MALQUILAPOLIS - WEEK 5 - MARCUS BALDWIN

MALQUILAPOLIS - WEEK 5 - MARCUS BALDWIN

This film makes think of the tyranny that comes with the supply and demand ethic of capitalism. Ultimately efficiency, repetition, mass production, and profit come before humanity in the work environment. I think the eye opening thing about this documentary is that this exploitation is legal and common. And yet, it is clearly a violation of these women's health and rights by the standards we live under in this country. The working conditions and the wages are none that the average American citizen would settle for, and to realize this isn't coincidence but the very reason these big companies outsource to Mexico, further shows how unethical the system is. I think the documentarians made a meaningful step towards subverting the system that treats these women as expendable, by allowing them to dictate the narrative of the documentary. Some of the imagery at the beginning of the division between the U.S. and Mexico at the boarder and the scenes in the film where the women narrated over the visuals of the empty factories evoked a very stark image of the discrepancy between our way of life and theirs as well as the industrial machine they work within versus the real life human beings who are being exploited by it.