Download Sweaters: Gender class and workshop-based industry in Mexico by Fiona Wilson PDF

Show description

Few found they could join a stable urban proletariat. Even fewer were able to achieve social mobility through higher education: one migrant rose to a senior position in the Ministry of Education and another became personnel Economic and Social Relations before 1960 45 manager in a large metallurgical consortium in Mexico City - both returned home to Santiago on retirement. But in general, migration to the towns led to a temporary, insecure or incomplete incorporation into the urban working class of Mexico or the US; contacts with Santiago were not broken.

They scourged a large area of westerncentral Mexico, threatening in particular the more isolated upland settlements where they looted and killed, raped women and committed other excesses. 1 The people of Santiago lived in constant fear of bandits. When they were in the neighbourhood, those who could escape left for larger safer towns or went up to the hills. Those trapped in town hid in the house roofs. On various occasions the bandits ransacked and burnt the town, using dried chili pepper to smoke out the remaining inhabitants.

Many workshops produce sweaters only in the winter season, and make up fashion clothing from bought cotton cloth during the hot months. In the latter type of manufacture, the most successful have been those businesses where a family member has received some professional training in design and cutting. The capitalisation of production and increasingly technical skills of family members means that this type of production need draw on fewer wage, workers than formerly. The workshops and family-run enterprises that do employ labour prefer workers from the neighbouring (and reputedly backward) towns of Uriangato and Cuitzeo or from the surrounding ranchos.