And we started at the university, with a sort of a history of the regions that we were visiting, and then we went to a school, which was largely built by the families of these students, and we asked the students how many had family members, we talked about that, and almost all the hands were raised. And then when we asked do you want to, almost all the hands went up. Then we went to a clinic in a slum, I think it was, we went to, I’m trying to think of all of the-we went to a maquiladora, where they manufactured cheap goods, for the US. I’m trying to think-we were, we went about four places-oh, we went to a microfinancing business, and we went-I can’t remember, we went one other place where these folks lived. Oh, I know, we went to a little village where they actually invited us into their home and gave us a wonderful welcome, with their candy and whatnot. And what was striking about this village was, they were making these little concrete block houses, very simple, you know, they made them themselves. And where we went they had a pig, and a chicken, and I don’t think they had a cow, but they had some animals right there. But what was striking about this village was that they had built these houses, these were very simple houses, but there were no men. There were, of course, sending back money so that they could build these. And interestingly, I think a lot of the people who had made enough money here, when the downturn in the economy came, just went back to those houses with their pig and their chickens and that sort of thing. So that was-and so, then, the last night, we went to the home of a rich industrialist, and they’re like fortresses, you know. It had walls around with spikes and glass sticking up, that sort of thing. To protect these-and it was a beautiful mansion, beautiful grounds. So he owned a factory, a textile factory, and of course, we come from North Carolina, the home of tex-the former home of textile factories. And he spent the evening complaining that the Chinese were taking his work-his business-his source of his income away, because the textile mills were all going over to China. And we didn’t say anything, but we thought, ah, yes. We’re familiar with that story, that’s a familiar one to us. And so we did really get a view of what the people who were coming here, what their life was like. And it was a-a way to connect with, in a personal way, with all of those people that we were seeing in our everyday life.
HL: Absolutely. Did you feel-do you feel as though your ability to work with the immigrant community, the undocumented community in this area and in North Carolina was different in local government versus at the state legislature, so different as a mayor versus as a senator?
EK: Not really, because of course we-we did the matricula consular and we required that ballot instructions be written in Spanish, so we-and you know, and the driver’s license, we had a lot of power over those people. And I think that that’s something that-now the local folks had to accommodate housing and that sort of thing, and the friction between, as I say, the neighborhood, the African-American neighborhood and the folks who were standing there, so [pause] I think that on all levels, you have the same power to-over these lives, in one way or another. Interestingly, during this period, a bunch of us legislators decided we’re going to learn Spanish. Well, that was a big joke. So the institute came over, I think it was the institute, or might have been the one, Chicle, I think it was Chicle. Which is a language institute here in Chapel Hill. Came over and gave us a course, well, you know, we hadn’t studied, we hadn’t done our homework, we couldn’t pronounce anything, it was an absolute joke. But I still have those tapes, and I listened to them for years, but I couldn’t learn any Spanish. I tried and I tried and I tried but I just couldn’t learn any Spanish. So that goes to show you how we were welcoming, and we wanted to make them part of our lives even in the legislature. And so, we tried.
HL: Based on your experience and what you’ve seen, is there any way to go back to what the attitudes were like before, to something more welcoming, where policies are different and the debate is different and the language is different?
EK: The only thing that will help is if we go into a boom economy again, where they need these workers. Because our-the baby boomers are retiring, and they’re going to need care, and so there’s going to be a lot of service workers necessary. And our birth rate is almost zero. We’re going to need workers, and if there’s all of a sudden a huge construction boom, well, they’ll be very welcome and the business community will be clamoring to the legislature again to do something about it. So it’s going to be strictly economic and voting. It’s very-it’s very black and white.
HL: I guess the last thing that I wanted to touch on is your decision to leave the state legislature and work and do advocacy in different ways, particularly regarding issues of access to voting. Can you talk a little bit about making that decision and what’s the difference in what you are able to accomplish and the work that you can do?
EK: Well, when I-the last time I was elected, there were only-there were 33 Republicans and 17 Democrats in the Senate. We couldn’t do anything. We had absolutely no power whatsoever. And everything I’d worked on for 17 years, almost everything, was completely dismantled. Including, of course, all the voter work that I had done. So I just felt that there wasn’t anything I could do, this short session which is coming up in May, and I felt like I could, though, inform people about the changes to the voting laws and maybe even try to make sure that those groups that were most affected could possibly still retain some of their former voter-voting power. But that’s probably not very true, unfortunately.
HL: I have an anecdote from a student who does this advocacy work who said that especially when she’s in front of the legislature, her dialogue focuses on, very much on rational things. On revenue that undocumented individuals bring to the state, on things related to the economy, things related to business, she stays away from her personal story and that kind of thing. If you were to give advice to individuals doing this advocacy work in North Carolina, about working with legislators, would you agree with that approach? Are there things that need to be done that aren’t being done right now?
EK: There’s only one thing that counts, I keep coming back to this, and that is voting. If the business community felt that they are losing business because of this policy-these polices, those advocates should go to the business community and say, will you help us. Because if you’ve got, I don’t know, how many His-undocumented do they figure are in North Carolina? 400,000? If they can’t vote, you know, why would anybody court them? So what it really means is, if the business community finds this to their advantage, to start working to get this population served in some way or another. Now, as I said in my article, a large number of these children of undocumented workers are getting to be eighteen years old. And frankly, if I were one of those people representing some of these large population groups, I’d think about that. Because, are they going to be angry and vote against you, or are they going to be grateful that you helped them, and vote for you? That’s what I would be thinking about if I were there, while you’re counting votes, and-I think the one thing that’s not going to happen is, there won’t be campaign literature against Hispanics or immigration. Now somebody like Renee Elmers in Congress, that’s a different matter. She’s gotten herself apparently on the bad side of those people. But they can affect everybody. They can say, yeah, you’re all going to be citizens tomorrow-and by the way, the craziness that they’ve got where they have to be away for five years, and pay fines and-they’re already paying taxes. That is one thing that people really don’t understand, and I ran into that over and over. Well, they don’t pay their fair share of taxes. Not true, if they rent, they pay property taxes, every time they buy something, they pay sales taxes, and, if they work for a company that deducts their income tax, they never get that back, and their social security, they never get that back. And so, yes, they pay taxes, they pay more taxes than you pay. And they don’t get them back. So, I think that-but, I think it’s just going to take a change in the economy.
HL: Absolutely. I think [pause] yeah, I think that’s all the questions that I have.
EK: Ok. Good.
END OF INTERVIEW
The following addition was sent via email after the interview:
EK: You asked when attitudes in the legislature might change toward undocumented workers and how it could happen. I talked about the business community being the key. I had intended also to say that the agriculture sector from truck garden produce such as tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers in the east to Christmas trees in the mountains has great influence. While I talked the poultry industry about having influence, I think these farmers have even more influence since it is labor intensive and the migrant workers cannot completely meet the demand for workers. In fact, there are many undocumented workers hired alongside the migrant workers and has been for years. To show their influence, a bill last session that required employers to check the national social security and citizen status list exempted farm workers. There was an article in yesterday's paper about the shortage of construction and service workers in Colorado that I think will be mirrored soon throughout the U.S. including North Carolina.
Es: Restricciones
Sin restricciones. Abierta para investigación.
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Legisladores; Alcaldes
Es: Género de entrevistado
Mujer
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
Inglés
Es: Resumen
Los temas discutidos incluyeron la interacción que Kinnaird ha tenido con trabajadores indocumentados e inmigrantes hispanos, primero cuando ella era la alcalde de Carrboro y después como senadora del estado Carolina del Norte, así como su opinión del cambio generalizado en las actitudes de funcionarios públicos electos en el estado hacia estas comunidades. Este trabajo cubrió diversos temas, desde el tema de las credenciales de identificación para votar hasta las licencias para conducir. Kinnaird describe el énfasis que los funcionarios públicos electos ponen en trabajar con una población en particular o en un tema en particular dependiendo de si les puede ayudar a ser reelegidos, así como la relación entre la situación de la economía y la recepción que los inmigrantes reciben en Carolina del Norte. Ella cuenta sobre un viaje que hizo a México con el Centro de Entendimiento Internacional. Finalmente Kinnaird describe sus frustraciones con políticas tales como la ley 287(g) y Comunidades Seguras y su decisión de salir de la legislatura, así como también discute el papel clave que ella piensa que la comunidad de negocios debe desempeñar en el cambio de actitudes hacia inmigrantes y trabajadores indocumentados en Carolina del Norte.
Es: Citación
Entrevista con Ellie Kinnaird por Hetali Lodaya, 08 Abril 2014, R-0690, en Southern Oral History Program Collection#4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, Universidad de Carolina del Norte en Chapel Hill.
Es: Temas
Ciudadanía e inmigración; Economía; Integración y segregación
Es: Transcripción
Hetali Lodaya: This is Hetali Lodaya. I’m interviewing former Senator Ellie Kinnaird, on April 8th, 2014, at the Chapel Hill Public Library. If you could just start by giving a brief background on your career in North Carolina, specifically the points at which you touched on issues of immigration in this community?
Eleanor Kinnaird: Well, of course I’ve lived here since 1964, so I have seen many, many changes. I have-the first change that would relate to immigration is that I was the mayor of Carrboro from 1987 through ‘95. And that was a period when there was a great influx of nondocumented, undocumented workers into our area through construction, because of so much economic activity, and so we had a great influx of workers. Who-many of whom settled in Carrboro. We did have some friction, which actually came about a little bit later, in which construction workers would gather on a street and wait to be picked up by worker-by employers. And it was in an African American neighborhood, so that caused some friction there. And that has been ongoing off and on for a number of years. And of course what they finally decided was they had an accommodation with the neighborhood, in which they restricted the hours that the undocumented workers waiting–we assume they’re undocumented workers–waiting–and they lived in apartments very close by there, and pretty much filled those apartments. And the neighborhood-and the accommodation was that they would limit the number of hours that the workers could stand there waiting for people to pick them up. That was later overturned, none of this was when I was the mayor, I mean, the labor part, because of-this is a right to peaceably assemble, many people said, and that they weren’t really causing trouble. I actually drove by that area every day on my way to Raleigh, and they did not cause a problem. There was not litter, they were not confronting people, they were just there. But it was a large group. It could be as many as forty people. And I think that was intimidating to some of the people who lived around there. As I say, it was an African-a historically African American community, with some mix of students, but for the most part that’s what it was. So there was that friction, and now I think they are trying to find a place-I’m trying to think of where it is-Main Street, where they will congregate, waiting to be picked up-picked up by the employers. I got more directly involved when I went to the senate in 1996. By this time it was a state-wide issue. And at first, everybody was very friendly. There was boom time, economic needs for workers, for-for workers who would work for low pay, low skill jobs, so they were very much welcomed into the state. I also represented Chatham county, which had a very large influx, because Siler City had a large chicken processing plant, so they had-they started a Hispanic center there, El Vinculo Hisp-I don’t, I think that’s the name of it. So I represented that area, and was very familiar with them, attended a couple-they had a couple festivals, Hispanic festivals, and at that time, El Pueblo was a very large festival. And it had moved actually from Chapel Hill, to I think the fairgrounds in Raleigh. I haven’t seen much about it there. People were actually very interested in welcoming this Hispanic, kind of large Hispanic community, both in places like Siler City. Oh no, they had no problem, Siler City. This was a very lower middle class white town, and when the influx of the workers came in, the migrant workers-not migrant workers, the workers for immigrating, because migrant workers are of course farm workers, and that’s a different category, and I do have something interesting about that one later on, in the legislature, which I want to come back to-but what happened was the entrenched, long serving government in Siler City was responding to their constituency, their citizens, who were beginning to get very upset over this large influx. So, they decided they would send out a flyer to all of the immigrants, and they were pretty much in neighborhoods where they could be located easily, about how to behave in Siler City.
HL: Wow.
EK: And they told them their children had to be dressed when they went outside, no chickens in the front yard, they had to fix their screen door if it broke, and that sort of thing. Well, that upset the liberals in Chatham County, of which there are a lot. Not necessarily in Siler City, they happen to be closer to Chapel Hill. So they got very upset, and so they objected to the town government in Siler City about this, and then somehow the people in Siler City decided they needed to really confront this, so they invited David Duke, who was head of the KKK at one time. So they had a rally, in Siler City, I believe it was, where David Duke came with all of the KKK types, and confronted the liberal types. I’m sure the Hispanics were nowhere to be seen, because they didn’t want to get involved in this. So there was that, when I was representing Chatham County early on. But other things were happening, people were welcoming them, and El Pueblo started, a big festival for celebrating the Hispanic community that was coming in. In the legislature, we actually required that ballots be printed in Spanish, and that the matricula consular would be allowed to be used for identification anywhere, including driver’s licenses. [pause] But then of course the economy began to go bad. There was an increasing reaction, and at the same time, these anti-immigrant groups were beginning to set up shop and became very active. What’s the name of that-I’m mixing up with (7:43) but-ALIPAC is a very, very hostile to immigration group, and they’re alive and well today, and you can look on their-their website, and they’re constantly trying to do that. That came out of a person who was a representative of a Senator from Alamance County, Hugh Webster. And he began really this anti-Hispanic drumbeat, and his intern at the time, or his assistant, went off to start ALIPAC. It has been very active ever since. Of course, in the meantime, with the economy going down, you began to get friction everywhere. Friction in the poultry industry between low income workers and the undocumented, friction in the hog industry, friction in the fact that construction had suddenly completely stopped because the housing bubble went, so you have a lot of people there, people were no longer needing a lot of maids and service workers in the hotels, so all of a sudden, everything changed. And all those people who’d been welcomed in as workers, who had set up businesses in Siler City, were changing radically. And they became very hostile, and this really showed in the legislature. So, we go from welcoming all these folks with ballots printed-ballot instructions printed in Spanish, and the matricula consular being used as-to saying, no, we’re not even going to let these folks get driver’s licenses. That was the most severe punishment that the state could have placed on these undocumented workers. And then things really began to get bad. The sheriff in Johnston County, the sheriff in Alamance County, and it began to be a campaign problem. Because the Democrats who were in power were seeing this tide turn, and so they began ramping up the anti-immigration rhetoric and campaign material. And of course, by that time, people couldn’t drive in the-and the sheriffs were beginning to stop people, the horror stories began. We had, in Alamance County, we had a family stopped and the children were left on I-whatever that major highway is, 85, I think it is-all night long. We had people stopping cars on checkpoints that were obviously aimed at Hispanics, and then another thing cropped up, and this was really bad. The 287 (g). This was a program in which sheriffs could stop people on any pretext, and that’s what was happening, on any pretext, book them for whatever it was, and not only-you know, if it was no driver’s licenses. Because by this time, you’ve got this large population who couldn’t get driver’s licenses, but had to get to work, had to get their children to the doctor, had to take them to school, and they were being stopped. And so the sheriffs then would not only say, you don’t have a license, show up in court two weeks from now, they were taking them to jail. Now if you and I get stopped for not having a license, we get a notice to go to court, we don’t go to jail. This was a very discriminatory practice. And, in addition the 287 (g) meant that the sheriffs would get paid for the people to be in their jail who could be then deported. I tried year after year after year to stop the legislature from giving them money! They gave them $100,000 to the sheriff’s association to carry out the 287 (g). Then there’s another program which even Orange County, liberal Orange County got into, and I’m trying to think of the name of that one.
HL: Not Secure Communities?
EK: Yes, Secure Communities. Even Orange County got that. And I don’t think that was publicized very well, or I think people in Chapel Hill would have been very upset, that our sheriffs did that, and that did the same thing, that allowed them to stop on any pretext, take these folks to jail, get paid a per diem for every one that they had, and then they’d be turned over and deported. So what had been a welcoming community in North Carolina all of a sudden became not only a hostile one, but one aggressively acting against these folks. So then when the campaigns came around, by this time the United States had gotten into this very hostile aggressive stance against them, and when people run for office, they hire consultants. And these consultants go around the state, and they might do Ohio in part of the year, and North Carolina another, and Texas another, and they decided that the tide had turned and the polls showed that there was a great anti-immigration sentiment in the state of North Carolina. So they advised those folks running for office, and I’m talking about–these are my colleagues. And I kept arguing against that and said look, you just don’t do that to these people who are actually contributing to our economy. James Johnson at the school of business-if you don’t know that name, you really do need to know him, of course-did a large study that showed how much they added to our economy, and how we needed them. And of course in the future, as the United States’ population grows older, and our birth rate goes down, we’re going to need workers to take care of all those older folks. But nothing was rational in this argument, and so what they did was they began-everybody began campaigning on an anti-immigrant, anti-undocumented worker platform. Actually, it backfired in two places. One of them was David Redwine, was running for the house from the ocean, from the beach, from the coast. And they depend on heavily on immigrant workers in the-in the shellfish, in the fishing industry. So what happened was, these campaign consultants did a one-size-fits-all, they ran an anti-immigrant campaign for him, and he lost. Because what they needed was more to keep their, their economy going, these workers, and same thing happened with another person. So the hostility towards these folks was rampant in the legislature. And I pleaded and begged with my colleagues, my Democratic colleagues-please don’t run these campaigns, these anti-immigrant campaigns. And one of them was actually a minister, and I said to him, how can you do this? You’re a minister! And he said, well, I gotta get elected, and this is a big issue. So it just flipped, a hundred and eighty degrees. And those who were welcomed all of a sudden just were, were the real object of hostility and aggression in order to get elected and to me that was very-that was very sad. I think that the matricula consular is actually still on the statues. But nobody pays any attention to it, and of course the DMV can no longer issue those. Now, nationwide, there is a move to undo that. And I’m hoping that someday we in-but we’re so conservative. The one thing is that the business people maybe want that driver’s license back for their workers, and they may be able to influence the Republicans, that would be my hope. Now, I’m going to go back to migrant workers. Migrant workers in North Carolina are treated very, very badly as we know. In the past, now, it’s shifting now, because the population is shifting to urban centers, but in the past, especially Eastern North Carolina farmers, had a great deal of power-still do-and there are all these groups that are trying to work with migrant farmers, like the Episcopal Farmworkers Group, and all these groups, and all they want are sanitation, protection from pesticides and being sprayed with all of these things, a place that’s clean to wash their hands in the fields, toilets, and decent living in the barracks that they live in. Year after year after year we-this was introduced. And interestingly, the only thing that went through was from a hog farmer in Duplin County, or a man who represented hog farms in Duplin County, of all places-and soybean farmers-was that each person coming in was required to have a clean mattress. I mean, the only thing, you know, it’s just-and we had to fight to get that through. But then there was a caveat, if they turn it in, and there was anything on it, they lost the money for that and they had to pay it back or something. It was-it was really-so what we saw reflected in the greater population was concentrated in the legislature. And maybe some local governments, I don’t know. And it’s there to this day. I don’t think it’s turned around. Because of course in the meantime we have a second recession, and that just really did it. Now, the one thing that happened though, the 287 (g), we gave them $100,000, I tried to keep that from getting in the budget, because I was chair of JPS, Justice and Public Safety, the appropriations that appropriated the money. Well, I lost on that one. I think then it went down to $50,000 the next year, because the economy was beginning to sink, and finally when the Republicans went in, they got rid of the 287 (g) money. So, at least-but the harassment goes on. I just heard from our federal clinic that our Chapel Hill-now I don’t know this for a fact, I have to follow up on it-that they may have been doing some checkpoints. Now that federal clinic takes all comers, and that’s largely Hispanic. You walk in the-in the waiting room, it looks like Little Mexico. And so we still have a cluster. I don’t know what happened in Siler City because I’ve asked about that, a couple times-the chicken processing plant closed. But in the meantime, they had set up quite a little community there. They had restaurants, and they had lots of things for the Hispanic community. And it was very well established in Siler City. There’s a clinic there, a mental health clinic. But I don’t know what’s happened, and that might be something worth following up to find out what’s happened to that. If you go to-I think it’s Vincula-does that sound right? Vinculo Hispano?
HL: I think so.
EK: You can find out whether that Hispanic population has left Siler City.
HL: Sure. Going back to your experiences in the legislature, as different pieces of legislation are brought forward, for example, when you last year introduced a piece of legislation trying to again have a tax identification number as a way to get a driver’s license, when there’s opposition to these policies, is there a broader theme in which that opposition is couched? Is it the economy, is it about immigration, what-what terms do, do elected officials that are opposed to these things talk in?
EK: Getting elected. It’s very simple. It has nothing to do with logic, it has nothing to do with facts, it has nothing to do with moral issues. Are you going to get elected or not elected if you introduce it? So, you can introduce something, and brave souls do, but unless their leadership is going to accept it, it’s not going anywhere. It won’t even get assigned to a committee. Because it’s poisonous for a campaign. Now, if you lived in a community and represented a community which was majority immigrants, that might work, but remember they don’t vote. So they can’t help you. Even though it may be the morally right thing to do, even though you believe that ethically it’s the right thing to do, it won’t make no difference whatsoever.
HL: So do most elected officials view immigrants in North Carolina, do you think, as their constituents, or as constituents that they should care about?
EK: There’s a difference between a constituent and a voter. Elected officials are about voters, and they count. And they court potential voters, but if they’re not voters, they’re not even going to pay any attention. Oh, they might go to the festival, because, you know, that looks good, but they’re simply not going to respond in any way to help them.
HL: And do you feel that this attitude has changed significantly, specifically in elected officials, from when you first came to the state legislature to, you were talking about downturns in the economy in the past couple of years? Did that attitude change very perceptibly?
EK: Radically. It was the most obviously thing you could-as I say, you’re counting votes, and the only thing that would turn this around is the business community. And the business community is very closely tied to the Republican Party. It used to be tied to the Democratic Party, when they were in power, but they’re not in power anymore. If the business community-and by the way, there’s a Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, there’s another Hispanic business group, I can’t think, I just heard about it last week-I’ll give you another instance of this. I was-when I was working in the building that the Justice Center is located in in Raleigh, they had a very large-and they still do, a large Hispanic services. I don’t know exactly what it is, but-and so there was a woman there whom I knew, because I saw her on a daily basis. When I very first went into the legislature, and to the Senate-and at that time, as I say, people were embracing and welcoming the Hispanic population-and the president pro tem, Marc Basnight, wanted a Hispanic liaison. So he asked around if anybody knew anybody who would be good. So I said, oh yes, Mattie Laszlo Chatterdon is wonderful. She’s from Peru, not Mexico, but nevertheless she had close ties with the Hispanic community, because that were her job at the Justice Center. And so I introduced her to Senator Basnight, and she was hired, and she was there until the Republicans took over. And in the meantime, the Democrats, even though they had sort of turned their back on it, on the Hispanic population, they still, you know, were friendly with Mattie and whatnot, and she would try-she would be a liaison for people who-Hispanic people who needed help. And since she was in the president pro tem’s office, she had access to a lot of power. And-but of course, as soon as the Republicans came in, she was let go. And so I just saw her the other day, she doesn’t have a job. So the radical change could slowly be changed if the economy improves to the point where we need those workers again. And it’s beginning to pick up. Construction is beginning to pick up. And construction owners need people to drive their trucks. And if they get-if they’re in danger of getting stopped, and losing the license, and the truck is in the middle of the road someplace, when the police confiscate it, they’re going to be pretty upset. So what they are going to do as helping their business, possibly get together with the Republicans and say-now, they did do something last year, and I’m trying to think of what it was. They did do something once. Last year. Because the business community needs these workers. I know that they raided, about six years ago I think it was, they raided the hog processing plant at Smithfield, or it’s the one on the coast, can’t remember which. And there were a lot of undocumented workers. And I don’t know how that came out. It’d be interesting to find out how that came out. Presumably, there were other workers, you know, who took those jobs. One of the things is that I know that the working conditions are very bad, in those processing plants, both the chicken processing and the hog processing plants, I do know that there’s a lot of competition at the bottom for jobs. Do we know how many American workers are put out of work? We don‘t know. But that would be an interesting thing to find out. What happened when all those Hispanic workers, undocumented workers were let go doing the raid, and who-was it African-Americans that took their jobs? What the advocates for Hispanics have been saying all along is nobody wants these jobs. Well, maybe that’s not the case. It does drive down wages, we know there’s wage theft, that’s a big problem with the Hispanic undocumented population, who is-who are taking these construction jobs, taking these jobs. In the meantime, a lot of the construction jobs that lead to small businesses like painting, and remodeling, have been established by Hispanics, I don’t know whether they’re documented or undocumented, they do drive trucks. So there is a-a class of workers, business owners, that have set up here. Both in Siler City that I used to represent-it wasn’t that long ago, I actually had Chatham County just until last August-and these small businesses are-whether they’re still striving or not. But I know I see around here-of course we didn’t go through the economic boom in or-recession in Orange County as badly, but-I see a lot of Hispanic painters, you know, trucks with Hispanic names on them and all Hispanic workers, and to this day, in this area, you will see landscapers, gardeners, and [pause] people in probably the back room of dishwashers in restaurants, that sort of thing. So we still have a population. I don’t know how much it’s diminished, but I do know that the legislature at this point will do nothing until the business community says they need these workers. We need for them to have driver’s licenses. So when that will happen, I don’t know.
HL: So the business community is obviously one stakeholder group, and there’s others, there’s nonprofits, and foundations that do advocacy work, there’s students that do advocacy work, that kind of thing. What-do you think those groups have been effective at engaging with the legislature over, sort of, your time? Do you think they can be effective?
EK: Remember voters. That’s the only thing that counts. They were very helpful when people embraced and welcomed Hispanics, oh yeah. All the non-profits, they were there. Business community was there, everybody was on board. But until it becomes something that the business community wants-but then you have things like ALIPAC. And if you haven’t looked at that website, you really need to look at it. It is juts full of venom and hate. Their goal is to have no immigration whatsoever, and to get rid of it, all of the undocumented workers and Hispanic workers. And residents in the state of North Carolina. I do know one thing that happened when I was on the board of an organization which helps women with-prisoners with children and the children of prisoners. My friend, who served on the board with me, was-is the public health director in Alamance County. And they came in and she was put on suspension from her job, along with another person, for treating undocumented people. And she got her job back, I think the nurse did not, though. So this type of attitude was spreading, and that was Alamance County, where of course the sheriff is now, right now, being investigated by the Justice Department. So these things are just reflect the attitude of the economic need for what are essentially throwaway workers. You know, we embrace them when we need them, and then we just throw them away and treat them badly when we don’t, with 287 (g), and all of the things like the checkpoints and I know that it’s a serious problem with families, where they even are afraid to drop their children off to school. Of course we have buses, I don’t know why they would drop them off anyway, that’s another story.
HL: North Carolina’s been in the national media a lot for issues relating to immigration, things like voter ID, things like access to drivers’ licenses. Do you think that affects how the legislature and elected officials in North Carolina approach these issues, talk about these issues, deal with them?
EK: Nope. The only thing they care about is getting elected. If you don’t have a constituency that can vote for you, then, you know, I mean. This isn’t to say that there aren’t some compassionate people. But the fact is, you can introduce all the bills you want, but if you’re leadership thinks it’s going to harm your, your caucus, there’s nothing, they’re simply not going to even assign it to a committee. Now, interestingly, we do have a very powerful Republican majority leader, Tom Apodaca, and he has prevented the worst of the bills that would be punitive from coming through. And, I forgot about that. Tom Apodaca has just-when the Democrats were in power, we kept all those anti-immigration bills from coming through. And the other one was of course with our, they could, Hispanic, undocumented people could go to community college. And then of course they could go to community college because that’s the law, but what they can’t do is get in-state tuition. So several of the students approached me before I left the legislature-in fact, one of them ran for student body president-and they wanted me to get an appointment with Jim Johnson to see if he would help them get this in-state tuition. Of course, he doesn’t do that, he’s a scholar, a researcher, he doesn’t do that. But I got the meeting, and they were pleased. Oh, the other thing-this is happening before I left, and boy, I thought this was a really bad move. Those students and those people were advocating for getting undocumented people licenses, driver’s licenses, got a bill, and they got some Republicans, and they worked on it, and I saw them week after week after week meeting with legislators trying to get the bill through. But it was draconian. Sure, they could get the driver’s licenses. But if anybody got caught without a driver’s license, they went to jail, they were put up for deportation, I mean it was-I said, you know, you don’t want that compromise, that’s not worth it, and they said it’s worth it to us to get these driver’s licenses. Now the fact-I think it got assigned to a committee, whether it got a hearing or not I don’t know, but I saw them there week after week after week meeting with all of these legislators. And so perhaps they were able to get through to enough people that-things that are tough take maybe ten years to get through-that maybe in a few years they might be able to turn the driver’s licenses issue around and be able to get licenses and several states have done it. I’ve forgotten where they are now, I think one was Arizona or New Mexico, one of those places that are so hostile.
HL: Absolutely. Talking a little bit about your own personal experience, so you had mentioned that you went on one of the trips, one of the first trips with the Center for International Understanding to communities in Mexico. Can you talk a little bit about that and how it shaped your, just, view on what you were to do as an elected official related to these issues?
EK: Well, that was the time when the Hispanic population was welcomed by the business community. And so there was a lot of interest. And of course it was almost the most sudden thing that happened, I guess this is after NAFTA-this happened because of NAFTA. All of a sudden in our towns and cities and rural areas, just lots of Hispanic people we had never seen before. And we all said, where are these people coming from? Well, they were coming up to work, of course, because of NAFTA, had taken their work away and a lot of the farm bill problems is that they lost the ability to make money on their farms. And so people began getting really interested. And of course the Center for International Understanding was one of the very first to pick up on this. So they invited various people from various careers and representatives, we had people from, I think, Duke Health, we had educators, we had a police officer from Cary, we had a-several, I think, there were four of us in the legislature, and what they wanted to show us was where these folks that all of a sudden appeared in great quantity in our streets and our towns, where they were coming from. And so that’s what we did, we went to the areas where they were coming from. And we started at the university, with a sort of a history of the regions that we were visiting, and then we went to a school, which was largely built by the families of these students, and we asked the students how many had family members, we talked about that, and almost all the hands were raised. And then when we asked do you want to, almost all the hands went up. Then we went to a clinic in a slum, I think it was, we went to, I’m trying to think of all of the-we went to a maquiladora, where they manufactured cheap goods, for the US. I’m trying to think-we were, we went about four places-oh, we went to a microfinancing business, and we went-I can’t remember, we went one other place where these folks lived. Oh, I know, we went to a little village where they actually invited us into their home and gave us a wonderful welcome, with their candy and whatnot. And what was striking about this village was, they were making these little concrete block houses, very simple, you know, they made them themselves. And where we went they had a pig, and a chicken, and I don’t think they had a cow, but they had some animals right there. But what was striking about this village was that they had built these houses, these were very simple houses, but there were no men. There were, of course, sending back money so that they could build these. And interestingly, I think a lot of the people who had made enough money here, when the downturn in the economy came, just went back to those houses with their pig and their chickens and that sort of thing. So that was-and so, then, the last night, we went to the home of a rich industrialist, and they’re like fortresses, you know. It had walls around with spikes and glass sticking up, that sort of thing. To protect these-and it was a beautiful mansion, beautiful grounds. So he owned a factory, a textile factory, and of course, we come from North Carolina, the home of tex-the former home of textile factories. And he spent the evening complaining that the Chinese were taking his work-his business-his source of his income away, because the textile mills were all going over to China. And we didn’t say anything, but we thought, ah, yes. We’re familiar with that story, that’s a familiar one to us. And so we did really get a view of what the people who were coming here, what their life was like. And it was a-a way to connect with, in a personal way, with all of those people that we were seeing in our everyday life.
HL: Absolutely. Did you feel-do you feel as though your ability to work with the immigrant community, the undocumented community in this area and in North Carolina was different in local government versus at the state legislature, so different as a mayor versus as a senator?
EK: Not really, because of course we-we did the matricula consular and we required that ballot instructions be written in Spanish, so we-and you know, and the driver’s license, we had a lot of power over those people. And I think that that’s something that-now the local folks had to accommodate housing and that sort of thing, and the friction between, as I say, the neighborhood, the African-American neighborhood and the folks who were standing there, so [pause] I think that on all levels, you have the same power to-over these lives, in one way or another. Interestingly, during this period, a bunch of us legislators decided we’re going to learn Spanish. Well, that was a big joke. So the institute came over, I think it was the institute, or might have been the one, Chicle, I think it was Chicle. Which is a language institute here in Chapel Hill. Came over and gave us a course, well, you know, we hadn’t studied, we hadn’t done our homework, we couldn’t pronounce anything, it was an absolute joke. But I still have those tapes, and I listened to them for years, but I couldn’t learn any Spanish. I tried and I tried and I tried but I just couldn’t learn any Spanish. So that goes to show you how we were welcoming, and we wanted to make them part of our lives even in the legislature. And so, we tried.
HL: Based on your experience and what you’ve seen, is there any way to go back to what the attitudes were like before, to something more welcoming, where policies are different and the debate is different and the language is different?
EK: The only thing that will help is if we go into a boom economy again, where they need these workers. Because our-the baby boomers are retiring, and they’re going to need care, and so there’s going to be a lot of service workers necessary. And our birth rate is almost zero. We’re going to need workers, and if there’s all of a sudden a huge construction boom, well, they’ll be very welcome and the business community will be clamoring to the legislature again to do something about it. So it’s going to be strictly economic and voting. It’s very-it’s very black and white.
HL: I guess the last thing that I wanted to touch on is your decision to leave the state legislature and work and do advocacy in different ways, particularly regarding issues of access to voting. Can you talk a little bit about making that decision and what’s the difference in what you are able to accomplish and the work that you can do?
EK: Well, when I-the last time I was elected, there were only-there were 33 Republicans and 17 Democrats in the Senate. We couldn’t do anything. We had absolutely no power whatsoever. And everything I’d worked on for 17 years, almost everything, was completely dismantled. Including, of course, all the voter work that I had done. So I just felt that there wasn’t anything I could do, this short session which is coming up in May, and I felt like I could, though, inform people about the changes to the voting laws and maybe even try to make sure that those groups that were most affected could possibly still retain some of their former voter-voting power. But that’s probably not very true, unfortunately.
HL: I have an anecdote from a student who does this advocacy work who said that especially when she’s in front of the legislature, her dialogue focuses on, very much on rational things. On revenue that undocumented individuals bring to the state, on things related to the economy, things related to business, she stays away from her personal story and that kind of thing. If you were to give advice to individuals doing this advocacy work in North Carolina, about working with legislators, would you agree with that approach? Are there things that need to be done that aren’t being done right now?
EK: There’s only one thing that counts, I keep coming back to this, and that is voting. If the business community felt that they are losing business because of this policy-these polices, those advocates should go to the business community and say, will you help us. Because if you’ve got, I don’t know, how many His-undocumented do they figure are in North Carolina? 400,000? If they can’t vote, you know, why would anybody court them? So what it really means is, if the business community finds this to their advantage, to start working to get this population served in some way or another. Now, as I said in my article, a large number of these children of undocumented workers are getting to be eighteen years old. And frankly, if I were one of those people representing some of these large population groups, I’d think about that. Because, are they going to be angry and vote against you, or are they going to be grateful that you helped them, and vote for you? That’s what I would be thinking about if I were there, while you’re counting votes, and-I think the one thing that’s not going to happen is, there won’t be campaign literature against Hispanics or immigration. Now somebody like Renee Elmers in Congress, that’s a different matter. She’s gotten herself apparently on the bad side of those people. But they can affect everybody. They can say, yeah, you’re all going to be citizens tomorrow-and by the way, the craziness that they’ve got where they have to be away for five years, and pay fines and-they’re already paying taxes. That is one thing that people really don’t understand, and I ran into that over and over. Well, they don’t pay their fair share of taxes. Not true, if they rent, they pay property taxes, every time they buy something, they pay sales taxes, and, if they work for a company that deducts their income tax, they never get that back, and their social security, they never get that back. And so, yes, they pay taxes, they pay more taxes than you pay. And they don’t get them back. So, I think that-but, I think it’s just going to take a change in the economy.
HL: Absolutely. I think [pause] yeah, I think that’s all the questions that I have.
EK: Ok. Good.
END OF INTERVIEW
The following addition was sent via email after the interview:
EK: You asked when attitudes in the legislature might change toward undocumented workers and how it could happen. I talked about the business community being the key. I had intended also to say that the agriculture sector from truck garden produce such as tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers in the east to Christmas trees in the mountains has great influence. While I talked the poultry industry about having influence, I think these farmers have even more influence since it is labor intensive and the migrant workers cannot completely meet the demand for workers. In fact, there are many undocumented workers hired alongside the migrant workers and has been for years. To show their influence, a bill last session that required employers to check the national social security and citizen status list exempted farm workers. There was an article in yesterday's paper about the shortage of construction and service workers in Colorado that I think will be mirrored soon throughout the U.S. including North Carolina.
Interviewee Journey Coordinates
Dublin Core
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Title
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R-0690 -- Kinnaird, Ellie.
Description
An account of the resource
Ellie Kinnaird discusses various interactions she has had with undocumented workers and Hispanic immigrants, first as mayor of Carrboro, North Carolina, and then as a North Carolina State Senator. She gives opinions on the general shift in attitudes of elected officials towards these communities in North Carolina. She has worked issues related to voter IDs and driver’s licenses. Kinnaird describes the emphasis that elected officials place on whether working with a particular population or addressing a particular issue will get them elected, as well as the relationship between the state of the economy and the reception immigrants are given in North Carolina. She recounts a trip she took to Mexico with the Center for International Understanding. Lastly, Kinnaird describes her frustrations with policies such as 287 (g) and Secure Communities, and her eventual decision to leave the legislature. She thinks the business community must play a key leadership role for attitudes towards immigrants and undocumented workers to ever change in North Carolina.
Source
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University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
Rights
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No restrictions. Open to research.
Date
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08 April 2014
Format
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R0690_Audio.mp3
Publisher
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<a href="http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/19873">University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.</a>
-
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/df08b34dc8e9e7507ed71029f593aab9.mp3
92b3994e3f32da1572d8dd46e1419632
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/c5d2cc8ad50cb1f92af335c6553753aa.pdf
4fef0e9c47c490751f21fa13c79a4978
SOHP Interview - Bilingual
Southern Oral History Program Interview with metadata in English and Spanish
Interview number
Número de entrevista
R-0692
En: Restrictions
Es: Restricciones
No restrictions. Open to research.
Date
Fecha
21 April 2014
Interviewee
Entrevistado/a
Martínez-Gallardo, Cecilia.
En: Interviewee Occupation
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Professors
Interviewee Date of Birth
Fecha de nacimiento del entrevistado
1974
En: Interviewee Gender
Es: Género de entrevistado
Female
Interviewee Place of Origin
Lugar de origen del entrevistado
Mexico
Interviewee Places of Residence
Lugares de residencia del entrevistado
Chapel Hill -- Orange County -- North Carolina
Interviewee Journey Coordinates
POINT(-102 23),1974,1;POINT(-79.05584450000003 35.9131996),2000,2
Interviewer
Entrevistador/a
Brandt, Eric.
En: Language of Interview
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
English
En: Abstract
Es: Abstracto en español
The interview focuses on the political side of the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and international policy within the United States and Mexico. Martinez-Gallardo first covers everything from how the Mexican government works and is organized, in terms of its democratic representation and the history of leadership beginning in the 1980s and moving through NAFTA into the current period. She also talks about the political struggles and shortcomings of working within governmental bodies to pass such a large encompassing bill. Martinez-Gallardo comments the downfalls and shortcomings of the bill including how it was crafted and negotiated, leaving public sentiment and other concerns such as the environment out of the political discussions.
En: Citation
Es: Citación
Interview with Cecilia Martinez-Gallardo by Eric Brandt, 21 April 2014, R-0692, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Reference URL
URL de referencia
http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/19867
Repository
Repositorio
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
En: Themes
Es: Temas
Economics; Labor and employment; Workers' rights and unions
En: Transcript
Es: Transcripción
Eric Brandt: So this is Eric Brandt, I am conducting my fourth interview and today we will be talking about the political side of NAFTA, mainly focusing on the United States and Mexican governments and what goes into such large political movements. So, before we get started, if you would, just introduce yourself, tell a little about your background, your research, and who you are.
Cecilia Martinez-Gallardo: Ya, my name is Cecilia Martinez-Gallardo, I am an assistant professor at UNC in the department of Political science. I studied political institutions in Latin America, particularly in Mexico. I am originally from Mexico and was in Mexico in college when NAFTA was passed. And that’s pretty much it.
EB: Great. So I guess I would like to focus on what goes into such large-scale movements. If we could just go from a beginning standpoint, what does it take to have an international policy as large as NAFTA? What is required for the Mexican government and the United States government to sit together and talk to pass such a large bill?
CMG: I mean the first thing that it takes is for the governments to want to do it. Right? I mean in terms of the history of NAFTA, NAFTA is really inserted in a process of trade liberalization, but kind of a wider sort of liberalization of economics in Mexico and Latin America really. But in Mexico the process started after the 1982 debt crisis. So after the 1982 debt crisis we see a kind of clear movement, especially the government of Miguel de la Madrid we see a clear sort of movement towards the liberalization of the economy. This included other things apart from trade liberalization like international liberalizations, privatization, deregulation, and other sorts of big aspects. The government of Miguel de la Madrid first, in 1982 through 1988, he started, kind of took the first steps toward a policy of trade liberalization that included membership in GATT [General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade] which sort of required some economic changes as well. So it all fed into a process that started in the mid 1982’s of what I said of liberalization. When Miguel de la Madrid’s successor took office, Carlos Salinas, he clearly has a strong preference for liberalization and was chosen because he has a clear kind of intention not only continue the policies of what became known as the neo-liberal agenda, but also because he wanted to sort of take it even further. And so his big project was NAFTA, he took NAFTA to be kind of one of his main signature policy, and as I said, the initial steps were already taken when he took office. The process through which NAFTA was approved involved many things. First it involved the negotiation between the US and Mexico through its trade representative and sort of secretaries of different economic areas of the goverment. And, also negotiations in Mexico were very important between different stakeholders. So the governemnt negotiatied every piece of NAFTA with different stakeholders, importanty big sectors of the business community. So, there were, you know, the traditional smoke filled rooms, where they would sit with the American governemnt and at a negotiation table for each aspect of NAFTA, and in the back room there would be stakeholders, or members of the business community and different affected interests that would negotiate with US at the same time as Mexcio. And that was kind of the process of negotiation. Once the process was negotiatied, certain aspects of it had to be approved in Congress. The parts that needed to be approved in Congress, really the policy processes that normal policy goes through were the least, I would say, important part of the process. In great part because before 1994 the PRI, [Industrial Revolutionary Party] the government party, had a majority in Congress. It is true that in 1988, just when Salinas took office, the government lost its ability to change the constitution unilaterally, so it now took a majority and had to neogitate a certain aspect of its kind of wider economic policy reform agenda with the PAN [National Action Party]. The PAN was the right-wing party that was sort of very sympathetic to their agenda. And so I think that the biggest locks to the process were not the congressional processes, but were negotiating with stake holders. Right? With unions, well unions were sort of a big obstacle although they turned out to not be a big obstacle because unions at that point were not very strong, and certainly not very independent.
