annenberg media ♪ captioning sponsored by annenberg/cpb narrator: in the region of latin america, a key geographical issue isopulation-- its distributionand rad.

inub-region ofexico, weo oklation movement, or migration bo within mexico and north tohe u. we explore a major and unexpectedource of migras caedollow re weskf e usionof s 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 arrested manyre at the border.o man: ahora lista po la mano frente... narrator the u.s. i.n.s., or immigration and naturalization service, records each apprehension on standard forms,

including one entrywith hid: it was the migrants' home towns inexico. that's whabringseograpr richard jones to the i.n. with a novel reseah plan. jones knows that economic conditions vary greatly om region to region in mexico. he suspects that some places drive ou- or "push"-- many more migrants to the u.s. than others. hehis investigation beginses driin tly90s "push"-- aris hom in sanoniotes. jones lieves many secrets are stored in i.n.s. files like tse. can they 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 send an above-average number of migrantso e u.s. jonea pattern emerges that reveals much about thchanging econocage numbeansocial condition.s. of mexico's diverse geograic regions. on the west coast, townships marked in blue se migrantnoh. th sweboegions most he thcocialgricul are econically dic a rong pum iyou r nor source. nes: ecteand we did, because an from ethis is an area of close-kni indigenous communies, and economic and social barriers for those peop make it difficult for them to come here.

narrator: he confirms that a large number of migrants haveome from the northern border region and from the metropolitan center, including mexico city. arth rio has, for almost a hundred years, beenheest central region, that is, jalisco, michoacan. and we found that indeed, it was stillhe most important gion for sendingignts. narrator: jones then sees a surprising cluster here, whheecit.jones:central mexi hascarcelyn udd byociascntists.we wererore suri narrator: jones then sees a surprising cluster here, hetumigratones:central mexi hom the nenand i a o is so, byociascntists.we wererore suri narrator: but to verify this,s ai needed to go into e field. narrator: nes's research has brought him here, to the mesa e, a high dry plateau beginning near mexico city and stretching to the u.s. border.

iss one sourceof traditial and employment here: gold andilver mining. t one look at the mines and a lk wh some remaining workers coirms the sad economic stastics. t ochear mesututesmand a drop e lk wh some remaining workers have cut many bsere. jones: what we fod in the north central region was a decline in proction anin employment in the mining sector, which corresponded, spatially, remarkably closely to the migration patterns. narrator: so mining incomeas lowered regional living standards. ( dog barking ) whatute agcuural stor,where mad 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. its d iluatys poor so when jones interviews anastacio, he is not surprised eau. translator: what kind of work did you do in the u.s.? cortaba los arbotos... translator: i chopped christmas trees and picked apples. ( conversing ) narrator jones's findings challenge the widespread assumption thatigra workers move permanently to the.s jones ( translated ): 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 earn investment capital that they bring ord me

slor: to your family and your wife? en pmegar. translator: most importantly, it was r e children'school, food and clothing. 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 that is the nation's fouhn immi. andlargessource of income,ments behind oil, manufacturing and tourism. so in interviewing townspeople, jones is not surprised to fi at many family members have left me to find work. s research shows e u.s. locations

ere oplem ceal gone. rctween thma mouninanges,e meelor is, jones calls theg nes sech has vealed thasis re are not migrating only to the united states. many come theexic, ere spiazone was created wi.s. agemen u.s.ompanies theexic, could ca new plants wiin0 kimete of t border toake advantage of cheap mexican labor plants like isciudad a "maquila" is a measure of corn jor corn oil given a farmer but the maquiladora plantse had to "give back" all theifinished pcts to the u.s.

nothing made here could be sold in mexico. ey get nothing b wagesfotheilabo that sheltered local industries, but there was a ice procte technological know-how. e nortamerican free trade agement, onafta, was crafted dual end those protections. theso now, the maquiladorasend e locatifrom the u.s.ions. and manyigrants from the holw core move to fiach other in cities soutof theorde ke ts. they are also migrating here to monterrey. located in the northern border region, monterrey is mexico's third largest city and the country's center of heavy industry.

rof 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 the maquiladoras. aquí en la fábrica, pues, como le dijo... translator: here ithe factory we work an eight-hour day. for an eight-houday in my me town, they'd paybout 8,000esos. heren the factory we earn twice as much. narrator: at grote industries, most workers are women, who assemble reflectors and ilg. th a pai62 cents per hour. wthat's less than the goiageilg. in the north along the bor but it is more than new plants

would ha to payin theollow core. grote manager jaime gomez. so probably we're going tourn t in the north part of mexico. they're going to start to develop a lot of maquiladora businesses and it'soing to go down, down and down because we're going toun out of labor. so they have to go farther south. jones agrees that the abundance of cheaper labor inalready, ofelia has a neww new employment option hereouthg is is one of twoew mthat makes women's underwear. they are typical of maquilas moving south. textile workers require fewer skills, so employers can pay them less than workers along the border. jones: since i gaisdy, i've already noted that maquiladoras

are decentralizing into the north central region, into some of the smaller places, and this is having the beneficial effects of increasing the job rate and decreasing e u.s. migration rate. narrator: eight years later, and the numbers confirm his theories. nationwi after 20, e mber of maquilora jobs dipp witthe u.s. recession, but then rebounded again. and employers certainly moved south. in 1993, nonborder states employed ten percent of maquila workers. in998, that percentage increased by over 50%. but how much did maquiladoras actually spread into the hollow core? between 1993 and 1998, these six states almost tripled their maquila employees, adding 44,000 new jobs. they gained jobs almost twice as fast as the rest of mexico.

