N.A.C.L.A. in Mexico has had enormous impact on the labor force, sending millions of ,rural unemployed to Mexico's urban centers in search of jobs in the manufacturing and service sectors. But here, too, the penetration. •of U.S. companies .has meant the introduction of labor•saving technology, severely undercutting industry's ability to absorb the growing urban work force . . Lured by the higher wages along the U.S. border and the possibility of working as a bracero in the ".promised land ", hundreds of thousands of. Mexico's unemployed workers· - rural and 1urban - have migrated to the northern cities, no.w among the fastest growing urban tenters in the world. Tijuana's population has mushroomed from roughly 20,000 in 1940 to 165,000 by 1960-, and 1is projected to top -604,000 by 1980 (30). Mexicali',s population more than doubled between 1950 and 1970, while Ciudad Juarez has had a population growth of 700% in the past thirty years (31). The bulk of these newly arrived men and women came to depend on emp'loyment in th·e United States - pal"ticularly through the bracero program - as their main source of income. How·ever, in the early- sixties, ·progressive forces in labor, the church, and the Congress - most notably Cesar Chavez' budding .farm workers movement - began to organize against the abuses of the state-run labor contracting system. Under' public pressure, Congress voted not to · renew the bracero program in 1964. The action was a crucial step toward the building of a farm worker's ·union in the United States, but its ·impact on the border· was immedïate and dramatic; more than 200,000 braceros were suddenly faced with unemployment or 'the risk of ·crossing the border illegally. At the same time, the Mexican government, with the help of North American àdvisers, began planning' a new solution to the problems of Mexico's unemployment and the United States' need for cheap labor. The Border lndustrialization Program was conceived, a plan through which U.S. industry could set up assembly operations along the Mexican border. A new technique for exploiting the reserve army of labor had been found: the runaway shop. Rather than import workers, the United States would export t_heindustri~s. 30. San Diego Union, Nov. 25. 1968. 31. U.S. News & World Report, July 1, 1968 « Thlngs Look Up for Mexico as U.S. Flrms Cross the Border•. · . · go·
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