annenberg media ♪ captioning sponsored annenberg/cpb narrator: in the region of latin america, a key geographical issue is population-- its stributionand rad g.

inub-region ofexico, weo oklationstributionand rad g. moment, or migration both within mexico and north tohe u.s. we explore a major and unexpected source of migrants in scaedollow re skf e usioofaquiaces can change the rate of flow, or if a new u.s. border policy is having an unintendeconsequence. ( helicopter whirring ) narrator: every day, thousands of mexicans cross the border illegally into the united states. often, those hopes are arreste many arat the border.nwo ma ahora lista pont la mano en frente... narrator: the u.s. i.n.s., or immigration and naturalization service,

recos each apprehension on standard forms, including one entry with hidden lue: it was the migrants'ome towns inexico. that's whabringseograpr chard jones to the.n. it was the migrants'ome towns with a novel research plan. jones knows that economic conditions vary greatly om region region in mexico. he suspects that some places drive ou- or "push"-- manyore migrants to the u.s. than others. his investigation begins ly90s aris hom inanoniotes. jones believes many secrets are stored in i.n.s. files like tse. can ey reveal where most migrants come om? can the answers help both countries keep more ople at home? cjones sampless every tenth record, writing down the area of origin within mexico.

back in his office at the university of texas, he enters the values into a map of mexico. jones marks in blue the wnships that sd an above-arage number of migrantso e u.s. jonea pattern emerges that reveals much about thchanng econoce numbed social condition.s. of mexico's diverse geograic regions. on the west coast, townships marked in blue migrantnoh. swe boegnsare economicly dic a strong pum iyorousmagriculre amir source. nes: ected find reti w anrom e sout and we did, because this is an area of close-kni indigenous communies, and economic and social barriers fothose people make it difficult for themo come here.

narrator: he confirms that a largeumr of migrants veome make it difficult from the northern border region and from the metropolitan center, including mexico city. hear reg has, for almost a hundred years, beenheest central region, that is, jalisco, michoacan. hear reg has,and we found that indeed,rs, it was still t most important region forendiignts.choacan. narrator: jones then sees a surprising cluster here, whe heeastecit. jones:centl mexi hascarcelyn udd narrator: jones then sees a subyociascntistser here, we wererefore surines:centl mexi hascarcelyn udd hetu of migrat narrator: jones then sees a sub the norend i a huo is w s, but to verify this, i eded to go into e fiel narrator: jones's research has brought him here, the mesa e, a high dry plateau beginning near mexico city

and sttching to the u.s. border. and employmentere:raditiaa gold and silr mining. but one look at the mines and a talk wh so remaining workers coirms the sad economic stistics. butchr mesutestand a drop in pe talk wh so remaining workers haveut many bs here. jos: whate found in the north central region was a decline in production and in employment in the mining sector, which corresponded, spatially, remarkably closely to the migration patterns. narrator: so mining incomeasowered regional living stanrds. ( dog barking ) whatute cuural stor,where oerd difficulties relso encouragtoigra? it is 1994. buenos días. narrator: nes arrives at the farm of anastacio and ofelia near a municipio called cedral.

their family sells goat meat in a local market. they also groworn, barley and a little wheat. but the climate makes farming a constant battle. it d soiluatys poor buso when jones interviewsing anastacio, he is not surprised eau. translator: what kind of work did you do in the u.s.? cortaba los arlis. translator: i chopped christmas trees and picked apples. ( conversing ) rrator jones's findings challenge the widespread assumption thatignt workers move permanently to the.s jones ( anslated ): and you went how many times? translator: six times. narrator: as hard as this land is, these people are attached to this place. many move north to earninvl that they bring ord me

slor: to your fami and your wife? aten pmegar. translator: most important, it was r e children's school, food andlothing. jones: the remittances which migrants bring back or send back are used by their families, first for food, then for educational health and small appliances, and then for larger investments such as improving a house or investments in agriculture. ator each year, mexican immi. and then for larger investments se home over $billion. that is the nation'sou largessource oincome, behind oil, manufacturing and tourism. so in interviewing townsople, jones isot surprised to fi at many family members hae u.s. locationsnd work.s rs

ere opm ceal gone. percbetween thma mouninanges, e mesaelor is om te afuentoast, jones calls eg vealed tsides ch has are not migrating only to the united states. many come theexic, ere spiazone was cated wi.s. agemen u.s.ompaniescod ca news withinkimete of border toake advantage of cheap mexican labor plants like is iciudad a "maquila" is a measure of co jor corn oil give a farmer. but the maquiladora plants had "give back"e.