EB: Great ya, that was a great summary, so I have a lot of questions stemming off of that—
CMG: Ya I don’t know that I can go that much deeper than, that but I can try.
EB: Well I guess in terms of, so you mentioned there are a lot of negotiations between different parties, the businesses, the union side… how much do think these political institutions take into account the opinion of the business side, or the labor unions, or even public policy?
CMG: Uh can you tell me what you mean by ‘these political institutions’?
EB: So these stakeholders that are in these smoke filled room negotiations, how much do they care what the public opinion thinks?
CMG: Oh, I think very little. I mean I think that the public opinion mattered very very little.
EB: You think that is both in the United States and Mexico?
CMG: I can't tell you so much about the US, I don’t really study US politics or policy making. The kind of principle of politics is that you have to get elected, and to get elected you care about the public, not always on normative grounds but on instrumental grounds, right? If you were going to get elected you need a certain number of votes so you need to cobble together a coalition to gather enough votes to keep governing. That coalition might be conflicted by different interests, and you might try to do policy so those interests are happy with you still. That is sort of the electoral democratic policy making, and in Mexico in 1994 and certainly between 88 and 98 when Salinas took power, electoral politics have become a lot more competitive. The election in ‘88 when Salinas took power was very contested, so he did take power with a really weak mandate, he was oppressive and at that point had this kind of electoral majority so he did have some sense in which he was trying to build the mandate. So, I do think they made a very big effort to sell NAFTA to the Mexican population. That effort however, obviously was not matched by efforts to involve the actual Mexican population in decision making in NAFTA that is a different matter, there were no consultations no referendums, no real sort of mechanisms through which people could really express their opinion. Where there were forms, they were not very deep. The stakeholders that really had their opinions heard, and had a very important part in the process, were special interests like big business, commerce, associations, business associations. And so I think that you know, I don’t know of the proof of it, but something that sort of points to some kind of deep sense of alienation from the Mexican population, you know this, but when NAFTA affected the first generation in 1994 the Zapatista army rebelled in Chiapas, and though this was sort of a minority group, it certainly didn’t reflect the means with which the political process should be thought out. They did in a way receive support from a lot of people that felt alienation from the process. And this alienation was not particular to NAFTA, as policy making in the 1980s was very top down. It was famously technocratic, famously run from the top down, it was very much sort of moved and oiled through personal relationships that had been forged between the US and Mexico and other sort of politicians that studied together in US institutions and very much sort of top down political process that marked those years and NAFTA was certainly an example of that
EB: Ok, great. I guess if we just take a brief step back, could you explain how the Mexican governmental bodies work? How representations within the different states of Mexico are represented, and the congressional bodies?
CMG: Ya, very very similar to the US. Mexico has a separation of power system. So you have the executive, the legislature, and judicial, very much in the same way that the US does it. Its also a federal system like the US so you have the states and in each state you have, again a repeated system of separation of power where you have a governor and you have typically two houses of local congress. To pass a law you have to pass it through the two houses of congress and the president has to either accept it or veto it, so the process is I would say similar. To pass a constitutional reform, which as I say isn’t sort of particularly important in NAFTA, but was for other parts of the neoliberal reform agenda like privatization for example—to pass a constitutional reform you need the approval, special majorities, 2/3 majorities in 2 chambers of congress and the approval of all state legislatures. So it is kind of a higher order, but the process is very similar.
EB: It seems very similar, ya of course. So then you mentioned the public isn’t necessarily as involved as we would hope, though they have to get reelected. Another thing I was interested n, but I'm not sure if you could speak on this—but I have heard, through rumor so to speak, that there are higher levels of corruption or political payoffs in the Mexican government than supposedly in the United States. Do you think this plays a big role in passing bills of this size, or is that maybe for an effect in local issues?
CMG: No I think it certainly does. You know, corruption in Mexico and everywhere happens at very different levels. So you have petty corruption, I don’t know how petty it is, but on the level of bribes or police or one on one like extortion on level of individual, but also you have big systemic corruption, and think that that certainly plays a role in policy making. One person’s corruption is another person’s lobbying right? And so I think in Mexico it is certainly the case that negotiations between big stakeholders happened behind closed doors and under circumstances that were out of the public eye. There were a lot of accusations of changes of privileges, it was a moment in which there was a lot going on. There was a lot to offer and a lot to negotiate and exchange. You have for example processes of very deep deregulation, of course deregulation is selective, you don’t require money necessarily to change hands to have deals that might not be completely honest, let’s say. You might have situations in which benefits in the law might be exchanged for changes in regulation schemes or stuff like that. You know privatization was also happening at the same time, and all of these things were part of the package. So there was the sense in Mexico and Latin America that the process especially of divestiture of the economy, and especially privatization, and in part the negotiation of NAFTA and other things, happened in a way that was outside of public scrutiny. So though in NAFTA in particular, I'm not saying I have evidence or anything, but people sort of felt this insular policy making outside of public eye gave opportunity for politicians and stakeholders to exchange favors and privileges outside of public scrutiny.
EB: So we don’t have to direct this just to NAFTA, but who would be benefiting? Is it the business that would pay to bring business from the United States.. or who saw the benefits here?
CMG: Well there are certain economic, you spoke about economics of NAFTA before, so as you know NAFTA is a very very technical very complex set of regulations that had some of its main goals to increase trade in certain areas, right? Especially by eliminating barriers to trade that had existed for many years. NAFTA eliminated many sequentially, and over time. But the idea was to increase the exchange of goods and services. Who benefited? I mean a lot of the details of the law really created a lot of winners and losers. Which businesses were regulated? What order were they regulated in? Which businesses managed to keep their, for example, tariffs? All of these things kind of created a massive web of winners and losers. And so even within industry and business there were industries that were the big winners and compared to other industries. The big billboard loser right was corn. So that was kind of a big loser, but there were tons of other industries that were big winners. It was a very very intricate web of winners and losers that was created even within industry. And so the question for people at that moment and still now, did Mexico lose in terms of the environment or environmental impacts and also sort of workers, did Mexican workers kind of get shorter end of stick? And which industries have benefited or not? These are question that are still kind of certainly open to question. But it certainly did create an intricate web of winners and losers.
EB: So you just briefly mentioned at the end the environmental and labor negatives, which are probably the largest at least from my point of view. Do you know if the Mexican government has bodies such as the EPA or environmentally regulatory agencies? Because I have heard that the regulation is less stringent.
CMG: Ya regulation is not great. Environmental regulations are not great. There has been a lot of pressure, not only from environmental focus, but also from certain businesses and also from international dynamics that have put on more pressure. I think there has been a big effort to change some of these regulations in the past perhaps 10-15 years. So there has been some kind of regulation that has been passed, but I do think that it still remains an area of a lot of concern.
EB: So compared to the United States, this may be an opinion, but would you say the Mexican government from a policy standpoint is as slow moving at the American government?
CMG: I mean ya, I would say definitely. I would say, I mean, in the last, since 1997, NAFTA was passed in 94, since 1997 Mexico has had divided government every single year, so divided government is a fact of life every year. Competition has increased, participation has increased, and divided government has made the Mexican government incredibly slow moving, as you would say in terms of policy. Reform last year has seen a massive amount of policy change and performance that have been done in part because of a reaction to this decades long situation of divided government. When NAFTA was passed though, we have to remember that the PRI still had majorities in both houses of congress. It couldn’t pass constitutional reform, but had swift majority in most of the states and it passed a lot of this reform agenda with the PAN of the right wing. And so then it wasn’t as difficult, then it was actually, passing NAFTA wasn’t… you know the roadblocks were activist and people protesting, more sort of grass roots opposition, but really the PRD the left wing party which was most opposed to the reforms really didn’t have a form from which to oppose them in any sort of significant way. Then policy was easier to pass. It’s just hard to think something like NAFTA could be passed now. Although as I said the last year has seen an explosion of various policy reforms.
EB: Ya so I find it interesting looking at the change of governments going forward and moving throughout. I read somewhere briefly that there was a political coalition in Mexico the Broad progressive front, and that was sort of a center left, leftist coalition founded in 2006 which the labor party, the citizens movement. So you mentioned the last year it has changed a lot, has it been a gradual movement towards this? I'm not completely familiar with how these coalitions work, but how to they affect government?
CMG: No, but to be clear the coalition, the Frente Amplio Progresista was a coalition of political parties that first formed, that had a center the PRD, the left wing party. So Mexico has historically three large parties, the PRI which ruled for 70 odd years was the dominant party till 2000, then the PAN a center right party which governed between 2000-2012, and then the left wing, the PRD which was founded as split from PRI in 1988 which was a coalition of parties founded in 1989. That part of the PRD, the center left party, coalesced with other parties to present as a candidate and create the Frente Amplio Progresista. The leader has since left the party and created a movement, a different party, and the PRD remains the PRD. That is kind of the political competition. Really the change in the last years in terms of policy reform has been that the PRI came back to power and their strategy when they came back was to create a kind of broad negotiation table between the three main parties in which they agreed and were for the precedent of power [CMG’s Phone starts to ring in background, interview is paused for a moment as she speaks]. So I think that as I said, after many years of divided government, the PRI strategy was to create a negotiating table, what they called the structural reforms, that kind of a lot of experts and analysts considered were necessary to move the Mexican economy forward. These were education and tele-communication, engineer, political reform, and were reforms that were passed with the support on some occasions from the left, on some from the right, but the have broken the imbalance, whether good or bad is a discussion for another day. But they broke the impass in terms of policy reform.
EB: Great, I guess kind of shifting the conversation a tiny bit, I saw you also did a little bit of research on the correlation between he economic situation and the accountability for scandal, I think that was how it was phrased. Could this apply at all to Mexico and NAFTA? I know NAFTA increased the GDP of Mexico was this almost an effort to remove, totally opinion, but to reduce accountability from all the building political corruption and negative sentiment of the government?
CMG: I think it’s completely unrelated. I think that NAFTA was passed because the people who passed it president Salinas and Miguel de la Madrid before him and the people in power believed that that was the way forward for both the economy of the country and for party. They strongly believed that the party, to survive, had to change the economic reform program. A lot of them did both things as they saw. It allowed them to become dominant within the party to eliminate the left wing of the PRI, and so politically it was important for them. But mostly they believed that that was the [phone ring again] way forward. It’s important to remember also that the change in policy in 1980s that led to NAFTA is a change that sort of responded to crises in a global context. So the 1982 debt crisis led not only Mexico, but also countries in Latin America to turn to the IMF structural adjustment program in order to bridge the payment prices. The debt crisis, these were conditional of certain reforms, and this conditionality kind of coincided with a wave or change in the kind of focus of US in Mexico and other places seeing the shortcomings of the economic development program that had been there until then. The views had changed to more open markets, freeing markets and liberalizing trade. So they didn’t just wake up and say oh lets to NAFTA, this is something that had been building since the 1980s. And it was part of a trend and requirements of the IMF structural adjustment programs that it also kind of coincided with a change I mean, Reagan and Thatcher take power, thinking of 79 and 81,.. you know this was a global trend toward people believing in a different type of economic orthodoxy. Mexico wasn’t alone in this at all it was part of a global trend toward seeing the liberalization of trade as kind of part of a new economic orthodoxy. So I think, you know, that that was a big part of it. They also saw it as politically convenient because they thought that in the measure it was successful it would allow them to take the upper hand within the party so they could continue to dominate politics. As it turns out the 1994 crisis really eliminated a lot of the gains they had through the negotiations of NAFTA and the big kind of publicity around the world of president Salinas’s economic program. In 1994 a lot of these gains were eliminated. And we know what happened; just one term later they lost power for the first time in over 70 years. So politically it didn’t quite turn out the way they had wished.
EB: then I guess kind of as we look forward in the discussion, do you think that a bill such as NAFTA, maybe not specifically, but something hat large scale of free trade policy, is something that would be continued into the future? Or do you think this was kind of a moment in history and moving forward things are going to change? Or politically are we going to renew these agreements?
CMG: I'm not sure what you mean, that this type of big policy or NAFTA itself?
EB: So I usually say, do you think NAFTA will continue on for the next 50 years?
CMG: Ya I definitely think so. I mean, I think it will change in nature, I think the environment will become imperative and a lot of the under negotiated aspects of the environment will come to the floor and as stakeholders change over in power part of the agreement might be renegotiated. But I do not see NAFTA being overturned. I think that free trade has a dynamic, a logic of its own. I don’t see free trade not being the baseline. You know, free trade, we have to remember it is not always free. It is negotiated; it is full or regulations, full of things. So it is important to remember those regulations, and the extent of which the regulations are put on some products and not others. I think that might change for sure. But I just don’t see the idea of systematic relationship between the US and Mexico and Canada in terms of trade, I don’t see that disappearing
EB: And then I have to ask the tough question I ask everyone. So there are many negatives of NAFTA of course the environment, the labor, the relationships. If you could go back in this time, would you have supported NAFTA and pushed for approval or said this is not the best idea at the moment?
CMG: I mean I was in college at that point and I didn’t support NAFTA then. But I didn’t support it not because I didn’t think it was a good idea to talk about trade, I didn’t support it because I thought it was being negotiated with, as I said before, without an eye towards the most vulnerable groups including the environment, which I saw as a big weakness. Kind of, maybe years on, I still believe the same thing. I mean I think the trade relations and regulation, the trade relations between the 3 countries is something that I support, and is something with a good idea, something natural, something that is interrupted by the artificial creation of borders. But that’s not true if we think about our relationship as integral and organic. I do still think that negotiations over NAFTA should be done in more democratic ways, and the environment should be more important, and workers should play a very central role in the negotiations.
EB: Is that realistic?
CMG: It is realistic in the sense that as long as politics both in the US and Mexico are driven by money it is kind of hard to see how that is going to be the case. But its realistic in the sense that I think that that should be, I think it’s a realistic expectation of the democratic policy. It might not be the case because when we think of the obstacles of political competition and citizens expressing voices and voices being heard, they are vague in Mexico and in the US, so there are big obstacles. But hopefully obstacles that you know can be overcome.
EB: And I guess kind of finally, I know you have also done a lot of research in different Latin American countries, do you foresee or recommend, or what are your opinions on US political interaction or partnerships with other Latin American countries? It works with Mexico currently, is this something that could be expanded through Central America?
CMG: I don’t have an opinion on that in this sense, I mean its not that I don’t have an opinion, I just think its not something that is going to happen. If you mean a trade agreement like NAFTA, the US has many trade agreements with many Latin American Countries. Bilateral and multilateral agreements like CAFTA are an essential part of US foreign trade policy, and will continue to be and continue to expand those relationships. I think NAFTA, the size of the three economies and closeness makes it a very specific particular kind of agreement. I don’t think it will be repeated just because there are no 3 countries with the same relationship. The expansion of trade agreements between the US and other parts of the world, not only Latin American is inevitable and in the US’s best interest, so it’s going to continue to happen for sure.
EB: Great, I think I covered basically everything on my list.
CMG: Great.
EB: Do you have anything you would like to add or say before we end?
CMG: No, nothing. It was a very interesting topic
EB: Ok well thank you for your time, I appreciate it.
Es: Restricciones
Sin restricciones. Abierta para investigación.
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Profesores
Es: Género de entrevistado
Mujer
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
Inglés
Es: Resumen
Esta entrevista se enfoca en los aspectos políticos del Tratado de Libre Comercio de America del Norte (TLCAN) y la política internacional entre los Estados Unidos y México. Martinez-Gallardo primero cubre desde cómo funciona el gobierno mexicano y cómo está organizado, en términos de su representación democrática y su historia de liderazgo comenzando en la década de 1980, a través de TLCAN, hasta el período actual. Ella también habla sobre las luchas políticas y las limitaciones de trabajar dentro de instituciones gubernamentales para pasar acuerdos tan grandes. Martinez-Gallardo comenta sobre el declive y los defectos del tratado, incluyendo cómo fue creado y negociado, dejando a la opinión pública y otras preocupaciones sobre el medio ambiente fuera de la discusión política.
Es: Citación
Entrevista con Cecilia Martinez-Gallardo por Eric Brandt, 21 Abril 2014, R-0692, en Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, Universidad de Carolina del Norte en Chapel Hill.
Es: Temas
Economía; Trabajo y empleo; Derechos de los trabajadores y sindicatos
Es: Transcripción
Eric Brandt: So this is Eric Brandt, I am conducting my fourth interview and today we will be talking about the political side of NAFTA, mainly focusing on the United States and Mexican governments and what goes into such large political movements. So, before we get started, if you would, just introduce yourself, tell a little about your background, your research, and who you are.
Cecilia Martinez-Gallardo: Ya, my name is Cecilia Martinez-Gallardo, I am an assistant professor at UNC in the department of Political science. I studied political institutions in Latin America, particularly in Mexico. I am originally from Mexico and was in Mexico in college when NAFTA was passed. And that’s pretty much it.
EB: Great. So I guess I would like to focus on what goes into such large-scale movements. If we could just go from a beginning standpoint, what does it take to have an international policy as large as NAFTA? What is required for the Mexican government and the United States government to sit together and talk to pass such a large bill?
CMG: I mean the first thing that it takes is for the governments to want to do it. Right? I mean in terms of the history of NAFTA, NAFTA is really inserted in a process of trade liberalization, but kind of a wider sort of liberalization of economics in Mexico and Latin America really. But in Mexico the process started after the 1982 debt crisis. So after the 1982 debt crisis we see a kind of clear movement, especially the government of Miguel de la Madrid we see a clear sort of movement towards the liberalization of the economy. This included other things apart from trade liberalization like international liberalizations, privatization, deregulation, and other sorts of big aspects. The government of Miguel de la Madrid first, in 1982 through 1988, he started, kind of took the first steps toward a policy of trade liberalization that included membership in GATT [General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade] which sort of required some economic changes as well. So it all fed into a process that started in the mid 1982’s of what I said of liberalization. When Miguel de la Madrid’s successor took office, Carlos Salinas, he clearly has a strong preference for liberalization and was chosen because he has a clear kind of intention not only continue the policies of what became known as the neo-liberal agenda, but also because he wanted to sort of take it even further. And so his big project was NAFTA, he took NAFTA to be kind of one of his main signature policy, and as I said, the initial steps were already taken when he took office. The process through which NAFTA was approved involved many things. First it involved the negotiation between the US and Mexico through its trade representative and sort of secretaries of different economic areas of the goverment. And, also negotiations in Mexico were very important between different stakeholders. So the governemnt negotiatied every piece of NAFTA with different stakeholders, importanty big sectors of the business community. So, there were, you know, the traditional smoke filled rooms, where they would sit with the American governemnt and at a negotiation table for each aspect of NAFTA, and in the back room there would be stakeholders, or members of the business community and different affected interests that would negotiate with US at the same time as Mexcio. And that was kind of the process of negotiation. Once the process was negotiatied, certain aspects of it had to be approved in Congress. The parts that needed to be approved in Congress, really the policy processes that normal policy goes through were the least, I would say, important part of the process. In great part because before 1994 the PRI, [Industrial Revolutionary Party] the government party, had a majority in Congress. It is true that in 1988, just when Salinas took office, the government lost its ability to change the constitution unilaterally, so it now took a majority and had to neogitate a certain aspect of its kind of wider economic policy reform agenda with the PAN [National Action Party]. The PAN was the right-wing party that was sort of very sympathetic to their agenda. And so I think that the biggest locks to the process were not the congressional processes, but were negotiating with stake holders. Right? With unions, well unions were sort of a big obstacle although they turned out to not be a big obstacle because unions at that point were not very strong, and certainly not very independent.
EB: Great ya, that was a great summary, so I have a lot of questions stemming off of that—
CMG: Ya I don’t know that I can go that much deeper than, that but I can try.
EB: Well I guess in terms of, so you mentioned there are a lot of negotiations between different parties, the businesses, the union side… how much do think these political institutions take into account the opinion of the business side, or the labor unions, or even public policy?
CMG: Uh can you tell me what you mean by ‘these political institutions’?
EB: So these stakeholders that are in these smoke filled room negotiations, how much do they care what the public opinion thinks?
CMG: Oh, I think very little. I mean I think that the public opinion mattered very very little.
EB: You think that is both in the United States and Mexico?
CMG: I can't tell you so much about the US, I don’t really study US politics or policy making. The kind of principle of politics is that you have to get elected, and to get elected you care about the public, not always on normative grounds but on instrumental grounds, right? If you were going to get elected you need a certain number of votes so you need to cobble together a coalition to gather enough votes to keep governing. That coalition might be conflicted by different interests, and you might try to do policy so those interests are happy with you still. That is sort of the electoral democratic policy making, and in Mexico in 1994 and certainly between 88 and 98 when Salinas took power, electoral politics have become a lot more competitive. The election in ‘88 when Salinas took power was very contested, so he did take power with a really weak mandate, he was oppressive and at that point had this kind of electoral majority so he did have some sense in which he was trying to build the mandate. So, I do think they made a very big effort to sell NAFTA to the Mexican population. That effort however, obviously was not matched by efforts to involve the actual Mexican population in decision making in NAFTA that is a different matter, there were no consultations no referendums, no real sort of mechanisms through which people could really express their opinion. Where there were forms, they were not very deep. The stakeholders that really had their opinions heard, and had a very important part in the process, were special interests like big business, commerce, associations, business associations. And so I think that you know, I don’t know of the proof of it, but something that sort of points to some kind of deep sense of alienation from the Mexican population, you know this, but when NAFTA affected the first generation in 1994 the Zapatista army rebelled in Chiapas, and though this was sort of a minority group, it certainly didn’t reflect the means with which the political process should be thought out. They did in a way receive support from a lot of people that felt alienation from the process. And this alienation was not particular to NAFTA, as policy making in the 1980s was very top down. It was famously technocratic, famously run from the top down, it was very much sort of moved and oiled through personal relationships that had been forged between the US and Mexico and other sort of politicians that studied together in US institutions and very much sort of top down political process that marked those years and NAFTA was certainly an example of that
EB: Ok, great. I guess if we just take a brief step back, could you explain how the Mexican governmental bodies work? How representations within the different states of Mexico are represented, and the congressional bodies?
CMG: Ya, very very similar to the US. Mexico has a separation of power system. So you have the executive, the legislature, and judicial, very much in the same way that the US does it. Its also a federal system like the US so you have the states and in each state you have, again a repeated system of separation of power where you have a governor and you have typically two houses of local congress. To pass a law you have to pass it through the two houses of congress and the president has to either accept it or veto it, so the process is I would say similar. To pass a constitutional reform, which as I say isn’t sort of particularly important in NAFTA, but was for other parts of the neoliberal reform agenda like privatization for example—to pass a constitutional reform you need the approval, special majorities, 2/3 majorities in 2 chambers of congress and the approval of all state legislatures. So it is kind of a higher order, but the process is very similar.
EB: It seems very similar, ya of course. So then you mentioned the public isn’t necessarily as involved as we would hope, though they have to get reelected. Another thing I was interested n, but I'm not sure if you could speak on this—but I have heard, through rumor so to speak, that there are higher levels of corruption or political payoffs in the Mexican government than supposedly in the United States. Do you think this plays a big role in passing bills of this size, or is that maybe for an effect in local issues?
CMG: No I think it certainly does. You know, corruption in Mexico and everywhere happens at very different levels. So you have petty corruption, I don’t know how petty it is, but on the level of bribes or police or one on one like extortion on level of individual, but also you have big systemic corruption, and think that that certainly plays a role in policy making. One person’s corruption is another person’s lobbying right? And so I think in Mexico it is certainly the case that negotiations between big stakeholders happened behind closed doors and under circumstances that were out of the public eye. There were a lot of accusations of changes of privileges, it was a moment in which there was a lot going on. There was a lot to offer and a lot to negotiate and exchange. You have for example processes of very deep deregulation, of course deregulation is selective, you don’t require money necessarily to change hands to have deals that might not be completely honest, let’s say. You might have situations in which benefits in the law might be exchanged for changes in regulation schemes or stuff like that. You know privatization was also happening at the same time, and all of these things were part of the package. So there was the sense in Mexico and Latin America that the process especially of divestiture of the economy, and especially privatization, and in part the negotiation of NAFTA and other things, happened in a way that was outside of public scrutiny. So though in NAFTA in particular, I'm not saying I have evidence or anything, but people sort of felt this insular policy making outside of public eye gave opportunity for politicians and stakeholders to exchange favors and privileges outside of public scrutiny.
EB: So we don’t have to direct this just to NAFTA, but who would be benefiting? Is it the business that would pay to bring business from the United States.. or who saw the benefits here?
CMG: Well there are certain economic, you spoke about economics of NAFTA before, so as you know NAFTA is a very very technical very complex set of regulations that had some of its main goals to increase trade in certain areas, right? Especially by eliminating barriers to trade that had existed for many years. NAFTA eliminated many sequentially, and over time. But the idea was to increase the exchange of goods and services. Who benefited? I mean a lot of the details of the law really created a lot of winners and losers. Which businesses were regulated? What order were they regulated in? Which businesses managed to keep their, for example, tariffs? All of these things kind of created a massive web of winners and losers. And so even within industry and business there were industries that were the big winners and compared to other industries. The big billboard loser right was corn. So that was kind of a big loser, but there were tons of other industries that were big winners. It was a very very intricate web of winners and losers that was created even within industry. And so the question for people at that moment and still now, did Mexico lose in terms of the environment or environmental impacts and also sort of workers, did Mexican workers kind of get shorter end of stick? And which industries have benefited or not? These are question that are still kind of certainly open to question. But it certainly did create an intricate web of winners and losers.
EB: So you just briefly mentioned at the end the environmental and labor negatives, which are probably the largest at least from my point of view. Do you know if the Mexican government has bodies such as the EPA or environmentally regulatory agencies? Because I have heard that the regulation is less stringent.
CMG: Ya regulation is not great. Environmental regulations are not great. There has been a lot of pressure, not only from environmental focus, but also from certain businesses and also from international dynamics that have put on more pressure. I think there has been a big effort to change some of these regulations in the past perhaps 10-15 years. So there has been some kind of regulation that has been passed, but I do think that it still remains an area of a lot of concern.
EB: So compared to the United States, this may be an opinion, but would you say the Mexican government from a policy standpoint is as slow moving at the American government?
CMG: I mean ya, I would say definitely. I would say, I mean, in the last, since 1997, NAFTA was passed in 94, since 1997 Mexico has had divided government every single year, so divided government is a fact of life every year. Competition has increased, participation has increased, and divided government has made the Mexican government incredibly slow moving, as you would say in terms of policy. Reform last year has seen a massive amount of policy change and performance that have been done in part because of a reaction to this decades long situation of divided government. When NAFTA was passed though, we have to remember that the PRI still had majorities in both houses of congress. It couldn’t pass constitutional reform, but had swift majority in most of the states and it passed a lot of this reform agenda with the PAN of the right wing. And so then it wasn’t as difficult, then it was actually, passing NAFTA wasn’t… you know the roadblocks were activist and people protesting, more sort of grass roots opposition, but really the PRD the left wing party which was most opposed to the reforms really didn’t have a form from which to oppose them in any sort of significant way. Then policy was easier to pass. It’s just hard to think something like NAFTA could be passed now. Although as I said the last year has seen an explosion of various policy reforms.
EB: Ya so I find it interesting looking at the change of governments going forward and moving throughout. I read somewhere briefly that there was a political coalition in Mexico the Broad progressive front, and that was sort of a center left, leftist coalition founded in 2006 which the labor party, the citizens movement. So you mentioned the last year it has changed a lot, has it been a gradual movement towards this? I'm not completely familiar with how these coalitions work, but how to they affect government?
CMG: No, but to be clear the coalition, the Frente Amplio Progresista was a coalition of political parties that first formed, that had a center the PRD, the left wing party. So Mexico has historically three large parties, the PRI which ruled for 70 odd years was the dominant party till 2000, then the PAN a center right party which governed between 2000-2012, and then the left wing, the PRD which was founded as split from PRI in 1988 which was a coalition of parties founded in 1989. That part of the PRD, the center left party, coalesced with other parties to present as a candidate and create the Frente Amplio Progresista. The leader has since left the party and created a movement, a different party, and the PRD remains the PRD. That is kind of the political competition. Really the change in the last years in terms of policy reform has been that the PRI came back to power and their strategy when they came back was to create a kind of broad negotiation table between the three main parties in which they agreed and were for the precedent of power [CMG’s Phone starts to ring in background, interview is paused for a moment as she speaks]. So I think that as I said, after many years of divided government, the PRI strategy was to create a negotiating table, what they called the structural reforms, that kind of a lot of experts and analysts considered were necessary to move the Mexican economy forward. These were education and tele-communication, engineer, political reform, and were reforms that were passed with the support on some occasions from the left, on some from the right, but the have broken the imbalance, whether good or bad is a discussion for another day. But they broke the impass in terms of policy reform.
EB: Great, I guess kind of shifting the conversation a tiny bit, I saw you also did a little bit of research on the correlation between he economic situation and the accountability for scandal, I think that was how it was phrased. Could this apply at all to Mexico and NAFTA? I know NAFTA increased the GDP of Mexico was this almost an effort to remove, totally opinion, but to reduce accountability from all the building political corruption and negative sentiment of the government?
CMG: I think it’s completely unrelated. I think that NAFTA was passed because the people who passed it president Salinas and Miguel de la Madrid before him and the people in power believed that that was the way forward for both the economy of the country and for party. They strongly believed that the party, to survive, had to change the economic reform program. A lot of them did both things as they saw. It allowed them to become dominant within the party to eliminate the left wing of the PRI, and so politically it was important for them. But mostly they believed that that was the [phone ring again] way forward. It’s important to remember also that the change in policy in 1980s that led to NAFTA is a change that sort of responded to crises in a global context. So the 1982 debt crisis led not only Mexico, but also countries in Latin America to turn to the IMF structural adjustment program in order to bridge the payment prices. The debt crisis, these were conditional of certain reforms, and this conditionality kind of coincided with a wave or change in the kind of focus of US in Mexico and other places seeing the shortcomings of the economic development program that had been there until then. The views had changed to more open markets, freeing markets and liberalizing trade. So they didn’t just wake up and say oh lets to NAFTA, this is something that had been building since the 1980s. And it was part of a trend and requirements of the IMF structural adjustment programs that it also kind of coincided with a change I mean, Reagan and Thatcher take power, thinking of 79 and 81,.. you know this was a global trend toward people believing in a different type of economic orthodoxy. Mexico wasn’t alone in this at all it was part of a global trend toward seeing the liberalization of trade as kind of part of a new economic orthodoxy. So I think, you know, that that was a big part of it. They also saw it as politically convenient because they thought that in the measure it was successful it would allow them to take the upper hand within the party so they could continue to dominate politics. As it turns out the 1994 crisis really eliminated a lot of the gains they had through the negotiations of NAFTA and the big kind of publicity around the world of president Salinas’s economic program. In 1994 a lot of these gains were eliminated. And we know what happened; just one term later they lost power for the first time in over 70 years. So politically it didn’t quite turn out the way they had wished.
EB: then I guess kind of as we look forward in the discussion, do you think that a bill such as NAFTA, maybe not specifically, but something hat large scale of free trade policy, is something that would be continued into the future? Or do you think this was kind of a moment in history and moving forward things are going to change? Or politically are we going to renew these agreements?
CMG: I'm not sure what you mean, that this type of big policy or NAFTA itself?
EB: So I usually say, do you think NAFTA will continue on for the next 50 years?
CMG: Ya I definitely think so. I mean, I think it will change in nature, I think the environment will become imperative and a lot of the under negotiated aspects of the environment will come to the floor and as stakeholders change over in power part of the agreement might be renegotiated. But I do not see NAFTA being overturned. I think that free trade has a dynamic, a logic of its own. I don’t see free trade not being the baseline. You know, free trade, we have to remember it is not always free. It is negotiated; it is full or regulations, full of things. So it is important to remember those regulations, and the extent of which the regulations are put on some products and not others. I think that might change for sure. But I just don’t see the idea of systematic relationship between the US and Mexico and Canada in terms of trade, I don’t see that disappearing
EB: And then I have to ask the tough question I ask everyone. So there are many negatives of NAFTA of course the environment, the labor, the relationships. If you could go back in this time, would you have supported NAFTA and pushed for approval or said this is not the best idea at the moment?
CMG: I mean I was in college at that point and I didn’t support NAFTA then. But I didn’t support it not because I didn’t think it was a good idea to talk about trade, I didn’t support it because I thought it was being negotiated with, as I said before, without an eye towards the most vulnerable groups including the environment, which I saw as a big weakness. Kind of, maybe years on, I still believe the same thing. I mean I think the trade relations and regulation, the trade relations between the 3 countries is something that I support, and is something with a good idea, something natural, something that is interrupted by the artificial creation of borders. But that’s not true if we think about our relationship as integral and organic. I do still think that negotiations over NAFTA should be done in more democratic ways, and the environment should be more important, and workers should play a very central role in the negotiations.
EB: Is that realistic?
CMG: It is realistic in the sense that as long as politics both in the US and Mexico are driven by money it is kind of hard to see how that is going to be the case. But its realistic in the sense that I think that that should be, I think it’s a realistic expectation of the democratic policy. It might not be the case because when we think of the obstacles of political competition and citizens expressing voices and voices being heard, they are vague in Mexico and in the US, so there are big obstacles. But hopefully obstacles that you know can be overcome.
EB: And I guess kind of finally, I know you have also done a lot of research in different Latin American countries, do you foresee or recommend, or what are your opinions on US political interaction or partnerships with other Latin American countries? It works with Mexico currently, is this something that could be expanded through Central America?
CMG: I don’t have an opinion on that in this sense, I mean its not that I don’t have an opinion, I just think its not something that is going to happen. If you mean a trade agreement like NAFTA, the US has many trade agreements with many Latin American Countries. Bilateral and multilateral agreements like CAFTA are an essential part of US foreign trade policy, and will continue to be and continue to expand those relationships. I think NAFTA, the size of the three economies and closeness makes it a very specific particular kind of agreement. I don’t think it will be repeated just because there are no 3 countries with the same relationship. The expansion of trade agreements between the US and other parts of the world, not only Latin American is inevitable and in the US’s best interest, so it’s going to continue to happen for sure.
EB: Great, I think I covered basically everything on my list.
CMG: Great.
EB: Do you have anything you would like to add or say before we end?
CMG: No, nothing. It was a very interesting topic
EB: Ok well thank you for your time, I appreciate it.
Dublin Core
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Title
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R-0692 -- Martínez-Gallardo, Cecilia.
Description
An account of the resource
The interview focuses on the political side of the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and international policy within the United States and Mexico. Martinez-Gallardo first covers everything from how the Mexican government works and is organized, in terms of its democratic representation and the history of leadership beginning in the 1980s and moving through NAFTA into the current period. She also talks about the political struggles and shortcomings of working within governmental bodies to pass such a large encompassing bill. Martinez-Gallardo comments the downfalls and shortcomings of the bill including how it was crafted and negotiated, leaving public sentiment and other concerns such as the environment out of the political discussions.
Source
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University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
Rights
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No restrictions. Open to research.
Date
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21 April 2014
Format
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R0692_Audio.mp3
Publisher
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<a href="http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/19867">University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.</a>
-
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/9db82b67e9712312c10d7ff69ae94622.mp3
a9aaeafa75afdad297e6c8fe89dd78b0
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/f7db1963ab64b3463278992c522e5535.pdf
31ae3ee7ae5bcb3f515e0350726c6f5a
SOHP Interview - Bilingual
Southern Oral History Program Interview with metadata in English and Spanish
Interview number
Número de entrevista
R-0685
En: Restrictions
Es: Restricciones
No restrictions. Open to research.
Date
Fecha
06 April 2014
Interviewee
Entrevistado/a
Ford, Joshua.
En: Interviewee Occupation
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Students Consultants
En: Interviewee Gender
Es: Género de entrevistado
Male
Interviewer
Entrevistador/a
Brandt, Eric.
En: Language of Interview
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
English
En: Abstract
Es: Abstracto en español
This interview with Joshua Ford focuses on his personal two-year experience living and working in Mexico City. The interview explores Ford's work through the Fulbright scholarship, where he assisted Mexican entrepreneurs through Endeavor, a company that serves to connect Mexican entrepreneurs with powerful business mentors from across Mexico and the United States. Through the interview, Brandt continually questions what Ford found and believes to be necessary for Mexican entrepreneurs and start-ups to be successful. Through the lens of The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the interviewer, Eric Brandt, attempts to figure out where and how Mexico could move beyond its industrial independence on the United States for jobs, and how Mexico could further promote local businesses to create in-house jobs to employ Mexican labor under Mexican management. Also, by examining NAFTA through an economical, entrepreneurial lens, Ford appeared to maintain a relatively positive opinion and outlook concerning NAFTA’s original goals and to-date accomplishments. Interestingly, Ford seemed to support Mexico's involvement in NAFTA, and even mentions that he believes NAFTA benefits Mexico more than it benefits the United States. His biggest concern with NAFTA was the American labor loss of bargaining power, followed closely by labor concerns within Mexico, that he then expands upon by saying he believes the creation of numerous jobs in Mexico potentially positively outweighs the negative labor and exploitative wage consequences. Ford seemed very proud of the Mexican entrepreneurs using NAFTA to help themselves grow, and seemed to favor NAFTA’s ability to promote trade within the United States and Mexico for all parties, though especially for small businesses.
En: Citation
Es: Citación
Interview with Joshua Ford by Eric Brandt, 06 April 2014, R-0685, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Reference URL
URL de referencia
http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/19852
Repository
Repositorio
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
En: Themes
Es: Temas
Economics; Labor and employment; Workers' rights and unions
En: Transcript
Es: Transcripción
Eric Brandt: This is Eric Brandt recording Joshua Ford on my NAFTA Oral History Project. Josh if you could just introduce yourself and give a tiny bit of background on who you are and your experience with Mexico and NAFTA.
Josh Ford: Sure, so my name is Josh Ford, I went to Mexico for the first time in 2009 for a class trip and then went and did a Fulbright year there, which was last year, so the 2012-2013 academic year. I was working fulltime for an entrepreneurial accelerator there and taking MBA classes at the local business school in Mexico City. So I got to kind of see first hand the business world and the effects that NAFTA has on the business world there.
EB: So what specifically were you doing with this startup, and how did you get involved?
JF: Sure, so actually my Fulbright scholarship was created after NAFTA was signed and the idea—so it’s the only Fulbright scholarship that is for business people, that want to go and work for business. So there are some PhD programs that study in business, but this was the only one where you are actually working in a business. So you work full time for a company and the Fulbright sets up all these different companies. Some of them are American companies operating in Mexico, and some companies are [server handed me my food and brief inaudible sentence] Mexican companies that obviously are operating in Mexico. If you receive this Fulbright, they will kind of go through a matching process where you interview with ones that you are interested in and kind of rank which ones you like and which ones that like you. So I was just matched up with this accelerator, and the accelerator is actually a US based accelerator that operates in different emerging countries, and so Mexico was just one of those countries.
EB: Why were you so interested in Mexico going into this?
JF: I think for me, a lot of it really does have to do with NAFTA but Mexico is a phenomenal place that is very strategic to the US. You know politically obviously [server brings Josh his food “You guys enjoy your meal alright…” “Thank you” “… if you guys need anything my name is Maui, just let me know” “OK Great, thank you” is heard] so, you know being so close to the United States and sharing a border that is thousands of miles long… but also from a business point of view, it is a huge market that is growing, a middle class that is growing. So not only are they able to provide us with goods at cheaper prices, but they are also a very solid market for us to sell to. You know they have a lot of consumers now, and really any big company that is operating internationally has to be operating in Mexico.
EB: So I guess right from the beginning you mentioned [the program] was created by NAFTA. Could you see the American influence within Mexico City from all aspects, or where did you see almost the American business connection most clearly, so to speak?
JF: Ya I mean I think, you know obviously America is probably the dominant country in terms of business in the world. And so like I said really any big company that you can think of operates in Mexico and has a very large presence, and so for example… kind of just a weird fun fact—Mexicans consume more Coca-Cola products than anywhere in the world per capita, so especially in a city like Mexico City that is so big, there are parts when you definitely feel like you are in America. There are all the American brands, and you go to the mall and its all American restaurants and TGIF and McDonalds and all that stuff. And so I think that has definitely skyrocketed since NAFTA. I think some of those things were there, but I think NAFTA has really promoted that more.
EB: Feel free to eat too. Cool, so you mentioned that you stayed in Mexico City, did you have, was your experience focused only in Mexico City, or were you able to compare situations in more rural communities?
JF: Ya that’s a good question. So, I had the opportunity to travel a lot, more for my own benefit than for work. That was part of the cultural aspect of the Fulbright of trying to really understand the country and all its different areas. So I think Mexico City obviously is the most, has the biggest influence from American side, just because it’s the capital city. I think Monterrey, in the north, is definitely, its kind of the manufacturing area, so a lot of factories are there from American companies, a lot of car companies. Actually there has been a trend recently to move things back to Mexico from Japan or China, especially China really because those prices and gas prices have increased really, so getting those products back from China costs more money, and labor costs have gone up in China. So now it’s almost cheaper and easier to manage to bring that back to Mexico.
EB: Would you say that ability to move back to Mexico is kind of a direct result of NAFTA because without free trade perhaps these businesses couldn’t go back from Southeast Asia?
JF: Ya for sure. I think free trade definitely helps that and keeps you know taxes and stuff like that really low on these companies. And ya, I would say if something else other than NAFTA was in place we might not be seeing that. But I think it’s a good thing for companies and certainly for Mexico
EB: So I was going to ask, do you think it’s a good thing that NAFTA allows companies to come back to Mexico, instead of outsourcing to Southeast Asia? I guess from a Mexican standpoint and from an American standpoint?
