Determining Scope: An Operational Definition of Sustainability

• Author: William R. Blackburn
• Pages: 17-31

CHAPTER 2

Determining Scope: An Operational

Definition of Sustainability

“If you don’tknow where you’regoing, you just might not get there.”1

—Yogi Berra

The plan sounded good: bring employment and development to northern

Mexico by enacting a law enabling companies to set up special corpora-

tions, called maquiladoras.2These corporations could establish collabo-

rating “twin” facilities on each side of the U.S.-Mexican border and ship

duty-free raw materials, product components, and assemblies from the

U.S. operations to their Mexican counterparts. There in Mexico, hand

work or other processing could be done before shipping the finished

product back to the North. Employment, development, and social prog-

ress would flow to many Mexican families. Everyone would win.

Indeed, business did flourish in northern Mexico, but the reality of

maquiladoras in practice left much to be desired. Townsbecame crowded

with the wave of new residents seeking work. Water and sewerage sys-

tems, garbage disposal, and other basic services were overwhelmed.

Squalid shanty towns erupted. Although many responsible U.S. compa-

nies and their suppliers flocked to take advantage of Mexico’s maquila-

dora law, many others with weaker social values or economic resources

also arrived. Serious health problems from pollution became common-

place. This was far from what planners had envisioned.

It was in this setting in the early 1990s that fierce debate arose over the

proposed North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).3Here was an

agreement that would take the idea of free trade in the border region and

expand it to the entire country—in fact to three countries: Canada, Mexico,

and the United States. The questions for the Mexican maquiladora com-

munities were: Would this agreement spread the same ills that arose years

earlier in the wake of the maquiladora pact? Wouldthis just make a bad sit-

uation worse?

As the controversy raged on, religious, labor, and other social groups

sympathetic to the plight of the Mexicans began to wade in. They pub-

licly grilled U.S. companies with operations already in Mexico or inten-

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