The “Poisoning” of Indigenous Migrant Women Workers and Children: From Deadly Colonialism to Toxic Globalization Egla Martinez Salazar

INTRODUCTION An Interlocking analysis based on race/ethnicity, class gender and colonialist legacies is necessary for understanding the particular struggles of indigenous women and their families as workers in the Mexican agromaquilas and the implications of the globalizing trend on indigenous women’s lives

“Class struggle, narrowly defined, can no longer be the only basis for solidarity among women workers. The fact of being women with particular racial, ethnic, cultural, sexual, and geographic histories has everything to do about definitions and identities as workers.” - Chandra Mohanty

SPANISH COLONIZATION: THE HISTORICAL ROOTS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES’ MIGRATION After the Spanish conquest, the first large-scale migrations were organized by the colonizers majority were indigenous men who were brought to sugar plantations as slaves the majority of women stayed back in their communities to cultivate their own crops or to be exploited as domestic or textile workers. assimilation policies has reduced indigenous peoples’ histories and cultures to “the Indian problem” dominant views of indigenous peoples industrialization and modernization trade liberalization

INDIGENOUS WOMEN AND THE NEW CONDITIONS OF FORCED MIGRATION Ongoing expropriation and erosion of indigenous land land reform that “liberated” the ejide Racist ideology “naturalizes” the poverty and marginalization of indigenous peoples

WORKING CONDITIONS Family-based work force Due to their extreme poverty, Indigenous mothers are forced to take their children into the fields Contractors often promise indigenous families good housing and wages. However, their actual living conditions are what some local journalists describe as, “smelly ghettos hat reproduce the misery pf the places that the indigenous people came from. There, they live and die at the margins of a society that never understands them.” Wage inequality Worker safety

PESTICIDES: THE DEADLY POISONING The majority of Mestizo and indigenous migrant farmers are not given proper information about the toxicity of pesticides. labels and instructions are written in English and Spanish. Use of pesticide containers for drinking water or storage Greatest risks for pregnant women

PUTING FOOD ON WHOSE TABLE? Indigenous women working as migrant agricultural workers are, “a causalized clandestine economy, where workers have little redress against either physical or economic exploitation” Salazar contends that indigenous women are the most forgotten and exploited in the global capitalist economy Gobalization must be perceived as a continuation of colonialism, an exploitative and unequal process in which relations based on race, class, and gender shape the lives of indigenous women in the agromaquilas. “Behind the perfect-looking tomato, there are thousands of hidden oppressive realities.” The rights of indigenous women are being eroded by trade liberalization, structural adjustment policies and globalization