all their finishedrocts the.s. nothing made here coulbe sold inexico. get nothing b wagesfotheir labo that sheltered local industries, but there was a ice procte technologicaknow-how. e north american free trade agreement, onafta, was crafted gdual ende procte those protections.how. theso now, the maquiladorasd the locafrom the u.s.ctions. and manyigrants from the holw core move to find eacother in cities soutofheorde ke this. move to find eacother they are also migrating re to monterrey. located in the northern border region, monterrey is mexico's third largest city and the country's centerof .

richard jones arrives at montoi, the monterrey locaon of american-owned mattel toys, to continue his research. as he expected, many of these workers came from the hollow core region, lured north by the higher salaries in. aquí ela fábrica, pues, como le dijo... translator: re ithe factory we work an eight-hour y. for an eight-houday in my me town, they'daybout 8,000esos. heren the factory we earn ice asuc narrator: at grote industries, most workers are women, who assemble reflectors and ilg. th a pai62 cents perour. that's less than the goiage in the north along the bor but it is more than new plants

would ha to payin theollow core. grote manager jaime gomez. sorobly we're going tourn t inhe north part of mexico. they're going to start to develop a lot of maquidora businesses and it'soing to go down, down and down cause we're going to run out of labor. so they have to go farther south. jones agrees that the abundance of cheaper labor in the hollow core will draw already, olia has a new new employment option hereth.ag is one of twoewmaquiloras itha that makes women's underwear. they are typical of maquilas mong south. textile workers require fewer skills, so employers can pay them less than workers alonghe border.

jones: sinare decentlizing've into the north central region,s into some of the smaller pces, and this is having the beneficial effects of increasing the job rate and decreasingthe u.s.. narrator: eight years later, and the numbers confirm his theories. nationwide after 2 e mber of maquilorjobs died witthe u.s. recession, but theneboued again. and employers certainly moved south. in 1993, nonborder states employed ten percent of maquila workers. in998, that percentage increased over 50%. but how much did maquilaras actually spread into the hollow core? between 1993 and 1998, these six states almost tripled their maquila employees, adding 44,000 new jobs. they gaid jobs almost twice as fast as the rest of mexico.

t wiinhenorte, ere isreatspatit san luis potosí, where jones studied the town of cedral, gained only 2,0 new jobs. san luthat's less than jones studthe naonal gwth radral, and even though the wages are below those near the border, there is acant multiplier effec families spend a very highs are percentage of their incomeder, close tobut richard jones employ twas t just interesdel to see if maquiladoras would spad south, but whether they could keep people home and stop them from migrating. and here, new enforcement policies at the u.s. border may have negated any gains realized by maquilado diffusion. before 1993 the border patrol more or less looked the other way,

allowing people to cross freely. once inside, the migrants were then pursued with limited results. once inside, the migrants now the of the border.ed fences it forces migrants to cross in remote deserts. bustileyss-- overalf a million a year, angr. the get-tough approach has had an ironic and unintended consequence. now instead of crossing temporarily and returning home with money, men either stay longer or bngir whole families and move pernentlyto u.s. it's just too ngerous to cross only have ake it once.d.s now ms every year now, 50,000 people from just one hollow core state-- choacan-- migrate to the u.s.

about halff them movemanently. moreichoacanos cly live in california, tex anheilno anme about halff them movemanently. so witrders thaton't se mexicans, let alone terrorts, ny starting tosk "is ere betterolicy? in the latmecasuegioofentral aa guemala isllome toilons of maya indians. overa inmetheir populationcles has coapseanthen boometsand rey without enough land their rising numbers, sociphgrows,

including -uan migratiooverioe. in the highlands of guatemala, weary maya indians welcome a truce, following the peace accords of 1996. a victimthe violence was ma, who lives in this house compound with her surviving grandchildren and their families. the pipes that carry this wate to t village were an innovation brought by her son. helso effos toui a road aspeakingocalanguager) translator: wanting those kinds of thingss in t eyes of certaineople. it caused mo to goroun that he's onoi that good wo because he's a member of the gueilla organization. naator:the organizan was caolction.