JF: Ya I mean I think from a Mexican standpoint it certainly does, it creates a lot of jobs and decent paying jobs and helps grow that middle class that they are trying to grow. I think from an American perspective you know you really want those jobs in America and not Mexico, but I do think at least from a business perspective, you know if I’m running a company and I want to make sure quality assurance or if something goes wrong, it’s so much easier to get to Mexico and I can fly to Mexico for the day and come back at night and I can go very easily, than jump across the world and have a 15 hour flight and be in a completely different time zone. So from that point of view its much much easier to operate out of Mexico.
EB: Ok, what about, I guess almost staying within the Asia comparison vein, do you think bringing factories back to Mexico has a better labor conditions than keeping them in Asia or do you think both of them are comparatively pretty terrible?
JF: Ya, I mean I’m certainly not an expert in this at all, so I can’t really honestly tell you that. But I think what I can tell you, I mean it depends on the company and all that, but again I think that are more stringent regulations in Mexico, and again it’s easier for me to go and see my factory than being somewhere in China or wherever it is. So I do think it’s probably better for workers in that regard and definitely more manageable from a business side.
EB: I’ll slow down so you can eat—
JF: —No you’re fine. Also I think culturally Mexico is much closer to us culturally than an Asian country would be. That really makes things easier, you know you don’t really have a lot of, you’re not in a completely different world when you are there. There are certainly some differences culturally, but at least from my perspective, and being in Asia as well, they are much more minor, and it makes it a lot easier.
EB: So I guess speaking of the culture differences, I’m not completely sure on this, but would want to say— a company creates a new factory in Mexico that was previously only in the US, is it run by American management in Mexico or do they hire Mexican management to run the company or factory?
JF: Ya it really depends on the company. I think the general rule of thumb is that the person probably running the company or factory is going to be an American, or at least in the beginning is going to be an American while they transfer it over, or a Mexican with a lot of experience. I had, you know, had some contacts there that were Mexicans but had lived in the US. For example, one of my mentors was the CEO of IBM Mexico for a while, he’s retired now, and works as a professor now. But, he worked in the US for IBM for a long time, and kind of got sent back to Mexico to run it. So I think that’s another option. But generally all your other workers all the way down the line are going to be Mexican, or immigrants from other countries, but not American.
EB: And so, what is the benefit of hiring all Mexican workers in Mexico? Is it simply decreased labor costs or is there more to it?
JF: I think the biggest thing is decreased labor costs, you know comparatively to what the US is, and just the salary of wages are way lower. Probably some of the benefits are much lower and stuff like that. I think that’s really the primary area, the real benefit there.
EB: And because of NAFTA and these factories moving into Mexico, do you believe—again I’m not sure how experienced you are in this topic—but are these factories selling primarily back to the United States or are they reaching their fingertips out and selling into Mexican markets as well?
JF: Ya so it just depends on the company, all of them like I said… there is a very strong middle class now and a very strong wealthy class. You know your top 2 percent of Mexico now— the richest guy in the world is Mexican— so you have some people with real bargaining power. You know I remember when I was there, all of my coworkers had iPhones and IPads, so obviously things like that that are pretty expensive even here in the US, they are buying. I think what you don’t have is a mass market still because it’s still growing that middle class, but it’s growing and they still have millions of people in that market that can buy things. So I think you have both. It kind of depends on the products that you are making.
EB: So, I guess I’ll assume, from a GDP standpoint then, NAFTA and allowing these factories to go down to Mexico, hiring workers and creating more products and allowing more flow of cash, it seems like it’s relatively beneficial so to speak. If we put a scope on our vision and don’t look at the labor conditions, would you say over the past 10 years its done maybe what its hoped to do creating that inter-balance, or is it less appealing in reality than what it seems theoretically?
JF: No I think, that from a Mexican perspective it’s done a good job. I think if I was the president of Mexico I would certainly support this. I think it does increase GDP it brings businesses, it brings jobs, and I think that for the most part, again you said there are some labor issues in terms of that, but you know for them, so, well they can kind of crack down on that, and that’s what they should be doing—
EB: The government?
JF: The government, ya. I think sometimes what happens is the government is afraid to bite the hand that feeds it. So if they crack down on the labor and crack down too hard, they drive the companies out and you are gona have companies say, ‘you know what I just can't, I can't pour in this much money’ or ‘I can't allot to this safety standards or working conditions’, or whatever it is, and they will move to the next hot place. So we have seen that, companies do that, and it’s part of the reason they move out of China, the labor costs have increased and the move has been a little bit harder.
EB: Um, so what do you, I guess again I'm kind of touching on topics that you may not be as experienced in but that’s ok. What do you feel about the environmental consequences? So labor is one obviously, we see the labor dropping, and like we said they have to maintain, I guess you could think of it as a competitive advantage to other countries for these factories to be here. Do you think that the environmental and lack of regulation also plays into that as well? Cause that is something I’ve been a little concerned about with all these factories moving into unregulated Mexican areas.
JF: Ya for sure. Living In Mexico City for a year, it’s a horrific place for pollution. And its not all corporate pollution, you know it’s really old vehicles on the road, and the thing is they just have a different used car market then we do. They are much more creative with their cars, I mean they have environmental standards with new cars, but there’s just so many cars out there that people aren’t buying new cars. So you have cars that are 30 years old that have 30 year-old regulations on them that are crushing the environment. But you’re right you know, whenever you have a factory its going to lead to you know, I mean it doesn’t have to, but the cheap way to do it is its going to lead to pollution. Again its one of those things you want to crack down on, but you can't crack down too much because then they go to Honduras.
EB: So do you foresee I guess, we’ve mentioned, actually hit it a few times, going to different countries? Could you say that NAFTA keeps factories going to Mexico and creating labor for Mexico as opposed to creating other free trade agreements for other countries in Central America and South America? I'm not sure if that’s in the future for the American trade policy, but do you foresee America trying to strike a deal with Central and South American countries to try to expand this NAFTA benefit?
JF: Ya, I think the hard part is that for me at least I see it that, like we said its hard on the environmental stuff and labor conditions, but in terms of pure economics I think it’s a win for Mexico. I’m pretty convinced on that. In terms of whether it’s a win for America or not, I'm not sure. I do think that it would be beneficial that, and I'm sure—I’d be quite surprised if Honduras or Guatemala would not be interested in something like this from their point of view, I just don’t know if the US would be interested. And that’s not to say there are certainly benefits for the US as well, but I think it’s not as clear-cut, at least economically, the benefits for the US.
EB: What might negatives be of creating free trade?
JF: Well I think you lose protectionism of your own workforce [Some music in distance heard] you know if it’s all free trade and everything’s easy, then all the jobs are out of the United States cause your costs are just so much higher. That’s why I think especially within agriculture its just really really tough on folks in high agriculture areas like Florida, that are just being undercut by Mexican prices. That’s just a really tough you know, toss up there.
EB: So what sectors, you mentioned agriculture. What industrial sectors did you experience in Mexico City were most connected with America— agriculture specifically?
JF: No, I mean its definitely a big one, but certainly had a lot of industrial places like chemical things or cars essentially, a lot of really big car industries are there, some of them aren’t even all American. Like Volkswagen has a huge base there, but the thing is they are still selling to America. So they are from Germany, and it’s much easier to have a factory in Mexico to sell to their American consumers.
EB: So lets talk a little more about what you did specifically in Mexico. So what you did, if I understand correctly, helped new businesses grow and become a force in Mexico City.
JF: And not just Mexico, so essentially the way it works is— there is a selection process to be a part of the Endeavor, which is the company’s name’s portfolio. And the reason you want to be in the portfolio, a couple of reasons, one the brand name. So it’s like you are an Endeavor entrepreneur, so you are kind of like our good company, kind of like a quality check. The really smart business leaders have seen your company and believe in it, and its safe to invest in, and all that. The other thing is they gain access to really really top notch mentors. So the way it works, you apply; actually I was the first door they had to get through. I was the guy, I would say I think the company is growing or at a point of inflection. Most of our companies were newer but some were 25 year-old companies looking to change or get a new market.
EB: What type of metrics did you use to evaluate a company’s value?
JF: So we really looked at obviously their revenue, but really the changing of revenue over the last three years, and their predicted revenue for the next two, and how they were going to get there. So sometimes we saw companies that had 0 dollars in revenue, but would be 20 million in two years, that’s a really big jump. Or we would have a company worth 75 million dollars that had revenues of 75, and thought they may be able to double that in 2 years because they were going to enter Peru or Uruguay or something. And then I would have meeting with the entrepreneur and get a feel of who they are and if they would be open for feedback. Then they kind of enter our process. They would have 7 meetings with our mentors. And our mentors, we have a network of 200 mentors in Mexico, and not all in Mexico City, so mentors in different places, but the majority and headquarters is in Mexico City, the Mexican headquarters. And so, they would have an hour long meeting with these mentors, and the mentors would generally be people who were the top at their companies. So the CEO of Wal-Mart Mexico was one, or the CEO of Starbucks Mexico was another, or a top consultant at Bain Mexico, and so most of them, almost all of them were Mexican business owners. A lot were US educated or worked in the US, like the head of Google Mexico was one of ours. So he worked for Google in San Francisco for a while and then came and set up their office down in Mexico City. So you get access to these people. You give your pitch, go through what you are trying to do, and they would help and give advice. So it doesn’t matter what industry you are in, we had everything from mobile app developers, to shrimp farmers, to a constructing company, to a cement making company, to really anything you could think of. So I was kind of helping them along this process. Then what happened was they go to a selection panel, so we have like three or four national selection panels in Mexico where they go and present in front of judges and they have to get a unanimous yes vote to go to the international level. Then there are 5 or 6 global entrepreneurial selection panels. Again needing 100% yes votes. We don’t have a set number or limit, like 3 out of 5 get it—100% could get it if they are all great. And at the international level they are up against everyone from Turkey, Argentina, Brazil, wherever you could think really, are sending entrepreneurs, and if they get selected, then they become part of the Endeavor brand. So the good thing about that was I got to see a lot of different companies. A lot of my companies operated in a lot of different countries but were Mexican owned or primarily operated. Some of them even the entrepreneurs lived in the US. I had one who lived in San Diego and he had shrimp farms right underneath San Diego in Mexico. Another guy lived in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, but spent time between there and Mexico City and kind of had his mentors in Mexico.
EB: What’s the main benefit of working with Endeavor? Getting the brand recognition? Or do they provide investments and consulting advice?
JF: So they provide consulting advice, and then also, so we don’t invest in them. But a lot of the mentors are investors and so they would get really good access to people that they may not be able to get through sending an e-mail or a call or knocking on their door to get. And the other thing is that if you are selected at the global level, you actually become part of the portfolio they get through the mentors, that we kind of choose for them to have them sit on their board of directors. So then they are actually there for, for forever I guess, or until they don’t want to or something happens. Then you have all of a sudden, you start a company two years ago with a friend from high school and you have the CEO of Google Mexico telling you what to do in the mobile app realm, that is a really awesome thing. They can provide great advice and obviously have great contacts in the business world to kind of open up new avenues for you.
EB: How many different firms were you exposed to throughout your time there? Hundreds, or tens?
JF: Well I worked very closely with 36 throughout the year, but in terms of how many I saw when I was filtering that first round probably hundreds; 150 or so that I looked at and at least had the conversation with. But spoke to and went through the whole process with 36 of them, and got to know them very well and saw their whole business plans, the good things and bad things and everything in between.
EB: Did you find any repetitive processes or patterns that the successful firms had going for them in terms of management style or industry, or anything correlating between them?
JF: No I mean, [waiter at restaurant offering more chips/salsa] so in terms of patterns not really, obviously there were some that resembled each other, but there was nothing I saw that in the 36 companies that was the definite thing that was going to happen, or if it was a different strategy that was happening. But, one thing that they certainly thought about was that they always thought about expansion. Like no one that was really there said ‘I just want to be in Mexico’ sometimes the expansion was south into Latin America, but I think everyone at some point wanted to go to the US to sell.
EB: And why? Why did they want to expand?
JF: Well with expansion comes more money I think. The US especially has consumers and bigger spending power that can buy things, and that is kind of like, also from a buying point that is how you know you’ve made it from a business perspective. When you are operating in the United States, that’s how you know you really made it.
EB: I'm not sure if you could see an direct effects but do you think that maybe from some level NAFTA had given these companies any more, any stronger ability to come to America, or do you think that wasn’t even in the picture?
JF: Ya I don’t know. It was certainly something that they didn’t talk about. Maybe it has and we just don’t know. But I think definitely, for example, one of them was a shrimp farmer [waiter returning with salsa and chips]…. Ya so for example we had this shrimp farmer again, who actually lived in San Diego, was Mexican born and raised but lived in San Diego. Spent the majority of his day in Mexico, he would come over the border and go to his farms and stuff like that and then he sold his shrimp to the United States, he didn’t sell at all in Mexico. Part of that is that they were a growing company and so they are still growing their farms. They are selling all the shrimp they have essentially so they couldn’t expand more now until the farm expands. They looked at it as, ‘I can sell my shrimp for more money in the United States than I can in Mexico.’ Some of the supply chains are a little more established in the US so the hard part is because they are already established they already have sources where they get shrimp so you have to make it either cheaper or better in some way. But they would kind of deal with, you know, the big grocery store to do it all, like they were providing all the shrimp for this California chain and all their stores in California. You did have some, I think in that case thats definitely a big thing for NAFTA—it’s being grown in Mexico and owned by Mexican company, but being sold without tariff, duty free in the US.
EB: I guess that kind of, I wanted to transition into this topic at some point, but looking forward and overcoming—so what I foresee as a lot of the negatives of NAFTA is labor conditions and decreased wage and huge companies going into Mexico and using their labor and land and taking advantage of it. I'm curious about what a maybe solution would be and if you think from your experience the solution is the new and upcoming opportunities to create new jobs and domestic sourcing for the labor, or if that is too small scale? Or what do you see going forward in terms of how to attack the problem?
JF: Ya I mean it’s a great question. I think, I think sometimes its helpful to have local companies because they understand local concerns and are more invested in Mexico and it’s not just a purely economic relationship where I just use you and not come back. And I think, but like what you said or alluded to, it is a little small scale. I mean there are certainly companies that are huge there, but I don’t see them competing with like a General Electric or a Coca-Cola. They are not going to be that big I don’t think, maybe eventually, but there won’t be enough of them.
EB: But in terms of just, you are creating jobs but still its beneficial to—
JF: So ya I think its still beneficial for these guys to come in and provide jobs. When you look at like manufacturing they are taking in somewhat rural areas or going to small cities and really providing jobs to folks. So in terms of the other part of the question about how do we, what are some things we can do to kinds of mitigate some of the concerns, I have to say I think its mostly on, ok its two-fold.
It’s on the Mexican government to kind of crack down on that, again as I said it’s a slippery slope, you crack down too much and get too hard, and you lose the businesses. But you know we are talking about people’s lives here too, so it’s important. And I think the other part is that companies, one of the really good things about all the transparency and the internet and twitter and all this stuff it’s become so big in these developing countries, these emerging economies, is that it’s not as hard to get something out. So if there are atrocious conditions in a factory, all it takes is a tweet with a photo, and if someone has a couple followers someone can broadcast that to the world, and in a matter of seconds can have millions of people looking at it.
EB: And do you think public opinion influences anything? Do you think if people are [inaudible] and sharing it on their Facebook page it actually has impact?
JF: Ya I mean I think you know it’s how you go about it, sometimes it works really great sometimes it doesn’t work at all. It kind of depends on how terrible is it, what the offence is. I think generally people get more riled up about labor conditions than they would about environmental stuff. That they may not care all that much about pollution because its harder to see how its affecting people, but if people were getting their hands chopped off in factories or something like that that would be much more alarming for people to look at.
EB: I guess the tough question that follow that is, is it almost worth it to create jobs at the expense of poor labor conditions, or is this something that we would look at eliminating NAFTA because labor conditions are too bad that the creation of jobs is not worth it?
JF: Ya I don’t know, that’s the million dollar question, and I don’t know. Personally I don’t know how widespread the labor issues are. If it’s a rule of thumb, if American companies have horrible labor conditions, or is this one or two companies. So I guess I'm not as familiar with that and how widespread is the problem. But I think it’s who you are, you know who is the signing party. At some point some company can say ‘ya, we don’t have great labor conditions, but these folks were unemployed and jobless.’ So it may be tough and they may have to stand on their feet for 12 hours with no break, but at least they have food on the table now, and they didn’t have that before NAFTA came in. So there is a point to be made in that regard, to say that these companies are creating jobs. Some people look at these companies as exploiting workers but at the end of the day these workers have these jobs because they need to support their families and if there were other jobs they would take those. The fact is there aren’t other jobs for all people.
EB: Good point, so when I was in Mexico we saw a lot of these smaller cities, perhaps this is anecdotal but say with 300-500 residents that have nothing to do. The women and children, the men had emigrated to the United States, the women and children would feed their family and go to school and do nothing else. They tried to implement these small projects. In one of the places they had a worm farm they tried to grow which didn’t necessarily take off the ground at all, but do you think that smaller, I guess another question is, do you think smaller projects in smaller communities would help? Or is bringing in a large factory 20 miles away that could source jobs for all of these communities would be...? And again that’s a hard depending question—
JF: Ya its tough, it kind of depends on the company and how it works. I think in terms of labor conditions obviously a smaller company probably has a grasp on it a little better. But, ya so it’s really dependent on the situation, I think the hard part is that, you know if Coca-Cola decided to move into an area, or if General Motors decides to open a plant in Guanajuato, they are employing everybody, and everyone is going to have a job and it’s going to work out great in terms of that part. And so I think it’s a lot easier for a big company to come in and kinda like make a bigger splash in the water [some loud background noise from outside].
EB: So if we look into the future now, hypothetically now in 10 years when all these factories have moved into Mexico do you think that NAFTA and free trade will still be necessary to incentivize companies to come in? Or do you think that once they are already in, if you reinstate trade tariffs if they would stay? Or if they would just evacuate a say ‘sunk cost to the factory, forget about it,’ or would they try to make it work now that they invested millions of dollars?
JF: Ya it’s tricky, it’s kind of what we are seeing now even in this move from Asia to Mexico. They opened up factories in China, and they say ‘in the long term it’s better for me to come back here.’ So I think you have the exact same thing, with the trade situation, ‘how much am I gona get taxed on this?’ How much harder is it now, is it worth it to go to another country with a sunk cost and leave whatever I did, or should I stick it out a little bit longer? And the answer would be different by industry.
EB: Another question, maybe this is a little unrelated to what we were talking about before, but NAFTA encourages tons of industries to move into Mexico to create factories for jobs there, and yet at the exact same time we see increased numbers of immigration to the United States. Where do you think that plays in? If factories are going down and creating jobs, why is there the need to come to the United States, are they simply not creating enough? Or is the United States that illusion of a better life that has a bigger pull?
JF: Ya I mean I think, I still think that anywhere in the world where I’ve been, from Africa to Asia to Europe, not Europe as much, but any emerging area, like Latin America, the dream, and where you make it, is in America and the United States. You always have that kind of dream. It’s where you have hope and we still drive things culturally. I mean the movies of the world are from Hollywood; music of the world is from United States. And like McDonalds and Coca-Cola make these brands that operate in all these different countries. I do think that, I mean the other thing is that the wages are more in the United States if I work in a factory in Monterey Mexico, I would be making, and I have no idea what the prices are really, but lets say I make $3 and hour, in the states the least is $7.15, so you make double, more than double, I don’t know the actual numbers there, but I could work the same and get double and send that back. The thing that people forget is the cost of living is so much higher. So when you are eating and living somewhere it’s tough. Or if you need insurance or go to the doctor or whatever, those are all things that really add up, and people don’t realize that yes you make more money, but you spend so much more money. I think that’s why you see so many people that go to the United States but don’t bring their families because they can't support their families. Then you have the whole immigration part. But I don’t think it would be any more of a benefit to move family from Mexico to the United States to work the exact same job.
EB: It might even be easier to just stay—
JF: Instead of having to learn the language and worry about legal status and all that stuff, but I mean it depends and I don’t think there are enough jobs. But people also say there aren’t enough jobs in the US. It just kind of depends on your skill level and what you are willing to do.
EB: I guess from an overall arching standpoint, in other interviews I’ve had people may have been more against NAFTA where you almost recognize the need so to speak of what NAFTA is creating. Would you say, this is kind of a direct question, but that you support NAFTA’s efforts and moving factories into Mexico and what its been doing for Mexico in terms of an overall benefit?
JF: Ya I mean I think part of my background and my perspective is based in business so it’s not as much in the environmental and labor side, even though those are caused by business. I look at it in much more of an economic argument, and ya I can say if I were the president of Mexico I would sign NAFTA. I don’t know where I would be on the other side, if I was Barack Obama, would I sign or not? Because it certainly gets us cheaper goods from more competition, so it’s good for consumers. The issue is that you lose the protection of your American workers and that’s something we need to be careful with going forward. But from a Mexican perspective going forward, I think it’s a good thing.
EB: So you mention it’s not as good for America, Bill Clinton signed it into law in ’94, why do you think he was a proponent of it, did he foresee something else?
JF: Well I mean, the thing that is good about free trade partnership in Canada, Mexico, and the United States, is you have three really big economies and they are neighbors, and they pretty much operate through, pretty well together, we are allies. Generally, it’s better for competition, and better for business people, as a business its better for you. I would say as a CEO of a company you are generally for free trade because it opens up new markets for you, brings down your costs; that part of it is great. Again it’s the American factory worker, the American farmer that is not off very good. That maybe the food on the table is going to be a little cheaper, but their jobs are gone, and they just can't operate against being undercut by 40% by Mexican prices, so those folks are really against it. That’s why I think it’s much stricter on the American side. But you look at a company like BlackBerry, it’s a Canadian owned company, they manufactured everything in Mexico, and sold everything in the US so when you look at big success stories, BlackBerry, one of the biggest, a Canadian company owned and operated in Canada, manufacturing in Mexico, and selling to consumers in the United States; that is kind of what a lot of NAFTA people say this is how its supposed to work, and its working. Who knows if BlackBerry would be as big as it was without that.
EB: So I guess as kind of a final question to wrap it up, what do you, what would you recommend for the next 10 years into the future, maybe even 50 in terms of maintaining free trade and growing grassroots in Mexico, moving industries. Do you have an overall idea of what should happen or would be the best for a mutually beneficial arrangement?
JF: in terms of free trade I don’t necessarily have a clear plan there, but I do think that you have to look at Mexico as more of a market, in terms of they are not just a place for cheaper goods or cheaper labor, but a real market for us to sell to as well. As a company you are being stupid to not be operating in Mexico in some capacity. Not just manufacturing but selling your stuff there. And I think the way to do that is to invest in companies and entrepreneurs… that as the middle class continues to grow these entrepreneurs will be successful as they have a market to sell to. And I think you really look at it and you see, especially what I was doing last year, these are the kinds of jobs Mexico needs and the kind of good jobs that are going to be created. And I think the key is then how do you figure out, one of the things I saw, is even though a lot of these are entrepreneurs are creative people a lot of them are just taking copies of things that exist in the US and putting it in Mexico. Taking uber cars that you can rent a black SUV in the city, why not bring it to Mexico? Or, we have this in the US why not bring it to Mexico? I think the next step is the next twitter, or whatever that is. Not a replica that is in the United States; that is the big jump. So what I saw at least is a majority of my projects were copies or replicas of something that already existed. So how do we get people to really think or be creative? The next Apple Company to come out of Mexico or any emerging market. I think its just making sure you have investments and have people, you know a lot of people that are founders come from somewhere else, even in United States because they have money and access to capital and consumers and mentors and all. So how do you keep that local? That’s the question to ask and answer. Hopefully they can answer it.
EB: Ok well I appreciate your time, thanks so much for coming out. [Interruption by waiter] I appreciate it again and hope you have a great day.
JF: Thanks.
Es: Restricciones
Sin restricciones. Abierta para investigación.
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Estudiantes; Consultores
Es: Género de entrevistado
Hombre
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
Inglés
Es: Resumen
La entrevista realizada con Josh Ford se enfoca en la experiencia que tuvo de vivir y trabajar en la Ciudad de México por dos años. La entrevista saca ventaja del trabajo realizado por Ford durante su beca Fulbright, donde él asistía a empresarios mexicanos en una compañía que se llama Endeavor, la cual sirve para conectar empresarios mexicanos con mentores poderosos de todo México y de los Estados Unidos. Durante la entrevista, Brandt le pregunta a Ford continuamente sobre lo que Ford encontró y cree que es necesario para que los empresarios mexicanos y los negocios que recién inician sean exitosos. A través de la visión del Tratado de Libre Comercio de América del Norte (TLCAN), Brandt intenta descubrir dónde y cómo México podría avanzar más allá de la dependencia de trabajos industriales de Estados Unidos, y cómo México podría impulsar negocios locales para crear empleos dentro de México, que emplee mexicanos bajo la administración mexicana. También, al examinar al TLCAN através de una visión económica y empresarial, Ford parecía mantener una opinión positiva sobre el panorama y las metas originales y logros del tratado hasta la fecha. De manera interesante, Ford parecía apoyar la participación de México en el TLCAN, e incluso menciona que cree que el TLCAN beneficia a México más de lo que beneficia a los Estados Unidos. Su mayor preocupación con el TLCAN es la pérdida del poder de negociación de los trabajadores estadounidenses, seguido de las preocupaciones sobre el trabajo en Mexico, que él después expande diciendo que él cree que la creación de múltiples empleos en México potencialmente compensa positivamente las consecuencias negativas, como la explotación laboral y salarial. Ford se mostró muy orgulloso de los emprendedores mexicanos que usan el TLCAN para ayudarse a crecer, y dio la impresión que él cree en la capacidad del TLCAN de promover el comercio dentro de Estados Unidos y México para todas las partes interesadas, especialmente para los pequeños negocios.
Es: Citación
Entrevista con Joshua Ford por Eric Brandt, 06 Abril 2014, R-0685, en Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern HistoricalCollection, Wilson Library, Universidad de Carolina del Norte en Chapel Hill.
Es: Temas
Economía; Trabajo y empleo; Derechos de los trabajadores y sindicatos
Es: Transcripción
Eric Brandt: This is Eric Brandt recording Joshua Ford on my NAFTA Oral History Project. Josh if you could just introduce yourself and give a tiny bit of background on who you are and your experience with Mexico and NAFTA.
Josh Ford: Sure, so my name is Josh Ford, I went to Mexico for the first time in 2009 for a class trip and then went and did a Fulbright year there, which was last year, so the 2012-2013 academic year. I was working fulltime for an entrepreneurial accelerator there and taking MBA classes at the local business school in Mexico City. So I got to kind of see first hand the business world and the effects that NAFTA has on the business world there.
EB: So what specifically were you doing with this startup, and how did you get involved?
JF: Sure, so actually my Fulbright scholarship was created after NAFTA was signed and the idea—so it’s the only Fulbright scholarship that is for business people, that want to go and work for business. So there are some PhD programs that study in business, but this was the only one where you are actually working in a business. So you work full time for a company and the Fulbright sets up all these different companies. Some of them are American companies operating in Mexico, and some companies are [server handed me my food and brief inaudible sentence] Mexican companies that obviously are operating in Mexico. If you receive this Fulbright, they will kind of go through a matching process where you interview with ones that you are interested in and kind of rank which ones you like and which ones that like you. So I was just matched up with this accelerator, and the accelerator is actually a US based accelerator that operates in different emerging countries, and so Mexico was just one of those countries.
EB: Why were you so interested in Mexico going into this?
JF: I think for me, a lot of it really does have to do with NAFTA but Mexico is a phenomenal place that is very strategic to the US. You know politically obviously [server brings Josh his food “You guys enjoy your meal alright…” “Thank you” “… if you guys need anything my name is Maui, just let me know” “OK Great, thank you” is heard] so, you know being so close to the United States and sharing a border that is thousands of miles long… but also from a business point of view, it is a huge market that is growing, a middle class that is growing. So not only are they able to provide us with goods at cheaper prices, but they are also a very solid market for us to sell to. You know they have a lot of consumers now, and really any big company that is operating internationally has to be operating in Mexico.
EB: So I guess right from the beginning you mentioned [the program] was created by NAFTA. Could you see the American influence within Mexico City from all aspects, or where did you see almost the American business connection most clearly, so to speak?
JF: Ya I mean I think, you know obviously America is probably the dominant country in terms of business in the world. And so like I said really any big company that you can think of operates in Mexico and has a very large presence, and so for example… kind of just a weird fun fact—Mexicans consume more Coca-Cola products than anywhere in the world per capita, so especially in a city like Mexico City that is so big, there are parts when you definitely feel like you are in America. There are all the American brands, and you go to the mall and its all American restaurants and TGIF and McDonalds and all that stuff. And so I think that has definitely skyrocketed since NAFTA. I think some of those things were there, but I think NAFTA has really promoted that more.
EB: Feel free to eat too. Cool, so you mentioned that you stayed in Mexico City, did you have, was your experience focused only in Mexico City, or were you able to compare situations in more rural communities?
JF: Ya that’s a good question. So, I had the opportunity to travel a lot, more for my own benefit than for work. That was part of the cultural aspect of the Fulbright of trying to really understand the country and all its different areas. So I think Mexico City obviously is the most, has the biggest influence from American side, just because it’s the capital city. I think Monterrey, in the north, is definitely, its kind of the manufacturing area, so a lot of factories are there from American companies, a lot of car companies. Actually there has been a trend recently to move things back to Mexico from Japan or China, especially China really because those prices and gas prices have increased really, so getting those products back from China costs more money, and labor costs have gone up in China. So now it’s almost cheaper and easier to manage to bring that back to Mexico.
EB: Would you say that ability to move back to Mexico is kind of a direct result of NAFTA because without free trade perhaps these businesses couldn’t go back from Southeast Asia?
JF: Ya for sure. I think free trade definitely helps that and keeps you know taxes and stuff like that really low on these companies. And ya, I would say if something else other than NAFTA was in place we might not be seeing that. But I think it’s a good thing for companies and certainly for Mexico
EB: So I was going to ask, do you think it’s a good thing that NAFTA allows companies to come back to Mexico, instead of outsourcing to Southeast Asia? I guess from a Mexican standpoint and from an American standpoint?
JF: Ya I mean I think from a Mexican standpoint it certainly does, it creates a lot of jobs and decent paying jobs and helps grow that middle class that they are trying to grow. I think from an American perspective you know you really want those jobs in America and not Mexico, but I do think at least from a business perspective, you know if I’m running a company and I want to make sure quality assurance or if something goes wrong, it’s so much easier to get to Mexico and I can fly to Mexico for the day and come back at night and I can go very easily, than jump across the world and have a 15 hour flight and be in a completely different time zone. So from that point of view its much much easier to operate out of Mexico.
EB: Ok, what about, I guess almost staying within the Asia comparison vein, do you think bringing factories back to Mexico has a better labor conditions than keeping them in Asia or do you think both of them are comparatively pretty terrible?
JF: Ya, I mean I’m certainly not an expert in this at all, so I can’t really honestly tell you that. But I think what I can tell you, I mean it depends on the company and all that, but again I think that are more stringent regulations in Mexico, and again it’s easier for me to go and see my factory than being somewhere in China or wherever it is. So I do think it’s probably better for workers in that regard and definitely more manageable from a business side.
EB: I’ll slow down so you can eat—
JF: —No you’re fine. Also I think culturally Mexico is much closer to us culturally than an Asian country would be. That really makes things easier, you know you don’t really have a lot of, you’re not in a completely different world when you are there. There are certainly some differences culturally, but at least from my perspective, and being in Asia as well, they are much more minor, and it makes it a lot easier.
EB: So I guess speaking of the culture differences, I’m not completely sure on this, but would want to say— a company creates a new factory in Mexico that was previously only in the US, is it run by American management in Mexico or do they hire Mexican management to run the company or factory?
JF: Ya it really depends on the company. I think the general rule of thumb is that the person probably running the company or factory is going to be an American, or at least in the beginning is going to be an American while they transfer it over, or a Mexican with a lot of experience. I had, you know, had some contacts there that were Mexicans but had lived in the US. For example, one of my mentors was the CEO of IBM Mexico for a while, he’s retired now, and works as a professor now. But, he worked in the US for IBM for a long time, and kind of got sent back to Mexico to run it. So I think that’s another option. But generally all your other workers all the way down the line are going to be Mexican, or immigrants from other countries, but not American.
EB: And so, what is the benefit of hiring all Mexican workers in Mexico? Is it simply decreased labor costs or is there more to it?
JF: I think the biggest thing is decreased labor costs, you know comparatively to what the US is, and just the salary of wages are way lower. Probably some of the benefits are much lower and stuff like that. I think that’s really the primary area, the real benefit there.
EB: And because of NAFTA and these factories moving into Mexico, do you believe—again I’m not sure how experienced you are in this topic—but are these factories selling primarily back to the United States or are they reaching their fingertips out and selling into Mexican markets as well?
JF: Ya so it just depends on the company, all of them like I said… there is a very strong middle class now and a very strong wealthy class. You know your top 2 percent of Mexico now— the richest guy in the world is Mexican— so you have some people with real bargaining power. You know I remember when I was there, all of my coworkers had iPhones and IPads, so obviously things like that that are pretty expensive even here in the US, they are buying. I think what you don’t have is a mass market still because it’s still growing that middle class, but it’s growing and they still have millions of people in that market that can buy things. So I think you have both. It kind of depends on the products that you are making.
EB: So, I guess I’ll assume, from a GDP standpoint then, NAFTA and allowing these factories to go down to Mexico, hiring workers and creating more products and allowing more flow of cash, it seems like it’s relatively beneficial so to speak. If we put a scope on our vision and don’t look at the labor conditions, would you say over the past 10 years its done maybe what its hoped to do creating that inter-balance, or is it less appealing in reality than what it seems theoretically?
JF: No I think, that from a Mexican perspective it’s done a good job. I think if I was the president of Mexico I would certainly support this. I think it does increase GDP it brings businesses, it brings jobs, and I think that for the most part, again you said there are some labor issues in terms of that, but you know for them, so, well they can kind of crack down on that, and that’s what they should be doing—
EB: The government?
JF: The government, ya. I think sometimes what happens is the government is afraid to bite the hand that feeds it. So if they crack down on the labor and crack down too hard, they drive the companies out and you are gona have companies say, ‘you know what I just can't, I can't pour in this much money’ or ‘I can't allot to this safety standards or working conditions’, or whatever it is, and they will move to the next hot place. So we have seen that, companies do that, and it’s part of the reason they move out of China, the labor costs have increased and the move has been a little bit harder.
EB: Um, so what do you, I guess again I'm kind of touching on topics that you may not be as experienced in but that’s ok. What do you feel about the environmental consequences? So labor is one obviously, we see the labor dropping, and like we said they have to maintain, I guess you could think of it as a competitive advantage to other countries for these factories to be here. Do you think that the environmental and lack of regulation also plays into that as well? Cause that is something I’ve been a little concerned about with all these factories moving into unregulated Mexican areas.
JF: Ya for sure. Living In Mexico City for a year, it’s a horrific place for pollution. And its not all corporate pollution, you know it’s really old vehicles on the road, and the thing is they just have a different used car market then we do. They are much more creative with their cars, I mean they have environmental standards with new cars, but there’s just so many cars out there that people aren’t buying new cars. So you have cars that are 30 years old that have 30 year-old regulations on them that are crushing the environment. But you’re right you know, whenever you have a factory its going to lead to you know, I mean it doesn’t have to, but the cheap way to do it is its going to lead to pollution. Again its one of those things you want to crack down on, but you can't crack down too much because then they go to Honduras.
EB: So do you foresee I guess, we’ve mentioned, actually hit it a few times, going to different countries? Could you say that NAFTA keeps factories going to Mexico and creating labor for Mexico as opposed to creating other free trade agreements for other countries in Central America and South America? I'm not sure if that’s in the future for the American trade policy, but do you foresee America trying to strike a deal with Central and South American countries to try to expand this NAFTA benefit?
JF: Ya, I think the hard part is that for me at least I see it that, like we said its hard on the environmental stuff and labor conditions, but in terms of pure economics I think it’s a win for Mexico. I’m pretty convinced on that. In terms of whether it’s a win for America or not, I'm not sure. I do think that it would be beneficial that, and I'm sure—I’d be quite surprised if Honduras or Guatemala would not be interested in something like this from their point of view, I just don’t know if the US would be interested. And that’s not to say there are certainly benefits for the US as well, but I think it’s not as clear-cut, at least economically, the benefits for the US.
EB: What might negatives be of creating free trade?
JF: Well I think you lose protectionism of your own workforce [Some music in distance heard] you know if it’s all free trade and everything’s easy, then all the jobs are out of the United States cause your costs are just so much higher. That’s why I think especially within agriculture its just really really tough on folks in high agriculture areas like Florida, that are just being undercut by Mexican prices. That’s just a really tough you know, toss up there.
EB: So what sectors, you mentioned agriculture. What industrial sectors did you experience in Mexico City were most connected with America— agriculture specifically?
JF: No, I mean its definitely a big one, but certainly had a lot of industrial places like chemical things or cars essentially, a lot of really big car industries are there, some of them aren’t even all American. Like Volkswagen has a huge base there, but the thing is they are still selling to America. So they are from Germany, and it’s much easier to have a factory in Mexico to sell to their American consumers.
EB: So lets talk a little more about what you did specifically in Mexico. So what you did, if I understand correctly, helped new businesses grow and become a force in Mexico City.
JF: And not just Mexico, so essentially the way it works is— there is a selection process to be a part of the Endeavor, which is the company’s name’s portfolio. And the reason you want to be in the portfolio, a couple of reasons, one the brand name. So it’s like you are an Endeavor entrepreneur, so you are kind of like our good company, kind of like a quality check. The really smart business leaders have seen your company and believe in it, and its safe to invest in, and all that. The other thing is they gain access to really really top notch mentors. So the way it works, you apply; actually I was the first door they had to get through. I was the guy, I would say I think the company is growing or at a point of inflection. Most of our companies were newer but some were 25 year-old companies looking to change or get a new market.
EB: What type of metrics did you use to evaluate a company’s value?
JF: So we really looked at obviously their revenue, but really the changing of revenue over the last three years, and their predicted revenue for the next two, and how they were going to get there. So sometimes we saw companies that had 0 dollars in revenue, but would be 20 million in two years, that’s a really big jump. Or we would have a company worth 75 million dollars that had revenues of 75, and thought they may be able to double that in 2 years because they were going to enter Peru or Uruguay or something. And then I would have meeting with the entrepreneur and get a feel of who they are and if they would be open for feedback. Then they kind of enter our process. They would have 7 meetings with our mentors. And our mentors, we have a network of 200 mentors in Mexico, and not all in Mexico City, so mentors in different places, but the majority and headquarters is in Mexico City, the Mexican headquarters. And so, they would have an hour long meeting with these mentors, and the mentors would generally be people who were the top at their companies. So the CEO of Wal-Mart Mexico was one, or the CEO of Starbucks Mexico was another, or a top consultant at Bain Mexico, and so most of them, almost all of them were Mexican business owners. A lot were US educated or worked in the US, like the head of Google Mexico was one of ours. So he worked for Google in San Francisco for a while and then came and set up their office down in Mexico City. So you get access to these people. You give your pitch, go through what you are trying to do, and they would help and give advice. So it doesn’t matter what industry you are in, we had everything from mobile app developers, to shrimp farmers, to a constructing company, to a cement making company, to really anything you could think of. So I was kind of helping them along this process. Then what happened was they go to a selection panel, so we have like three or four national selection panels in Mexico where they go and present in front of judges and they have to get a unanimous yes vote to go to the international level. Then there are 5 or 6 global entrepreneurial selection panels. Again needing 100% yes votes. We don’t have a set number or limit, like 3 out of 5 get it—100% could get it if they are all great. And at the international level they are up against everyone from Turkey, Argentina, Brazil, wherever you could think really, are sending entrepreneurs, and if they get selected, then they become part of the Endeavor brand. So the good thing about that was I got to see a lot of different companies. A lot of my companies operated in a lot of different countries but were Mexican owned or primarily operated. Some of them even the entrepreneurs lived in the US. I had one who lived in San Diego and he had shrimp farms right underneath San Diego in Mexico. Another guy lived in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, but spent time between there and Mexico City and kind of had his mentors in Mexico.
EB: What’s the main benefit of working with Endeavor? Getting the brand recognition? Or do they provide investments and consulting advice?
JF: So they provide consulting advice, and then also, so we don’t invest in them. But a lot of the mentors are investors and so they would get really good access to people that they may not be able to get through sending an e-mail or a call or knocking on their door to get. And the other thing is that if you are selected at the global level, you actually become part of the portfolio they get through the mentors, that we kind of choose for them to have them sit on their board of directors. So then they are actually there for, for forever I guess, or until they don’t want to or something happens. Then you have all of a sudden, you start a company two years ago with a friend from high school and you have the CEO of Google Mexico telling you what to do in the mobile app realm, that is a really awesome thing. They can provide great advice and obviously have great contacts in the business world to kind of open up new avenues for you.
EB: How many different firms were you exposed to throughout your time there? Hundreds, or tens?
JF: Well I worked very closely with 36 throughout the year, but in terms of how many I saw when I was filtering that first round probably hundreds; 150 or so that I looked at and at least had the conversation with. But spoke to and went through the whole process with 36 of them, and got to know them very well and saw their whole business plans, the good things and bad things and everything in between.
EB: Did you find any repetitive processes or patterns that the successful firms had going for them in terms of management style or industry, or anything correlating between them?
JF: No I mean, [waiter at restaurant offering more chips/salsa] so in terms of patterns not really, obviously there were some that resembled each other, but there was nothing I saw that in the 36 companies that was the definite thing that was going to happen, or if it was a different strategy that was happening. But, one thing that they certainly thought about was that they always thought about expansion. Like no one that was really there said ‘I just want to be in Mexico’ sometimes the expansion was south into Latin America, but I think everyone at some point wanted to go to the US to sell.
EB: And why? Why did they want to expand?
JF: Well with expansion comes more money I think. The US especially has consumers and bigger spending power that can buy things, and that is kind of like, also from a buying point that is how you know you’ve made it from a business perspective. When you are operating in the United States, that’s how you know you really made it.
