Feminine Villains, Masculine Heroes, and the Reproduction of Ciudad Juarez

Citation:

Wright, Melissa W. 2001. “Feminine Villains, Masculine Heroes, and the Reproduction of Ciudad Juarez.” Social Text 19 (4): 93–113.

Author: Melissa W. Wright

Annotation:

From Introduction: In this essay, I attempt to demonstrate how this development plan for “the next Silicon Valley of Mexico” necessarily requires the reproduction of the current city, marked by poverty, inadequate infrastructure, and unskilled, low-waged laborers who work in labor-intensive industries. This contradiction becomes clear upon close inspection of the proposal’s internal design, which is revealed through the narratives used to describe and justify it. These explanations reveal that the Silicon Valley of Mexico proposal does not call for the replacement of the unskilled laborers who live in squatter settlements and attend overcrowded schools. Rather, ORION’s plan for the Silicon Valley of Mexico promises to join high-tech, design-oriented operations with the labor-intensive manufacturing facilities that still mainly rely upon low-waged workers who live in poorly serviced areas of the city. These are the very workers that ORION’s team needs in order to convince potential investors that the proposal for developing the next Silicon Valley of Mexico is a viable plan.

Topics: Development, Economies, Poverty, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Femininity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Infrastructure, Livelihoods, Political Economies Regions: Americas, North America Countries: Mexico

Year: 2001