his son, diego, was too young to remember s faer and grandfather when paramilitaries entered his compound in 1982. they beat, bound and took away first his grandfather, anthen his father. ( speaking local language ) translator: i heard a shot, and i knew my son was dead. narrator: ten years later, a humaamong them,oup exhumed 1doña magdalena's son., magdalena shouting) ( wailing ) narrator: diego,the crusng bwatc atois fatr's head.aled

w,0 yes afe murders, diego has grow and momala c s farmca longesuorhim. heow sells fruit for ve dolla a day. te of thousas of oer maya haigrated here, o. rural--urban migraon is a keyegional feature te of thousas of oer maya haiginatin america. diego's siblings face the same problems. poquito nos tocó a cada uno y por eso que cada uno... naatorsince we eacht very little land, each one has to move to support one's family. that is why were scaeredalovee narrator: the same forces at push indians out of tighlanalso le. what a those forces, aha are the prospects r change?

orse wiw out for a historical geographer, the past is fertile ground. george lovell is researching patterns in both time and space explain the colpse-- and now the explosion-- ofaya populaon aftethe conquest in the6th ceury, the spaniards had little interest in highlandesources. they saw something in the hills more valuable than land. as labor the spaniards saved mayas' souls and forced their bodies to work silver mines and lowland antations. love: to supply them with ready pools of labor, spaniards forced maya indians to build and toive in compact tow like is

ator: anthis... the w settlements, called congregaciones, were laid out in classic spanish-american grids and located in valys. e dense urban settlement pattern helped decimate maya populatio the conquistadors ought fromurope stthe close ling quarters andpod kellx. the vastating illness. lovell estimates that the guatemala maya numbered two million before the conquest, and fell to 128,000 by 1625. it was part of the largest population collapse in human history.

but when thepanish empire itself collapsed here, many indianseft the congregaciones to return to their age-old pattern many indianseft of dispersed ruralettlement. gradually eir numbers, too, rebounded theointhere many now fear a daerous polation explosion. georgeovelwants to know why. narrator: the year 2000, and doña magdalena is now 92. with diego now working in guatemala city, she relies on one of her other grandsons, paulino, george lovell visits still e gonzales farmund. to seef growth of their familyos into t larger mayaociety.

whdid diego ha to leave?why ci rvests of corn hfor ousands of yea here the size of maya populatio was limited rgely e of t corn harvest. the land has been good to the gonles family. she has just divided the land into separate plotsdren. for her six grandchildren. are e plots big enghr each famy? lovell ( translating ): this is the boundary marker el betweemy land,iel...

you casee st how narrow isy brthstrip of land ise, ator: paulino draws a simple map to sw the layout. uh-huh. ah. narrator: doña magdana's husband once farmed fivecres. ent suor11eoe. now aso suort ? más que nos aguan es has. anslator we harvest ourorin jano can lastll of thfamily-- all nine ous-- uil august. if the corn runs out before august, what that means is we'll just have to start working get money to buy the corn earlier. paulino has toind other work for a good part of the year. that's whyis broer, diego, now lives in the city.

he mrates seasonalfomporary emy o many maya for the land? maybe e problem is the way the land is used. george lovell heads offto y of the highlands. traditionally it is marked by tall trees shloshike is this is a co fia. eh, r... porías o toaganquets p? trslatoronig quetzales n narrator: eightquetzales-- .50 a day-- iseager wage by a staar

onoffee pof violenceand thgrion. it is commoncross guatemala. just three perce of guamalas by the m960s controedwo-thisofhe ae la. atel ghree perce of guamalas by the m960s he h cinedwo-thisofhe ae la. most are cash crops for export. verywho support rerns anxpdi populatn on the sm. squalid using, impoverishing wages and lid ofir led many indians and with that desireheir , impovcame conflict. in new milnnium but the underlying the guuiproblems remain.

maya't have enoughan who will soon reach growo kechildbring age.n isite l willir culturem but the underlying the and economy changen. toncourage family planning? willthe countrs population buwill they ha access the and to birth conol?. willow double in just 24 yea, willtcompared with 120 years for the u.s. buwill they ha access the and to birth conol?. economics, religion and the lack of birth control mean that fertility rates remain as high as they have been for centuries. at the other end of life, however, something has changed thsalu-aspanish foal local clinics like thisve f and keptopulatiohigh. for geographers like george lovell e goodews is tempe byac on e gr. for doña magdalena's hean only hope for a change in the balance of people to the land that supports them.

the inequities result from three cycles of conquest, lasting over 500 years. as maya pulation continues to grow, a ck of nduatemala.t sures grear soci ueaval lasting over 500 years.

captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org