EB: I'm not sure if you could see an direct effects but do you think that maybe from some level NAFTA had given these companies any more, any stronger ability to come to America, or do you think that wasn’t even in the picture?
JF: Ya I don’t know. It was certainly something that they didn’t talk about. Maybe it has and we just don’t know. But I think definitely, for example, one of them was a shrimp farmer [waiter returning with salsa and chips]…. Ya so for example we had this shrimp farmer again, who actually lived in San Diego, was Mexican born and raised but lived in San Diego. Spent the majority of his day in Mexico, he would come over the border and go to his farms and stuff like that and then he sold his shrimp to the United States, he didn’t sell at all in Mexico. Part of that is that they were a growing company and so they are still growing their farms. They are selling all the shrimp they have essentially so they couldn’t expand more now until the farm expands. They looked at it as, ‘I can sell my shrimp for more money in the United States than I can in Mexico.’ Some of the supply chains are a little more established in the US so the hard part is because they are already established they already have sources where they get shrimp so you have to make it either cheaper or better in some way. But they would kind of deal with, you know, the big grocery store to do it all, like they were providing all the shrimp for this California chain and all their stores in California. You did have some, I think in that case thats definitely a big thing for NAFTA—it’s being grown in Mexico and owned by Mexican company, but being sold without tariff, duty free in the US.
EB: I guess that kind of, I wanted to transition into this topic at some point, but looking forward and overcoming—so what I foresee as a lot of the negatives of NAFTA is labor conditions and decreased wage and huge companies going into Mexico and using their labor and land and taking advantage of it. I'm curious about what a maybe solution would be and if you think from your experience the solution is the new and upcoming opportunities to create new jobs and domestic sourcing for the labor, or if that is too small scale? Or what do you see going forward in terms of how to attack the problem?
JF: Ya I mean it’s a great question. I think, I think sometimes its helpful to have local companies because they understand local concerns and are more invested in Mexico and it’s not just a purely economic relationship where I just use you and not come back. And I think, but like what you said or alluded to, it is a little small scale. I mean there are certainly companies that are huge there, but I don’t see them competing with like a General Electric or a Coca-Cola. They are not going to be that big I don’t think, maybe eventually, but there won’t be enough of them.
EB: But in terms of just, you are creating jobs but still its beneficial to—
JF: So ya I think its still beneficial for these guys to come in and provide jobs. When you look at like manufacturing they are taking in somewhat rural areas or going to small cities and really providing jobs to folks. So in terms of the other part of the question about how do we, what are some things we can do to kinds of mitigate some of the concerns, I have to say I think its mostly on, ok its two-fold.
It’s on the Mexican government to kind of crack down on that, again as I said it’s a slippery slope, you crack down too much and get too hard, and you lose the businesses. But you know we are talking about people’s lives here too, so it’s important. And I think the other part is that companies, one of the really good things about all the transparency and the internet and twitter and all this stuff it’s become so big in these developing countries, these emerging economies, is that it’s not as hard to get something out. So if there are atrocious conditions in a factory, all it takes is a tweet with a photo, and if someone has a couple followers someone can broadcast that to the world, and in a matter of seconds can have millions of people looking at it.
EB: And do you think public opinion influences anything? Do you think if people are [inaudible] and sharing it on their Facebook page it actually has impact?
JF: Ya I mean I think you know it’s how you go about it, sometimes it works really great sometimes it doesn’t work at all. It kind of depends on how terrible is it, what the offence is. I think generally people get more riled up about labor conditions than they would about environmental stuff. That they may not care all that much about pollution because its harder to see how its affecting people, but if people were getting their hands chopped off in factories or something like that that would be much more alarming for people to look at.
EB: I guess the tough question that follow that is, is it almost worth it to create jobs at the expense of poor labor conditions, or is this something that we would look at eliminating NAFTA because labor conditions are too bad that the creation of jobs is not worth it?
JF: Ya I don’t know, that’s the million dollar question, and I don’t know. Personally I don’t know how widespread the labor issues are. If it’s a rule of thumb, if American companies have horrible labor conditions, or is this one or two companies. So I guess I'm not as familiar with that and how widespread is the problem. But I think it’s who you are, you know who is the signing party. At some point some company can say ‘ya, we don’t have great labor conditions, but these folks were unemployed and jobless.’ So it may be tough and they may have to stand on their feet for 12 hours with no break, but at least they have food on the table now, and they didn’t have that before NAFTA came in. So there is a point to be made in that regard, to say that these companies are creating jobs. Some people look at these companies as exploiting workers but at the end of the day these workers have these jobs because they need to support their families and if there were other jobs they would take those. The fact is there aren’t other jobs for all people.
EB: Good point, so when I was in Mexico we saw a lot of these smaller cities, perhaps this is anecdotal but say with 300-500 residents that have nothing to do. The women and children, the men had emigrated to the United States, the women and children would feed their family and go to school and do nothing else. They tried to implement these small projects. In one of the places they had a worm farm they tried to grow which didn’t necessarily take off the ground at all, but do you think that smaller, I guess another question is, do you think smaller projects in smaller communities would help? Or is bringing in a large factory 20 miles away that could source jobs for all of these communities would be...? And again that’s a hard depending question—
JF: Ya its tough, it kind of depends on the company and how it works. I think in terms of labor conditions obviously a smaller company probably has a grasp on it a little better. But, ya so it’s really dependent on the situation, I think the hard part is that, you know if Coca-Cola decided to move into an area, or if General Motors decides to open a plant in Guanajuato, they are employing everybody, and everyone is going to have a job and it’s going to work out great in terms of that part. And so I think it’s a lot easier for a big company to come in and kinda like make a bigger splash in the water [some loud background noise from outside].
EB: So if we look into the future now, hypothetically now in 10 years when all these factories have moved into Mexico do you think that NAFTA and free trade will still be necessary to incentivize companies to come in? Or do you think that once they are already in, if you reinstate trade tariffs if they would stay? Or if they would just evacuate a say ‘sunk cost to the factory, forget about it,’ or would they try to make it work now that they invested millions of dollars?
JF: Ya it’s tricky, it’s kind of what we are seeing now even in this move from Asia to Mexico. They opened up factories in China, and they say ‘in the long term it’s better for me to come back here.’ So I think you have the exact same thing, with the trade situation, ‘how much am I gona get taxed on this?’ How much harder is it now, is it worth it to go to another country with a sunk cost and leave whatever I did, or should I stick it out a little bit longer? And the answer would be different by industry.
EB: Another question, maybe this is a little unrelated to what we were talking about before, but NAFTA encourages tons of industries to move into Mexico to create factories for jobs there, and yet at the exact same time we see increased numbers of immigration to the United States. Where do you think that plays in? If factories are going down and creating jobs, why is there the need to come to the United States, are they simply not creating enough? Or is the United States that illusion of a better life that has a bigger pull?
JF: Ya I mean I think, I still think that anywhere in the world where I’ve been, from Africa to Asia to Europe, not Europe as much, but any emerging area, like Latin America, the dream, and where you make it, is in America and the United States. You always have that kind of dream. It’s where you have hope and we still drive things culturally. I mean the movies of the world are from Hollywood; music of the world is from United States. And like McDonalds and Coca-Cola make these brands that operate in all these different countries. I do think that, I mean the other thing is that the wages are more in the United States if I work in a factory in Monterey Mexico, I would be making, and I have no idea what the prices are really, but lets say I make $3 and hour, in the states the least is $7.15, so you make double, more than double, I don’t know the actual numbers there, but I could work the same and get double and send that back. The thing that people forget is the cost of living is so much higher. So when you are eating and living somewhere it’s tough. Or if you need insurance or go to the doctor or whatever, those are all things that really add up, and people don’t realize that yes you make more money, but you spend so much more money. I think that’s why you see so many people that go to the United States but don’t bring their families because they can't support their families. Then you have the whole immigration part. But I don’t think it would be any more of a benefit to move family from Mexico to the United States to work the exact same job.
EB: It might even be easier to just stay—
JF: Instead of having to learn the language and worry about legal status and all that stuff, but I mean it depends and I don’t think there are enough jobs. But people also say there aren’t enough jobs in the US. It just kind of depends on your skill level and what you are willing to do.
EB: I guess from an overall arching standpoint, in other interviews I’ve had people may have been more against NAFTA where you almost recognize the need so to speak of what NAFTA is creating. Would you say, this is kind of a direct question, but that you support NAFTA’s efforts and moving factories into Mexico and what its been doing for Mexico in terms of an overall benefit?
JF: Ya I mean I think part of my background and my perspective is based in business so it’s not as much in the environmental and labor side, even though those are caused by business. I look at it in much more of an economic argument, and ya I can say if I were the president of Mexico I would sign NAFTA. I don’t know where I would be on the other side, if I was Barack Obama, would I sign or not? Because it certainly gets us cheaper goods from more competition, so it’s good for consumers. The issue is that you lose the protection of your American workers and that’s something we need to be careful with going forward. But from a Mexican perspective going forward, I think it’s a good thing.
EB: So you mention it’s not as good for America, Bill Clinton signed it into law in ’94, why do you think he was a proponent of it, did he foresee something else?
JF: Well I mean, the thing that is good about free trade partnership in Canada, Mexico, and the United States, is you have three really big economies and they are neighbors, and they pretty much operate through, pretty well together, we are allies. Generally, it’s better for competition, and better for business people, as a business its better for you. I would say as a CEO of a company you are generally for free trade because it opens up new markets for you, brings down your costs; that part of it is great. Again it’s the American factory worker, the American farmer that is not off very good. That maybe the food on the table is going to be a little cheaper, but their jobs are gone, and they just can't operate against being undercut by 40% by Mexican prices, so those folks are really against it. That’s why I think it’s much stricter on the American side. But you look at a company like BlackBerry, it’s a Canadian owned company, they manufactured everything in Mexico, and sold everything in the US so when you look at big success stories, BlackBerry, one of the biggest, a Canadian company owned and operated in Canada, manufacturing in Mexico, and selling to consumers in the United States; that is kind of what a lot of NAFTA people say this is how its supposed to work, and its working. Who knows if BlackBerry would be as big as it was without that.
EB: So I guess as kind of a final question to wrap it up, what do you, what would you recommend for the next 10 years into the future, maybe even 50 in terms of maintaining free trade and growing grassroots in Mexico, moving industries. Do you have an overall idea of what should happen or would be the best for a mutually beneficial arrangement?
JF: in terms of free trade I don’t necessarily have a clear plan there, but I do think that you have to look at Mexico as more of a market, in terms of they are not just a place for cheaper goods or cheaper labor, but a real market for us to sell to as well. As a company you are being stupid to not be operating in Mexico in some capacity. Not just manufacturing but selling your stuff there. And I think the way to do that is to invest in companies and entrepreneurs… that as the middle class continues to grow these entrepreneurs will be successful as they have a market to sell to. And I think you really look at it and you see, especially what I was doing last year, these are the kinds of jobs Mexico needs and the kind of good jobs that are going to be created. And I think the key is then how do you figure out, one of the things I saw, is even though a lot of these are entrepreneurs are creative people a lot of them are just taking copies of things that exist in the US and putting it in Mexico. Taking uber cars that you can rent a black SUV in the city, why not bring it to Mexico? Or, we have this in the US why not bring it to Mexico? I think the next step is the next twitter, or whatever that is. Not a replica that is in the United States; that is the big jump. So what I saw at least is a majority of my projects were copies or replicas of something that already existed. So how do we get people to really think or be creative? The next Apple Company to come out of Mexico or any emerging market. I think its just making sure you have investments and have people, you know a lot of people that are founders come from somewhere else, even in United States because they have money and access to capital and consumers and mentors and all. So how do you keep that local? That’s the question to ask and answer. Hopefully they can answer it.
EB: Ok well I appreciate your time, thanks so much for coming out. [Interruption by waiter] I appreciate it again and hope you have a great day.
JF: Thanks.
Interviewee Date of Birth
Fecha de nacimiento del entrevistado
Interviewee Place of Origin
Lugar de origen del entrevistado
Interviewee Places of Residence
Lugares de residencia del entrevistado
Interviewee Journey Coordinates
Dublin Core
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Title
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R-0685 -- Ford, Joshua.
Description
An account of the resource
This interview with Joshua Ford focuses on his personal two-year experience living and working in Mexico City. The interview explores Ford's work through the Fulbright scholarship, where he assisted Mexican entrepreneurs through Endeavor, a company that serves to connect Mexican entrepreneurs with powerful business mentors from across Mexico and the United States. Through the interview, Brandt continually questions what Ford found and believes to be necessary for Mexican entrepreneurs and start-ups to be successful. Through the lens of The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the interviewer, Eric Brandt, attempts to figure out where and how Mexico could move beyond its industrial independence on the United States for jobs, and how Mexico could further promote local businesses to create in-house jobs to employ Mexican labor under Mexican management. Also, by examining NAFTA through an economical, entrepreneurial lens, Ford appeared to maintain a relatively positive opinion and outlook concerning NAFTA’s original goals and to-date accomplishments. Interestingly, Ford seemed to support Mexico's involvement in NAFTA, and even mentions that he believes NAFTA benefits Mexico more than it benefits the United States. His biggest concern with NAFTA was the American labor loss of bargaining power, followed closely by labor concerns within Mexico, that he then expands upon by saying he believes the creation of numerous jobs in Mexico potentially positively outweighs the negative labor and exploitative wage consequences. Ford seemed very proud of the Mexican entrepreneurs using NAFTA to help themselves grow, and seemed to favor NAFTA’s ability to promote trade within the United States and Mexico for all parties, though especially for small businesses.
Source
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University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
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No restrictions. Open to research.
Date
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06 April 2014
Format
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R0685_Audio.mp3
Publisher
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<a href="http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/19852">University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.</a>
-
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/b3a0fe87f7db6fe01b69751a2d0109a1.mp3
57578d5e141dd72c4df78b7ad45a5870
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/b5bddf335611e401ab08e80a04a05966.pdf
aae9ea48ef8d2ec80ddd66f0052e4115
SOHP Interview - Bilingual
Southern Oral History Program Interview with metadata in English and Spanish
Interview number
Número de entrevista
R-0642
En: Restrictions
Es: Restricciones
No restrictions. Open to research.
Date
Fecha
March 27 2012
Interviewee
Entrevistado/a
Wiltberger, Joe.
En: Interviewee Occupation
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Students Researchers
Interviewee Date of Birth
Fecha de nacimiento del entrevistado
En: Interviewee Gender
Es: Género de entrevistado
Male
Interviewee Place of Origin
Lugar de origen del entrevistado
New York -- United States
Interviewee Places of Residence
Lugares de residencia del entrevistado
Chapel Hill -- Orange County -- North Carolina
Interviewer
Entrevistador/a
Wittum, Caleb Garret.
En: Language of Interview
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
English
En: Abstract
Es: Abstracto en español
The interview was organized around a few major themes. These include views or stereotypes of Latinos, views or stereotypes of immigration, the origin of views on these topics, the mass media’s impact on common views of immigration, and how North Carolinians may or may not have different views on this topic from people in other parts of the country. The interview has a brief background about Joe Wiltberger and talks about his personal experiences as well as his overall views on the questions listed above. Wiltberger gives a unique point of view because he has not only worked with immigrant communities, but he also has some experience working in the media field.
En: Citation
Es: Citación
Interview with Joe Wiltberger by Caleb Wittum, 27 March 2012, R-0642, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Reference URL
URL de referencia
http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/17010
Repository
Repositorio
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
En: Themes
Es: Temas
Citizenship and immigration; Economics; Media; Racism and discrimination
En: Transcript
Es: Transcripción
Caleb Wittum: This is an interview with UNC PHD Student Joe Wiltberger for the Southern Oral History Program’s series Latin American Immigrant Perspectives it is conducted on Monday March…Tuesday March 27, 2012 in Joe’s Apartment. The interviewer is Caleb Wittum. Can you start by telling me a little about yourself? What do you study? Where do you go to school?
Joe Wiltberger: Sure. Yeah. I go to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and I am a PHD candidate. I’m finishing my dissertation research which is about Salvadorian migration to the US and the impact that immigration has for communities of origin in El Salvador. And I also wrote my master’s thesis around the question of Latino immigration to the United States and how those…and how the Latino immigration debate is understood and framed in the US. And I’m from New York State but I’ve been living in North Carolina for the last, well 7 years for my graduate career; however, 3 of those years were spent in El Salvador.
CW: Umm. When you were in El Salvador did you do field research and have you done any in North Carolina or in the US?
JW: I have. I did 3 years of field research mainly based in El Salvador. Its qualitative research so I look at publications and literature coming from the government, different non-governmental agencies, development agencies that are all addressing migration and I also interviewed those folks and I also interviewed a lot of Salvadorians living in…some rural communities in the northern part of the country. Which is an area with a strong stream of immigrants, and a strong history of community organizing and development. So I interviewed them about their experience going to the United States. So that also included interviews with Salvadorian migrants from those communities in the Washington DC metropolitan area in New Jersey in Virginia and a few other areas as well in the US. My masters work, or my work in NC. I was involved in a couple of different initiatives one of them was the 287g working group. That’s what we call it. And we organized a series of community conferences. We collaboratively got a group of scholars together as well as community leaders. Umm people who work around issues of immigration and migration, and we put together some research and extended our efforts to help educate the local community and people around the UNC community about Latino migration, especially in North Carolina. And so our work around the question of 287g looked at local immigration enforce measures and what sort of impact they were having on people’s lives here in North Carolina in the local area. So I was involved in that. I also have been involved more generally with the Latino community in North Carolina. Having some alliances and conversations with local neighbors as well as other community leaders from for example the North Carolina Latino Coalition or from El Pueblo. Just throughout my encounters as the immigrant rights movement was really starting to take form and have a presence here beginning around 2006 with the mega marches. The question of Latino immigration became very important and relevant in people’s lives all of the sudden. And people started to notice that their communities were changing quickly and that people were raising their voices with some discontent around superposed immigrant enforcement measures. And so it became a relevant issue and a number of forums and dialogues happened. We brought a number of guest speakers to UNC and I went to a number of community based meetings and organizing meetings addressing important issues such as the raids in Smithfield or… other opportunities were we were bringing together local leaders and advocates to discuss and address problems especially around immigration enforcement, deportation, and the possibility of racial profiling and discrimination and the violation of civil rights of people in the local area.
CW: You worked a lot in this field. How do you think that the general public who may not have as close of access or interaction with the immigrants. How do you think they view immigration?
JW: Well in NC, we have a sense that Latino immigration is something very new when in reality it is not. There have been Latinos migrating, Latin Americans migrating to the United States from the United States, around the United States for hundreds of years. We have seen, you know, a rise in migration from the Central American and Mexican region over the last several decades. And North Carolina particularly has felt that change in the last 10 to 20 years as we became the state I think with the highest rate of Latino immigration. Many people coming from other parts of the United States: California where the cost of living became too high. The Midwest where meat packing and farm workers were coming into the Southeast were production was picking up. And for a variety of reasons. And so communities around here, in this state and around the Southeast, changed dramatically demographically in a short period of time. And so when people began to sense and feel that in their communities, I think there was a sense that the border was crossing them or that North Carolina was becoming part of the new south and therefore part of a Latin American space and a Latin American demographic. And I don’t know if everyone was ready for that. I think that race in North Carolina, as in many places in the southeast, has been thought of in binary or dualist terms: very much black and white, the American Indian presence. And while we have always had a Latino community here, the strengthening of that community was very sudden for people. So yeah I forget sometimes that not everyone is exposed and working closely with the Latino community here and I forget that there are some very prominent assumptions and stereotypes that carry over that simply aren’t debunked and aren’t… there are a set of taken for granted assumptions that people don’t question. And it is simply because not everyone is informed about where people are coming from. And about what their experiences are and why they are here. And I think it is exacerbated as well by the news media and the way the Latino immigration debate is framed in the United States in general, because there are a set of narratives about Latino immigration that are very negative that are very generalized and monolithic. That categorize a whole set of people in a very universalist way and attribute certain qualities and characteristics to them in very much, on very much, racial terms even though we don’t speak of race in the same way in the United States as we used to. We frame it in cultural terms or we code it in cultural terms. When very much this is still. The debate is very much a racial issue in that it is very much a debate around Latinos immigration in the United States. And because that debate, and Latinos as subjects of that debate necessarily so, has become so normalized in the United States. That’s the information that people have. So what people understand about Latinos comes from these very politicized narratives coming from the news media coming from politicians that frame how we are allowed to think about what Latinos mean or Latin American means for our communities.
CW: How do you think…these sources frame the Latino population? What characteristics do they attribute to this demographic?
JW: Well, there’s a number of generalizations that, you know, would be very hard to address the scope of those. And they vary. You know when we talk about culture or race or geography or nationality or ethnicity. Those are phenotypical categories that are never perfect and they are always changing. And People understand them differently according to their own subjective experience; their own subjectivities. It’s locally contextual right. If you live in Los Angeles you probably have a much different idea of what it means to be Latino or to be part of a Latino community than if you are in North Carolina. In Orange County. So these ideas are variant and they are flexible and they are changing. However, the Political rhetoric around Latino immigrant is very much framed in terms of national security right now and in terms of the Economy. Or at least those are the two explicit frames of reference that are drawn upon as people make assessments about whether Latino immigration is something good or something bad or how it could be addressed. So in terms of national security this is very much linked to 9-11 and everything that came out of 9-11. As a moment where suddenly you know our national security felt threatened. Our borders were fortified and built up even though I don’t know of any terrorist activity coming across the Mexican-US border. That very much became part of the political project: was addressing the Mexican-US border. And maybe that’s important…securing the sense that people feel threatened and therefore quote unquote illegal aliens are criminals or are criminalized in the popular rhetoric just on the basis that they don’t have a legal status. And that may be because you have overstayed a visa. It may be because you were forced out of your country and you weren’t able to get an asylum status. So all of these legal categories again we always think of legalization and illegality in a dualist way. But really, laws are never perfect just like phenotypical categories aren’t perfect. And we can’t address the plethora of context and situations from which people are coming. For example from Central America or Mexico in this case since that is the focus of concerns around Latino immigration in the United States. Laws…legal status is not applied equally. It is an unequal playing field…and citizenship is very much an idea that is determined in relation to how we understand our national community. Right who belongs and who doesn’t belong. So it is very much about our ideas about what it means to be American and what it means to be a part of the US. The other side of this debate is as I mentioned is the Economy. And of course, you know immigration has always been linked to concerns about economic wellbeing. And in this case, people look to Latinos as being part of a larger structural problem of absorbing a large number of migrants. Who then are, you know, taking away jobs from rightfully legal people living in the US. And that is also a valid concern. However, the way we understand the economic debate, because Latinos are the subject of that debate, tends to ascribe blame to a particular group of people. And therefore, that can generate these sorts of stereotypes and generalizations about, about an entire group of people, who suffer as a result of that regardless of their legal status. We’ve had us citizen who have been deported. And we look at the question of racial profiling well you’re more likely to stop or pull over a Latino. Is it because of these assumptions about legal status? And The reality is, a lot of legal citizens have been stopped by the police and so we need to be cautious of that. But the economic debate you know immigration has always been an important part of our economy. The 1990s, particularly you know the late 90s after NAFTA was signed, was an economic boom. Umm And George w Bush was pushing for temporary worker programs, for guest worker programs with some really ambitious proposals. And then that shifted. That shifted after 9-11 as the security discourse came about. And as far as assessments about whether or not you know undocumented immigration or temporary worker immigration is healthy for the economy. That again is debatable according to different context and different experiences. So what might be outstanding in…a local economy in a town in rural Indiana might be much different than what is going on in a neighborhood in northern New Jersey. And there is also...you can look at this on the macro scale of the national economy or you can look at a local scale and what is going on. And indeed there is a number of different factors. But can we really reduce, you know, how we understand economic well-being to a certain set of reductionist factors and indicators. So it becomes very hard to judge that, but these are real concerns. So I think the economy and national security and the one that doesn’t get talked is this question of culture. And stereotypes, there’s been a lot of writing about this. Especially around the time that the 2006 marches were happening, several books came out by Latino studies scholars, and historians, and anthropologist and others who talk about. Who are speaking against the Samuel Huntington discourse that was particularly strong since the early 2000s and late 90s. Which is this idea of an invasion or a Latino threat narrative. Or umm the idea that Latinos and particularly Mexicans, and I would extend that to central American people as well, this idea that they are particularly for some reason interested in some separatist movement. Or are unwilling to quote-unquote assimilate to this supposed US, white American, Anglo-Saxon, English speaking norm. Which is a norm we need to question to begin with, I would argue. We think about globalization today and what Latin America looks like today and what the us looks like today. Why is this particular norm the privilege status of what is acceptable? And who get to determine what is acceptable and what is not. Who are the folks who are able to make a decision and decide that Latinos are subjects of this debate? Why isn’t someone else the subject of the debate? So this question of culture, which is really a code for race, is imbedded in this political rhetoric about national security and about the nation economy and wellbeing and sovereignty. But it is sort of hidden. It is weaved into the rhetoric. Especially the more vocal people like Samuel Huntington or Lou Dobbs or the founder of the Minutemen Movement. But whether or not you are taking a pro-immigrant or anti-immigrant. No matter where you stand on the question of undocumented immigration, you… there are a certain set of assumptions that are very much ingrained in the logic of the way we think and understand race and equality and culture as people who have grown up in the US. So, you know, there are certain taken for granted assumptions that are there that really go unquestioned but it just as much conditions and shapes the logic of people who might be very much advocating on behalf of the rights of new generation Latino immigrants, as much as it might be people who might be very much concerned about that issue.
CW: How do you think these assumptions impact the immigrants?
JW: Well…some people argue that these discourses or you know the set of ideas, the narratives, structures in society, the sort of way we understand things and the way that structures society. Some people argue that is very much internalized in how people self-govern themselves, right. How people go about their lives. So it could have all sorts of impacts. Certainly we see a climate of fear, a climate of tension especially since the 2006 marches. There has been an extreme reaction to that visibility and that protest against legislations that would have made it a felony to be an illegal immigrant in the US. Since that time of course we have seen a host of hate groups of white supremacy groups that have now begun to target the Latino community. And have even shifted in that direction more so than before when it was more of a racial binary. We also see it in terms of you know people who react as well, right. I think that not everyone chooses to live in a state of fear but when you see high school students who walk out of classes or host sit ins who are undocumented in favor of the dream act. I think that’s really powerful about fearlessness, right. So I think in a lot of ways people don’t stand for being accused of or being generalized as having certain characteristics. Just like, you know, I can’t think of anyone who enjoys enduring a racial or you know stereotype. We don’t like to be, as human beings, we don’t like it when people judge us and generalize us and tell us what we are capable of and what we are incapable of. So I think that those stereotypes also can have a powerful effect in that, you know, some people aren’t afraid to stand up and take risk because they are concerned. They won’t stand for it.
CW: Umm, I know you have worked a lot with the Salvadorian community have they been generalized with the rest of the Latinos? Or do you think they have been viewed separately?
JW: I think that when we talk about the immigration issue or the immigration debate in the US. First it ends up being a debate around Latino immigration. Even though people don’t say that. And second I think that they’re not talking about Chilean immigration. They’re talking about Mexico especially and also especially Central America. There are a lot of Guatemalans Salvadorians Hondurans especially who since the 1980s civil wars and 1990s civil wars in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua. Has established a set of flows that have grown out of that displacement. And so Salvadorians do have a presence in the US. And I think it depends on geographic context as well. In Los Angles, Salvadorians are Mexicanized all the way to the level of politics. The Salvadorian community is very established. It’s the largest Salvadorian community outside of San Salvador. It is one of the longest standing outside of San Francisco (loud noise) and folks there struggle to get a seat in the state legislature or in the city council. And leaders of the Salvadorian community have expressed that to me. And then generally Salvadorians face the sort of umm racial stereotype of being lumped in together with the strong Mexican community in California. In Washington DC, where I do a lot of my work, Salvadorians are a salient community. They are the largest immigrant community in the metropolitan Washington dc area. They are the largest contingent of Latinos and they are also an old long standing community that has had a presence there for many decades now. It was one of the first places that people were heading in the sanctuary movement and it became a hub for political organizing in favor of refugee status for Salvadorians escaping the civil war. A status they never really earned they were always unrecognized refugees. And of course as soon as the war ended in 1992, they were then thought of as economy driven labor migrants and were lumped into the category illegal immigrants just as Mexicans and Latinos in general are confronting as a category. So it varies from place to place. Salvadorians are in all 50 states. They’re in countries all over the world. I know Salvadorians in Australia, Sweden, in Italy, in Germany, in Costa Rica. I know people all over the place. So yes they are lumped in with this concern of Latino immigration in particular way, in particular places. They are very much an invisibilized population in that sense because they are lumped in with becoming Latino. When I meet a Salvadorian in Washington DC on the streets they usually ask me ‘oh how exciting you have heard of my country.’ Well yeah I have. I’ve been going there for 12 years. But when you go to El Salvador you realize they are very connected to the United States. They have extremely close political ties ever since the Civil War which the US government funded. They… it seems like every family I meet in El Salvador has family living in the United States. We estimate that a million of the 2 point something million Salvadorians in the US do have a legal status. Several hundred thousand do have TPS and hundreds of thousands more have citizenship or permanent or temporary residency. Many of them were here prior to the amnesty that Reagan offered. And some of those older ties mean that parents may have been raising their kids from the United States who were living in El Salvador, kids who were living in El Salvador and then those kids may be, after a long period of time, eligible for obtaining a residency status as well. So we do have all different kinds of Salvadorian immigration not just illegal or undocumented immigration. It’s a long standing community it’s a changing community. It’s a very…When you go to El Salvador you feel a connection because people speak to you in English. People know where you’re from. People have been to the United States. Many people go back and forth yet in the United States we tend to not see, you know, an entire community of people or understand the difference between or value the difference where they’re from and where other Latinos who are coming to the United States are coming from. The other thing that differentiates Salvadorians, with a stigma, that I think is not warranted is the association with violence, violent society and gang membership. And I don’t like this because of my own experience working in El Salvador. There is the one common assumption is that the gangs, or the quote unquote Salvadorian gang or Mara Salvatrucha. Came from the experience of the war. The civil war in the 1980s and early 1990s in El Salvador. That these were former guerilla fighters or they were exposed to so much violence, that they, that is where they learned things. I don’t buy into that narrative which has been a narrative that has been advocated by some of the initial gang member themselves. But really much of this gang began on the streets of Los Angeles so it was a US problem and it was about exposure to violence in the United States. That was then brought to El Salvador through deportation throughout the 1990s and grew and proliferated to many different countries and states and incorporated a wide range of membership. So really it isn’t a Salvadorian gang anymore. Really it is a Latino based gang…and unfortunately they retain the name Salvatrucha. So people still associate it as an exclusively Salvadorian phenomenon, coming from El Salvador which is the reverse of what it is about. And it has also been linked to this national security discourse as this gang has been talked of as having transnational cells or being part of a sort of terrorist security threat to the United states which is also problematic because it really doesn’t operate in that way. In fact if you talk to scholars who work on this they tell you that they are actually quite disorganized. However it is a serious stigma. I know Salvadorians on the streets in Virginia whose Mexican friends turn to them and make a joke and say ‘hey salvatrucha’ so it’s an everyday, you know, internalization. An everyday thing that people have to deal with, is this stigma of coming from a place that a country that has a history of war…..it was a very difficult time but it is something Salvadorians have moved past. It happened twenty years ago, it ended 20 years ago. And, umm you know, I meet some of the friendliest most peaceful antiwar people I’ve ever met in that country. And we have to completely throw away any of these myths about culture of violence or cycles of violence. Umm that have also come into these discourses on Latino immigration. I think those are very dangerous, baseless assumptions that are placed upon people to justify particular political objectives.
CW: you have talked about Virginia, and DC and California how do you think the views of immigrants compare to the ones in North Carolina? Like for, are they treated better in North Carolina? Or worse? Is there a better understanding of immigrants in North Carolina?
JW: Well I think that North Carolina is, has always been a very welcoming place. And For me it has been a welcoming, I came from growing up in New York State. People here are very friendly. And so I think they receive new comers really well around here. However like I said there is a lack of information about where people are coming from. And you read the book “The Maya from Morganton” the classic example of you know suddenly schools have to not just teach ESL, but to teach ESL to students who may not even be speaking Spanish. And you may be from highland Guatemala, but people still assume that you are from Mexico or that you eat tacos. So it is really a matter of education and information reaching to areas and communities that are being heavily affected by immigration. Whose only source of information, or whose primary source of information has been media and political debates that are, whether or not we want them to be heavily laden with rhetoric and narratives that are constructed with particular political objectives. To either take a particular stand for or against undocumented immigration or particular stand about how to address that. So having said that, I think the structures weren’t in place. When we saw schools in Raleigh suddenly need ESL teachers that they didn’t have. Or when we suddenly needed immigration lawyers in North Carolina who had good quality training and how to deal with immigration law and have a professional background in that. We were lacking because all of the sudden people were getting jailed or detained, and we didn’t know yet whether or not our state or constitutional laws were being abided by. And that needed…that needs to be determined by… by lawyers and by people who know immigration law well and what the loopholes are and what the ends and outs are. So what happened in North Carolina recently in the last several years is that, all of that has been sort of meshed out through trial and error and it still very much is a trial and error. And we saw that with the local immigration enforcement initiatives that took effect here just like we have all over the country. Where we really don’t know just yet to what extent constitutional laws or federal laws were being upheld or were being called into question or being interpreted in new ways or being violated. So it’s this question of change and rapid change in North Carolina and it’s a question of how to have the infrastructure and the people who have the knowhow to respond to those changes effectively. And unfortunately we just haven’t had that all over the US because things have heated up so much around the question of Latino immigration. That it becomes very emotional a very delicate topic. People don’t want to talk about it. People aren’t interested in learning new perspectives or responding to it in a practical way. And what we see instead are more extreme measures that end up contributing to these tensions. Simply because people don’t know their neighbors yet, and people don’t know where people are coming from. People don’t know whether or not they should believe what they hear in the news or not. So I think that rapid demographic change has made it particularly difficult. However I think that in my experience in North Carolina I have met some communities that have responded to change really, really well as well. In other cases no but you look at what is going when you see local economies that have benefitted and have grown and some people have come to really appreciate that and to appreciate diversity. But we still have a lot of work to do.
CW: Where do you think the public gets there information and their views about Latinos and immigrants?
JW: Well I think that…well I don’t know. I think like what we talked about the media. The mainstream media has particular perspectives. That are shared and in order for media… for the TV stations to get ratings they need to pose the two extremes. And that shapes and conditions our thinking about the issue because we think in very dualist and extreme terms. And we don’t see the common ground. When in reality the common ground, the overlap, might be right in front of us but we just don’t see it. Because we’re always hearing that we have to think about this at odds that we have to be on one side or the other. And I think when we are able to have dialogue that that’s when productive measures to respond to and address the question of undocumented immigration become more widespread and more feasible and more able to be reached. But it’s not until we can have those dialogues that we will be able to make any progress. And so I think that people are getting their information in North Carolina by through personal experience too. You know, I think when you see a person who looks different than you, who speaks a different language who moved in next door to you, or who is suddenly is working for you. You might have a particular set of assumptions initially about that person. But once you get to know them if it is possible if you reach out if they reach out to you, if you can find ways to communicate. Those experiences are really rewarding. And I hear about those experiences all the time from people I know who work in mixed company. That, you know, people are really receptive to and appreciative of diversity and the skills and the knowledge and the customs and the interesting ways of doing things and ways of life that people bring with them when they come to this country or to a home community. So I think it is a matter of learning to understand and appreciate change and appreciate diversity and engage with diversity through experience. And some peoples experiences are positive and some peoples experience are negative but I think people are misinformed if they are… cutting themselves off from being open to diversity and only listening to what they hear from political debates around, around this issue.
CW: What do you see as the future of, you know, views of immigration? Do you think people will get out as more immigrants come that they will…their views will change?
JW: I don’t know what the future is. I didn’t bring my crystal ball. Well we know the United States is changing and Latin America is changing too. And y’all were down in Mexico a few weeks ago and you saw that there were all sorts of retired United States citizens moving to Mexico to the communities that were sending all sorts of Mexicans to the United States. So this is called globalization. We are experiencing demographic shifts in the Americas in other parts of the world as well and we’re becoming more international communities. And so we need to go beyond thinking in national terms. We need to be more open to diversity. And we are certainly going to see that in the United States, as the Latino community becomes a stronger immigrant group and their presence continues to grow and strengthen. So what I think is really, really inspiring for me is as an instructor at UNC is seeing more and more Latino students, first generation second generation students, who are Carolinians who speak with a Carolina accent. Not that that is a good thing or a bad thing. To not be speaking Spanish or to be speaking Spanish. Or to be speaking with a Carolina accent or not. But these are Carolinians, right. And these are people who are part of the United States and have been part of this area and country for a long time now. And you know it is inspiring because you see students who are going on to become doctors or professionals who may be from a family where they were first generation Americans in the family and their parents were doing some pretty hard work as new immigrants to this country and having to learn a language and having to take on jobs that maybe others didn’t want to do. Having to fight for legal status. But I think the future is in the first, second, third generations. People who are from these families that have recently arrived and also the long standing generation of the Latino community that has been a part of this country for decades or even hundreds of years. And I think that mixing of diversity and this ability not to assume that everyone has to assimilate to a certain norm but to accept instead the idea that we are a diverse…this is a diverse country. This is a diverse continent. And that people are always moving and that people have the right to mobility. It’s just a matter of figuring out politically and legislatively the appropriate ways to deal with that reality and to help promote positive social change and cultural change, as we do go forward into the future.
CW: Well thank you for conducting this interview with me.
Es: Restricciones
Sin restricciones. Abierta para investigación.
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Estudiantes; Investigadores
Es: Género de entrevistado
Hombre
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
Inglés
Es: Resumen
La entrevista fue organizada en torno a varios temas principales. Estos incluyen opiniones o estereotipos sobre los latinos, opiniones o estereotipos sobre inmigración, el origen de estos temas, el impacto de los medios de comunicación masiva en las opiniones comunes sobre inmigración y cómo los ciudadados de Carolina del Norte puedan o no puedan tener diferentes opiniones en este tema en comparación a personas de otras partes del país. Esta entrevista tiene un breve recuento sobre Joe Wiltberger y habla sobre sus experiencias personales así como también sus opiniones generales sobre los temas mencionados anteriormente. Wiltberger da un punto de vista particular porque él no solamente ha trabajado con comunidades inmigrantes, sino que también tiene algo de experiencia trabajando en el campo de los medios de comunicación.
Es: Citación
Entrevista con Joe Wiltberger por Caleb Wittum, 27 Marzo 2012, R-0642, en Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, Universidad de Carolina del Norte en Chapel Hill.
Es: Temas
Ciudadanía e inmigración; Economía; Medios de comunicación; Racismo y discriminación
Es: Transcripción
Caleb Wittum: This is an interview with UNC PHD Student Joe Wiltberger for the Southern Oral History Program’s series Latin American Immigrant Perspectives it is conducted on Monday March…Tuesday March 27, 2012 in Joe’s Apartment. The interviewer is Caleb Wittum. Can you start by telling me a little about yourself? What do you study? Where do you go to school?
Joe Wiltberger: Sure. Yeah. I go to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and I am a PHD candidate. I’m finishing my dissertation research which is about Salvadorian migration to the US and the impact that immigration has for communities of origin in El Salvador. And I also wrote my master’s thesis around the question of Latino immigration to the United States and how those…and how the Latino immigration debate is understood and framed in the US. And I’m from New York State but I’ve been living in North Carolina for the last, well 7 years for my graduate career; however, 3 of those years were spent in El Salvador.
CW: Umm. When you were in El Salvador did you do field research and have you done any in North Carolina or in the US?
JW: I have. I did 3 years of field research mainly based in El Salvador. Its qualitative research so I look at publications and literature coming from the government, different non-governmental agencies, development agencies that are all addressing migration and I also interviewed those folks and I also interviewed a lot of Salvadorians living in…some rural communities in the northern part of the country. Which is an area with a strong stream of immigrants, and a strong history of community organizing and development. So I interviewed them about their experience going to the United States. So that also included interviews with Salvadorian migrants from those communities in the Washington DC metropolitan area in New Jersey in Virginia and a few other areas as well in the US. My masters work, or my work in NC. I was involved in a couple of different initiatives one of them was the 287g working group. That’s what we call it. And we organized a series of community conferences. We collaboratively got a group of scholars together as well as community leaders. Umm people who work around issues of immigration and migration, and we put together some research and extended our efforts to help educate the local community and people around the UNC community about Latino migration, especially in North Carolina. And so our work around the question of 287g looked at local immigration enforce measures and what sort of impact they were having on people’s lives here in North Carolina in the local area. So I was involved in that. I also have been involved more generally with the Latino community in North Carolina. Having some alliances and conversations with local neighbors as well as other community leaders from for example the North Carolina Latino Coalition or from El Pueblo. Just throughout my encounters as the immigrant rights movement was really starting to take form and have a presence here beginning around 2006 with the mega marches. The question of Latino immigration became very important and relevant in people’s lives all of the sudden. And people started to notice that their communities were changing quickly and that people were raising their voices with some discontent around superposed immigrant enforcement measures. And so it became a relevant issue and a number of forums and dialogues happened. We brought a number of guest speakers to UNC and I went to a number of community based meetings and organizing meetings addressing important issues such as the raids in Smithfield or… other opportunities were we were bringing together local leaders and advocates to discuss and address problems especially around immigration enforcement, deportation, and the possibility of racial profiling and discrimination and the violation of civil rights of people in the local area.
CW: You worked a lot in this field. How do you think that the general public who may not have as close of access or interaction with the immigrants. How do you think they view immigration?
