Posted on 03/26/2010 3:58:23 AM PDT by Palter
Executives Train to Foil Kidnappings, Drive in Convoys as Drug Cartels Bring Bloody Feud to Manufacturing Mecca
U.S. companies flocked to the border city of Juárez because it was one of Mexico's most business-friendly cities. Now, an entire industry is adjusting to doing business in Mexico's deadliest town.
Just across the U.S. border from El Paso, Texas, Juárez has turned into a murderous battleground as two rival drug cartels vie for a lucrative entry route into the U.S. A dozen homicides a night isn't uncommon. On Wednesday, Luis Raúl Macías Rosas, who was a manager at a Juárez maquiladora, was murdered within 600 feet of a military checkpoint, authorities said.
Some executives now carpool to work in a convoy, fearing they could otherwise be abducted. Whole factory work forces are undergoing kidnapping training. Routes to and from the bridge in El Paso are now patrolled by armed military guard.
"You have to ask God every day that you come back safe," says a senior executive at one of the plants.
Until two years ago, Juárez was a thriving manufacturing hub. The 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement paved the way for the rise of so-called maquiladoras, assembly lines where everything from laptops to motorcycles are built with cheap local labor and shipped back across the border tariff-free.
Dell Inc., Johnson & Johnson and General Motors are among the scores of companies that contract with the assembly plants here. All told, the maquila plants employ roughly 180,000 people, according to the industry association.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
We should close the border. With soldiers and double lanes of razor-wire. And attack-drone surveillance planes. And land mines.
Third world, corrupt cesspool, right next door.
Maybe those companies will move back to America.
-Lack of dirty bomb threat or the use of a bomb going off would extend Gov't power
-Eventual citizenship for illegals
-Weakens America so the NWO can eventually take America off the threat list
etc.
I wonder how the NAFTA Nabobs and the Illegal Alien lovers are going to spin this one now.....
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