The Desert

• Maquiladoras


  High profit factories along the U.S.-Mexican border with over 1 million Mexican workers, accounting for 45% of Mexico's total exports as of 2006
• Sweatshops


  Workplaces that violate the law and where workers are subject to extreme exploitation, poor working conditions, arbitrary discipline, and fear and intimidation
• Hazards of Maquiladoras


  • Low wages
  • Long hours with few breaks
  • Inadequate training
  • Exposure to potentially dangerous chemicals
  • High stress due to need to meet quotas
  • Poor ventilation and lighting
  • Lack of protective equipment
  • Low process cycle times (repetitive action can harm workers if under 10 seconds)
  • Lax environmental regulations lead to hazards for the community
• NAFTA


  North American Free Trade Agreement, 1994
• There are about 3,000 high profit maquiladora factories along the 2000-mile U.S.-Mexican border with over 1 million Mexican workers, accounting for 45 percent of Mexico's total exports as of 2006
• NAFTA and Mexican Employment
• Ejido system


  Communal land used for agriculture, an indigenous system that the Spanish took away but was reinstated following Mexican independence, until the 1991 Agrarian Reform Act (Article 27) did away with the constitutional right to form an ejido
• Who benefits the most from free trade agreements such as NAFTA (i.e. Mexicans? Americans? Businesses? Workers? Consumers?)
• If you had been in a position to decide, would you have supported NAFTA? Why or why not?
• USMCA (NAFTA 2.0)


  Went into effect July 1, 2020
• Invasive species


  Non-native species that have been introduced, or moved, by human activities to a location where they do not naturally occur
• Endemic species


  Species that are found naturally nowhere else on Earth
• Non-native species are not necessarily bad
• When ecological/economic problems arise with non-native species

  We call them "invasive"
• East vs. West Settlement Patterns

  • Continuous settlement - large areas of uninterrupted human occupation
  • Discontinuous settlement - human-impacted areas with primarily natural landscapes between or among them
• Flat topography in the east


  Allowed for extensive settlement and farming
• Arid conditions and difficult terrain in the west

  Led to settlements focused around arable or mining lands
• Checkerboard arrangement of public land ownership

  Precludes rational development
• Exurbanization


  The movement of people from urban and suburban areas to counties still deemed to be "rural"
• The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo in 1848 protected the civil and property rights of Mexican nationals now on American soil, but the U.S. removed and/or weakened these provisions and anti-Mexican sentiments prevailed
• As of 2010, the Latino population comprised: Nevada—26.5%, Arizona—29.6%, California—37.6%, Texas—37.6%, New Mexico—46.3%, United States—16.3%
• Bracero Program


  1942-1964 program that brought Mexican workers to the US for agricultural labor
• Protections for Braceros


  • Guaranteed payment of at least the prevailing area wage received by native workers
  • Employment for ¾ of the contract period
  • Adequate, sanitary, and free housing
  • Decent meals at reasonable prices
  • Occupational insurance at employer's expense
  • Free transportation back to Mexico at the end of the contract
• Mexico's Border Industrialization Program (BIP)


  Started in 1965 to promote economic development along the Mexico-US border
• Transnational Corporations (TNCs)


  Any company that has investments and activities that span international boundaries and that has production facilities, offices or research establishments in several nations
• Export processing zones: are generally found in coastal areas for ease of transport to markets
• The Desert Southwest (or MexAmerica) region "remains one of the poorest in North America," and that "thousands of residents of MexAmerica, especially southern Texas, live in" these dwellings, which are "located on the outskirts of cities or in rural areas in which many people live in trailers, wooden shacks, or other makeshift housing units."  These are called: colonias
• According to the reading in our textbook, this reptile, which is the official state reptile of both Nevada and California, is threatened due to poaching for sale in the pet trade, habitat fragmentation, and habitat destruction through land development. The Desert totoise
• The Mexican ejido system was essentially eliminated prior to the passing of NAFTA. True or False
• The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: Was the way the U.S obtained much of the land that now constitutes the Desert Southwest
• The Western United States is a zone of continuous settlement because different federal entities hold claim to all of the land. True
• Which of the following is not true regarding the Bracero Program? Exploitation the protections put in place to support Braceros were always abided by and respected