JW: Well in NC, we have a sense that Latino immigration is something very new when in reality it is not. There have been Latinos migrating, Latin Americans migrating to the United States from the United States, around the United States for hundreds of years. We have seen, you know, a rise in migration from the Central American and Mexican region over the last several decades. And North Carolina particularly has felt that change in the last 10 to 20 years as we became the state I think with the highest rate of Latino immigration. Many people coming from other parts of the United States: California where the cost of living became too high. The Midwest where meat packing and farm workers were coming into the Southeast were production was picking up. And for a variety of reasons. And so communities around here, in this state and around the Southeast, changed dramatically demographically in a short period of time. And so when people began to sense and feel that in their communities, I think there was a sense that the border was crossing them or that North Carolina was becoming part of the new south and therefore part of a Latin American space and a Latin American demographic. And I don’t know if everyone was ready for that. I think that race in North Carolina, as in many places in the southeast, has been thought of in binary or dualist terms: very much black and white, the American Indian presence. And while we have always had a Latino community here, the strengthening of that community was very sudden for people. So yeah I forget sometimes that not everyone is exposed and working closely with the Latino community here and I forget that there are some very prominent assumptions and stereotypes that carry over that simply aren’t debunked and aren’t… there are a set of taken for granted assumptions that people don’t question. And it is simply because not everyone is informed about where people are coming from. And about what their experiences are and why they are here. And I think it is exacerbated as well by the news media and the way the Latino immigration debate is framed in the United States in general, because there are a set of narratives about Latino immigration that are very negative that are very generalized and monolithic. That categorize a whole set of people in a very universalist way and attribute certain qualities and characteristics to them in very much, on very much, racial terms even though we don’t speak of race in the same way in the United States as we used to. We frame it in cultural terms or we code it in cultural terms. When very much this is still. The debate is very much a racial issue in that it is very much a debate around Latinos immigration in the United States. And because that debate, and Latinos as subjects of that debate necessarily so, has become so normalized in the United States. That’s the information that people have. So what people understand about Latinos comes from these very politicized narratives coming from the news media coming from politicians that frame how we are allowed to think about what Latinos mean or Latin American means for our communities.
CW: How do you think…these sources frame the Latino population? What characteristics do they attribute to this demographic?
JW: Well, there’s a number of generalizations that, you know, would be very hard to address the scope of those. And they vary. You know when we talk about culture or race or geography or nationality or ethnicity. Those are phenotypical categories that are never perfect and they are always changing. And People understand them differently according to their own subjective experience; their own subjectivities. It’s locally contextual right. If you live in Los Angeles you probably have a much different idea of what it means to be Latino or to be part of a Latino community than if you are in North Carolina. In Orange County. So these ideas are variant and they are flexible and they are changing. However, the Political rhetoric around Latino immigrant is very much framed in terms of national security right now and in terms of the Economy. Or at least those are the two explicit frames of reference that are drawn upon as people make assessments about whether Latino immigration is something good or something bad or how it could be addressed. So in terms of national security this is very much linked to 9-11 and everything that came out of 9-11. As a moment where suddenly you know our national security felt threatened. Our borders were fortified and built up even though I don’t know of any terrorist activity coming across the Mexican-US border. That very much became part of the political project: was addressing the Mexican-US border. And maybe that’s important…securing the sense that people feel threatened and therefore quote unquote illegal aliens are criminals or are criminalized in the popular rhetoric just on the basis that they don’t have a legal status. And that may be because you have overstayed a visa. It may be because you were forced out of your country and you weren’t able to get an asylum status. So all of these legal categories again we always think of legalization and illegality in a dualist way. But really, laws are never perfect just like phenotypical categories aren’t perfect. And we can’t address the plethora of context and situations from which people are coming. For example from Central America or Mexico in this case since that is the focus of concerns around Latino immigration in the United States. Laws…legal status is not applied equally. It is an unequal playing field…and citizenship is very much an idea that is determined in relation to how we understand our national community. Right who belongs and who doesn’t belong. So it is very much about our ideas about what it means to be American and what it means to be a part of the US. The other side of this debate is as I mentioned is the Economy. And of course, you know immigration has always been linked to concerns about economic wellbeing. And in this case, people look to Latinos as being part of a larger structural problem of absorbing a large number of migrants. Who then are, you know, taking away jobs from rightfully legal people living in the US. And that is also a valid concern. However, the way we understand the economic debate, because Latinos are the subject of that debate, tends to ascribe blame to a particular group of people. And therefore, that can generate these sorts of stereotypes and generalizations about, about an entire group of people, who suffer as a result of that regardless of their legal status. We’ve had us citizen who have been deported. And we look at the question of racial profiling well you’re more likely to stop or pull over a Latino. Is it because of these assumptions about legal status? And The reality is, a lot of legal citizens have been stopped by the police and so we need to be cautious of that. But the economic debate you know immigration has always been an important part of our economy. The 1990s, particularly you know the late 90s after NAFTA was signed, was an economic boom. Umm And George w Bush was pushing for temporary worker programs, for guest worker programs with some really ambitious proposals. And then that shifted. That shifted after 9-11 as the security discourse came about. And as far as assessments about whether or not you know undocumented immigration or temporary worker immigration is healthy for the economy. That again is debatable according to different context and different experiences. So what might be outstanding in…a local economy in a town in rural Indiana might be much different than what is going on in a neighborhood in northern New Jersey. And there is also...you can look at this on the macro scale of the national economy or you can look at a local scale and what is going on. And indeed there is a number of different factors. But can we really reduce, you know, how we understand economic well-being to a certain set of reductionist factors and indicators. So it becomes very hard to judge that, but these are real concerns. So I think the economy and national security and the one that doesn’t get talked is this question of culture. And stereotypes, there’s been a lot of writing about this. Especially around the time that the 2006 marches were happening, several books came out by Latino studies scholars, and historians, and anthropologist and others who talk about. Who are speaking against the Samuel Huntington discourse that was particularly strong since the early 2000s and late 90s. Which is this idea of an invasion or a Latino threat narrative. Or umm the idea that Latinos and particularly Mexicans, and I would extend that to central American people as well, this idea that they are particularly for some reason interested in some separatist movement. Or are unwilling to quote-unquote assimilate to this supposed US, white American, Anglo-Saxon, English speaking norm. Which is a norm we need to question to begin with, I would argue. We think about globalization today and what Latin America looks like today and what the us looks like today. Why is this particular norm the privilege status of what is acceptable? And who get to determine what is acceptable and what is not. Who are the folks who are able to make a decision and decide that Latinos are subjects of this debate? Why isn’t someone else the subject of the debate? So this question of culture, which is really a code for race, is imbedded in this political rhetoric about national security and about the nation economy and wellbeing and sovereignty. But it is sort of hidden. It is weaved into the rhetoric. Especially the more vocal people like Samuel Huntington or Lou Dobbs or the founder of the Minutemen Movement. But whether or not you are taking a pro-immigrant or anti-immigrant. No matter where you stand on the question of undocumented immigration, you… there are a certain set of assumptions that are very much ingrained in the logic of the way we think and understand race and equality and culture as people who have grown up in the US. So, you know, there are certain taken for granted assumptions that are there that really go unquestioned but it just as much conditions and shapes the logic of people who might be very much advocating on behalf of the rights of new generation Latino immigrants, as much as it might be people who might be very much concerned about that issue.
CW: How do you think these assumptions impact the immigrants?
JW: Well…some people argue that these discourses or you know the set of ideas, the narratives, structures in society, the sort of way we understand things and the way that structures society. Some people argue that is very much internalized in how people self-govern themselves, right. How people go about their lives. So it could have all sorts of impacts. Certainly we see a climate of fear, a climate of tension especially since the 2006 marches. There has been an extreme reaction to that visibility and that protest against legislations that would have made it a felony to be an illegal immigrant in the US. Since that time of course we have seen a host of hate groups of white supremacy groups that have now begun to target the Latino community. And have even shifted in that direction more so than before when it was more of a racial binary. We also see it in terms of you know people who react as well, right. I think that not everyone chooses to live in a state of fear but when you see high school students who walk out of classes or host sit ins who are undocumented in favor of the dream act. I think that’s really powerful about fearlessness, right. So I think in a lot of ways people don’t stand for being accused of or being generalized as having certain characteristics. Just like, you know, I can’t think of anyone who enjoys enduring a racial or you know stereotype. We don’t like to be, as human beings, we don’t like it when people judge us and generalize us and tell us what we are capable of and what we are incapable of. So I think that those stereotypes also can have a powerful effect in that, you know, some people aren’t afraid to stand up and take risk because they are concerned. They won’t stand for it.
CW: Umm, I know you have worked a lot with the Salvadorian community have they been generalized with the rest of the Latinos? Or do you think they have been viewed separately?
JW: I think that when we talk about the immigration issue or the immigration debate in the US. First it ends up being a debate around Latino immigration. Even though people don’t say that. And second I think that they’re not talking about Chilean immigration. They’re talking about Mexico especially and also especially Central America. There are a lot of Guatemalans Salvadorians Hondurans especially who since the 1980s civil wars and 1990s civil wars in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua. Has established a set of flows that have grown out of that displacement. And so Salvadorians do have a presence in the US. And I think it depends on geographic context as well. In Los Angles, Salvadorians are Mexicanized all the way to the level of politics. The Salvadorian community is very established. It’s the largest Salvadorian community outside of San Salvador. It is one of the longest standing outside of San Francisco (loud noise) and folks there struggle to get a seat in the state legislature or in the city council. And leaders of the Salvadorian community have expressed that to me. And then generally Salvadorians face the sort of umm racial stereotype of being lumped in together with the strong Mexican community in California. In Washington DC, where I do a lot of my work, Salvadorians are a salient community. They are the largest immigrant community in the metropolitan Washington dc area. They are the largest contingent of Latinos and they are also an old long standing community that has had a presence there for many decades now. It was one of the first places that people were heading in the sanctuary movement and it became a hub for political organizing in favor of refugee status for Salvadorians escaping the civil war. A status they never really earned they were always unrecognized refugees. And of course as soon as the war ended in 1992, they were then thought of as economy driven labor migrants and were lumped into the category illegal immigrants just as Mexicans and Latinos in general are confronting as a category. So it varies from place to place. Salvadorians are in all 50 states. They’re in countries all over the world. I know Salvadorians in Australia, Sweden, in Italy, in Germany, in Costa Rica. I know people all over the place. So yes they are lumped in with this concern of Latino immigration in particular way, in particular places. They are very much an invisibilized population in that sense because they are lumped in with becoming Latino. When I meet a Salvadorian in Washington DC on the streets they usually ask me ‘oh how exciting you have heard of my country.’ Well yeah I have. I’ve been going there for 12 years. But when you go to El Salvador you realize they are very connected to the United States. They have extremely close political ties ever since the Civil War which the US government funded. They… it seems like every family I meet in El Salvador has family living in the United States. We estimate that a million of the 2 point something million Salvadorians in the US do have a legal status. Several hundred thousand do have TPS and hundreds of thousands more have citizenship or permanent or temporary residency. Many of them were here prior to the amnesty that Reagan offered. And some of those older ties mean that parents may have been raising their kids from the United States who were living in El Salvador, kids who were living in El Salvador and then those kids may be, after a long period of time, eligible for obtaining a residency status as well. So we do have all different kinds of Salvadorian immigration not just illegal or undocumented immigration. It’s a long standing community it’s a changing community. It’s a very…When you go to El Salvador you feel a connection because people speak to you in English. People know where you’re from. People have been to the United States. Many people go back and forth yet in the United States we tend to not see, you know, an entire community of people or understand the difference between or value the difference where they’re from and where other Latinos who are coming to the United States are coming from. The other thing that differentiates Salvadorians, with a stigma, that I think is not warranted is the association with violence, violent society and gang membership. And I don’t like this because of my own experience working in El Salvador. There is the one common assumption is that the gangs, or the quote unquote Salvadorian gang or Mara Salvatrucha. Came from the experience of the war. The civil war in the 1980s and early 1990s in El Salvador. That these were former guerilla fighters or they were exposed to so much violence, that they, that is where they learned things. I don’t buy into that narrative which has been a narrative that has been advocated by some of the initial gang member themselves. But really much of this gang began on the streets of Los Angeles so it was a US problem and it was about exposure to violence in the United States. That was then brought to El Salvador through deportation throughout the 1990s and grew and proliferated to many different countries and states and incorporated a wide range of membership. So really it isn’t a Salvadorian gang anymore. Really it is a Latino based gang…and unfortunately they retain the name Salvatrucha. So people still associate it as an exclusively Salvadorian phenomenon, coming from El Salvador which is the reverse of what it is about. And it has also been linked to this national security discourse as this gang has been talked of as having transnational cells or being part of a sort of terrorist security threat to the United states which is also problematic because it really doesn’t operate in that way. In fact if you talk to scholars who work on this they tell you that they are actually quite disorganized. However it is a serious stigma. I know Salvadorians on the streets in Virginia whose Mexican friends turn to them and make a joke and say ‘hey salvatrucha’ so it’s an everyday, you know, internalization. An everyday thing that people have to deal with, is this stigma of coming from a place that a country that has a history of war…..it was a very difficult time but it is something Salvadorians have moved past. It happened twenty years ago, it ended 20 years ago. And, umm you know, I meet some of the friendliest most peaceful antiwar people I’ve ever met in that country. And we have to completely throw away any of these myths about culture of violence or cycles of violence. Umm that have also come into these discourses on Latino immigration. I think those are very dangerous, baseless assumptions that are placed upon people to justify particular political objectives.
CW: you have talked about Virginia, and DC and California how do you think the views of immigrants compare to the ones in North Carolina? Like for, are they treated better in North Carolina? Or worse? Is there a better understanding of immigrants in North Carolina?
JW: Well I think that North Carolina is, has always been a very welcoming place. And For me it has been a welcoming, I came from growing up in New York State. People here are very friendly. And so I think they receive new comers really well around here. However like I said there is a lack of information about where people are coming from. And you read the book “The Maya from Morganton” the classic example of you know suddenly schools have to not just teach ESL, but to teach ESL to students who may not even be speaking Spanish. And you may be from highland Guatemala, but people still assume that you are from Mexico or that you eat tacos. So it is really a matter of education and information reaching to areas and communities that are being heavily affected by immigration. Whose only source of information, or whose primary source of information has been media and political debates that are, whether or not we want them to be heavily laden with rhetoric and narratives that are constructed with particular political objectives. To either take a particular stand for or against undocumented immigration or particular stand about how to address that. So having said that, I think the structures weren’t in place. When we saw schools in Raleigh suddenly need ESL teachers that they didn’t have. Or when we suddenly needed immigration lawyers in North Carolina who had good quality training and how to deal with immigration law and have a professional background in that. We were lacking because all of the sudden people were getting jailed or detained, and we didn’t know yet whether or not our state or constitutional laws were being abided by. And that needed…that needs to be determined by… by lawyers and by people who know immigration law well and what the loopholes are and what the ends and outs are. So what happened in North Carolina recently in the last several years is that, all of that has been sort of meshed out through trial and error and it still very much is a trial and error. And we saw that with the local immigration enforcement initiatives that took effect here just like we have all over the country. Where we really don’t know just yet to what extent constitutional laws or federal laws were being upheld or were being called into question or being interpreted in new ways or being violated. So it’s this question of change and rapid change in North Carolina and it’s a question of how to have the infrastructure and the people who have the knowhow to respond to those changes effectively. And unfortunately we just haven’t had that all over the US because things have heated up so much around the question of Latino immigration. That it becomes very emotional a very delicate topic. People don’t want to talk about it. People aren’t interested in learning new perspectives or responding to it in a practical way. And what we see instead are more extreme measures that end up contributing to these tensions. Simply because people don’t know their neighbors yet, and people don’t know where people are coming from. People don’t know whether or not they should believe what they hear in the news or not. So I think that rapid demographic change has made it particularly difficult. However I think that in my experience in North Carolina I have met some communities that have responded to change really, really well as well. In other cases no but you look at what is going when you see local economies that have benefitted and have grown and some people have come to really appreciate that and to appreciate diversity. But we still have a lot of work to do.
CW: Where do you think the public gets there information and their views about Latinos and immigrants?
JW: Well I think that…well I don’t know. I think like what we talked about the media. The mainstream media has particular perspectives. That are shared and in order for media… for the TV stations to get ratings they need to pose the two extremes. And that shapes and conditions our thinking about the issue because we think in very dualist and extreme terms. And we don’t see the common ground. When in reality the common ground, the overlap, might be right in front of us but we just don’t see it. Because we’re always hearing that we have to think about this at odds that we have to be on one side or the other. And I think when we are able to have dialogue that that’s when productive measures to respond to and address the question of undocumented immigration become more widespread and more feasible and more able to be reached. But it’s not until we can have those dialogues that we will be able to make any progress. And so I think that people are getting their information in North Carolina by through personal experience too. You know, I think when you see a person who looks different than you, who speaks a different language who moved in next door to you, or who is suddenly is working for you. You might have a particular set of assumptions initially about that person. But once you get to know them if it is possible if you reach out if they reach out to you, if you can find ways to communicate. Those experiences are really rewarding. And I hear about those experiences all the time from people I know who work in mixed company. That, you know, people are really receptive to and appreciative of diversity and the skills and the knowledge and the customs and the interesting ways of doing things and ways of life that people bring with them when they come to this country or to a home community. So I think it is a matter of learning to understand and appreciate change and appreciate diversity and engage with diversity through experience. And some peoples experiences are positive and some peoples experience are negative but I think people are misinformed if they are… cutting themselves off from being open to diversity and only listening to what they hear from political debates around, around this issue.
CW: What do you see as the future of, you know, views of immigration? Do you think people will get out as more immigrants come that they will…their views will change?
JW: I don’t know what the future is. I didn’t bring my crystal ball. Well we know the United States is changing and Latin America is changing too. And y’all were down in Mexico a few weeks ago and you saw that there were all sorts of retired United States citizens moving to Mexico to the communities that were sending all sorts of Mexicans to the United States. So this is called globalization. We are experiencing demographic shifts in the Americas in other parts of the world as well and we’re becoming more international communities. And so we need to go beyond thinking in national terms. We need to be more open to diversity. And we are certainly going to see that in the United States, as the Latino community becomes a stronger immigrant group and their presence continues to grow and strengthen. So what I think is really, really inspiring for me is as an instructor at UNC is seeing more and more Latino students, first generation second generation students, who are Carolinians who speak with a Carolina accent. Not that that is a good thing or a bad thing. To not be speaking Spanish or to be speaking Spanish. Or to be speaking with a Carolina accent or not. But these are Carolinians, right. And these are people who are part of the United States and have been part of this area and country for a long time now. And you know it is inspiring because you see students who are going on to become doctors or professionals who may be from a family where they were first generation Americans in the family and their parents were doing some pretty hard work as new immigrants to this country and having to learn a language and having to take on jobs that maybe others didn’t want to do. Having to fight for legal status. But I think the future is in the first, second, third generations. People who are from these families that have recently arrived and also the long standing generation of the Latino community that has been a part of this country for decades or even hundreds of years. And I think that mixing of diversity and this ability not to assume that everyone has to assimilate to a certain norm but to accept instead the idea that we are a diverse…this is a diverse country. This is a diverse continent. And that people are always moving and that people have the right to mobility. It’s just a matter of figuring out politically and legislatively the appropriate ways to deal with that reality and to help promote positive social change and cultural change, as we do go forward into the future.
CW: Well thank you for conducting this interview with me.
Interviewee Journey Coordinates
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
R-0642 -- Wiltberger, Joe.
Description
An account of the resource
The interview was organized around a few major themes. These include views or stereotypes of Latinos, views or stereotypes of immigration, the origin of views on these topics, the mass media’s impact on common views of immigration, and how North Carolinians may or may not have different views on this topic from people in other parts of the country. The interview has a brief background about Joe Wiltberger and talks about his personal experiences as well as his overall views on the questions listed above. Wiltberger gives a unique point of view because he has not only worked with immigrant communities, but he also has some experience working in the media field.
Source
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University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
Rights
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No restrictions. Open to research.
Date
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March 27 2012
Format
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R0642_Audio.mp3
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
<a href="http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/17010">University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.</a>
-
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/5f0c6f75bb9f77e9d3ee91d93c58d470.mp3
e8d0cd1df42610aa9932220ef6e70a84
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/d475f4f045c85754e34bb9f4a04d4bb7.pdf
904e3dba71abedb2ced386a5f1abee57
SOHP Interview - Bilingual
Southern Oral History Program Interview with metadata in English and Spanish
Interview number
Número de entrevista
R-0633
En: Restrictions
Es: Restricciones
No restrictions. Open to research.
Date
Fecha
April 15 2012
Interviewee
Entrevistado/a
Schultz, Mark.
En: Interviewee Occupation
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Journalists; Editors
Interviewee Date of Birth
Fecha de nacimiento del entrevistado
En: Interviewee Gender
Es: Género de entrevistado
Male
Interviewee Place of Origin
Lugar de origen del entrevistado
New York -- United States
Interviewee Places of Residence
Lugares de residencia del entrevistado
Raleigh -- Wake County -- North Carolina
Interviewer
Entrevistador/a
Wittum, Caleb Garret.
En: Language of Interview
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
English
En: Abstract
Es: Abstracto en español
The interview was organized around a few major themes, particularly as they apply to Raleigh and Durham, in North Carolina. These include Mark Schultz’s background information, his experience working in the journalism field, his work with the bilingual column “Nuestro Pueblo,” how the Latino population has been portrayed in the media, the struggles of covering minority groups, how the media decides what is news worthy, why the Latino population is not covered frequently in Orange County, N.C., how the media has been impacted by the recession and how that has hurt news coverage and where people get their news. The interview contains a brief description of Schultz’s background. Schultz states his opinions on the topics listed above and goes into great detail about how the downturn in the economy has impacted the journalism field.
En: Citation
Es: Citación
Interview with Mark Schultz by Caleb Garret Wittum, 15 April 2012, R-0633, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Reference URL
URL de referencia
http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/16996
Repository
Repositorio
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
En: Themes
Es: Temas
Citizenship and immigration; Economics; Media; Racism and discrimination
En: Transcript
Es: Transcripción
Caleb Wittum: This is an interview with Mark Schultz an Editor at The Chapel Hill News for the Southern Oral History Program’s series “Latin American Immigrant Perspectives.” The Interview being conducted Sunday April 15, 2012. The interview is being conducted at The Chapel Hill News’ conference room and the interviewer is Caleb Wittum. Ok to start out can you tell me a little about yourself? Where are you from?
Mark Schultz: I am from New York. I graduated from Cornell University and Columbia University, where I got my Masters in Journalism. I came down here in 1988 to work for the Herald Sun and then worked for them for 16 years and about 5 different jobs. And about six years ago I came over to the News and Observer.
CW: You’ve worked in the area with the News and Observer, have you worked anywhere else?
MS: Yeah, I worked in New York. My first paper was a regional paper kind of like the N&O, based in Syracuse, New York which is in central New York. Then I worked for a weekly paper, the Ithaca Times, which is a member of the Association of Alternative News Weeklies like the Independent, like the Voice is a big one that people have heard of. I came down here worked for the Herald and now at the N&O and the Chapel Hill News. So I guess that is four Newspapers also worked in small town radio for a number of years.
CW: Can you talk a little bit about how the main stream media covers immigration and immigration issues?
MS: Well you know there is a big difference between how the big main stream media covers immigration issues and how a local newspaper covers these kinds of issues. I think generally you’re right we tend to cover people when they get in trouble, but we also tend to cover people when there is a good picture, when there is a spectacle. One of the conferences that I went to said that there is a tendency to cover Latinos as zoo animals. What he meant was they were on display. So you get good coverage of them at festivals, you get good pictures of them at some rituals, some customs like Dia de los Muertos or…well that was the big one because it is the equivalent of the Hispanic Halloween even though that is not what it is at all. That’s how people perceive it. But it has lots of pictures with the skeletons and skulls and usually alters that people create for their loved ones which make very good pictures. So this speakers point was we have to get beyond covering the display to tell the stories of peoples real lives. So I can’t remember exactly when it was, I’d have to look up the date for you. But some time ago the editor at the time of the Herald Sun, his name was Bill Hawkins, he realized that Durham and the triangle but specifically Durham was seeing a tremendous influx of Hispanic immigrants. And it was only probably 15 years ago, it was in the later half of the 1990s and the early 2000s and you saw it with the tiendas. You really saw this influx of a group of people who hadn’t been here in those numbers before. So he wanted to start a series and he enlisted a young reporter from Colombia named Miriam…..who was bilingual obviously. She was a native born Colombian and she wrote this series over the summer. And it was great, a great look at this immigrant community and then when this series was over he wanted to keep it going so he had her write a bilingual column. And I was her editor because I was the assistant city editor at the time and I spoke some Spanish, I studied it. And we kept that going for a while and then I asked him if we could do a page. And so some time after her column ran for several months or maybe it was a year, we decided to dedicate one page a week in the Herald Sun to a bilingual page which was unique at the time. And we did that and quickly said well let’s get some other voices. Let’s get some immigrants voices, or some Hispanic, Latino voices in the paper. So we kept that going for a couple years and then we said this is great. It is in the paper for people who are reading it which is primarily educated Latinos and white people or primarily white people who want to brush up with their Spanish. We said if we really want to reach the immigrant community we have to put it in the immigrant community so we got permission to publish the articles that had been bilingual publish the Spanish versions. And we put this out in a very small little newspaper called “Nuestro Pueblo” which we put in tiendas, and libraries, and community centers, and health clinics. And we probably did the page for 8 years and I think we did the monthly newspaper for 5 years. The monthly newspaper ended when the herald sun was bought by Paxton and the bilingual page ended when I left to come to the News and Observer.
CW: Do you think this area is missing out that they have lost Nuestro Pueblo?
MS: Well the thing about Nuestro Pueblo was two things. One is it kept a focus on Latino issues because you had to fill a page every week but it also helped us get deeper into the community. So one of the first stories we did was about the disproportionate number of DWIs among Hispanic drivers, among Latino drivers and why that was. And a lot of health issues related to Latinos and lesser known customs such as Quinceañeras or Las Posadas which is a holiday that recreates the travels of Joseph and Mary. So yeah I do think that the community misses out because this culture has slipped back into where they were before which is being reported on primarily when they get into trouble. It’s interesting I just came from the community dinner which is the 15th annual community dinner here in Carrboro. And it is put on by a couple of people and a lot of community groups and there were 650 people. And on the way out a visitor, a first time visitor, said that it was the most integrated thing she had been to in the south since she had been visiting. She is from California. But she noted that there weren’t Latinos there. There were black people, and white people, and some Asian people, and Burmese immigrants but for whatever reasons there may have been a few but there were not significant numbers of Latinos or Mexicans. So you know most of these immigrant communities that we have are insular, and unless there is deliberate outreach to get to know them and to involve them in the community they keep to themselves. Which makes it really hard to report on them if you are not regularly reporting on them.
CW: You just mentioned one challenge, but could you talk about some more challenges of covering this community?
MS: Well so there are all these levels of how you cover people right. The top level is your elected officials who are really good at talking to you for the most part and know what you need, and are accessible and give you sound bites. And the second level of person is the public figures. People who elevate themselves because they serve on boards or they appoint themselves citizen activist. They are spokes people for a group or cause. And then the third level is the hardest level and that is the average person. And that is really hard. It was not as hard once we got going because people we had writing the stories could speak passable Spanish and the people at the first two levels introduced us to people at the third level. But right now we are having the same issue with the Burmese population. This is a resettlement area for Karen ethic immigrants from Burma as well as some Burmese immigrants from Burma. And the language is impenetrable. I mean you just can’t you know. So you have to go with an interpreter to do any of those stories. So some of the issues we faced with Latinos ten-fifteen years ago we are facing now but even more so with the Burmese immigrant community. So that was a challenge, getting average peoples voices. I think another challenge is that just by focusing on this group you can be perceived as advocating for this group. You know why not have a page of African American news once a week, why not have a page of whatever? Why are you doing a page of Latino News once a week? So there are two issues that I think we probably encountered from time to time. The issue of making sure we are talking to enough people and enough different types of people, and making sure the reporting didn’t veer into advocacy and dealing with perceptions that perhaps it was advocacy journalism.
CW: Do you think that the public is well informed about immigration and the Latino Community around here?
MS: No. No I don’t. Sorry I want to ask you questions because that is what I do, but I won’t right now anyway. You know I think people don’t understand. Jim Johnson here at the University, you should read some of his reports on the Hispanic immigrant community, but James Johnson at Kenan-Flagler has done probably the most widely quoted study of the economic impact of the immigrant, Latino community here in North Carolina. And how it is actually is a plus, it makes money for North Carolina as opposed to being a drain on resources. I don’t think that is widely understood that Latinos pay taxes if they are on the books. Even now we don’t really understand a lot of the cultural patterns. Just a couple months ago there had been a widely quoted study or studies that showed the maternal health of Latinos when they come to this country is better than native born Americans, native born United States citizens. Their birth weight of their babies was better, they had better infant mortality, all this kind of thing. So the thinking was that well the longer they live here they start eating like Americans, they start being more sedentary, they become less healthy. And now just this year they have been questioning these long held studies. Saying well maybe that wasn’t the case. Maybe it wasn’t that they were healthier, maybe it was that they didn’t intersect, they didn’t interact with the health agency. So they didn’t really have a good representation of what the health was of these immigrant communities. So you know whether we are talking about the average person or people whose job it is to research these communities, no I don’t think there is enough understood about them maybe because the numbers are too small. I mean the reason we were able to do what we did in Durham was because it had the fastest growing Hispanic population between the 1990 and 2000 census of any North Carolina city. Of The fifteen largest metropolitan areas in North Carolina, or cities in North Carolina Durham was number one. Its Hispanic population increased 400% in that one decade. But when I came over here my initial inclination was let’s do a page over here. Well in Orange County it is less than 5% of the population. We didn’t have the resources at the time, and we certainly don’t have them now, to devote that much attention to such a small segment of the population. So we try to make contacts with the appropriate people and we try to do stories. There is an ongoing story about a day laborers gathering point, have you heard of that?
CW: Yeah
MS: Ok, so this has been an issue in Carrboro for over a decade. Men gather there in the morning to pick up contract work and there have been problems associated with that. Public urination, harassment of women, just loitering. If you get deeper into it most people including the police will say that it is not really the men gathering for work but the other men who gather for whatever reasons that are causing most of the problems. But you have to go to that deeper level to really know what’s going on. So we do that story and we do that periodically because it comes up periodically but again to answer your question no I don’t think people really understand what life is like for immigrants here.
CW: Where do you think they get most of their information about this community?
MS: I don’t know that they do get any information.
CW: they don’t get any?
MS: No I think, I ask myself that all the time about just news in general. Where do you find out what is going on in Chapel Hill, Durham because our job is Durham here too. And I don’t know the answer. I mean I think people get some news off the first five minutes of TV, which is not very substantial. I think probably a good number of people are so busy that they don’t care, or don’t know what they are missing or don’t care what they are missing. I don’t know the answer to your question.
CW: The stereotypes that they get or the accepted truths that they think immigrants hurt the economy do you think that is just from politicians or from talking, interacting; where do you think those ideas come from?
MS: No I think you can see it at the University and in all kinds of things. Housekeeping which had been primarily been an African American department at UNC is now much more missed with many Latinos and Hispanics. Latinos and Hispanics taking jobs previously held almost entirely by black workers. If you look at the recent rows of habitat for humanity houses you are seeing more and more habitat houses going to people with Spanish/Latino surnames and years ago that was much more African American in this community. So it would be interesting to know whether Latinos are taking jobs away from blacks or if that is a perception. But you can talk to people and still hear that. I don’t have the facts to tell you why it is that this has changed over but we do know that the black population of Chapel Hill and Orange County is decreasing. The census figures show that. So it could just be that Latinos have come to take the history role of those people who have left.
CW: Do you think some sources of media give a better, more thorough coverage of Latinos?
MS: Well, I think that for people who want to seek out depth whether it is a 8 inch story in the Independent or a 40 inch story in the News and Observer you can sort of try to find those stories, but no one is really covering it as an ongoing issue. You know you don’t really see a lot of coverage of the Dream Act and all the kids who are going through school and then they graduate and then what. That should be, that’s a huge story that doesn’t get covered. So that is like your other question “where do people get their information” and I don’t think anyone is doing a lot of in depth stuff on immigrants. Certainly not what we were doing before. Not that our stories individually were so in depth, but overtime the number of stories, the quantity, the diversity of stories provided you a much better understanding than anyone is giving you now. And you know the issue has been eclipsed by the economy and the recession. I don’t know that people really care. When it was boom time and the immigrants were here mowing the lawns, and building the buildings, and working in the restaurants you know it was different. We had the luxury to cover the issues that we don’t now because our industry has sunk with the economy. I mean we don’t have resources, we don’t have the people, we don’t have the pages, we don’t have the advertising to support the pages print wise. And the online things that are starting up Reese News or some other efforts that might be underway, those don’t really have mass audiences. So I mean I’m not being pessimistic, I’m not trying to be cynical but I think they have slipped back into obscurity like probably a lot of issues.
CW: I’ve talked with another Newspaper that was in a rural part of North Carolina and they talked a lot about how much the economy and the shift to online had hurt their newspaper, and could you talk about how it has impacted the newspapers around here?
MS: Sure, I mean I can tell you that when I came to the News and Observer we had something like 240 people in our newsroom and now we have less than 100. When I came here six years ago we had 8 people assigned to cover Durham County and 8 people assigned to cover Orange County, and now we have one assigned to each county. And we use freelancers to help make up a tiny portion of what we lost and they are very good freelancers. A lot of them are former Herald Sun staffers. So a couple years ago where I would have said most of our freelancers were college students, today I would say most of our freelancers are full time professional journalist who are out of fulltime work. So there is that; there are fewer people and there are fewer pages. So even if you could get the stories you don’t have the room to print the stories. The reason I didn’t get your call back today was because I was out shooting something because we don’t have a weekend photographer. But if you want to reflect your community you can’t just cover board meetings during the week. You have to cover 650 people who go to a community dinner on a Sunday afternoon. So it’s a lousy time to be a newspaper reporter and it is a lousy time to be a newspaper reader. But every day we try to find the best stories we can and we can’t report as much as we do so what I tell my staff is to report the biggest stories, the best. And over time if you do that you can still make yourself essential reading to a number of readers.
CW: What are the biggest stories around here typically? What types of stories?
MS: Well they are not immigrant stories you know although we have made an effort this year to cover the Burmese community more. And we have spent more attention and we have done quite a bit more with them. The biggest stories here are Growth. Chapel Hill is growing exponentially downtown and not everybody is happy with it. The town has embarked with a community planning process and there are people who are saying that it is going too fast and that it is rigged. So growth is a big one. I think that the town, both Chapel Hill and Carrboro, have dealt with painfully this past year the issue of public protest and what is the appropriate level of police response. And it has led to a number of, well this week we covered a committee that was formed and it is looking at new police policies so that the police can handle things better. You know if you talk to folks like Ron Bogle you’ll hear him say that another untold story is underage drinking and the toll it takes on kids who drink. We are lucky here our unemployment here in Chapel Hill is 6% so it is much better than the state and better than the triangle as a whole. So we don’t really have that as a huge story although people are working probably are not making as much money or are taking lower paying jobs. Let me tell you about where the immigrants fit in. Because when I give talks in the community I often talk about how we decide what news is you know you pick your news probably. I don’t know if you still learn this way in J-53, or your first journalism class but you learn these elements that make a news story. Prominence, timeliness, and one of them is conflict. The bigger conflict the better, but really if you are going to cover a community accurately it is not the big clashes that you have to look for. But it is the smaller tensions that you have to look for. And those are the tensions that I think we were able to mine successfully in our immigrant coverage at the Herald Sun. You know the tension of standing in line when someone in front of you doesn’t speak English and you get frustrated. and why is this person here. And is that person legal? Those kinds of tensions. Why is it taking me so long to drive on I-40 to where I have to go? Tensions of growth but as it affects you personally. Another cell phone driver, it will be very interesting to watch and see if the town actually enforces that. So the tensions if you want to replace that big conflict with this other a smaller word tensions, that is something that the N&O I think has always been very good at identifying and trying to teach reporters to look for. And at the Herald Sun I didn’t have that word tension drilled into me but it certainly was what I was looking for and what I was doing and what I was asking people to look for and look at. So you say what are the biggest stories, I don’t think the biggest stories are immigrants but it may just be because we don’t know enough what’s happening to the immigrants now to put them on the list of biggest stories.
CW: You worked in Durham can you compare, I know you mentioned it is much smaller here, but compare the communities: Durham to Chapel Hill?
MS: Well sure, Chapel Hill is affluent. Chapel Hill has one of the highest housing prices in the state. So it is a much more homogenous community certainly economically. It is diverse because of the University and we have a lot of Asian people here, a small African American community, and a small Hispanic community. Durham is much more diverse and much more working class. It is something like 55% white, 45%…Let me get this right here. Its somewhere in the nature of 10 to 15% Latino, and 50 plus white, and 30 something or 40 something black. So it is much more diverse than here. The housing stock is much more affordable, there is much more affordable housing in Durham. We had reporters who left here to live in Durham because they couldn’t afford anything here. I don’t know enough about the job base to know where the incomes are but it is not a college town. It is not dominated by the university and the hospital the way this community is. The issues there are much more stark. There is tremendous poverty in Durham so a lot of the public conversion takes place around poverty issues, and crime, and drugs. And what happens is a lot of the activity, the news, the bad news happens within a small circle around downtown. And if you live in Southern Durham, or if you live in the rural north, or if you live in Southwest Durham I’m not sure if that discussion about what happens in downtown really reflects your life. You may not go downtown except for a ballgame or for a movie, not a movie but a D pack. So you drive in and drive out. But if you drive from the East you’ll come through east Durham and you will see that poverty and you will see the boarded up houses and you’ll see the places where people get shot on the street. We just did a story today about a, it has been a year since this 13 year old girl was killed in Eastern Durham on her driveway. Unsolved crime, that doesn’t happen here. So the issues in Durham are much more life and death.
CW: With those different demographics and different situations did that make the tensions, did that lead to tensions with the Latino community and make them more news worthy?
MS: It was the numbers. It was just the numbers. Durham was the number one, it had the number growing Latino population in the 1990s and far outpaced. I think the state wide growth was something like 240% but in Durham it was 400%. We had an editor who decided it was worth something, we had a bilingual reporter and we took advantage of that, and we had an editor, Me, who was willing and eager to take it on.
We had support for a long time to do this. In fact we gave out the paper on Fridays. When we had the bilingual paper we had a partnership with some businesses Glaxo-Smith-Kline was one of them at the time. It was called GSK at the time but was called Glaxo at the time. And they would provide us money to buy papers and we gave them out to any English or ESL teachers in the Triangle who wanted copies for their class. Because they were always looking for local material that was bilingual that they could use in their classes. So it was in the schools, and we won awards for that, an award for that. It was a great, great thing. We did a lot of great things back then, and a lot has changed since then.
CW: It is difficult to find bilingual reporters and are there many here currently?
MS: We are not in position to hire so we are not looking for bilingual reporters. We are trying to hold on to the reporters we have.
CW: Do you have bilingual reporters?
MS: Umm…no. I mean I could have a conversation with someone but it has been a few years and I am rusty.
CW: Is it difficult to report on a community if you aren’t fluent in a language?
MS: You have to do those steps I told you before. You have to find people to take you into the community or you have to take the time to learn passable Spanish so that you can conduct a basic interview. How long have you been here? Why did you come? You know tell me about your job? Tell me about your family? But you can do that with Spanish again it is much harder with a community like the Karen.
CW: Do you think that the Latinos in Carrboro, like in the Abbey Court Apartments, do you think that even registers on most the people. Do you think that they even notice them in Chapel Hill?
MS: I don’t know. I notice them. I mean we try to do stories about the issues that affect them. A few years ago when people were getting towed in Abbey Court we wrote about that. We wrote about the protest. We have written about the Human Rights Center that is based there or had been based there until recently and their efforts to serve this community. Certainly you see Mexicans, primarily Mexicans, when you are out and about. So in terms of level of awareness does the average person who might eat dinner at 411 West think about Latinos once a day? I don’t know, probably not. Should they? I don’t know. I’m not making judgment. I am just saying that they are not the first thing you think of when you think of Chapel Hill.
CW: You said that you worked with the Radio too?
MS: Not in this State, in New York.
CW: Did they talk about Latinos? How does radio compare or differ from Journalism?
MS: I don’t think there is any real local news radio except for CHL which does a very good job of covering the community. But it is very short you know. WNC does a good job with the intersection of immigrant issues and politics and certainly they have covered Dream Act stuff. But I don’t think anyone looks to radio for much coverage of local news you know certainly not local news about immigrants.
CW: Do you think they look more to TV?
MS: I don’t know. You are asking me questions about where people get their News and I just don’t know. I just know that we work so hard to give them the best local news that we can and even that you just never really know.
CW: Where do you see the future? Do you think the Journalism industry will regain strength? And do you think they will cover Latinos in Orange county more if the population grows?
MS: No, I don’t think so. I think the numbers are too small. I mean we had I think the first Latino immigrant elected to a local board in Carrboro: John Herrera. And I thought that issues would rise more with his presence and that didn’t really happen for whatever reasons. And he left politics, he didn’t seem to really enjoy it. So I don’t know. I don’t know if the Judith Blaus of the world or El Centro Hispano in Durham which is now running El Centro Latino here. What used to be El Centro Latino. I think that they are just trying to serve their folks, their clients with meeting some basic needs. As far as making the community more aware of them that is a luxury. Really the issue is just making sure these people are getting served adequately by Schools, Social Services, health care. No I couldn’t tell you what the 3, 4, 5 stories I’d like to do on immigrant issues over the next year would be because I haven’t had the time to think about it. Because it is crazy what we are trying to do. Trying to put out a paper. I mean all the people at my level at the N&O work 6 days a week. And I’m taking a photo class so I can take better photos because they get in the paper because we don’t have enough photographers. And you know the only thing that keeps me going is knowing that it is up to me whatever is in the paper and that is an awesome responsibility and it is a lot of fun. And it is challenging but it is ridiculous. The work is too much. You don’t have enough time to think. All the copy editors and designers are consolidated in Charlotte. So today I’ve got to try to make sure I have got most of my Wednesday paper planned. For Wednesday on a Sunday so that they can be designed in the timeframe that the hub of designers have, because they have to design ten community papers. When I came here 6 years ago we had two designers who worked full time on just the Chapel Hill News. So I am not optimistic because for whatever reasons our industry hasn’t figure out how to make money off what we do which is so valuable. But we can’t figure out a way to monetize it. And I don’t know what the answer is because I don’t see that turning around. We are just trying to cover the school board, and the city hall, and who got arrested. Cover the biggest murder trials. So immigrant issues are not a priority unless they intersect with the bigger community in some way.