but wiinhenorte, ere isreatspao san luis potosí, where jonese studied the town of cedral,ico. gained only 2,0 new jobs. that's less than the naonal growth ra. and even though the wages are below those near the border, there is acant multiplier effect. families spend a very highs are percentage of their incomeder, close tobut richard jones employ twas not just interested to see if maquiladoras would spread 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 maquiladora 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. now the u.s. has erected fences and placedgents right up on ths of the border. it forces migrants to cross in remote deserts. overalf a million a year, and . bustileyss-- 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 now instead or bringir whole familiesy and move permanently tohe u.s. it's just too ngerous to cross now instead only have ake it once.d.ienow ms every year now, 50,000 people from just one hollow core state-- michoacan-- migrate to the u.s. about half of them movemanently.

moichoacanos cly live miin california, tex abanhen illinotanme movemanently. so witborders thaton't sp mexins, let alone terrorts, many starting to ask "is ere betterolicy? in theatmecasuegioofentral amea inmetheir populationclese aca has coapseanthenoomeistsand rey without enough land for 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 victim of the violence wa, who lives in this house compound with her surviving grandchildren and their families. the pipes that carry this wate t village were an innovation brought by her son. lso leefs touild aoad aspeakingocalanguager)h. translator: wanting those kinds of thingss in the eyes of certain people. it caused mors to go aroun that he's onoing in the ethat good work people. because he's a member of the gueilla organization. naator:the organizan was caolicction. his son, diego,

was too young to remember his father a grandfather whenaramilitaries entered his compound in 1982. they beat, bound and took away first his grandfather, and then his father. ( speaking local language ) translator: i heard a shot, and i knew my son was dead. narrator:ten years , a humaamong them,oup exhumed 1doña magdalena's son., ( magdalena shouting ) ( wailing ) narrator: ego, ithe crusng blowatc a hisatr's head.vealed now,0 yes afe murders, diego s grow and mod mala c

s farmca longesuorhim. narrator: eghe now sells fruitwatc for ve dolla a day.led te of thousas of otheraya haveigrated here, too. rural-to-urban migraon is a keyegional feature in latin america. diego's siblings face the same problems. poquito nos tocó a cada uno y por eso que cada uno... naatorsince we eacht very ltle land, each one has to move to support one's family. narrator: ththe same forces at pushdaloe inalso led to the violence. what a those forces, ahat are the prospects r change?

e orse will grow ou for a historical geographer, the past is fertile ground. george lovell is researching patterns in both time and space explain t collapse-- and now the explosion-- of maya population aftethe conquest in the6th ceury, the spaniards had little interest in highland resources. 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 anlowland antations. lovell: to supply them with ready pools of labor, spaniards forced maya indians to build

ator: anis... and toive in compact tow like this the w settlements, called congregaciones, were laid out in classic spanish-american grids and located in valleys. the dense urban settlement pattern helped decimate maya population. the conquistadors ought from europe stthe close ling quarters and poor sanitatiostccelered the devastating 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 the spanish empire itself collapsed here,

many indianseft the conggaciones to return to their age-old pattern gradually otheir numbers, too, rebounded the pointhere many now fear a daerous polation explosion. georgeovelwants to know why. narrator: with diego now working anin guatemala city,s now 92. she relies on one of her oer grandso, paulino, george lovell visits still the gonzales farmund. to see if growth of their famils rvests of corn inhave sustained life here whi

for ousands of yea the size of maya population was limited rgely e of theorn harvest. the land has been good to the gonzales family. doña magdalena now has 24 great-grandchildren. she has just divided the land into separate plots for her six grandchildren. are e ots big engheach famy? lovell ( translating ): this is the boundary marker el betweemy land,iel...

you casee st how narrowe, isy brthe strip of land is. rrator: paulino aws a simple map to sw the layout. uh-huh. ah. narrator: doña magdalena's husba once farmed five acres. en it suor11 peoe. now itaso 3 how doy do it? más que nos aguan es has. anslator we harvest ouro can last all of thfamily-- l nine ous-- until 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 to find other work for a good part of the year. that's whyis broer, diego, now lives in the city.

he migrates seasonalfor mporary o many maya for the land? maybe e problem is the wayhe land is used. george lovell heads off to study the dominant industry of the highlands. traditionally it is marked by tall trees g low shruike is. eh, r... porías o toaganquets po translatoronig quetzalen narrator: eightquetzales-- $10 a day-- iseager wage by a standar onoffee pofhe violenceke this,vt it and grion.ross guatemala.

just three perce of guamalas by the m960s controlledwo-thisofhe ae . atel gw co perce of guamalas by the m960s he h cal,ledwo-thisofhe ae . most are cash crops for export. verywho pportoy rerns on the small remaining land. squalid using, impoverishing wages and liand ofir own led many indians and with that desireheir , came conflict. in new milnnium but the underlying the gureproblems remain.

ma't have enough lan who will soon reach to childbearing age.re isin willir culture and economy change toncourage family planning? aturrent rates will they access to birth control? the cwillow doubletion in just 24 yea, compared with 120 years for the u.s. economics, religion and the lack of bih control mean tt fertility rates remain as high as they haveeen for centuries. at the other end of life, however, something has changed thsalu-aspanish foal.cal clinif and keptopulatiohigh. for geographers likeeorge lovell e goodews is tempe byace ground sos ponde t outlook for doña magdale's he can only hope for a change in the balance of people to the land that supports them.

the inequitiesesult from three cycles of conquest, lasting over 500 years. as maya pulation continues to grow,

a ck of ndin guatemala. sus greasoci ueaval captioned by media access group at wgbh lastaccess.wgbh.orgars.