“The most memorable part of the trip for me was walking along the border and seeing

the crosses representing all the people who have died. More than 4,000 people have

died just to have the opportunity at a better life…” Adora Cherry

Introduction

The purpose of this website is to provide summaries of what we have done for the Borders Class while in Mexico and in school. The trip to Tijuana, Mexico took place over fall break of 2007. The purpose of the trip was to further examine the United States relationship with Mexico and to get first hand accounts of the problems and issues involved with the U.S. Mexican border. Some of the topics we covered were the US-Mexican economy and investment, the maquila production system, the Mexican labor union system, the efforts of workers to form their own independent unions, community organization in working class neighborhoods, environmental damage from industrial pollution, migrant workers’ labor conditions and their self-organization efforts, women’s issues in terms of labor, reproductive rights and gender equality and immigration history and the current militarization of the US/Mexico border. During the trip we visited the Lazaro Cardenas School in Tijuana and San Ysidro High School to compare the lives of the students in these varying areas. San Ysidro high school is located on the California and had more opportunities available to them. A large component of the U.S. Mexican history is the initiation of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement. NAFTA was implemented in 1994 while President Clinton was in office. The purpose of NAFTA was to increase the trade between the United States and Mexico by primarily removing tariffs. NAFTA altered the states of both the United States and Mexican economy. The history between the United States and Mexico is a very coarse but very interesting and significant.