CW: Well thank you for conducting this interview with me it was a lot of help.
MS: Sorry to end on such a depressing note, a really depressing note but that is what we do.
Es: Restricciones
Sin restricciones. Abierta para investigación.
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Periodistas; Editores
Es: Género de entrevistado
Hombre
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
Inglés
Es: Resumen
La entrevista se organizó en torno a algunos temas importantes, particularmente aquellos que se relacionan con Raleigh y Durham, en Carolina del Norte. Estos incluyen información de los antecedentes de Mark Schultz, su experiencia de trabajo en el campo del periodismo, su trabajo con la columna bilingüe "Nuestro Pueblo", cómo ha sido representada la población latina en los medios de comunicación, las luchas por cubrir a los grupos minoritarios, cómo los medios deciden lo que es una noticia valedera, el porqué la población latina no es cubierta por los medios con frecuencia en el condado de Orange, en Carolina del Norte, cómo los medios de comunicación se han visto afectados por la recesión y cómo eso ha perjudicado la cobertura de noticias y de dónde la gente obtiene las noticias. La entrevista contiene una breve descripción de los antecedentes de Schultz. Schultz manifiesta sus opiniones sobre los temas antes mencionados y entra en gran detalle sobre cómo la desaceleración de la economía ha impactado el campo del periodismo.
Es: Citación
Entrevista con Mark Schultz por Caleb Garret Wittum, 15 Abril 2012, R-0633, en Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, Universidad de Carolina del Norte en Chapel Hill.
Es: Temas
Ciudadanía e inmigración; Economía; Medios de comunicación; Racismo y discriminación
Es: Transcripción
Caleb Wittum: This is an interview with Mark Schultz an Editor at The Chapel Hill News for the Southern Oral History Program’s series “Latin American Immigrant Perspectives.” The Interview being conducted Sunday April 15, 2012. The interview is being conducted at The Chapel Hill News’ conference room and the interviewer is Caleb Wittum. Ok to start out can you tell me a little about yourself? Where are you from?
Mark Schultz: I am from New York. I graduated from Cornell University and Columbia University, where I got my Masters in Journalism. I came down here in 1988 to work for the Herald Sun and then worked for them for 16 years and about 5 different jobs. And about six years ago I came over to the News and Observer.
CW: You’ve worked in the area with the News and Observer, have you worked anywhere else?
MS: Yeah, I worked in New York. My first paper was a regional paper kind of like the N&O, based in Syracuse, New York which is in central New York. Then I worked for a weekly paper, the Ithaca Times, which is a member of the Association of Alternative News Weeklies like the Independent, like the Voice is a big one that people have heard of. I came down here worked for the Herald and now at the N&O and the Chapel Hill News. So I guess that is four Newspapers also worked in small town radio for a number of years.
CW: Can you talk a little bit about how the main stream media covers immigration and immigration issues?
MS: Well you know there is a big difference between how the big main stream media covers immigration issues and how a local newspaper covers these kinds of issues. I think generally you’re right we tend to cover people when they get in trouble, but we also tend to cover people when there is a good picture, when there is a spectacle. One of the conferences that I went to said that there is a tendency to cover Latinos as zoo animals. What he meant was they were on display. So you get good coverage of them at festivals, you get good pictures of them at some rituals, some customs like Dia de los Muertos or…well that was the big one because it is the equivalent of the Hispanic Halloween even though that is not what it is at all. That’s how people perceive it. But it has lots of pictures with the skeletons and skulls and usually alters that people create for their loved ones which make very good pictures. So this speakers point was we have to get beyond covering the display to tell the stories of peoples real lives. So I can’t remember exactly when it was, I’d have to look up the date for you. But some time ago the editor at the time of the Herald Sun, his name was Bill Hawkins, he realized that Durham and the triangle but specifically Durham was seeing a tremendous influx of Hispanic immigrants. And it was only probably 15 years ago, it was in the later half of the 1990s and the early 2000s and you saw it with the tiendas. You really saw this influx of a group of people who hadn’t been here in those numbers before. So he wanted to start a series and he enlisted a young reporter from Colombia named Miriam…..who was bilingual obviously. She was a native born Colombian and she wrote this series over the summer. And it was great, a great look at this immigrant community and then when this series was over he wanted to keep it going so he had her write a bilingual column. And I was her editor because I was the assistant city editor at the time and I spoke some Spanish, I studied it. And we kept that going for a while and then I asked him if we could do a page. And so some time after her column ran for several months or maybe it was a year, we decided to dedicate one page a week in the Herald Sun to a bilingual page which was unique at the time. And we did that and quickly said well let’s get some other voices. Let’s get some immigrants voices, or some Hispanic, Latino voices in the paper. So we kept that going for a couple years and then we said this is great. It is in the paper for people who are reading it which is primarily educated Latinos and white people or primarily white people who want to brush up with their Spanish. We said if we really want to reach the immigrant community we have to put it in the immigrant community so we got permission to publish the articles that had been bilingual publish the Spanish versions. And we put this out in a very small little newspaper called “Nuestro Pueblo” which we put in tiendas, and libraries, and community centers, and health clinics. And we probably did the page for 8 years and I think we did the monthly newspaper for 5 years. The monthly newspaper ended when the herald sun was bought by Paxton and the bilingual page ended when I left to come to the News and Observer.
CW: Do you think this area is missing out that they have lost Nuestro Pueblo?
MS: Well the thing about Nuestro Pueblo was two things. One is it kept a focus on Latino issues because you had to fill a page every week but it also helped us get deeper into the community. So one of the first stories we did was about the disproportionate number of DWIs among Hispanic drivers, among Latino drivers and why that was. And a lot of health issues related to Latinos and lesser known customs such as Quinceañeras or Las Posadas which is a holiday that recreates the travels of Joseph and Mary. So yeah I do think that the community misses out because this culture has slipped back into where they were before which is being reported on primarily when they get into trouble. It’s interesting I just came from the community dinner which is the 15th annual community dinner here in Carrboro. And it is put on by a couple of people and a lot of community groups and there were 650 people. And on the way out a visitor, a first time visitor, said that it was the most integrated thing she had been to in the south since she had been visiting. She is from California. But she noted that there weren’t Latinos there. There were black people, and white people, and some Asian people, and Burmese immigrants but for whatever reasons there may have been a few but there were not significant numbers of Latinos or Mexicans. So you know most of these immigrant communities that we have are insular, and unless there is deliberate outreach to get to know them and to involve them in the community they keep to themselves. Which makes it really hard to report on them if you are not regularly reporting on them.
CW: You just mentioned one challenge, but could you talk about some more challenges of covering this community?
MS: Well so there are all these levels of how you cover people right. The top level is your elected officials who are really good at talking to you for the most part and know what you need, and are accessible and give you sound bites. And the second level of person is the public figures. People who elevate themselves because they serve on boards or they appoint themselves citizen activist. They are spokes people for a group or cause. And then the third level is the hardest level and that is the average person. And that is really hard. It was not as hard once we got going because people we had writing the stories could speak passable Spanish and the people at the first two levels introduced us to people at the third level. But right now we are having the same issue with the Burmese population. This is a resettlement area for Karen ethic immigrants from Burma as well as some Burmese immigrants from Burma. And the language is impenetrable. I mean you just can’t you know. So you have to go with an interpreter to do any of those stories. So some of the issues we faced with Latinos ten-fifteen years ago we are facing now but even more so with the Burmese immigrant community. So that was a challenge, getting average peoples voices. I think another challenge is that just by focusing on this group you can be perceived as advocating for this group. You know why not have a page of African American news once a week, why not have a page of whatever? Why are you doing a page of Latino News once a week? So there are two issues that I think we probably encountered from time to time. The issue of making sure we are talking to enough people and enough different types of people, and making sure the reporting didn’t veer into advocacy and dealing with perceptions that perhaps it was advocacy journalism.
CW: Do you think that the public is well informed about immigration and the Latino Community around here?
MS: No. No I don’t. Sorry I want to ask you questions because that is what I do, but I won’t right now anyway. You know I think people don’t understand. Jim Johnson here at the University, you should read some of his reports on the Hispanic immigrant community, but James Johnson at Kenan-Flagler has done probably the most widely quoted study of the economic impact of the immigrant, Latino community here in North Carolina. And how it is actually is a plus, it makes money for North Carolina as opposed to being a drain on resources. I don’t think that is widely understood that Latinos pay taxes if they are on the books. Even now we don’t really understand a lot of the cultural patterns. Just a couple months ago there had been a widely quoted study or studies that showed the maternal health of Latinos when they come to this country is better than native born Americans, native born United States citizens. Their birth weight of their babies was better, they had better infant mortality, all this kind of thing. So the thinking was that well the longer they live here they start eating like Americans, they start being more sedentary, they become less healthy. And now just this year they have been questioning these long held studies. Saying well maybe that wasn’t the case. Maybe it wasn’t that they were healthier, maybe it was that they didn’t intersect, they didn’t interact with the health agency. So they didn’t really have a good representation of what the health was of these immigrant communities. So you know whether we are talking about the average person or people whose job it is to research these communities, no I don’t think there is enough understood about them maybe because the numbers are too small. I mean the reason we were able to do what we did in Durham was because it had the fastest growing Hispanic population between the 1990 and 2000 census of any North Carolina city. Of The fifteen largest metropolitan areas in North Carolina, or cities in North Carolina Durham was number one. Its Hispanic population increased 400% in that one decade. But when I came over here my initial inclination was let’s do a page over here. Well in Orange County it is less than 5% of the population. We didn’t have the resources at the time, and we certainly don’t have them now, to devote that much attention to such a small segment of the population. So we try to make contacts with the appropriate people and we try to do stories. There is an ongoing story about a day laborers gathering point, have you heard of that?
CW: Yeah
MS: Ok, so this has been an issue in Carrboro for over a decade. Men gather there in the morning to pick up contract work and there have been problems associated with that. Public urination, harassment of women, just loitering. If you get deeper into it most people including the police will say that it is not really the men gathering for work but the other men who gather for whatever reasons that are causing most of the problems. But you have to go to that deeper level to really know what’s going on. So we do that story and we do that periodically because it comes up periodically but again to answer your question no I don’t think people really understand what life is like for immigrants here.
CW: Where do you think they get most of their information about this community?
MS: I don’t know that they do get any information.
CW: they don’t get any?
MS: No I think, I ask myself that all the time about just news in general. Where do you find out what is going on in Chapel Hill, Durham because our job is Durham here too. And I don’t know the answer. I mean I think people get some news off the first five minutes of TV, which is not very substantial. I think probably a good number of people are so busy that they don’t care, or don’t know what they are missing or don’t care what they are missing. I don’t know the answer to your question.
CW: The stereotypes that they get or the accepted truths that they think immigrants hurt the economy do you think that is just from politicians or from talking, interacting; where do you think those ideas come from?
MS: No I think you can see it at the University and in all kinds of things. Housekeeping which had been primarily been an African American department at UNC is now much more missed with many Latinos and Hispanics. Latinos and Hispanics taking jobs previously held almost entirely by black workers. If you look at the recent rows of habitat for humanity houses you are seeing more and more habitat houses going to people with Spanish/Latino surnames and years ago that was much more African American in this community. So it would be interesting to know whether Latinos are taking jobs away from blacks or if that is a perception. But you can talk to people and still hear that. I don’t have the facts to tell you why it is that this has changed over but we do know that the black population of Chapel Hill and Orange County is decreasing. The census figures show that. So it could just be that Latinos have come to take the history role of those people who have left.
CW: Do you think some sources of media give a better, more thorough coverage of Latinos?
MS: Well, I think that for people who want to seek out depth whether it is a 8 inch story in the Independent or a 40 inch story in the News and Observer you can sort of try to find those stories, but no one is really covering it as an ongoing issue. You know you don’t really see a lot of coverage of the Dream Act and all the kids who are going through school and then they graduate and then what. That should be, that’s a huge story that doesn’t get covered. So that is like your other question “where do people get their information” and I don’t think anyone is doing a lot of in depth stuff on immigrants. Certainly not what we were doing before. Not that our stories individually were so in depth, but overtime the number of stories, the quantity, the diversity of stories provided you a much better understanding than anyone is giving you now. And you know the issue has been eclipsed by the economy and the recession. I don’t know that people really care. When it was boom time and the immigrants were here mowing the lawns, and building the buildings, and working in the restaurants you know it was different. We had the luxury to cover the issues that we don’t now because our industry has sunk with the economy. I mean we don’t have resources, we don’t have the people, we don’t have the pages, we don’t have the advertising to support the pages print wise. And the online things that are starting up Reese News or some other efforts that might be underway, those don’t really have mass audiences. So I mean I’m not being pessimistic, I’m not trying to be cynical but I think they have slipped back into obscurity like probably a lot of issues.
CW: I’ve talked with another Newspaper that was in a rural part of North Carolina and they talked a lot about how much the economy and the shift to online had hurt their newspaper, and could you talk about how it has impacted the newspapers around here?
MS: Sure, I mean I can tell you that when I came to the News and Observer we had something like 240 people in our newsroom and now we have less than 100. When I came here six years ago we had 8 people assigned to cover Durham County and 8 people assigned to cover Orange County, and now we have one assigned to each county. And we use freelancers to help make up a tiny portion of what we lost and they are very good freelancers. A lot of them are former Herald Sun staffers. So a couple years ago where I would have said most of our freelancers were college students, today I would say most of our freelancers are full time professional journalist who are out of fulltime work. So there is that; there are fewer people and there are fewer pages. So even if you could get the stories you don’t have the room to print the stories. The reason I didn’t get your call back today was because I was out shooting something because we don’t have a weekend photographer. But if you want to reflect your community you can’t just cover board meetings during the week. You have to cover 650 people who go to a community dinner on a Sunday afternoon. So it’s a lousy time to be a newspaper reporter and it is a lousy time to be a newspaper reader. But every day we try to find the best stories we can and we can’t report as much as we do so what I tell my staff is to report the biggest stories, the best. And over time if you do that you can still make yourself essential reading to a number of readers.
CW: What are the biggest stories around here typically? What types of stories?
MS: Well they are not immigrant stories you know although we have made an effort this year to cover the Burmese community more. And we have spent more attention and we have done quite a bit more with them. The biggest stories here are Growth. Chapel Hill is growing exponentially downtown and not everybody is happy with it. The town has embarked with a community planning process and there are people who are saying that it is going too fast and that it is rigged. So growth is a big one. I think that the town, both Chapel Hill and Carrboro, have dealt with painfully this past year the issue of public protest and what is the appropriate level of police response. And it has led to a number of, well this week we covered a committee that was formed and it is looking at new police policies so that the police can handle things better. You know if you talk to folks like Ron Bogle you’ll hear him say that another untold story is underage drinking and the toll it takes on kids who drink. We are lucky here our unemployment here in Chapel Hill is 6% so it is much better than the state and better than the triangle as a whole. So we don’t really have that as a huge story although people are working probably are not making as much money or are taking lower paying jobs. Let me tell you about where the immigrants fit in. Because when I give talks in the community I often talk about how we decide what news is you know you pick your news probably. I don’t know if you still learn this way in J-53, or your first journalism class but you learn these elements that make a news story. Prominence, timeliness, and one of them is conflict. The bigger conflict the better, but really if you are going to cover a community accurately it is not the big clashes that you have to look for. But it is the smaller tensions that you have to look for. And those are the tensions that I think we were able to mine successfully in our immigrant coverage at the Herald Sun. You know the tension of standing in line when someone in front of you doesn’t speak English and you get frustrated. and why is this person here. And is that person legal? Those kinds of tensions. Why is it taking me so long to drive on I-40 to where I have to go? Tensions of growth but as it affects you personally. Another cell phone driver, it will be very interesting to watch and see if the town actually enforces that. So the tensions if you want to replace that big conflict with this other a smaller word tensions, that is something that the N&O I think has always been very good at identifying and trying to teach reporters to look for. And at the Herald Sun I didn’t have that word tension drilled into me but it certainly was what I was looking for and what I was doing and what I was asking people to look for and look at. So you say what are the biggest stories, I don’t think the biggest stories are immigrants but it may just be because we don’t know enough what’s happening to the immigrants now to put them on the list of biggest stories.
CW: You worked in Durham can you compare, I know you mentioned it is much smaller here, but compare the communities: Durham to Chapel Hill?
MS: Well sure, Chapel Hill is affluent. Chapel Hill has one of the highest housing prices in the state. So it is a much more homogenous community certainly economically. It is diverse because of the University and we have a lot of Asian people here, a small African American community, and a small Hispanic community. Durham is much more diverse and much more working class. It is something like 55% white, 45%…Let me get this right here. Its somewhere in the nature of 10 to 15% Latino, and 50 plus white, and 30 something or 40 something black. So it is much more diverse than here. The housing stock is much more affordable, there is much more affordable housing in Durham. We had reporters who left here to live in Durham because they couldn’t afford anything here. I don’t know enough about the job base to know where the incomes are but it is not a college town. It is not dominated by the university and the hospital the way this community is. The issues there are much more stark. There is tremendous poverty in Durham so a lot of the public conversion takes place around poverty issues, and crime, and drugs. And what happens is a lot of the activity, the news, the bad news happens within a small circle around downtown. And if you live in Southern Durham, or if you live in the rural north, or if you live in Southwest Durham I’m not sure if that discussion about what happens in downtown really reflects your life. You may not go downtown except for a ballgame or for a movie, not a movie but a D pack. So you drive in and drive out. But if you drive from the East you’ll come through east Durham and you will see that poverty and you will see the boarded up houses and you’ll see the places where people get shot on the street. We just did a story today about a, it has been a year since this 13 year old girl was killed in Eastern Durham on her driveway. Unsolved crime, that doesn’t happen here. So the issues in Durham are much more life and death.
CW: With those different demographics and different situations did that make the tensions, did that lead to tensions with the Latino community and make them more news worthy?
MS: It was the numbers. It was just the numbers. Durham was the number one, it had the number growing Latino population in the 1990s and far outpaced. I think the state wide growth was something like 240% but in Durham it was 400%. We had an editor who decided it was worth something, we had a bilingual reporter and we took advantage of that, and we had an editor, Me, who was willing and eager to take it on.
We had support for a long time to do this. In fact we gave out the paper on Fridays. When we had the bilingual paper we had a partnership with some businesses Glaxo-Smith-Kline was one of them at the time. It was called GSK at the time but was called Glaxo at the time. And they would provide us money to buy papers and we gave them out to any English or ESL teachers in the Triangle who wanted copies for their class. Because they were always looking for local material that was bilingual that they could use in their classes. So it was in the schools, and we won awards for that, an award for that. It was a great, great thing. We did a lot of great things back then, and a lot has changed since then.
CW: It is difficult to find bilingual reporters and are there many here currently?
MS: We are not in position to hire so we are not looking for bilingual reporters. We are trying to hold on to the reporters we have.
CW: Do you have bilingual reporters?
MS: Umm…no. I mean I could have a conversation with someone but it has been a few years and I am rusty.
CW: Is it difficult to report on a community if you aren’t fluent in a language?
MS: You have to do those steps I told you before. You have to find people to take you into the community or you have to take the time to learn passable Spanish so that you can conduct a basic interview. How long have you been here? Why did you come? You know tell me about your job? Tell me about your family? But you can do that with Spanish again it is much harder with a community like the Karen.
CW: Do you think that the Latinos in Carrboro, like in the Abbey Court Apartments, do you think that even registers on most the people. Do you think that they even notice them in Chapel Hill?
MS: I don’t know. I notice them. I mean we try to do stories about the issues that affect them. A few years ago when people were getting towed in Abbey Court we wrote about that. We wrote about the protest. We have written about the Human Rights Center that is based there or had been based there until recently and their efforts to serve this community. Certainly you see Mexicans, primarily Mexicans, when you are out and about. So in terms of level of awareness does the average person who might eat dinner at 411 West think about Latinos once a day? I don’t know, probably not. Should they? I don’t know. I’m not making judgment. I am just saying that they are not the first thing you think of when you think of Chapel Hill.
CW: You said that you worked with the Radio too?
MS: Not in this State, in New York.
CW: Did they talk about Latinos? How does radio compare or differ from Journalism?
MS: I don’t think there is any real local news radio except for CHL which does a very good job of covering the community. But it is very short you know. WNC does a good job with the intersection of immigrant issues and politics and certainly they have covered Dream Act stuff. But I don’t think anyone looks to radio for much coverage of local news you know certainly not local news about immigrants.
CW: Do you think they look more to TV?
MS: I don’t know. You are asking me questions about where people get their News and I just don’t know. I just know that we work so hard to give them the best local news that we can and even that you just never really know.
CW: Where do you see the future? Do you think the Journalism industry will regain strength? And do you think they will cover Latinos in Orange county more if the population grows?
MS: No, I don’t think so. I think the numbers are too small. I mean we had I think the first Latino immigrant elected to a local board in Carrboro: John Herrera. And I thought that issues would rise more with his presence and that didn’t really happen for whatever reasons. And he left politics, he didn’t seem to really enjoy it. So I don’t know. I don’t know if the Judith Blaus of the world or El Centro Hispano in Durham which is now running El Centro Latino here. What used to be El Centro Latino. I think that they are just trying to serve their folks, their clients with meeting some basic needs. As far as making the community more aware of them that is a luxury. Really the issue is just making sure these people are getting served adequately by Schools, Social Services, health care. No I couldn’t tell you what the 3, 4, 5 stories I’d like to do on immigrant issues over the next year would be because I haven’t had the time to think about it. Because it is crazy what we are trying to do. Trying to put out a paper. I mean all the people at my level at the N&O work 6 days a week. And I’m taking a photo class so I can take better photos because they get in the paper because we don’t have enough photographers. And you know the only thing that keeps me going is knowing that it is up to me whatever is in the paper and that is an awesome responsibility and it is a lot of fun. And it is challenging but it is ridiculous. The work is too much. You don’t have enough time to think. All the copy editors and designers are consolidated in Charlotte. So today I’ve got to try to make sure I have got most of my Wednesday paper planned. For Wednesday on a Sunday so that they can be designed in the timeframe that the hub of designers have, because they have to design ten community papers. When I came here 6 years ago we had two designers who worked full time on just the Chapel Hill News. So I am not optimistic because for whatever reasons our industry hasn’t figure out how to make money off what we do which is so valuable. But we can’t figure out a way to monetize it. And I don’t know what the answer is because I don’t see that turning around. We are just trying to cover the school board, and the city hall, and who got arrested. Cover the biggest murder trials. So immigrant issues are not a priority unless they intersect with the bigger community in some way.
CW: Well thank you for conducting this interview with me it was a lot of help.
MS: Sorry to end on such a depressing note, a really depressing note but that is what we do.
Interviewee Journey Coordinates
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
R-0633 -- Schultz, Mark.
Description
An account of the resource
The interview was organized around a few major themes, particularly as they apply to Raleigh and Durham, in North Carolina. These include Mark Schultz’s background information, his experience working in the journalism field, his work with the bilingual column “Nuestro Pueblo,” how the Latino population has been portrayed in the media, the struggles of covering minority groups, how the media decides what is news worthy, why the Latino population is not covered frequently in Orange County, N.C., how the media has been impacted by the recession and how that has hurt news coverage and where people get their news. The interview contains a brief description of Schultz’s background. Schultz states his opinions on the topics listed above and goes into great detail about how the downturn in the economy has impacted the journalism field.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
No restrictions. Open to research.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
April 15 2012
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
R0633_Audio.mp3
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
<a href="http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/16996">University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.</a>
-
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/a3a71f75c25035d9c176469432fe421d.MP3
4c3fe147e18a6613048172a79ae3bf91
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/c9acfb83623d739d555417e6bbcf0cfb.pdf
84b6eb514a878f822b7b5947f29aeb7e
SOHP Interview - Bilingual
Southern Oral History Program Interview with metadata in English and Spanish
Interview number
Número de entrevista
R-0641
En: Restrictions
Es: Restricciones
No restrictions. Open to research.
Date
Fecha
April 6 2012
Interviewee
Entrevistado/a
Willis, Robert J.
En: Interviewee Occupation
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Attorneys
Interviewee Date of Birth
Fecha de nacimiento del entrevistado
En: Interviewee Gender
Es: Género de entrevistado
Male
Interviewee Place of Origin
Lugar de origen del entrevistado
North Carolina -- United States
Interviewee Places of Residence
Lugares de residencia del entrevistado
North Carolina
Interviewer
Entrevistador/a
Willis, Elizabeth.
En: Language of Interview
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
English
En: Abstract
Es: Abstracto en español
Robert Willis begins the interview by describing how he began his legal career working with migrant workers in Florida. He then explains the situation of farm workers in North Carolina, describing the conditions of labor camps. He has been working in North Carolina since 1982, so he describes the changes that he has and has not seen over the years and the growing number of Latino workers in the state. He also explains that the exploitation of a farm worker greatly increases if they are undocumented and that there is significantly higher number of protections for farm workers on H2A visas that are members of unions. Through Robert’s work with Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), he is able to speak to the importance of supply chain organizing, stating that the changes need to be made by corporations that have supply contracts with growers. He describes the ongoing campaign against Reynolds Tobacco Company. He also describes his experiences in Mexico and the inefficiency of the consulate as a result of not having enough employees. Finally, he makes a few comments about day laborers, explaining that wage theft statutes could be the most effective way of legally holding employers accountable for not paying day laborers.
En: Citation
Es: Citación
Interview with Robert J. Willis by Elizabeth Willis, 06 April 2012, R-0641, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Reference URL
URL de referencia
http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/16990
Repository
Repositorio
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
En: Themes
Es: Temas
Agricultural workers; Citizenship and immigration; Day laborers; Economics; Workers' rights and unions
En: Transcript
Es: Transcripción
ELIZABETH WILLIS: This is Elizabeth Willis interviewing Robert Willis. It is April 6th 2012 and it is 10:45 in the morning. We are in his office in Pittsboro, North Carolina. So, just to start off if you just want to tell me a little bit about-- a little about yourself, where you are from and what you do and all that.
ROBERT WILLIS: I'm from North Carolina and I'm an attorney. I've been an attorney since 1979. I practiced as a lawyer in Florida representing migrant farm workers from 1979 to 1982 and then came back to North Carolina and represented migrant farm workers with legal services program again from 1982 through 1989. Then I went into private practice and have represented occasionally migrant farm workers since then and other low income immigrant workers. I also have worked for the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO, as their counsel in North Carolina since 1997.
EW: And how did you get into this work? How did you decide to work with migrant workers and other immigrants?
RW: 'Cause I wanted to work for workers.
EW: Did you meet someone and that made you decide to do or did you learn about it in law school? How did you learn about the issues that were going on?
RW: Basically when I was, last two years of law school. Well, I went to law school to work-- do work for-- legal work for workers basically and it was pretty much that nebulescent idea already certainly with the idea of organizing or helping workers organize but-- And so the last two years of law school I spent a lot of time trying to get a job in that field working for workers which was not too easy since I wanted to work in the South and there are not too many unions in the South. So, one of the people I-- or one of the outfits that I wrote to was a Florida rural legal services that did work for migrant farm workers on the East Coast basically and so, I kind of stumbled into them and have been doing migrant farm work ever since.
EW: And can you explain a little bit what the situation is like in North Carolina right now for migrant farm workers or workers in general?
RW: Well, with respect to farm labor basically, the majority of the farm labor that's-- or farm laborers that are working on a migrant basis in North Carolina are undocumented which means in common parlance that they are illegal. There is a substantial number, six or seven thousand, that also come in on guest visas or guest worker visas otherwise known as H2A visas. And those workers are organized and represented by the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, otherwise known as FLOC. The workers that are not organized and that are coming in undocumented by and large are experiencing illegal working conditions in terms of conditions of employment and subject to super exploitation because of their undocumented status.
EW: How does it help or how does it change the conditions for workers to have unions or to have FLOC present? What has FLOC been doing and what is your role with them?
RW: Excuse me. [eating]
EW: You're fine.
RW: FLOC gives workers that it represents and hopefully workers that it will be representing as part of our supply chain organizing a means by which they can voice their grievances and resolve them in a way and in a timeline that allows them to effectively be addressed instead of having to resort to litigation that takes years and doesn't really address the fundamental power problem or power between the employer and the employee and also between the people and the top of the supply chain like the tobacco companies for whom the workers that we represent harvest tobacco. So, with an opportunity for example to resolve a problem immediately and require an employer to resolve a problem immediately if, for example, there's dissatisfaction with work performance or dissatisfaction with anything else or dissatisfaction with wage payment that capacity to do that in a work context is invaluable basically in terms of the worker having better work conditions. It also helps in terms of supply chain organizing to require the processors to put more money into the supply chain so that the grower is not pinched between the demands of the worker and the grower's cost in terms of what he or she has to pay to produce a crop. So, we get Reynolds Tobacco Company for example to contribute more money to their supply contracts with the growers as part of a three party agreement and everybody beneath Reynolds is able to function at a higher level and a better level for everybody below.
EW: And I believe that you have a campaign or something against Reynolds right now. Is that going on right now?
RW: That's correct.
EW: Could you tell me a little bit more about that and what you guys are trying to do as far as pressuring the company to change their policies?
RW: Basically engaged in supply chain organizing with Reynolds American at their stockholder meetings, at their stockholder meetings and marketing outlets of their products. For example, Kangaroo stores market a lot of tobacco products that Reynolds puts out so we're engaged in discussions with the people that own Kangaroo stores. We are also engaged in discussions with British American Tobacco representatives and other tobacco companies and unions that work on the tobacco for those other tobacco companies in other countries. I'm scheduled to attend a meeting of the shareholders of British American Tobacco in London in-- in this month along with the president of the union to have more discussions about that. And later there will be more discussions that have been ongoing with international worker representatives in countries both in London-- I mean, in the United Kingdom and other countries in Europe.
EW: And how do you feel? Do you feel like it's going well?
RW: Yes, I do feel like it's going well. You know, it's not anything that happens overnight; basically you have to be persistent. Reynolds American Tobacco Company is big basically and they have no legal obligation to talk with the-- the workers that I represent. Well, not that I represent but that my union represents, or the union I work for I should say represents. There's a lot of responses that are similar to, Why are you bothering us? 'Cause we have no legal responsibility. But in terms of economic responsibility and moral responsibility, they have all of that and they have the power to do-- to make the changes that need to be made.
EW: And what are your feelings about the H2A visa program? What kind of improvements do you think should be made in that program?
RW: Well, in North Carolina, there are organized H2A workers and unorganized H2A workers. Those who are organized have access to a grievance procedure, have access to a bid system where they don't, if they are experiencing problems in returning to North Carolina between work years because of whatever discrimination or dislocations that they may perceive to exist or are actually experiencing in Mexico through recruiters down there who are subject to the immediate control of their employers in North Carolina. They can obtain work in North Carolina by submitting a bid directly through the union and processing their work requests that way basically to avoid all of the extracurriculars, let's put it that way, activities of the recruiters in Mexico. So, those kinds of systems to address grievances and discrimination and retaliation are not available to any H2A worker who is not organized in North Carolina so they are basically subject to their employers whim and their recruiters whim in terms of whether-- their continued livelihood and their work conditions while they are here in North Carolina. There are a lot of laws and regulations that say what is supposed to happen but as with any law or regulation, the will to enforce and the capacity to enforce determine what those-- whether those laws and regulations have any meaning basically. And so for a worker who doesn't have access to a grievance procedure and doesn't have access to a bid system to ensure worker return without discrimination those workers are basically up the creek without the proverbial paddle.
EW: And what are the conditions for workers that you've seen? Can you describe the lab-- sorry-- the labor camps in North Carolina? Just a little bit about what it's like.
RW: Well, there's a report that just came out concerning the-- I think it came out from Wake Forest University from Mr. Arcury, A-r-c-u-r-y that said that some large percentage, I think higher than 75 percent of labor camps in North Carolina had I think something like three or more violations of labor camp standards. No labor camp is supposed to be occupied unless it complies with all standards. That's part of what the grievance procedure allows us to address in the context of the growers by whom we're-- our workers are employed. So if there are problems with the labor camps, safety or health standards then we can address those immediately and they usually get corrected immediately if not sooner. But that's not the case, obviously, with respect to many other labor camps and there was a report that FLOC put out with Oxfam also that documented serious problems with labor camps standard compliance for workers living-- undocumented workers living in labor camps also. So it's pretty much my experience, and I've been doing it since 1982 in North Carolina, that labor camps, unless they are in a situation where you do have organized workers, have historically had and still have problems with compliance with the standards they're supposed to comply with and not just minor ones.
EW: And so you've been doing this work in North Carolina for thirty years, then?
RW: Yeah.
EW: And what been the changes that you've seen? Have you seen any improvements or have things been pretty much the same? What are the differences since then?
RW: Well, when I started in 1982, there was no union in North Carolina so that's the biggest change I've seen basically and by and large the only change I've seen. I mean I've represented workers and their work. You know I filed a lot of lawsuits and so did other people basically but it was only effective temporarily, the workers that were involved. And I think perhaps those lawsuits did have some effect in terms of most farmers recognized legally, or being forced to recognize, that legally they were jointly responsible with farm labor contractors for the conditions of the workers that were harvesting the crops that they were growing. But beyond that, in terms of the actual conditions that the workers were working under, it didn't make any change as far as I can see substantively in terms of the wages that were being paid or whether they were being paid and all the other working conditions basically. Until workers are provided with a means of self-enforcement through collective organization such as FLOC is providing, there have been historically and will continue to be problems in my opinion.
EW: How has the increased growth rate of Latino immigrants to this area, how has it impacted this issue? So has-- have you seen more immigration to this area, more workers coming in and what impact has that had on the union or on the conditions of the workers?
RW: When I first came to North Carolina in 1982, I would say by and large the work force was African American and coming from Florida in terms of the migrant worker-- work force. There were some isolated pockets of workers in some of the counties, some counties, Forsyth and Rockingham and a couple of those counties up in that area, Wilkes County. And then there was just starting to be some appearance of Latino workers in Henderson County. And all those workers that were starting to appear, well, I wouldn't say all but most of them, were undocumented. There were some workers that were working for a time around Forsyth and Rockingham counties that were migrating from Texas who were citizen workers or lawful permanent residents but those workers got pretty much squeezed out by workers who were willing to work for substandard conditions who were undocumented. Since going forward from 1982 or 83 to 89 was a gradual procession of workers, African American workers getting replaced by Latino workers across the state and starting about 1989 or so, I'd say that pretty much 80 percent, more than that, were replaced by Latino workers and probably 80 percent if not more than that were undocumented. Then starting in '89 there was also a concurrent or con-- concurrent yeah, effort to bring in workers on this H2A visa basically and that program developed gradually, was started as just a few hundred workers in 1989 to the point in 1999 , 2000 there was 10,000 workers coming in on H2A visas. And that program was kind of leveled off a little bit so it's maybe 7 or 8,000 now for reasons of the costs of bringing in workers on the H2A program, which is one of the things we're trying to address with the supply chain organizing with Reynolds. But the overwhelming majority of workers since 1989 have been undocumented Latino workers and with the immigration law enforcement the opportunity and the will for those workers to and the ability of those workers to do anything to secure their legal rights, which are technically the same as any other worker under federal and state labor laws, is pretty much non-existent so they pretty much have to take whatever is given. That's their, pretty much their station the way that the legal, well I would say the employment, circumstances exist in North Carolina. So, it's not a good situation basically. And I think that one of the reasons that there was a development in terms of this worker population and ethnic background of the workers is that the North American Free Trade Agreement, otherwise known as NAFTA, basically shortly after we passed the Immigration Reform Control Act in 1986, NAFTA was agreed to and NAFTA had an impoverishing effect on a lot of rural areas in Mexico so that people who used to be able to engage in subsistence farming couldn't even compete with the price of subsidized grain in the United States was allowed to import into Mexico basically and the United States growers so that all the people that were growing grain on the ejidos in Mexico or not all but a large number of them and marketing it a little bit to make do, basically, no longer could make do because whatever grain they were trying to market was being marketed at a price that was higher than the cost of the grain coming from the United States.
[Someone comes into the office]
EW: What were we talking about? Well also, you just got back from Mexico recently. Could you tell me what you were doing there and yeah, just what you were doing there and what you learned?
RW: [pause] I was down there for a union meeting and training of members of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee in Monterrey, Mexico. We met for two and half days and basically most of the time was taken up by discussions on and training of union members with respect to the new collective bargaining agreement that we've agreed to this year, how to exercise rights on the bid system, how to exercise rights on the grievance system, where the H2A program is going and why and where it had been historically and just generally issues that affect the workers that we represent basically and we had a pretty good turnout, about 80 workers that are strong members in the union and we had talked also about individual problems that some of them had basically but by and large it was a good development of people's knowledge basically about what they could do and were doing and what we were doing.
EW: So why did you decide to go to Monterrey over another place in Mexico?
RW: Monterrey is the place where the United States Consulate processes most of the H2A visas. We have an office in Monterrey and we're-- we have a staffed office in Monterrey to assist the workers when they're getting their visas and if they encounter problems getting their visas basically so, a lot of workers know how to get there and it's also the place to get to if you want to work H2A.
EW: Have you been to other places in Mexico working with FLOC?
RW: I have personally not but the staff has and we have staff-- we have US staff both traveled in other places in Mexico. Actually, I have, I take that back. I've been to Mexico City in connection with the murder of one of our staff. The investigation is still under-- ongoing. We had a staff member murdered in the Monterrey office on April 9th 2009, Santiago Cruz and so I was involved in some of the efforts to-- the Inter-American something, I don't know all the official deal basically but it was the inter-American Commission on Human Rights that assisted us in filing a complaint and we had had and have a bunch of lawyers helping us pursue that, I think it's the Mexican government made some required changes in the way they deal with things in Monterrey and those discussions and efforts are still ongoing and we've been assisted by a congressperson in Ohio who's actually traveled to Monterrey to assist us in our efforts to enforce, to get the Mexican government to investigate and enforce the law in respect to his murder but outside of that, I have not travelled anywhere for the union in Mexico. Well, I should say, in some ways I have traveled also to the state of Guerrero in connection with a family that the union was assisting who died of heat stroke in Halifax County here in North Carolina so we were able to get some compensation for his family finally so we did, we went down there and saw them and made sure there was a system set up so that the money didn't get frittered away with things that were not in the best interest of the children. So the president of the union and I went down to set that system up, which we did a couple years back but for the most part my business has been concentrated in Monterrey and I pretty much go there once a year.
EW: And how has going to Mexico, to Monterrey especially, changed your perspective on your work here? Does it help when you're talking to the workers that you've been to Monterrey, does it help to talk to them about Mexico, does it change anything about your work?
RW: Well, I mean, as doing anything, if you're on site where some part of the activity that you're purporting to address actually occurs it gives you some different perspective about what workers face when they're dealing with the H2A system, getting a visa and all that kind of stuff. I mean, I've been to the hospitals where they stay when they're attempting to get processed and I've been to the consulate so, you know, I have some idea of what they have to go through. Obviously, I don't have personal experience actually going through it so my perspective is always second hand but so, closer second hand obviously now that I've been there a number of times basically and also basically being with workers and talking about their problems in Monterrey is a lot different than talking to them over the telephone in North Carolina.
EW: Definitely. What is-- How long is the wait process to get an H2A? How long do they usually wait in Monterrey?
RW: Well, it varies on the efficiency of the consulate and the efficiency of the recruiters basically but usually it's a couple of days if not longer but it's usually a couple of days. If they're lucky, maybe just a night. But that's the ideal system but the problem now is that there's a, kind of a bottleneck effect with a lot of the workers wanting to come through and not enough embassy staff to deal with the workers that need to be processed basically so, there's that delay kind of inherent in the system.
EW: So do you think that there should be-- that the process in the United States needs to be changed so that there are more H2A opportunities available in the United States or-- Does that have an impact on the efficiency of the process in Mexico?
RW: What has the most-- largest effect on the efficiency of the process in Mexico is the number of staff the embassy has to process the visa. I mean, you've got literally thousands of workers wanting to come through and, you know, a handful of embassy staff to process those requests and since 9/11 there's been a much more thorough-- I wouldn't say necessarily thorough but exhaustive, interview process and you have to do everyone one by one basically whereas it was a little bit easier or not so formal and not so individually mandated before September 11th but for security reasons that everybody in this country is dealing with after September 11th, nobody gets through with an H2A visa anymore in Monterrey or in any consulate in Mexico without individual processing which multiplies the amount of time that's needed to get through all those workers which means you got to have more staff which hasn't necessarily occurred in many consulates.
EW: Can you tell me a little bit about what you know, more about the undocumented worker situation here? So, do some employers choose to not go through the H2A process and just hire undocumented workers? And what that it is like, why some farmers choose to do that.
RW: Well, I mean I represented recently a worker who has worked in Wayne County who was undocumented and he worked there until 2009, 2010 the whole seasons basically and minimum wage at that time was seven dollars and twenty five cents an hour. The employer the worker and every member of the crew seven dollars an hour on the books. And had them in an unpermitted labor camp, bad conditions basically. And in that same county, there were workers that were getting paid I think a little bit over nine dollars an hour under the-- mandated under the H2A program with permanent housing that was up to standard. So if you can-- If you're an employer and you can get away with paying seven dollars an hour and have a dump for housing that doesn't cost any money to put together as opposed to paying over nine dollars an hour and the cost of housing that you have to comply with and you're not too scrupulous about what you're doing, you can make a lot more money paying seven dollars an hour. That's basically the economic impulse for that situation and it recurs in North Carolina across, from one side of the state to the other basically in terms of the undocumented worker population.
EW: And how does the relationship with agribusinesses and corporations affect the relationship between the farmer and the worker?
