Chicana and Mexicana Workers in the El Paso–Ciudad Juarez Garment Industry from 1940 to 1970

Chicana and Mexicana workers in the El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juárez garment industry from 1940 to 1970 uniquely left a political, social, and economic legacy that influenced the local, national, and transnational apparel business. This is a transnational history of ethnic Mexican women in the El Paso and Ciudad Juarez apparel industry, and how within, gender, race, class, ethnicity, immigration status, and their intersectionalities contribute to the various ways they experienced factory work, gave meaning to it, and combated exploitative working conditions.

El Paso’s unique location across the Rio Grande from Ciudad Juárez ensured American businesses’ access to cheap Mexican labor. During WWII the need for military clothing harnessed the rapid growth of factories and labor migration of Mexican-born and ethnic Mexican U.S.-born women into manufacturing plants. I argue ethnic Mexican women shaped the economic and cultural landscape of the El Paso-Ciudad Juarez region during the rise of industrialization in both the United States and Mexico. As industrialization exponentially grew in the city of El Paso, in 1965, Mexico announced the Border Industrialization Program (BIP) that created the maquiladora program—manufacturing plants that are U.S. subsidiaries or contract affiliates under Mexican or foreign ownership. I thus explore how the competition between the maquilas in Ciudad Juárez and the plants in El Paso affected the women’s labor experiences on the U.S.-Mexico border within the broader history of the garment industry. Their race, gender, class, and immigration status determined their experiences within the industry and how they maneuvered them in a growing and exploitative institution along the U.S.-Mexico border.