'Maquila republic'
SAN PEDRO SULA -- Like the banana nearly 100 years ago, the maquila is forcing wrenching change on the family-based Honduran society.
Maquilas, producers of clothing to be sold abroad, have taken advantage in recent years of tax breaks and other government incentives to build huge factories and hire thousands of Honduran workers.
What effect pending quotas by the United States on how much can be shipped there will have isn't known yet. But what is obvious is that Hondurans are moving to where the jobs are now, here in the nation's industrial and commercial capital.
The impact on both San Pedro Sula and on the rural areas left behind hasn't been tallied yet, but experts say it is substantial.
While many men head for the United States "mojado," or illegally, to find work, many girls and young women between 15 and 24 are leaving their parents' homes to move to San Pedro Sula and outlying cities like Choloma and Villanueva, where the jobs are.
That's also where cultures begin to clash.
YOUNG WOMEN UNTAMED
They come mostly from Intibucá, Santa Bárbara and other western departments, or provinces, but also from Olancho, Choluteca and Valle. The maquila owners like to hire girls and young women because they believe -- erroneously, says sociologist Isbela Orellana -- that they will be easier to dominate than older workers or men.
Many of the young women have abandoned their studies and, more distressingly, their families -- something that is not easy in a society where the family is nearly everything. "They leave the family brusquely," says Orellana.
Also, they often must leave their own young children alone or with relatives each day to come to work, where they suffer another indignation: overbearing bosses.
Koreans own many of the maquilas. In their country, workers are used to someone standing over them all day demanding higher production rates; Hondurans are not, says Orellana, who heads the sociology department at San Pedro Sula's North Regional Central University (CURN).
Orellana says the women are taking jobs that in the past would have been filled by young men their age, who because they are locked out of this job market are often forced into informal work like selling goods on the street. Nevertheless, the money can be good in maquilas, and young women occasionally send lempiras home to their parents in what are extremely tough economic times for Honduras.
BANANA TIES
The banana revolution earlier this century in some ways parallels that of the maquilas in that many people migrated to northern Honduras to take advantage of jobs. But Orellana says those were usually male heads of households who brought along their wives and children, keeping the family intact.
Also, one large difference between young women leaving their homes and illegals going to the United States is that in the latter case they usually send dollars back to their families, a situation that is helping stir an economic miniboom in at least one Central American country, El Salvador.
The few lempiras the young women send home cannot begin to match the dollar's purchasing power.
Problems created by the maquilas are two-fold, say both Orellana and Robert Carranza, a CURN business administration professor. Not only do the plants increase demand on services with the increases in population that they promote, but they don't pay local taxes.
That creates an instant budget deficit for San Pedro Sula, which is struggling to extend water, sewer, road and other services to outlying areas.
Also, many of the workers enticed to San Pedro Sula by jobs in the maquilas and support industries are no longer farming, which could in the long run hurt the nation, says Carranza. "A nation that stops growing food is condemned to die."
He says those who thought they would be better off in an industrial job find that they must buy their own food and clothing and pay for housing, something they received free while living with their parents.
And, adds Carranza, they discover that San Pedro Sula is an expensive city. He calls it "strings of misery" that can foster depression.
One final social problem caused by the maquilas, says Carranza, affects the middle class.
People in a nation accustomed to hiring domestic help cheaply can no longer find cooks and maids because they're all working in the maquilas for better money, he says. The middle class then must do its own housework, sometimes spending the entire weekend catching up on laundry the domestic help used to keep done every day.
Thus the misery is shared throughout the social strata.
POSSIBLE LIFT-OUT: The banana revolution earlier this century in some ways parallels that of the maquilas in that many people migrated to northern Honduras to take advantage of jobs. But those were usually male heads of households who brought along their wives and children, keeping the family intact.
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