RW: Well, most, at least I can speak pretty much of the tobacco but it's not that much different for a lot of the crops. It used to be, back when I first started in North Carolina that tobacco was sold at auction. There were basically auction houses so that when the grower produced his or her tobacco, he had an arrangement with an independent auctioneer and tobacco was sold in big warehouses basically to tobacco companies so that buyers would come in and purchase tobacco. That system has is disappeared completely. Now all tobacco that is grown in North Carolina and any other state that I'm aware of are grown on supply contracts where tobacco companies mandate what kind of tobacco is going to be grown, with what kind of seeds and such and so forth using whatever kind of inputs that they want, fertilizers, pesticides, etc. And they have the right under these contracts to specify those things. They also have the right to require, and do require supposedly, compliance with all employment and labor laws. Well, I wouldn't say they do require but they have a right to require all employment and labor laws. So, basically what happens is the grower produces a certain amount of tobacco that's all spoken for and he has to sell or she to sell it at a stipulated price that's decided before the season starts to a particular tobacco company and they are-- the tobacco company only agrees, they don't agree to purchase the whole crop, they just agree to purchase whatever they think is necessary basically so tobacco growers are pretty much between a rock and a hard place because he has to or she has to sell her crop at a stipulated price which is basically non-negotiable at the start of the season and then they-- the amount of what they're selling is dictated by tobacco companies without any real ability on the part of the grower how much their crop is going to be purchased and how much is going down the toilet. So, they're at risk throughout the situation, throughout the season basically and depending upon, you know, then the weather and all that kind of stuff and then depending upon how the market proceeds and what's happening with international tobacco markets and all the things the grower has no control over, they sell their crop at a preordained price and hopefully they make some money and in the meantime, they've got to pay their workers. So, that's why we talk about supply chain organizing. The people that really need to make the changes are the people that are running those supply contracts.
EW: Can you tell me what you know about the day labor population in Pittsboro or in Chapel Hill or Carrboro or the state in general and kind of what are the issues in that situation as well?
RW: I don't do that much work in connection with the day labor population primarily because it's even more difficult to enforce day labor worker's rights legally than it is among migrant workers and migrant workers are tough enough, basically. The problem with day laborers in my experience is number one, they're transient, so that they're difficult to keep up with and sometimes they're difficult to stay in touch with you, so you have no client from one day to the next. They have-- but more importantly, the people that are employing them are undercapitalized or non-capitalized basically, so if there is a non-payment of wages, or wage theft is the term that's used, there's basically no recourse from a civil side basically because those entities or persons have no money to pay. So under North Carolina, there are no procedures under which you can collect or garnish or force execution in any kind of way that will give you kind of meaningful recourse for those kinds of undercapitalized or non-capitalized operations basically. So, you're talking about a guy who comes down to the railroad tracks, say in Raleigh which is where a lot of people are meeting, and have a couple of guys jump in the back of his pickup truck and off they go for a couple of days work in some landscaping or whatever and the guy at the end of the week pays them nothing or at the end of the day pays them nothing, then some hope that they will get some money the next day from the same guy and then it turns out they don't pay them anything, number one sometimes they don't even know the guy's name or they know him only as Jim in the blue pickup truck. So, you start with that problem and then number two, if they do manage to get the guy's full name, Jim in the blue pickup truck has no assets basically that you can get to because his house is owned with his wife and you can't get to that under North Carolina law in terms of an asset that you can execute against and the pickup truck is probably worth a total of a hundred bucks or not much more probably also, if he's making payments on it, you can't take that to satisfy a wage theft. So basically there's nothing you can do legally, from a civil side, to say to-- to collect those wages. The only real remedy is in some jurisdictions they've started to enact what they call wage theft statutes to make it a criminal offense to engage in that kind of activity and if there were such a statute in North Carolina, I believe there are in one or two jurisdictions, then you could file a complaint in that circumstance and, as condition of prosecution, require the employer to make good on the wages, just as you would require somebody who had obtained property by false pretenses, which is a felony in North Carolina, to provide restitution for the amount of money or property that they have wrongfully secured. And that's really not much different than basically what you're talking about. It's wrongfully obtaining people's labor with the, in some cases with the knowledge ahead of time that they're not going to pay them and certain not paying them. So that's basically the idea behind the wage theft statute and it's a good idea basically for day laborers because for the most part, unless they-- there is some organization among the day laborers, which in some jurisdictions and cities there is, there's a national day laborers organizing committee basically. But short of that, and short of some kind of requirement that day laborer employers are posting some kind of security or posting some kind of bond so that people can get their money, if they're not paid, as I see it, and I'm not an expert in this area by any stretch of the imagination, the only to vindicate people's rates is the day labor-- excuse me, the wage theft statutes.
EW: Okay, well, this-- that's all the questions that I have for today so thank you so much for talking to me.
RW: Okay, great.
EW: Thank you.
Es: Restricciones
Sin restricciones. Abierta para investigación.
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Abogados
Es: Género de entrevistado
Hombre
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
Inglés
Es: Resumen
Robert Willis empieza la entrevista con la descripción de la forma en que comenzó su carrera legal al trabajar con los trabajadores migrantes en la Florida. Él explica a continuación la situación de los trabajadores agrícolas en Carolina del Norte, y describe las condiciones de los campos agrícolas. Él ha estado trabajando en Carolina del Norte desde 1982, por lo que describe los cambios que él ha visto y los que no ha visto a lo largo de los años y el creciente número de trabajadores latinos en el estado. También explica que la explotación de un trabajador agrícola aumenta considerablemente si son indocumentados y que hay un número significativamente mayor de protecciones para los trabajadores agrícolas con visas H2A que son miembros de sindicatos. A través del trabajo de Robert con el Comité Organizador de Trabajadores de Granja (FLOC, por sus siglas en inglés), él es capaz de hablar sobre la importancia de la organización de la cadena del suministro de alimentos, afirmando que los cambios deben ser realizados por empresas que tienen contratos de suministro con los productores. Él describe la campaña en curso contra la compañía de tabaco de Reynolds. Él también describe sus experiencias en México y la ineficiencia del consulado como consecuencia de no tener suficientes empleados. Finalmente, hace algunos comentarios sobre los jornaleros, explicando que los estatutos de robo de salario podrían ser la forma más eficaz de hacer a los empleadores legalmente responsables de no pagar a los jornaleros.
Es: Citación
Entrevista con Robert J. Willis por Elizabeth Willis, 06 Abril 2012, R-0641, en Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, Universidad de Carolina del Norte en Chapel Hill.
Es: Temas
Trabajadores agrícolas; Ciudadanía e inmigración; Trabajadores jornaleros; Economía; Derechos de los trabajadores y sindicatos
Es: Transcripción
ELIZABETH WILLIS: This is Elizabeth Willis interviewing Robert Willis. It is April 6th 2012 and it is 10:45 in the morning. We are in his office in Pittsboro, North Carolina. So, just to start off if you just want to tell me a little bit about-- a little about yourself, where you are from and what you do and all that.
ROBERT WILLIS: I'm from North Carolina and I'm an attorney. I've been an attorney since 1979. I practiced as a lawyer in Florida representing migrant farm workers from 1979 to 1982 and then came back to North Carolina and represented migrant farm workers with legal services program again from 1982 through 1989. Then I went into private practice and have represented occasionally migrant farm workers since then and other low income immigrant workers. I also have worked for the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO, as their counsel in North Carolina since 1997.
EW: And how did you get into this work? How did you decide to work with migrant workers and other immigrants?
RW: 'Cause I wanted to work for workers.
EW: Did you meet someone and that made you decide to do or did you learn about it in law school? How did you learn about the issues that were going on?
RW: Basically when I was, last two years of law school. Well, I went to law school to work-- do work for-- legal work for workers basically and it was pretty much that nebulescent idea already certainly with the idea of organizing or helping workers organize but-- And so the last two years of law school I spent a lot of time trying to get a job in that field working for workers which was not too easy since I wanted to work in the South and there are not too many unions in the South. So, one of the people I-- or one of the outfits that I wrote to was a Florida rural legal services that did work for migrant farm workers on the East Coast basically and so, I kind of stumbled into them and have been doing migrant farm work ever since.
EW: And can you explain a little bit what the situation is like in North Carolina right now for migrant farm workers or workers in general?
RW: Well, with respect to farm labor basically, the majority of the farm labor that's-- or farm laborers that are working on a migrant basis in North Carolina are undocumented which means in common parlance that they are illegal. There is a substantial number, six or seven thousand, that also come in on guest visas or guest worker visas otherwise known as H2A visas. And those workers are organized and represented by the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, otherwise known as FLOC. The workers that are not organized and that are coming in undocumented by and large are experiencing illegal working conditions in terms of conditions of employment and subject to super exploitation because of their undocumented status.
EW: How does it help or how does it change the conditions for workers to have unions or to have FLOC present? What has FLOC been doing and what is your role with them?
RW: Excuse me. [eating]
EW: You're fine.
RW: FLOC gives workers that it represents and hopefully workers that it will be representing as part of our supply chain organizing a means by which they can voice their grievances and resolve them in a way and in a timeline that allows them to effectively be addressed instead of having to resort to litigation that takes years and doesn't really address the fundamental power problem or power between the employer and the employee and also between the people and the top of the supply chain like the tobacco companies for whom the workers that we represent harvest tobacco. So, with an opportunity for example to resolve a problem immediately and require an employer to resolve a problem immediately if, for example, there's dissatisfaction with work performance or dissatisfaction with anything else or dissatisfaction with wage payment that capacity to do that in a work context is invaluable basically in terms of the worker having better work conditions. It also helps in terms of supply chain organizing to require the processors to put more money into the supply chain so that the grower is not pinched between the demands of the worker and the grower's cost in terms of what he or she has to pay to produce a crop. So, we get Reynolds Tobacco Company for example to contribute more money to their supply contracts with the growers as part of a three party agreement and everybody beneath Reynolds is able to function at a higher level and a better level for everybody below.
EW: And I believe that you have a campaign or something against Reynolds right now. Is that going on right now?
RW: That's correct.
EW: Could you tell me a little bit more about that and what you guys are trying to do as far as pressuring the company to change their policies?
RW: Basically engaged in supply chain organizing with Reynolds American at their stockholder meetings, at their stockholder meetings and marketing outlets of their products. For example, Kangaroo stores market a lot of tobacco products that Reynolds puts out so we're engaged in discussions with the people that own Kangaroo stores. We are also engaged in discussions with British American Tobacco representatives and other tobacco companies and unions that work on the tobacco for those other tobacco companies in other countries. I'm scheduled to attend a meeting of the shareholders of British American Tobacco in London in-- in this month along with the president of the union to have more discussions about that. And later there will be more discussions that have been ongoing with international worker representatives in countries both in London-- I mean, in the United Kingdom and other countries in Europe.
EW: And how do you feel? Do you feel like it's going well?
RW: Yes, I do feel like it's going well. You know, it's not anything that happens overnight; basically you have to be persistent. Reynolds American Tobacco Company is big basically and they have no legal obligation to talk with the-- the workers that I represent. Well, not that I represent but that my union represents, or the union I work for I should say represents. There's a lot of responses that are similar to, Why are you bothering us? 'Cause we have no legal responsibility. But in terms of economic responsibility and moral responsibility, they have all of that and they have the power to do-- to make the changes that need to be made.
EW: And what are your feelings about the H2A visa program? What kind of improvements do you think should be made in that program?
RW: Well, in North Carolina, there are organized H2A workers and unorganized H2A workers. Those who are organized have access to a grievance procedure, have access to a bid system where they don't, if they are experiencing problems in returning to North Carolina between work years because of whatever discrimination or dislocations that they may perceive to exist or are actually experiencing in Mexico through recruiters down there who are subject to the immediate control of their employers in North Carolina. They can obtain work in North Carolina by submitting a bid directly through the union and processing their work requests that way basically to avoid all of the extracurriculars, let's put it that way, activities of the recruiters in Mexico. So, those kinds of systems to address grievances and discrimination and retaliation are not available to any H2A worker who is not organized in North Carolina so they are basically subject to their employers whim and their recruiters whim in terms of whether-- their continued livelihood and their work conditions while they are here in North Carolina. There are a lot of laws and regulations that say what is supposed to happen but as with any law or regulation, the will to enforce and the capacity to enforce determine what those-- whether those laws and regulations have any meaning basically. And so for a worker who doesn't have access to a grievance procedure and doesn't have access to a bid system to ensure worker return without discrimination those workers are basically up the creek without the proverbial paddle.
EW: And what are the conditions for workers that you've seen? Can you describe the lab-- sorry-- the labor camps in North Carolina? Just a little bit about what it's like.
RW: Well, there's a report that just came out concerning the-- I think it came out from Wake Forest University from Mr. Arcury, A-r-c-u-r-y that said that some large percentage, I think higher than 75 percent of labor camps in North Carolina had I think something like three or more violations of labor camp standards. No labor camp is supposed to be occupied unless it complies with all standards. That's part of what the grievance procedure allows us to address in the context of the growers by whom we're-- our workers are employed. So if there are problems with the labor camps, safety or health standards then we can address those immediately and they usually get corrected immediately if not sooner. But that's not the case, obviously, with respect to many other labor camps and there was a report that FLOC put out with Oxfam also that documented serious problems with labor camps standard compliance for workers living-- undocumented workers living in labor camps also. So it's pretty much my experience, and I've been doing it since 1982 in North Carolina, that labor camps, unless they are in a situation where you do have organized workers, have historically had and still have problems with compliance with the standards they're supposed to comply with and not just minor ones.
EW: And so you've been doing this work in North Carolina for thirty years, then?
RW: Yeah.
EW: And what been the changes that you've seen? Have you seen any improvements or have things been pretty much the same? What are the differences since then?
RW: Well, when I started in 1982, there was no union in North Carolina so that's the biggest change I've seen basically and by and large the only change I've seen. I mean I've represented workers and their work. You know I filed a lot of lawsuits and so did other people basically but it was only effective temporarily, the workers that were involved. And I think perhaps those lawsuits did have some effect in terms of most farmers recognized legally, or being forced to recognize, that legally they were jointly responsible with farm labor contractors for the conditions of the workers that were harvesting the crops that they were growing. But beyond that, in terms of the actual conditions that the workers were working under, it didn't make any change as far as I can see substantively in terms of the wages that were being paid or whether they were being paid and all the other working conditions basically. Until workers are provided with a means of self-enforcement through collective organization such as FLOC is providing, there have been historically and will continue to be problems in my opinion.
EW: How has the increased growth rate of Latino immigrants to this area, how has it impacted this issue? So has-- have you seen more immigration to this area, more workers coming in and what impact has that had on the union or on the conditions of the workers?
RW: When I first came to North Carolina in 1982, I would say by and large the work force was African American and coming from Florida in terms of the migrant worker-- work force. There were some isolated pockets of workers in some of the counties, some counties, Forsyth and Rockingham and a couple of those counties up in that area, Wilkes County. And then there was just starting to be some appearance of Latino workers in Henderson County. And all those workers that were starting to appear, well, I wouldn't say all but most of them, were undocumented. There were some workers that were working for a time around Forsyth and Rockingham counties that were migrating from Texas who were citizen workers or lawful permanent residents but those workers got pretty much squeezed out by workers who were willing to work for substandard conditions who were undocumented. Since going forward from 1982 or 83 to 89 was a gradual procession of workers, African American workers getting replaced by Latino workers across the state and starting about 1989 or so, I'd say that pretty much 80 percent, more than that, were replaced by Latino workers and probably 80 percent if not more than that were undocumented. Then starting in '89 there was also a concurrent or con-- concurrent yeah, effort to bring in workers on this H2A visa basically and that program developed gradually, was started as just a few hundred workers in 1989 to the point in 1999 , 2000 there was 10,000 workers coming in on H2A visas. And that program was kind of leveled off a little bit so it's maybe 7 or 8,000 now for reasons of the costs of bringing in workers on the H2A program, which is one of the things we're trying to address with the supply chain organizing with Reynolds. But the overwhelming majority of workers since 1989 have been undocumented Latino workers and with the immigration law enforcement the opportunity and the will for those workers to and the ability of those workers to do anything to secure their legal rights, which are technically the same as any other worker under federal and state labor laws, is pretty much non-existent so they pretty much have to take whatever is given. That's their, pretty much their station the way that the legal, well I would say the employment, circumstances exist in North Carolina. So, it's not a good situation basically. And I think that one of the reasons that there was a development in terms of this worker population and ethnic background of the workers is that the North American Free Trade Agreement, otherwise known as NAFTA, basically shortly after we passed the Immigration Reform Control Act in 1986, NAFTA was agreed to and NAFTA had an impoverishing effect on a lot of rural areas in Mexico so that people who used to be able to engage in subsistence farming couldn't even compete with the price of subsidized grain in the United States was allowed to import into Mexico basically and the United States growers so that all the people that were growing grain on the ejidos in Mexico or not all but a large number of them and marketing it a little bit to make do, basically, no longer could make do because whatever grain they were trying to market was being marketed at a price that was higher than the cost of the grain coming from the United States.
[Someone comes into the office]
EW: What were we talking about? Well also, you just got back from Mexico recently. Could you tell me what you were doing there and yeah, just what you were doing there and what you learned?
RW: [pause] I was down there for a union meeting and training of members of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee in Monterrey, Mexico. We met for two and half days and basically most of the time was taken up by discussions on and training of union members with respect to the new collective bargaining agreement that we've agreed to this year, how to exercise rights on the bid system, how to exercise rights on the grievance system, where the H2A program is going and why and where it had been historically and just generally issues that affect the workers that we represent basically and we had a pretty good turnout, about 80 workers that are strong members in the union and we had talked also about individual problems that some of them had basically but by and large it was a good development of people's knowledge basically about what they could do and were doing and what we were doing.
EW: So why did you decide to go to Monterrey over another place in Mexico?
RW: Monterrey is the place where the United States Consulate processes most of the H2A visas. We have an office in Monterrey and we're-- we have a staffed office in Monterrey to assist the workers when they're getting their visas and if they encounter problems getting their visas basically so, a lot of workers know how to get there and it's also the place to get to if you want to work H2A.
EW: Have you been to other places in Mexico working with FLOC?
RW: I have personally not but the staff has and we have staff-- we have US staff both traveled in other places in Mexico. Actually, I have, I take that back. I've been to Mexico City in connection with the murder of one of our staff. The investigation is still under-- ongoing. We had a staff member murdered in the Monterrey office on April 9th 2009, Santiago Cruz and so I was involved in some of the efforts to-- the Inter-American something, I don't know all the official deal basically but it was the inter-American Commission on Human Rights that assisted us in filing a complaint and we had had and have a bunch of lawyers helping us pursue that, I think it's the Mexican government made some required changes in the way they deal with things in Monterrey and those discussions and efforts are still ongoing and we've been assisted by a congressperson in Ohio who's actually traveled to Monterrey to assist us in our efforts to enforce, to get the Mexican government to investigate and enforce the law in respect to his murder but outside of that, I have not travelled anywhere for the union in Mexico. Well, I should say, in some ways I have traveled also to the state of Guerrero in connection with a family that the union was assisting who died of heat stroke in Halifax County here in North Carolina so we were able to get some compensation for his family finally so we did, we went down there and saw them and made sure there was a system set up so that the money didn't get frittered away with things that were not in the best interest of the children. So the president of the union and I went down to set that system up, which we did a couple years back but for the most part my business has been concentrated in Monterrey and I pretty much go there once a year.
EW: And how has going to Mexico, to Monterrey especially, changed your perspective on your work here? Does it help when you're talking to the workers that you've been to Monterrey, does it help to talk to them about Mexico, does it change anything about your work?
RW: Well, I mean, as doing anything, if you're on site where some part of the activity that you're purporting to address actually occurs it gives you some different perspective about what workers face when they're dealing with the H2A system, getting a visa and all that kind of stuff. I mean, I've been to the hospitals where they stay when they're attempting to get processed and I've been to the consulate so, you know, I have some idea of what they have to go through. Obviously, I don't have personal experience actually going through it so my perspective is always second hand but so, closer second hand obviously now that I've been there a number of times basically and also basically being with workers and talking about their problems in Monterrey is a lot different than talking to them over the telephone in North Carolina.
EW: Definitely. What is-- How long is the wait process to get an H2A? How long do they usually wait in Monterrey?
RW: Well, it varies on the efficiency of the consulate and the efficiency of the recruiters basically but usually it's a couple of days if not longer but it's usually a couple of days. If they're lucky, maybe just a night. But that's the ideal system but the problem now is that there's a, kind of a bottleneck effect with a lot of the workers wanting to come through and not enough embassy staff to deal with the workers that need to be processed basically so, there's that delay kind of inherent in the system.
EW: So do you think that there should be-- that the process in the United States needs to be changed so that there are more H2A opportunities available in the United States or-- Does that have an impact on the efficiency of the process in Mexico?
RW: What has the most-- largest effect on the efficiency of the process in Mexico is the number of staff the embassy has to process the visa. I mean, you've got literally thousands of workers wanting to come through and, you know, a handful of embassy staff to process those requests and since 9/11 there's been a much more thorough-- I wouldn't say necessarily thorough but exhaustive, interview process and you have to do everyone one by one basically whereas it was a little bit easier or not so formal and not so individually mandated before September 11th but for security reasons that everybody in this country is dealing with after September 11th, nobody gets through with an H2A visa anymore in Monterrey or in any consulate in Mexico without individual processing which multiplies the amount of time that's needed to get through all those workers which means you got to have more staff which hasn't necessarily occurred in many consulates.
EW: Can you tell me a little bit about what you know, more about the undocumented worker situation here? So, do some employers choose to not go through the H2A process and just hire undocumented workers? And what that it is like, why some farmers choose to do that.
RW: Well, I mean I represented recently a worker who has worked in Wayne County who was undocumented and he worked there until 2009, 2010 the whole seasons basically and minimum wage at that time was seven dollars and twenty five cents an hour. The employer the worker and every member of the crew seven dollars an hour on the books. And had them in an unpermitted labor camp, bad conditions basically. And in that same county, there were workers that were getting paid I think a little bit over nine dollars an hour under the-- mandated under the H2A program with permanent housing that was up to standard. So if you can-- If you're an employer and you can get away with paying seven dollars an hour and have a dump for housing that doesn't cost any money to put together as opposed to paying over nine dollars an hour and the cost of housing that you have to comply with and you're not too scrupulous about what you're doing, you can make a lot more money paying seven dollars an hour. That's basically the economic impulse for that situation and it recurs in North Carolina across, from one side of the state to the other basically in terms of the undocumented worker population.
EW: And how does the relationship with agribusinesses and corporations affect the relationship between the farmer and the worker?
RW: Well, most, at least I can speak pretty much of the tobacco but it's not that much different for a lot of the crops. It used to be, back when I first started in North Carolina that tobacco was sold at auction. There were basically auction houses so that when the grower produced his or her tobacco, he had an arrangement with an independent auctioneer and tobacco was sold in big warehouses basically to tobacco companies so that buyers would come in and purchase tobacco. That system has is disappeared completely. Now all tobacco that is grown in North Carolina and any other state that I'm aware of are grown on supply contracts where tobacco companies mandate what kind of tobacco is going to be grown, with what kind of seeds and such and so forth using whatever kind of inputs that they want, fertilizers, pesticides, etc. And they have the right under these contracts to specify those things. They also have the right to require, and do require supposedly, compliance with all employment and labor laws. Well, I wouldn't say they do require but they have a right to require all employment and labor laws. So, basically what happens is the grower produces a certain amount of tobacco that's all spoken for and he has to sell or she to sell it at a stipulated price that's decided before the season starts to a particular tobacco company and they are-- the tobacco company only agrees, they don't agree to purchase the whole crop, they just agree to purchase whatever they think is necessary basically so tobacco growers are pretty much between a rock and a hard place because he has to or she has to sell her crop at a stipulated price which is basically non-negotiable at the start of the season and then they-- the amount of what they're selling is dictated by tobacco companies without any real ability on the part of the grower how much their crop is going to be purchased and how much is going down the toilet. So, they're at risk throughout the situation, throughout the season basically and depending upon, you know, then the weather and all that kind of stuff and then depending upon how the market proceeds and what's happening with international tobacco markets and all the things the grower has no control over, they sell their crop at a preordained price and hopefully they make some money and in the meantime, they've got to pay their workers. So, that's why we talk about supply chain organizing. The people that really need to make the changes are the people that are running those supply contracts.
EW: Can you tell me what you know about the day labor population in Pittsboro or in Chapel Hill or Carrboro or the state in general and kind of what are the issues in that situation as well?
RW: I don't do that much work in connection with the day labor population primarily because it's even more difficult to enforce day labor worker's rights legally than it is among migrant workers and migrant workers are tough enough, basically. The problem with day laborers in my experience is number one, they're transient, so that they're difficult to keep up with and sometimes they're difficult to stay in touch with you, so you have no client from one day to the next. They have-- but more importantly, the people that are employing them are undercapitalized or non-capitalized basically, so if there is a non-payment of wages, or wage theft is the term that's used, there's basically no recourse from a civil side basically because those entities or persons have no money to pay. So under North Carolina, there are no procedures under which you can collect or garnish or force execution in any kind of way that will give you kind of meaningful recourse for those kinds of undercapitalized or non-capitalized operations basically. So, you're talking about a guy who comes down to the railroad tracks, say in Raleigh which is where a lot of people are meeting, and have a couple of guys jump in the back of his pickup truck and off they go for a couple of days work in some landscaping or whatever and the guy at the end of the week pays them nothing or at the end of the day pays them nothing, then some hope that they will get some money the next day from the same guy and then it turns out they don't pay them anything, number one sometimes they don't even know the guy's name or they know him only as Jim in the blue pickup truck. So, you start with that problem and then number two, if they do manage to get the guy's full name, Jim in the blue pickup truck has no assets basically that you can get to because his house is owned with his wife and you can't get to that under North Carolina law in terms of an asset that you can execute against and the pickup truck is probably worth a total of a hundred bucks or not much more probably also, if he's making payments on it, you can't take that to satisfy a wage theft. So basically there's nothing you can do legally, from a civil side, to say to-- to collect those wages. The only real remedy is in some jurisdictions they've started to enact what they call wage theft statutes to make it a criminal offense to engage in that kind of activity and if there were such a statute in North Carolina, I believe there are in one or two jurisdictions, then you could file a complaint in that circumstance and, as condition of prosecution, require the employer to make good on the wages, just as you would require somebody who had obtained property by false pretenses, which is a felony in North Carolina, to provide restitution for the amount of money or property that they have wrongfully secured. And that's really not much different than basically what you're talking about. It's wrongfully obtaining people's labor with the, in some cases with the knowledge ahead of time that they're not going to pay them and certain not paying them. So that's basically the idea behind the wage theft statute and it's a good idea basically for day laborers because for the most part, unless they-- there is some organization among the day laborers, which in some jurisdictions and cities there is, there's a national day laborers organizing committee basically. But short of that, and short of some kind of requirement that day laborer employers are posting some kind of security or posting some kind of bond so that people can get their money, if they're not paid, as I see it, and I'm not an expert in this area by any stretch of the imagination, the only to vindicate people's rates is the day labor-- excuse me, the wage theft statutes.
EW: Okay, well, this-- that's all the questions that I have for today so thank you so much for talking to me.
RW: Okay, great.
EW: Thank you.
Interviewee Journey Coordinates
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
R-0641 -- Willis, Robert J.
Description
An account of the resource
Robert Willis begins the interview by describing how he began his legal career working with migrant workers in Florida. He then explains the situation of farm workers in North Carolina, describing the conditions of labor camps. He has been working in North Carolina since 1982, so he describes the changes that he has and has not seen over the years and the growing number of Latino workers in the state. He also explains that the exploitation of a farm worker greatly increases if they are undocumented and that there is significantly higher number of protections for farm workers on H2A visas that are members of unions. Through Robert’s work with Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), he is able to speak to the importance of supply chain organizing, stating that the changes need to be made by corporations that have supply contracts with growers. He describes the ongoing campaign against Reynolds Tobacco Company. He also describes his experiences in Mexico and the inefficiency of the consulate as a result of not having enough employees. Finally, he makes a few comments about day laborers, explaining that wage theft statutes could be the most effective way of legally holding employers accountable for not paying day laborers.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
No restrictions. Open to research.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
April 6 2012
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
R0641_Audio.mp3
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
<a href="http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/16990">University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.</a>
-
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/aa2c6c55613b2a92400ad7be2b79fcef.mp3
ac65cc06c298768781650fe3b3194200
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/369793a26f41f2a75efb5e71b33c4f1d.pdf
442dfb7feaf1213566ba5b47ea025035
SOHP Interview - Bilingual
Southern Oral History Program Interview with metadata in English and Spanish
Interview number
Número de entrevista
R-0484
En: Restrictions
Es: Restricciones
No restrictions. Open to research.
Date
Fecha
4 April 2011
Interviewee
Entrevistado/a
X, Chano, pseud.
En: Interviewee Occupation
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Farmers
Interviewee Date of Birth
Fecha de nacimiento del entrevistado
1976
En: Interviewee Gender
Es: Género de entrevistado
Male
Interviewee Place of Origin
Lugar de origen del entrevistado
Tamazunchale -- San Luis Potosi -- Mexico
Interviewee Places of Residence
Lugares de residencia del entrevistado
Durham -- Durham County -- North Carolina
Interviewee Journey Coordinates
POINT(-98.795833 21.265556),1976,1;POINT(-78.898619 35.9940329),1997,2
Interviewer
Entrevistador/a
Markunas, Stephanie.
En: Language of Interview
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
Spanish
En: Abstract
Es: Abstracto en español
Chano is a native Mexican from the city of Tamazunchale, San Luis Potosi. He migrated to the United States in 1997 after he was unable to find sufficient work in Mexico. Growing up in a large household, and being the oldest, Chano left school after la secundaria, or the equivalent of middle school, in order to work and provide additional economic support for his family. He originally arrived to North Carolina on an agriculture contract to work during the tobacco season. At the end of the season, he decided not to return to Mexico and moved to Durham, North Carolina in order to work alongside other family members who settled in the area beforehand.
En: Citation
Es: Citación
Interview with Chano X, pseud., by Stephanie Markunas, 04 April 2011, R-0484, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Reference URL
URL de referencia
http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/6276
Repository
Repositorio
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
En: Themes
Es: Temas
Economics; Family; Labor and employment; Migratory experience; Social networks
En: Transcript
Es: Transcripción
Stephanie Markunas: This is Stephanie Markunas. I am interviewing Chano here
on April 11, 2011 at 8:00pm. We are located in my apartment in Durham North
Carolina, and we will start now. Entonces, ^Chano de donde eres?
Chano: Mexico.
SM: ^Y que parte en Mexico?
Chano: La cuidad de Tamazunchale en el estado de San Luis Potosi.
SM: ^Cuantos anos tienes aqui en Durham?
Chano: Aqui en Durham, tengo catorce anos viviendo.
SM: ^Cuando tii creciste en Mexico, cual fue tii lugar en tii casa? ^Como fue tii
ninez alii en Mexico?
Markunas 2
Chano: Bueno, mi ninez vivi con mi familia, todos, hasta los quince anos. Hasta
los quince anos, vivi en mi casa. Despues de alii, fui a la cuidad de Mexico a vivir cinco
anos mas.
SM: iY tu creciste con otros hermanos y hermanas?
Chano: Si, creci con mis siete hermanos.
SM: ^Siete hermanos?
Chano: Si, tres hermanas y cuatro hermanos.
SM: ^Cual fue tu, como, posicion en la casa? Como, ^eres el mas mayor o mas
joven?
Chano: Soy el mayor.
SM: ^Y tuviste unos responsabilidades en tu casa?
Chano: Todos tenemos responsabilidades en las casa. Tenia que ayudar a mi
mama con sus cosas, y en la casa tambien.
SM: ^Tii tuviste los mismos tipos de responsabilidades de tus hermanos?
Chano: No, yo tuve que ayudar mas porque yo era el mayor.
SM: ^Y en comparacion a las hermanas, en comparacion a los hermanos, ustedes
tuvieron otros diferentes tipos? Como ustedes ayudaron a tu papa y vez que ayudar a tu
mama. ^O todos tuvieron los mismos tipos de trabajos?
Markunas
Chano: Bueno, como yo era el mayor, tenia mas responsabilidades que mis
hermanas. Mis hermanas solamente tenian que ayudar a mi mama, y yo tenia que hacer
otras cosas. Ir a escuela y despues hacer otras cosas.
SM: Bueno, ^entonces tu fuiste a escuela desde que edad?
Chano: Desde los seis hasta los trece, doce anos. A la secundaria.
SM: ^Todos de tus hermanos y hermanas fueron a escuela?
Chano: Si todos fueron a escuela, a secundaria.
SM: ^A secundaria? <?,Por que fue tu decision a no seguir a la prepa?
Chano: Porque la escuela ya esta muy costoso y eramos muchos hermanos y no
cansaba el dinero. Una familia grande.
SM: Entonces, £tus papas? <?,En que trabajaban tus papas?
Chano: Mi papa tiene su propia carpinteria. Siempre trabajaba en su propia
carpinteria. Tuvimos, despues de los trece anos, teniamos que ayudar a el. A los trece
anos, dure como dos anos alii en la carpinteria, a trabajar.
SM: iY tu mama? IQUQ hizo tu mama?
Chano: Mi mama trabaja en casa solamente. Cuidaba la casa.
SM: ^Cuidaba tu casa, o casas de otros?
Chano: No, su casa de ella. La casa de mi mama.
SM: ^Y tus papas estudiaban tambien o no?
Markunas 4
Chano: No, ellos no alcanzaban a estudiar.
SM: ^Y eso fue, como en los anos de tus papas, el generation de ellos, fue normal
para que no estudian? ^O fue porque ellos tuvieron familia larga, o grande, o por otras
circunstancias?
Chano: Bueno, ellos dicen porque no era obligatoria a estudiar alii. Y ademas
eran muy pobres. Tenian que trabajar, no les alcanzaban para estudiar. Aunque la
escuela es gratuita, no.
SM: ^Quisieron estudiar? ^O no pusieron importancia en eso?
Chano: Querian estudiar pero no alcanzaba el dinero. Tuvieron que trabajar.
SM: ^Tu piensas que--? No, ignora eso pregunta. Lo siento. Dices que tu mama
cuidaba la casa y~.
Chano: Nosotros.
SM: Si, para ustedes. Y tu papa trabajaba en el carpinteria. Tu--. ^.Habia
posibilidad que tu mama trabajaba afuera de la casa? ^O fue en como la relacion entre tu
mama y tu papa? Ella se quedo en casa porque, numero uno necesitaba alguien que se
queda en la casa y cuidaba a ustedes, pero £tu papa senti como debia trabajar? ^Como
fue su responsabilidad?
Chano: No, porque eramos muchos. Entonces, el la tenia que estar en casa para
poder atender a todos. Y como alii vivia mi abuela con nosotros, pues ya eramos mas
todavia. Y el papa de mi mama vivia con nosotros.
Markunas 5
SM: ^Y tus abuelos vivieron en el mismo tipo de estructura? ^Como tu abuelo
trabajaba y tu abuela cuidaba los nifios en la casa antes? <<,Como una generacion--?
Chano: Si. Siempre asi. En Mexico, casi se acostumbran a eso.
SM: &Y-?
Chano: Mayormente los ranchos, los pueblos.
SM: <?,Y Tu piensas —? ^Entonces eso fue la normalidad?
Chano: Si, es normal.
SM: ^Y no fue otro tipo de perspectivo alia en la comunidad que, quizas de tu
generacion, que estas mas, como, movando [moviendo] mas por la liberalization?
^Como no fue mas un movimiento para que las mujeres si, educaban mas, y salgan a
trabajar, y tener un diferente vida que fue la de tradicional?
Chano: Las mujeres de mi edad, si es muy diferente. Las mujeres trabajan, los
hombres tambien. Unos estudian y tienen su propia carrera. Pero antes, la generacion de
mis papas, no alcanzaba el dinero.
SM: ^Y tu piensas que la diferencia ahorita es de dinero o es la cultura que esta
cambiando? Porque, me imagino que todavia el dinero y la economia alii esta mejorando
un poco pero todavia, especialmente en los ranchos mas, como, rurales.
Chano: ^Rurales?
Markunas 6
SM: Si, estan igual. ^Entonces, eso cambio tiene que ver en, nada mas la
educacion, y la cultura, pero--. Lo siento--. <?,Me entiendes? <<,No en solamente la
economia, y a tener dinero para estudiar, pero en la cultura tambien cambia un poco?
Chano: Hoy, estudian todos. Los hermanos menores fue porque todos los
hermanos mayores, muchos que estan en Los Estados Unidos trabajando, y ellos ayudan
a sus hermanos a superar.
SM: Entonces, ^ahorita que tienen remittances? No se, como dinero de aqui, de
los Estados Unidos para Ilegar alii. ^Eso es la razon que puedan seguir adelante en la
escuela?
Chano: Si.
SM: ^Y la costa de la escuela es gratis hasta la secundaria?
Chano: Hasta la secundaria.
SM: iY la prepa? ^Tienes que pagar la matricula y libros, o que?
Chano: La inscripcion, libros tambien. Examenes--.
SM: Entonces rue--. ^Nadie en tu familia rue a la prepa o a la universidad?
Chano: Mis hermanas fueron a la prepa, pero no querian estudiar.
SM: ^No quisieron?
Chano: No quisieron estudiar.
SM: ^Y tu sabes porque no quisieron o no?
Markunas 7
Chano: Querian trabajar. Si. Querian ser independientes.
SM: ^Y como fue tu experiencia alii en Mexico a otros hombres y mujeres en tu
comunidad? <-,Fue igual? Se que me acabaste de decir que fue normal que la gente no
sigue a estudiar, y la mujer se queda en la casa. Pero ya que estas movando mas adelante,
^otras personas en la comunidad sentian diferente o pensaban diferente en eso?
^Entiendes la pregunta?
Chano: Si, ya piensan diferente todos. En mi generation, toda de la gente ya
piensa diferente. Ya no es igual de antes.
SM: Pensaban diferente. ^Solamente no tuvieron la oportunidad?
Chano: Oportunidad de seguir estudiando.
SM: ^Cuando tu estabas en la escuela, ^habia programas o, como, cursos que
promovieron una cierta imagen de funciones del hombre y de la mujer? Como por aqui,
por ejemplo, hay cursos que las mujeres toman para aprender a cocinar y cocer y cosas
asi. Y hay cosas para, como, arregiar carros, o no se, hacer carpinteria. ^Hay en Mexico
cosas asi?
Chano: Yo estudie en las escuelas secundarias tecnicas. Esas escuelas
promocionan cursos como herreria, carpinteria, cocina, y agricultura porque eso es que se
usan. Y agropecuaria, cuidado de ganados.
SM: ^Tu escogiste los cursos o ellos escogieron los cursos para ti?
Chano: No, uno escoge los cursos.
Markunas
SM: ^Entonces las mujeres, si quisieron, podia estudiar otro?
Chano: No, ellas quisieron escoger la que ellas quisieron.
SM: Si, pero fellas tuvieron la oportunidad a escoger algo de carpinteria o algo
que es tradicionalmente trabajo de hombre?
Chano: No, es que en mis tiempos, cuando yo estuve en la secundaria, es
diferente. Ya pensaban diferente. Querian aprender cosas nuevas.
SM: Tu piensas que--. ^Tu piensas que, aparte del facto de que todos estaban
pensando diferente, ya no fue el sueno de las mujeres para quedar en casa? Quisieron
seguir adelante, a trabajar, ir a escuela. ^Tu piensas que aparte de eso pensamiento, el
cambio en pensamiento, tu piensas que todavia un porciento de mujeres callen en la
misma tradicion de quedar en casa, y se casan, y tengan ninos, y no salen mucho?
Chano: No, ya es diferente, todos. Mujer y hombre piensan salir adelante iguales.
SM: ^Ahorita que estas aqui, en Los Estados Unidos, tu percibes nuestra
percepcion de esa rol de genero diferente? ^Es diferente aqui o no?
Chano: Si, es muy diferente aqui. Aqui la mujer es mas independiente.
SM: e,C6mo?
Chano: Si.
SM: ^Como, en que forma?
Markunas 9
Chano: La mujer tiene que trabaj ar, salir a trabaj ar. Si necesita algo se compra
ella misma, no necesita andarle pidiendo al esposo o al parejo o novio.
SM: ^Pero si tu dices eso ya esta asi en Mexico, ya en esos generaciones, que
muestra la diferencia? Como hay todavia los generaciones pasados, que si son mas
tradicionales, pero si mentalmente si ya cambio la percepcion alii en Mexico y ya esta
siguiendo, o movando para eso tipo de comunidad tambien. ^Cual es la diferencia entre
esas sociedades?
Chano: La diferencia es que, aqui, la escuela es barata y en Mexico es mas caro.
Aqui trabajas un dia, puedes--. Te alcanza para muchas cosas. Y en Mexico trabajas un
dia y no alcanza para nada. Es mas caro todo. Y las mujeres, aqui, tienen mas Hbertad,
todavia mas que en Mexico. En Mexico si estan libres, se sientan libres, de Hbertad, pero
no tanto tanto como aqui.
SM: ^Como no, "tanto tanto" de aqui? Dame un ejemplo, quizas eso ayuda.
Chano: Por ejemplo, tu. Tu tienes tu pareja, tu te vas a escuela. No sabe si estas
en escuela. Si estas trabajando, y ella esta en Mexico, todavia es diferente. Aunque si
hay Hbertad, pero tienen que decir adonde estan.
SM: £Y no crees que un poco, aqui, digan adonde van? ^Porque si es un pareja,
deben a comunicar? ^O tu piensas que hay mas falta de comunicacion aqui en Los
Estados Unidos de en Mexico?
Chano: Si.
Markunas 10
SM: Entonces, antes tu estabas hablando de como aqui uno gana mas y la
educacion es mas barato aqui. Aqui, hasta tienes doce afios de educacion gratis. Si
quieres hay high school publico, hay primaria, secundaria publico. So, eso si es un
diferencia porque alia, solamente hasta la secundaria esta gratis. Pero, aparte de eso
educacion mas altos, como la universidad, estan mas caros aqui en Los Estados Unidos
de en Mexico. £ Y tu piensas que la unico razon que hay un diferencia en eso es porque
aqui uno puede ganar mas o, quizas, aqui dan mas apoyo, como emprestas de gobierno,
para ir a estudiar? ^En Mexico dan esos emprestas de gobierno?
Chano: No, en Mexico no hay servicios o pr^stanos, no hay de esos. Y aqui
trabajas un ano y ahorras tu dinero, puedes pagar tu universidad o si. Si, en Mexico no, es
mucho dinero, ganas poco.
SM: <-,Y hay becas y cosas asi en Mexico o muy poco?
Chano: Muy poco.
SM: ^Entonces, en tu experiencia, ahorita que estas aqui fue diflcil para cambiar
tu--. I guess [entonces] no cambio tu perception porque mas o menos es igual aqui,
solamente con mas libertad.
