Abstract

Mexico's new braceros

The article focuses on child labor in the Mexicali Valley, which extends south from the southern border of California and Arizona. These are Mexico's forgotten children, working in export agriculture, the hidden victims of North American Free Trade Agreement. Thousands of them produce crops destined for dinner tables in Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo and London. Child labor is not legal in Mexico any more than it is in the United States. Article 123 of the Mexican Constitution says that children under 14 may not work, and those between 14 and 16 may work only six hours a day. While no official statistics are collected on the number of working children in Mexico, the government's Secretariat of Labor and Social Forecasting estimates that 800,000 children under 14 work in different sectors of the economy.