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Photographs of a new distribution center built by tech giant Amazon in Tijuana, Mexico, near the US border, went viral within hours via social media.
Taken by the 41-year-old photojournalist Omar Martínez of the Cuartoscuro agency, they show a 32,000 square meter building built in the El Cañón del Padre district.
“I’m from Tijuana, I’ve spent my whole life on the border. I’ve been traveling and documenting what’s going on in my city for 20 years,” he told BBC Mundo.
“This is the first time I’ve talked about it. It’s a complicated place to go down and take pictures. I took them a bit from a distance. It’s complicated because there is a lot of insecurity, it’s a very marginalized place, it’s not sure to get there, ”he said.
“It’s on the side of a sewer canal where there are a lot of shooters, who are drug traffickers. So, it was not a very safe place. So I left and took pictures with a long lens and also decided to fly my drone. “
“I took the photos with the intention of showing the great contrast that exists here in my city,” explains Martínez. “I’m glad my image sparked a huge debate.”
Many users who disseminated the photographs on digital platforms referred to precisely this contrast mentioned by the professional, where a multinational company that generates millions of dollars in profit shares the same space, with the homes of people who live in precarious conditions.
Although some classified them as It’s capitalism (“It’s capitalism”), the Tijuana City Council has highlighted the benefits of installing the warehouse in this area, saying it will reduce costs and product delivery times in areas such as Tijuana, Mexicali, Tecate, Ensenada and Playas de Rosarito.
The opening of the distribution center “will contribute to the economic recovery and the well-being of families, ”City President Karla Ruiz Macfarland told the local press, explaining that this will generate new jobs for the people of Tijuana.
Amazon has assured that the company is committed to the development of the country and the communities where it operates.
“Since arriving in Mexico, we have generated over 15,000 jobs in the country and now we are adding 250 in Tijuana, creating employment opportunities with competitive salaries and benefits for all of our employees,” the company said. at BBC Mundo.
With the new warehouse in Tijuana, Amazon will complete 11 fulfillment centers in Mexico, according to data provided by the company.
“A growing trend”
Charmaine Chua, professor in the Department of Global Studies at the University of California Santa Bárbara, comments on her Twitter account that in order to better understand what is going on, it is necessary to place the center of Tijuana in the context of the chains of supply he uses Amazon.
The Inland Empire region of Southern California, according to the researcher, is the most crucial in Amazon’s distribution network. Close to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach – through which 40% of the containers that bring products to the United States pass – “it is a source of cheap land and labor.”
In addition, he argues, Amazon uses certain clauses of the United States-Mexico-Canada Free Trade Agreement (T-MEC) to import certain products duty-free.
Spencer Potiker, a doctoral student at the University of California at Irvine who studies the logistics industry on the Mexico-US border, says in a dialogue with BBC Mundo that these photographs of Amazon’s distribution center at Tijuana “represent global inequality”. , but, at the same time, “an increasing trend towards the development of distribution centers on both sides of the border. ”
Due to the trade war between the United States and China, he explains, but even before, border trade increased and with it the need to have more storage sites.
Working conditions are different on both sides, especially when it comes to payments. While in the United States salaries start at US $ 15 per hour, on the Mexican side “employees earn between US $ 2 and US $ 4 per hour,” says the researcher.
In other ways, like breaks or the pressure employees feel to meet quotas, the situation is not that different.
Given the current landscape of the job market and the way product distribution supply chains are evolving around the world, it is likely that in the future these types of distribution centers will continue to be built, Potiker explains.
An investigation by Reuters in April this year reported several cases of employees at an Amazon fulfillment center near Mexico City where they were forced to work longer hours than those established by law, forced to resign or made redundant after contracting covid-19.
This type of complaint has also occurred in the United States, where the company ended up acknowledging last April that some of its drivers urinate in plastic bottles to comply with deliveries.
Amazon responded that the company follows labor laws in all countries where it operates.
More than two thirds of the workforce Amazon employs in Mexico is handled by external contractors, informally referred to as “ghost labor,” according to estimates of workers delivered to Reuters.
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