Chano: Solamente la comida.
SM: Solamente la comida es diferente. ^Entonces, aparte de la comida, que fue la
cosa mas diflcil para ti, para ajustarse?
Chano: ^Acostumbrarme aqui? La comida y la familia, porque estan alia mis
hermana, hermanos, todos. Solo esta aqui diferente, lejos de todo. Lejos de la comida,
Markunas 11
lejos de lugares adonde uno acostumbre a vivir. Pero, mayormente, por el idioma de
ingles que no hablaba ingles. Llegando, uno no habla ingles y todos hablan ingles. Eso
es el mas dificil cuando uno llega aqui. A comunicarse, a encontrar trabajo.
SM: ^Y tu encuentras dificil en el trabajo? ^Como que fue diferente en el trabajo
en Mexico?
Chano: Mas dificil aqui por el idioma, porque uno no habla ingles. En Mexico, a
trabajar, te hablan el espanol y uno habla espanol. Se dicen como sucede.
SM: Tu piensas que—. ^En que trabajas aqui?
Chano: Aqui soy panadero.
SM: ^Hay muchas personas trabajando en tu especialidad adonde tu trabajas, o~?
Chano: No, solamente otra persona mas.
SM: Entonces, trabajas en una cocina, y hay muchos—. ^Es casi igual, hombres y
mujeres trabajando en la cocina, o es diferente? 1,0 hay mas hombres, o mas mujeres?
Chano: Hay lo mismo. Hay hombres y mujeres.
SM: ^Trabajando en la cocina?
Chano: Si. Estan los que lavan los platos, ella en las ensaladas, y cocineros
solamente son dos y abajo estan los preparadores. Pero yo trabajo de noche, es diferente
solo.
Markunas 12
SM: ^En Mexico, por ejemplo, tradicionalmente el trabajo de cocina fue para la
mujer?
Chano: Si.
SM: <?,En Mexico, en los trabajos afuera de la casa, hay mas mujeres trabajando en
eso? #0 porque es trabajo afuera de la casa, para ganar un salario, es mas hombres que
mujeres?
Chano: Bueno, los pueblos rurales, tiene que trabajar la mujer. Pero ya te vas a la
cuidad, trabajan hombres y mujeres depende en que lugar tu encuentras.
SM: ^Por que en las areas rurales son asi?
Chano: Porque mucha gente no quieren admitir que puede ayudar a la cocina o
meterse en la cocina.
SM: ^Por que piensas que ellos siguen creyendo eso?
Chano: Porque hay mucho ignorancia todavia en eso aspecto.
SM: ^Y ignorancia en eso viene de algo? Como uno no solamente piensa asi por
pensar, por no saber. Piensa asi porque eso mismo perception sigue en las generaciones.
^,De donde viene esa --?
Chano: De los padres.
SM: iY adonde aprendieron esa los padres?
Chano: Eso es la ( ).
Markunas 13
SM: Entonces, tu piensas esa cultura--. Como, tiene que ver raices de eso en algo.
Y que estoy tratando a encontrar es porque unas culturas tienen mas—. Eso cultura
tradicional, de como el hombre domina la mujer, es mas fuerte en unas culturas de otras
culturas. Y ahorita esta, todas las culturas estan poniendo mas igual, en el mismo nivel
de liberalismo. Pero estoy tratando a buscar, quizas, porque unas tradiciones siguen mas
tiempo, tienen mas vida de en otras culturas. Como aqui, en los Estados Unidos, esa
cultura y percepcion de las mujeres se quedan en la casa, y no puedan seguir. No pueden
ir a votar, no pueden ir a trabajar, no pueden seguir en la escuela. Eso siguio hasta,
como--. De verdad no se el afio, pero mas o menos ganaron mas de sus derechos en las
sesentas. Y £en Mexico, cuando empezo eso cambio de percepcion?
Chano: Eso no recuerdo. Pero, todavia sucede eso en los pueblos muy rurales, o
sea, muy pobres. Adonde no hay comunicacion. Todavia sucede eso.
SM: ^Tu conoces gente en esos lugares?
Chano: Si.
SM: Si. Como fue—. <?,Tu sabes unos ejemplos de como fueron ellos, conocidos?
Chano: No, porque ellos hablan sus dialectos. Entonces, no hablo dialecto, no
entiendo que dicen.
SM: ^Miraste personas? ^Como, miraste personas de casas que trataron o
dominaban las mujeres en forma, a veces formas feos?
Chano: Si.
SM: En formas de que no dejan salir.
Markunas 14
Chano: Violencia domestica. Si.
SM: <*,Y eso es mas? ^Tu piensas hay mas violencia domestica en lugares rurales?
Chano: Si. Hay mas violencia domestica en los lugares rurales.
SM: ^Y tu piensas que eso es porque es la falta de educacion?
Chano: —educacion, si. Alguien que vaya de orientacion sobre la vida. Necesitan
mas orientacion. No hay. No dan servicios de esos, para dar orientacion hacia como
vivir en familia. Necesitan mucha ayuda.
SM: ^Alli, en lugares asi, no hay nadie que puede? ^No hay ley alii mas o
menos? ^Es como hay ley?
Chano: Hay ley, pero--.
SM: ^Prohibe eso tipo de violencia? <?,Pero no puede implementar la ley?
Chano: La ley, por ejemplo, la persona que esta encargado de—. <-,El como se
dice?
SM: ^Los Policias o no se? Constitution? I don't know. Explica en otra forma,
porque yo no se la palabra.
Chano: El ejemplo de los que tienen que guardar los, los encargados de la ley,
tambien piensan igual. Si, no hay gente civilizada. Hay lugares adonde no hay gente
civilizada todavia. Que no tienen--. Que no saben leer.
SM: La gente alii, que son responsables para la ley, ^piensan igual?
Markunas 15
Chano: Si.
SM: Pero, para tener eso position, ^no tienen que ir a escuela?
Chano: No.
SM: Solamente—.
Chano: Solamente lo eligen, entre los mismos pueblos rurales, eligen a alguien.
SM: ^Entonces no es institution--?
Chano: No es adonde yo vivo.
SM: No no no, si si. ^Pero, no, entonces, es algo legitimo [legitamate]? ^Es algo
que entre la comunidad? ^Como esa persona no tiene titulo ni nada de como--?
Chano: No. Solamente eso lo llevan a--. Dicen que eso persona esta encargada, y
lo llevan a registrarlo solamente.
SM: [Entonces] eso sigue asi. <?,Tu piensas hay forma en que ellos paran de pensar
asi, aparte de mas educacion y mas—exposure? ^Como se dice exposure? Para que ellos
miran otros. Como miran la cuidad y miran como otros personas piensan, para aculturar
mas. ^O tu piensas que ellos, no hay esperanza para ellos?
Chano: Porque hay lugares adonde no hay calles, no hay carreteras, solamente
caminos. Si, solamente caminando no puedes llegar en carro.
SM: ^Entonces para que cosas cambian alii, el gobierno tiene que primero--?
Chano: Implementar mas servicios, mas escuelas.
Markunas 16
SM: Y cuando tu viviste en Mexico, voy a preguntar nada mas la diferencia.
^Cuando tu viviste en Mexico, como en tu cuidad, para casarse es como—? ^Tu te casas
con quien tu quieres?
Chano: Si.
SM: En pueblos rurales--. No se como decir eso palabra.
Chano: ^Rurales?
SM: Si, en esos lugares, ^personas se casan libres tambien o hay ejemplos de
personas que todavia sus papas, como, se venden?
Chano: No, todos ya son libres. Puedes buscar lo que tu quieres.
SM: Aqui que tu—. Esperame un momento. Entonces regresamos en forma de
hablando de porque decidiste para venir aqui, a los Estados Unidos, en vez que quedarse
alii en la cuidad de Mexico.
Chano: No me quede en Mexico porque se gana muy poco y se trabaja mucho.
Me vine a los veintiun anos. Tenia veintiun afios y me vine de contratado a tabaco.
Trabaje en el tabaco una temporada. Y despues de alii, me quede aqui. Desde ese
tiempo, estoy aqui viviendo. Vivo, tengo catorce afios viviendo aqui. Al principio fue
dificil por el idioma de ingles, porque uno no sabe nada. Todo diferente. El tiempo, muy
frio, seco. Diferente. Adonde yo vengo, el clima es tropical y todo diferente.
SM: ^Y cuando viniste, como adonde trabajaste en tabaco? ^Aqui en North
Carolina?
Markunas 17
Chano: Si, en North Carolina.
SM: ^Y como supiste de eso trabajo?
Chano: Hay, donde yo vivo, hay gente que manda personas contratadas, con
pasaporte. Entonces, yo fui a verlo y le dije que yo me queria venir.
SM: ^Fue una programa de gobierno aqui, los Estados Unidos, como la de H2A?
^Tu sabes de eso programa? ^Fue uno de esos programas?
Chano: Si son la asociacion de tabaqueros que nos llevo o Carolina.
SM: ^Y asi, tuvieron permiso para trabajar en la temporada?
Chano: Si, de tabaco.
SM: ^Y despues, por contrato, te mandan a Mexico de regreso? ^O tu saliste de
eso contrato para venir aqui?
Chano: No, termine mi contrato, pero quise quedarme mas tiempo. Hasta hoy.
SM: ^Tu viniste aqui, a Durham, solo? {,0 tu conociste personas aqui?
Chano: Yo llegue aqui, llegando en Eden North Carolina. Alii trabaje. Mi
hermano ya estaba aqui con mi primo. Entonces yo me vine para aca, porque ellos
estaban aqui.
SM: ^Y ellos Uegaban en, mas o menos, lo mismo forma? ^O ellos vmieron sin
contrato y llegaron aqui?
Chano: Ellos solamente llegaron aqui sin contrato.
Markunas
SM: ^Como supieron de aqui? ^Como conocieron a Durham?
Chano: Por otros amigos que estaban aqui trabajando.
SM: ^Entonces hay mucha gente de San Luis Potosi en Durham?
Chano: Si, casi todos.
SM: <-,Casi todos? £Y no hay otro—? Claro hay muchas lugares que puedan ir,
pero ^.conoces mucha gente, de donde tu creciste, que fueron a otro lugar?
Chano: Si, estan en otros estados. Texas, Florida, Chicago. Si.
SM: Entonces, ya que estas aqui, ^cuantos ailos?
Chano: Catorce.
SM: Catorce alios, <?,c6mo fue tu experiencia aqui en Durham, generalmente?
Chano: ^Mi experiencia?
SM: Si.
Chano: Fue dificil por mi trabajo, por agarrar un especialidad de panaderia. No
saber ingles y aprendiendo poco a poco. Experimentando en cosas. Y con su ayuda
tambien, de los patrones. Eso es como aprendi a hacer panadero. Ellos me dieron la
oportunidad de aprender.
SM: ^Y tu experiencia aparte de trabajo? <-,Nada mas, como, en la comunidad
sientes seguro aqui en Durham o has tuvido [tenido] experiencias malas en forma de otras
personas en otras comunidades o los otros--?
Markunas
Chano: Bueno, antes en Mexico no habia mucha inseguridad. A hoy, es muy
dificil. Es mas seguro aqui. Es mas seguro aqui.
SM: ^De en Mexico?
Chano: Que en Mexico.
SM: iPor que?
Chano: Mucha droga. En Mexico hay mucha droga. No hay seguridad.
SM: ^Alla, adonde tu vives, eso inseguridad esta alii?
Chano: Si.
SM: ^Eso es porque hay muchas lugares adonde siembran droga, o solamente es
en una de las rutas que pasan la droga a los Estados Unidos.
Chano: No hay mucho desempleo. Por ejemplo, empiezan a robar y la policia
esta lejos de alii, diez millas.
SM: Tengo hambre, lo siento [there is laughter because SM's stomach is
growling very loudly]. Y eso, porque hay mucho desempleo--. ^Y eso es porque la
economia esta baja o eso siempre estaba asi?
Chano: No, por la economia que se bajo.
SM: £Y aparte de aqui, y aparte de tu trabajo y cosas asi, tu has encontrado
ejemplos de racismo aqui en Durham entre--? Porque hay muchos vecinos que son puros
hispanos en esos vecinos, y casi puro afro-americanos en esa vecina. Hay muchos
Markunas 20
vecinos separados. Como dicen que no debe estar asi, pero asi es. En Durham, hay
muchos lugares asi. ^Tu ves racismo entre los vecinos?
Chano: En mi experiencia, nunca he pasado nada de racismo. No he tenido ni con
los americanos o afro-americano. Para mi no. Yo veo que todo es igual.
SM: Entonces, para ti, ^es todo es igual, menos la comida, la falta de familia, la
clima, y la idioma?
Chano: Si, pero eso fue a principio. Ahora me acostumbre a vivir aqui. Ya es
diferente. Ahora, si regreso a Mexico, va a ser dificil para mi.
SM: ^Y como?
Chano: Por empezar a conocer mi gente. Porque todo de la gente ya no esta alii.
SM: Pero alii, cuando tu vas a regresar a Mexico, £en que piensas hacer?
Chano: No se.
SM: ^No sabes?
Chano: No.
SM: ^Vas a llegar hasta donde esta tu familia?
Chano: Si. Voy a llegar a casa de mi mama, mis papas. Quiero verlos, el los
quieren verme. Mi mama tiene veinte anos que no la mire.
SM: ^Y tu hablas con el la regularmente?
Chano: Si.
Markunas 21
SM: iy ella, como habla de alia en Mexico ahorita?
Chano: Ella dice que esta bien. Que esta tranquilo. Si, pasa muchas cosas, pero
no me dice. No quiere que--.
SM: ^No quiere preocuparte?
Chano: No quiere preocuparme.
SM: ^Bueno, entonces, no tienes planes, no tienes deseos, no tienes nada en
mente?
Chano: Ahorita no. Quiero ver primero como esta alia.
SM: Entonces podemos terminar. Entonces, muchisimas gracias para tu ayuda.
Chano: No, no se si sirve o~.
SM: No esta bien. Si sirve mucho, y me ayuda mucho y gracias por tu tiempo.
Es: Restricciones
Sin restricciones. Abierta para investigación.
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Trabajadores agrícolas
Es: Género de entrevistado
Hombre
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
Español
Es: Resumen
Chano (pseudónimo) es un mexicano originario de la ciudad de Tamazunchale, en San Luis Potosí. Emigró a los Estados Unidos en 1997 después de que no pudo encontrar suficiente trabajo en México. Creciendo en una familia numerosa, y siendo el de más edad, Chano abandonó la escuela después de la secundaria con el fin de trabajar y brindar apoyo económico adicional a su familia. En un principio llegó a Carolina del Norte con un contrato para trabajar en el campo durante la temporada de cosecha del tabaco. Al final de la temporada, decidió no regresar a México y se mudó a Durham, en Carolina del Norte, para trabajar junto a otros familiares que se asentaron en la zona con anterioridad.
Es: Citación
Entrevista con Chano X, pseud., por Stephanie Markunas, 04 Abril 2011, R-0484, en Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, Universidad de Carolina del Norte en Chapel Hill.
Es: Temas
Economía; Familia; Trabajo y empleo; Experiencia migratoria; Redes sociales
Es: Transcripción
Stephanie Markunas: This is Stephanie Markunas. I am interviewing Chano here
on April 11, 2011 at 8:00pm. We are located in my apartment in Durham North
Carolina, and we will start now. Entonces, ^Chano de donde eres?
Chano: Mexico.
SM: ^Y que parte en Mexico?
Chano: La cuidad de Tamazunchale en el estado de San Luis Potosi.
SM: ^Cuantos anos tienes aqui en Durham?
Chano: Aqui en Durham, tengo catorce anos viviendo.
SM: ^Cuando tii creciste en Mexico, cual fue tii lugar en tii casa? ^Como fue tii
ninez alii en Mexico?
Markunas 2
Chano: Bueno, mi ninez vivi con mi familia, todos, hasta los quince anos. Hasta
los quince anos, vivi en mi casa. Despues de alii, fui a la cuidad de Mexico a vivir cinco
anos mas.
SM: iY tu creciste con otros hermanos y hermanas?
Chano: Si, creci con mis siete hermanos.
SM: ^Siete hermanos?
Chano: Si, tres hermanas y cuatro hermanos.
SM: ^Cual fue tu, como, posicion en la casa? Como, ^eres el mas mayor o mas
joven?
Chano: Soy el mayor.
SM: ^Y tuviste unos responsabilidades en tu casa?
Chano: Todos tenemos responsabilidades en las casa. Tenia que ayudar a mi
mama con sus cosas, y en la casa tambien.
SM: ^Tii tuviste los mismos tipos de responsabilidades de tus hermanos?
Chano: No, yo tuve que ayudar mas porque yo era el mayor.
SM: ^Y en comparacion a las hermanas, en comparacion a los hermanos, ustedes
tuvieron otros diferentes tipos? Como ustedes ayudaron a tu papa y vez que ayudar a tu
mama. ^O todos tuvieron los mismos tipos de trabajos?
Markunas
Chano: Bueno, como yo era el mayor, tenia mas responsabilidades que mis
hermanas. Mis hermanas solamente tenian que ayudar a mi mama, y yo tenia que hacer
otras cosas. Ir a escuela y despues hacer otras cosas.
SM: Bueno, ^entonces tu fuiste a escuela desde que edad?
Chano: Desde los seis hasta los trece, doce anos. A la secundaria.
SM: ^Todos de tus hermanos y hermanas fueron a escuela?
Chano: Si todos fueron a escuela, a secundaria.
SM: ^A secundaria? <?,Por que fue tu decision a no seguir a la prepa?
Chano: Porque la escuela ya esta muy costoso y eramos muchos hermanos y no
cansaba el dinero. Una familia grande.
SM: Entonces, £tus papas? <?,En que trabajaban tus papas?
Chano: Mi papa tiene su propia carpinteria. Siempre trabajaba en su propia
carpinteria. Tuvimos, despues de los trece anos, teniamos que ayudar a el. A los trece
anos, dure como dos anos alii en la carpinteria, a trabajar.
SM: iY tu mama? IQUQ hizo tu mama?
Chano: Mi mama trabaja en casa solamente. Cuidaba la casa.
SM: ^Cuidaba tu casa, o casas de otros?
Chano: No, su casa de ella. La casa de mi mama.
SM: ^Y tus papas estudiaban tambien o no?
Markunas 4
Chano: No, ellos no alcanzaban a estudiar.
SM: ^Y eso fue, como en los anos de tus papas, el generation de ellos, fue normal
para que no estudian? ^O fue porque ellos tuvieron familia larga, o grande, o por otras
circunstancias?
Chano: Bueno, ellos dicen porque no era obligatoria a estudiar alii. Y ademas
eran muy pobres. Tenian que trabajar, no les alcanzaban para estudiar. Aunque la
escuela es gratuita, no.
SM: ^Quisieron estudiar? ^O no pusieron importancia en eso?
Chano: Querian estudiar pero no alcanzaba el dinero. Tuvieron que trabajar.
SM: ^Tu piensas que--? No, ignora eso pregunta. Lo siento. Dices que tu mama
cuidaba la casa y~.
Chano: Nosotros.
SM: Si, para ustedes. Y tu papa trabajaba en el carpinteria. Tu--. ^.Habia
posibilidad que tu mama trabajaba afuera de la casa? ^O fue en como la relacion entre tu
mama y tu papa? Ella se quedo en casa porque, numero uno necesitaba alguien que se
queda en la casa y cuidaba a ustedes, pero £tu papa senti como debia trabajar? ^Como
fue su responsabilidad?
Chano: No, porque eramos muchos. Entonces, el la tenia que estar en casa para
poder atender a todos. Y como alii vivia mi abuela con nosotros, pues ya eramos mas
todavia. Y el papa de mi mama vivia con nosotros.
Markunas 5
SM: ^Y tus abuelos vivieron en el mismo tipo de estructura? ^Como tu abuelo
trabajaba y tu abuela cuidaba los nifios en la casa antes? <<,Como una generacion--?
Chano: Si. Siempre asi. En Mexico, casi se acostumbran a eso.
SM: &Y-?
Chano: Mayormente los ranchos, los pueblos.
SM: <?,Y Tu piensas —? ^Entonces eso fue la normalidad?
Chano: Si, es normal.
SM: ^Y no fue otro tipo de perspectivo alia en la comunidad que, quizas de tu
generacion, que estas mas, como, movando [moviendo] mas por la liberalization?
^Como no fue mas un movimiento para que las mujeres si, educaban mas, y salgan a
trabajar, y tener un diferente vida que fue la de tradicional?
Chano: Las mujeres de mi edad, si es muy diferente. Las mujeres trabajan, los
hombres tambien. Unos estudian y tienen su propia carrera. Pero antes, la generacion de
mis papas, no alcanzaba el dinero.
SM: ^Y tu piensas que la diferencia ahorita es de dinero o es la cultura que esta
cambiando? Porque, me imagino que todavia el dinero y la economia alii esta mejorando
un poco pero todavia, especialmente en los ranchos mas, como, rurales.
Chano: ^Rurales?
Markunas 6
SM: Si, estan igual. ^Entonces, eso cambio tiene que ver en, nada mas la
educacion, y la cultura, pero--. Lo siento--. <?,Me entiendes? <<,No en solamente la
economia, y a tener dinero para estudiar, pero en la cultura tambien cambia un poco?
Chano: Hoy, estudian todos. Los hermanos menores fue porque todos los
hermanos mayores, muchos que estan en Los Estados Unidos trabajando, y ellos ayudan
a sus hermanos a superar.
SM: Entonces, ^ahorita que tienen remittances? No se, como dinero de aqui, de
los Estados Unidos para Ilegar alii. ^Eso es la razon que puedan seguir adelante en la
escuela?
Chano: Si.
SM: ^Y la costa de la escuela es gratis hasta la secundaria?
Chano: Hasta la secundaria.
SM: iY la prepa? ^Tienes que pagar la matricula y libros, o que?
Chano: La inscripcion, libros tambien. Examenes--.
SM: Entonces rue--. ^Nadie en tu familia rue a la prepa o a la universidad?
Chano: Mis hermanas fueron a la prepa, pero no querian estudiar.
SM: ^No quisieron?
Chano: No quisieron estudiar.
SM: ^Y tu sabes porque no quisieron o no?
Markunas 7
Chano: Querian trabajar. Si. Querian ser independientes.
SM: ^Y como fue tu experiencia alii en Mexico a otros hombres y mujeres en tu
comunidad? <-,Fue igual? Se que me acabaste de decir que fue normal que la gente no
sigue a estudiar, y la mujer se queda en la casa. Pero ya que estas movando mas adelante,
^otras personas en la comunidad sentian diferente o pensaban diferente en eso?
^Entiendes la pregunta?
Chano: Si, ya piensan diferente todos. En mi generation, toda de la gente ya
piensa diferente. Ya no es igual de antes.
SM: Pensaban diferente. ^Solamente no tuvieron la oportunidad?
Chano: Oportunidad de seguir estudiando.
SM: ^Cuando tu estabas en la escuela, ^habia programas o, como, cursos que
promovieron una cierta imagen de funciones del hombre y de la mujer? Como por aqui,
por ejemplo, hay cursos que las mujeres toman para aprender a cocinar y cocer y cosas
asi. Y hay cosas para, como, arregiar carros, o no se, hacer carpinteria. ^Hay en Mexico
cosas asi?
Chano: Yo estudie en las escuelas secundarias tecnicas. Esas escuelas
promocionan cursos como herreria, carpinteria, cocina, y agricultura porque eso es que se
usan. Y agropecuaria, cuidado de ganados.
SM: ^Tu escogiste los cursos o ellos escogieron los cursos para ti?
Chano: No, uno escoge los cursos.
Markunas
SM: ^Entonces las mujeres, si quisieron, podia estudiar otro?
Chano: No, ellas quisieron escoger la que ellas quisieron.
SM: Si, pero fellas tuvieron la oportunidad a escoger algo de carpinteria o algo
que es tradicionalmente trabajo de hombre?
Chano: No, es que en mis tiempos, cuando yo estuve en la secundaria, es
diferente. Ya pensaban diferente. Querian aprender cosas nuevas.
SM: Tu piensas que--. ^Tu piensas que, aparte del facto de que todos estaban
pensando diferente, ya no fue el sueno de las mujeres para quedar en casa? Quisieron
seguir adelante, a trabajar, ir a escuela. ^Tu piensas que aparte de eso pensamiento, el
cambio en pensamiento, tu piensas que todavia un porciento de mujeres callen en la
misma tradicion de quedar en casa, y se casan, y tengan ninos, y no salen mucho?
Chano: No, ya es diferente, todos. Mujer y hombre piensan salir adelante iguales.
SM: ^Ahorita que estas aqui, en Los Estados Unidos, tu percibes nuestra
percepcion de esa rol de genero diferente? ^Es diferente aqui o no?
Chano: Si, es muy diferente aqui. Aqui la mujer es mas independiente.
SM: e,C6mo?
Chano: Si.
SM: ^Como, en que forma?
Markunas 9
Chano: La mujer tiene que trabaj ar, salir a trabaj ar. Si necesita algo se compra
ella misma, no necesita andarle pidiendo al esposo o al parejo o novio.
SM: ^Pero si tu dices eso ya esta asi en Mexico, ya en esos generaciones, que
muestra la diferencia? Como hay todavia los generaciones pasados, que si son mas
tradicionales, pero si mentalmente si ya cambio la percepcion alii en Mexico y ya esta
siguiendo, o movando para eso tipo de comunidad tambien. ^Cual es la diferencia entre
esas sociedades?
Chano: La diferencia es que, aqui, la escuela es barata y en Mexico es mas caro.
Aqui trabajas un dia, puedes--. Te alcanza para muchas cosas. Y en Mexico trabajas un
dia y no alcanza para nada. Es mas caro todo. Y las mujeres, aqui, tienen mas Hbertad,
todavia mas que en Mexico. En Mexico si estan libres, se sientan libres, de Hbertad, pero
no tanto tanto como aqui.
SM: ^Como no, "tanto tanto" de aqui? Dame un ejemplo, quizas eso ayuda.
Chano: Por ejemplo, tu. Tu tienes tu pareja, tu te vas a escuela. No sabe si estas
en escuela. Si estas trabajando, y ella esta en Mexico, todavia es diferente. Aunque si
hay Hbertad, pero tienen que decir adonde estan.
SM: £Y no crees que un poco, aqui, digan adonde van? ^Porque si es un pareja,
deben a comunicar? ^O tu piensas que hay mas falta de comunicacion aqui en Los
Estados Unidos de en Mexico?
Chano: Si.
Markunas 10
SM: Entonces, antes tu estabas hablando de como aqui uno gana mas y la
educacion es mas barato aqui. Aqui, hasta tienes doce afios de educacion gratis. Si
quieres hay high school publico, hay primaria, secundaria publico. So, eso si es un
diferencia porque alia, solamente hasta la secundaria esta gratis. Pero, aparte de eso
educacion mas altos, como la universidad, estan mas caros aqui en Los Estados Unidos
de en Mexico. £ Y tu piensas que la unico razon que hay un diferencia en eso es porque
aqui uno puede ganar mas o, quizas, aqui dan mas apoyo, como emprestas de gobierno,
para ir a estudiar? ^En Mexico dan esos emprestas de gobierno?
Chano: No, en Mexico no hay servicios o pr^stanos, no hay de esos. Y aqui
trabajas un ano y ahorras tu dinero, puedes pagar tu universidad o si. Si, en Mexico no, es
mucho dinero, ganas poco.
SM: <-,Y hay becas y cosas asi en Mexico o muy poco?
Chano: Muy poco.
SM: ^Entonces, en tu experiencia, ahorita que estas aqui fue diflcil para cambiar
tu--. I guess [entonces] no cambio tu perception porque mas o menos es igual aqui,
solamente con mas libertad.
Chano: Solamente la comida.
SM: Solamente la comida es diferente. ^Entonces, aparte de la comida, que fue la
cosa mas diflcil para ti, para ajustarse?
Chano: ^Acostumbrarme aqui? La comida y la familia, porque estan alia mis
hermana, hermanos, todos. Solo esta aqui diferente, lejos de todo. Lejos de la comida,
Markunas 11
lejos de lugares adonde uno acostumbre a vivir. Pero, mayormente, por el idioma de
ingles que no hablaba ingles. Llegando, uno no habla ingles y todos hablan ingles. Eso
es el mas dificil cuando uno llega aqui. A comunicarse, a encontrar trabajo.
SM: ^Y tu encuentras dificil en el trabajo? ^Como que fue diferente en el trabajo
en Mexico?
Chano: Mas dificil aqui por el idioma, porque uno no habla ingles. En Mexico, a
trabajar, te hablan el espanol y uno habla espanol. Se dicen como sucede.
SM: Tu piensas que—. ^En que trabajas aqui?
Chano: Aqui soy panadero.
SM: ^Hay muchas personas trabajando en tu especialidad adonde tu trabajas, o~?
Chano: No, solamente otra persona mas.
SM: Entonces, trabajas en una cocina, y hay muchos—. ^Es casi igual, hombres y
mujeres trabajando en la cocina, o es diferente? 1,0 hay mas hombres, o mas mujeres?
Chano: Hay lo mismo. Hay hombres y mujeres.
SM: ^Trabajando en la cocina?
Chano: Si. Estan los que lavan los platos, ella en las ensaladas, y cocineros
solamente son dos y abajo estan los preparadores. Pero yo trabajo de noche, es diferente
solo.
Markunas 12
SM: ^En Mexico, por ejemplo, tradicionalmente el trabajo de cocina fue para la
mujer?
Chano: Si.
SM: <?,En Mexico, en los trabajos afuera de la casa, hay mas mujeres trabajando en
eso? #0 porque es trabajo afuera de la casa, para ganar un salario, es mas hombres que
mujeres?
Chano: Bueno, los pueblos rurales, tiene que trabajar la mujer. Pero ya te vas a la
cuidad, trabajan hombres y mujeres depende en que lugar tu encuentras.
SM: ^Por que en las areas rurales son asi?
Chano: Porque mucha gente no quieren admitir que puede ayudar a la cocina o
meterse en la cocina.
SM: ^Por que piensas que ellos siguen creyendo eso?
Chano: Porque hay mucho ignorancia todavia en eso aspecto.
SM: ^Y ignorancia en eso viene de algo? Como uno no solamente piensa asi por
pensar, por no saber. Piensa asi porque eso mismo perception sigue en las generaciones.
^,De donde viene esa --?
Chano: De los padres.
SM: iY adonde aprendieron esa los padres?
Chano: Eso es la ( ).
Markunas 13
SM: Entonces, tu piensas esa cultura--. Como, tiene que ver raices de eso en algo.
Y que estoy tratando a encontrar es porque unas culturas tienen mas—. Eso cultura
tradicional, de como el hombre domina la mujer, es mas fuerte en unas culturas de otras
culturas. Y ahorita esta, todas las culturas estan poniendo mas igual, en el mismo nivel
de liberalismo. Pero estoy tratando a buscar, quizas, porque unas tradiciones siguen mas
tiempo, tienen mas vida de en otras culturas. Como aqui, en los Estados Unidos, esa
cultura y percepcion de las mujeres se quedan en la casa, y no puedan seguir. No pueden
ir a votar, no pueden ir a trabajar, no pueden seguir en la escuela. Eso siguio hasta,
como--. De verdad no se el afio, pero mas o menos ganaron mas de sus derechos en las
sesentas. Y £en Mexico, cuando empezo eso cambio de percepcion?
Chano: Eso no recuerdo. Pero, todavia sucede eso en los pueblos muy rurales, o
sea, muy pobres. Adonde no hay comunicacion. Todavia sucede eso.
SM: ^Tu conoces gente en esos lugares?
Chano: Si.
SM: Si. Como fue—. <?,Tu sabes unos ejemplos de como fueron ellos, conocidos?
Chano: No, porque ellos hablan sus dialectos. Entonces, no hablo dialecto, no
entiendo que dicen.
SM: ^Miraste personas? ^Como, miraste personas de casas que trataron o
dominaban las mujeres en forma, a veces formas feos?
Chano: Si.
SM: En formas de que no dejan salir.
Markunas 14
Chano: Violencia domestica. Si.
SM: <*,Y eso es mas? ^Tu piensas hay mas violencia domestica en lugares rurales?
Chano: Si. Hay mas violencia domestica en los lugares rurales.
SM: ^Y tu piensas que eso es porque es la falta de educacion?
Chano: —educacion, si. Alguien que vaya de orientacion sobre la vida. Necesitan
mas orientacion. No hay. No dan servicios de esos, para dar orientacion hacia como
vivir en familia. Necesitan mucha ayuda.
SM: ^Alli, en lugares asi, no hay nadie que puede? ^No hay ley alii mas o
menos? ^Es como hay ley?
Chano: Hay ley, pero--.
SM: ^Prohibe eso tipo de violencia? <?,Pero no puede implementar la ley?
Chano: La ley, por ejemplo, la persona que esta encargado de—. <-,El como se
dice?
SM: ^Los Policias o no se? Constitution? I don't know. Explica en otra forma,
porque yo no se la palabra.
Chano: El ejemplo de los que tienen que guardar los, los encargados de la ley,
tambien piensan igual. Si, no hay gente civilizada. Hay lugares adonde no hay gente
civilizada todavia. Que no tienen--. Que no saben leer.
SM: La gente alii, que son responsables para la ley, ^piensan igual?
Markunas 15
Chano: Si.
SM: Pero, para tener eso position, ^no tienen que ir a escuela?
Chano: No.
SM: Solamente—.
Chano: Solamente lo eligen, entre los mismos pueblos rurales, eligen a alguien.
SM: ^Entonces no es institution--?
Chano: No es adonde yo vivo.
SM: No no no, si si. ^Pero, no, entonces, es algo legitimo [legitamate]? ^Es algo
que entre la comunidad? ^Como esa persona no tiene titulo ni nada de como--?
Chano: No. Solamente eso lo llevan a--. Dicen que eso persona esta encargada, y
lo llevan a registrarlo solamente.
SM: [Entonces] eso sigue asi. <?,Tu piensas hay forma en que ellos paran de pensar
asi, aparte de mas educacion y mas—exposure? ^Como se dice exposure? Para que ellos
miran otros. Como miran la cuidad y miran como otros personas piensan, para aculturar
mas. ^O tu piensas que ellos, no hay esperanza para ellos?
Chano: Porque hay lugares adonde no hay calles, no hay carreteras, solamente
caminos. Si, solamente caminando no puedes llegar en carro.
SM: ^Entonces para que cosas cambian alii, el gobierno tiene que primero--?
Chano: Implementar mas servicios, mas escuelas.
Markunas 16
SM: Y cuando tu viviste en Mexico, voy a preguntar nada mas la diferencia.
^Cuando tu viviste en Mexico, como en tu cuidad, para casarse es como—? ^Tu te casas
con quien tu quieres?
Chano: Si.
SM: En pueblos rurales--. No se como decir eso palabra.
Chano: ^Rurales?
SM: Si, en esos lugares, ^personas se casan libres tambien o hay ejemplos de
personas que todavia sus papas, como, se venden?
Chano: No, todos ya son libres. Puedes buscar lo que tu quieres.
SM: Aqui que tu—. Esperame un momento. Entonces regresamos en forma de
hablando de porque decidiste para venir aqui, a los Estados Unidos, en vez que quedarse
alii en la cuidad de Mexico.
Chano: No me quede en Mexico porque se gana muy poco y se trabaja mucho.
Me vine a los veintiun anos. Tenia veintiun afios y me vine de contratado a tabaco.
Trabaje en el tabaco una temporada. Y despues de alii, me quede aqui. Desde ese
tiempo, estoy aqui viviendo. Vivo, tengo catorce afios viviendo aqui. Al principio fue
dificil por el idioma de ingles, porque uno no sabe nada. Todo diferente. El tiempo, muy
frio, seco. Diferente. Adonde yo vengo, el clima es tropical y todo diferente.
SM: ^Y cuando viniste, como adonde trabajaste en tabaco? ^Aqui en North
Carolina?
Markunas 17
Chano: Si, en North Carolina.
SM: ^Y como supiste de eso trabajo?
Chano: Hay, donde yo vivo, hay gente que manda personas contratadas, con
pasaporte. Entonces, yo fui a verlo y le dije que yo me queria venir.
SM: ^Fue una programa de gobierno aqui, los Estados Unidos, como la de H2A?
^Tu sabes de eso programa? ^Fue uno de esos programas?
Chano: Si son la asociacion de tabaqueros que nos llevo o Carolina.
SM: ^Y asi, tuvieron permiso para trabajar en la temporada?
Chano: Si, de tabaco.
SM: ^Y despues, por contrato, te mandan a Mexico de regreso? ^O tu saliste de
eso contrato para venir aqui?
Chano: No, termine mi contrato, pero quise quedarme mas tiempo. Hasta hoy.
SM: ^Tu viniste aqui, a Durham, solo? {,0 tu conociste personas aqui?
Chano: Yo llegue aqui, llegando en Eden North Carolina. Alii trabaje. Mi
hermano ya estaba aqui con mi primo. Entonces yo me vine para aca, porque ellos
estaban aqui.
SM: ^Y ellos Uegaban en, mas o menos, lo mismo forma? ^O ellos vmieron sin
contrato y llegaron aqui?
Chano: Ellos solamente llegaron aqui sin contrato.
Markunas
SM: ^Como supieron de aqui? ^Como conocieron a Durham?
Chano: Por otros amigos que estaban aqui trabajando.
SM: ^Entonces hay mucha gente de San Luis Potosi en Durham?
Chano: Si, casi todos.
SM: <-,Casi todos? £Y no hay otro—? Claro hay muchas lugares que puedan ir,
pero ^.conoces mucha gente, de donde tu creciste, que fueron a otro lugar?
Chano: Si, estan en otros estados. Texas, Florida, Chicago. Si.
SM: Entonces, ya que estas aqui, ^cuantos ailos?
Chano: Catorce.
SM: Catorce alios, <?,c6mo fue tu experiencia aqui en Durham, generalmente?
Chano: ^Mi experiencia?
SM: Si.
Chano: Fue dificil por mi trabajo, por agarrar un especialidad de panaderia. No
saber ingles y aprendiendo poco a poco. Experimentando en cosas. Y con su ayuda
tambien, de los patrones. Eso es como aprendi a hacer panadero. Ellos me dieron la
oportunidad de aprender.
SM: ^Y tu experiencia aparte de trabajo? <-,Nada mas, como, en la comunidad
sientes seguro aqui en Durham o has tuvido [tenido] experiencias malas en forma de otras
personas en otras comunidades o los otros--?
Markunas
Chano: Bueno, antes en Mexico no habia mucha inseguridad. A hoy, es muy
dificil. Es mas seguro aqui. Es mas seguro aqui.
SM: ^De en Mexico?
Chano: Que en Mexico.
SM: iPor que?
Chano: Mucha droga. En Mexico hay mucha droga. No hay seguridad.
SM: ^Alla, adonde tu vives, eso inseguridad esta alii?
Chano: Si.
SM: ^Eso es porque hay muchas lugares adonde siembran droga, o solamente es
en una de las rutas que pasan la droga a los Estados Unidos.
Chano: No hay mucho desempleo. Por ejemplo, empiezan a robar y la policia
esta lejos de alii, diez millas.
SM: Tengo hambre, lo siento [there is laughter because SM's stomach is
growling very loudly]. Y eso, porque hay mucho desempleo--. ^Y eso es porque la
economia esta baja o eso siempre estaba asi?
Chano: No, por la economia que se bajo.
SM: £Y aparte de aqui, y aparte de tu trabajo y cosas asi, tu has encontrado
ejemplos de racismo aqui en Durham entre--? Porque hay muchos vecinos que son puros
hispanos en esos vecinos, y casi puro afro-americanos en esa vecina. Hay muchos
Markunas 20
vecinos separados. Como dicen que no debe estar asi, pero asi es. En Durham, hay
muchos lugares asi. ^Tu ves racismo entre los vecinos?
Chano: En mi experiencia, nunca he pasado nada de racismo. No he tenido ni con
los americanos o afro-americano. Para mi no. Yo veo que todo es igual.
SM: Entonces, para ti, ^es todo es igual, menos la comida, la falta de familia, la
clima, y la idioma?
Chano: Si, pero eso fue a principio. Ahora me acostumbre a vivir aqui. Ya es
diferente. Ahora, si regreso a Mexico, va a ser dificil para mi.
SM: ^Y como?
Chano: Por empezar a conocer mi gente. Porque todo de la gente ya no esta alii.
SM: Pero alii, cuando tu vas a regresar a Mexico, £en que piensas hacer?
Chano: No se.
SM: ^No sabes?
Chano: No.
SM: ^Vas a llegar hasta donde esta tu familia?
Chano: Si. Voy a llegar a casa de mi mama, mis papas. Quiero verlos, el los
quieren verme. Mi mama tiene veinte anos que no la mire.
SM: ^Y tu hablas con el la regularmente?
Chano: Si.
Markunas 21
SM: iy ella, como habla de alia en Mexico ahorita?
Chano: Ella dice que esta bien. Que esta tranquilo. Si, pasa muchas cosas, pero
no me dice. No quiere que--.
SM: ^No quiere preocuparte?
Chano: No quiere preocuparme.
SM: ^Bueno, entonces, no tienes planes, no tienes deseos, no tienes nada en
mente?
Chano: Ahorita no. Quiero ver primero como esta alia.
SM: Entonces podemos terminar. Entonces, muchisimas gracias para tu ayuda.
Chano: No, no se si sirve o~.
SM: No esta bien. Si sirve mucho, y me ayuda mucho y gracias por tu tiempo.
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
R-0484 -- X, Chano, pseud.
Description
An account of the resource
Chano is a native Mexican from the city of Tamazunchale, San Luis Potosi. He migrated to the United States in 1997 after he was unable to find sufficient work in Mexico. Growing up in a large household, and being the oldest, Chano left school after la secundaria, or the equivalent of middle school, in order to work and provide additional economic support for his family. He originally arrived to North Carolina on an agriculture contract to work during the tobacco season. At the end of the season, he decided not to return to Mexico and moved to Durham, North Carolina in order to work alongside other family members who settled in the area beforehand.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
Rights
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No restrictions. Open to research.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
4 April 2011
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
R0484_Audio.mp3
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
<a href="http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/6276">University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.</a>