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Foxconn, Ciudad Juárez, and the Trials of Solidarity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2020

Gabriel Solis
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Extract

In San Jeronimo, Chihuahua, on the outskirts of Ciudad Juárez, a beige monolith of placid architecture hovers over the newly reconstructed US-Mexico border wall. Looking like a mix between a prison and a city built entirely of suburban Walmarts, this is in fact Foxconn's largest assembly plant at the US-Mexico Border; a shrine of sorts to over fifty-five years of low-cost export manufacturing in the region. And in 2010, it was where a decade of labor struggle was about begin. On a cold night in February 2010, around three hundred night workers at Foxconn's San Jeronimo factory on the outskirts of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, anxiously waited for company buses to finally deliver them home after a long shift. Soon enough however, managers filed out of the factory to inform the workers that the due to technical issues, the buses were not coming. According to worker accounts, the managers explained that the best thing these workers could do was work an extra shift, and wait for the buses to arrive later in the morning. Realizing that they were essentially being held against their will at the remote factory, and perhaps fueled by recent lay-offs on the assembly line and consistent pressure to work extra shifts, anger erupted in the crowd. By the end of the night, workers had set fire to the cafeteria, smashed the managers’ dormitory windows, and collided more than once with security guards. Days later, despite Foxconn's assurance to the press that there would be no reprisal, around 75 night-shift workers were identified and fired from the company.

In San Jeronimo, Chihuahua, on the outskirts of Ciudad Juárez, a beige monolith of placid architecture hovers over the newly reconstructed US-Mexico border wall. Looking like a mix between a prison and a city built entirely of suburban Walmarts, this is in fact Foxconn's largest assembly plant at the US-Mexico Border; a shrine of sorts to over fifty-five years of low-cost export manufacturing in the region. And in 2010, it was where a decade of labor struggle was about begin. On a cold night in February 2010, around three hundred night workers at Foxconn's San Jeronimo factory on the outskirts of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, anxiously waited for company buses to finally deliver them home after a long shift. Soon enough however, managers filed out of the factory to inform the workers that the due to technical issues, the buses were not coming.Footnote 1 According to worker accounts, the managers explained that the best thing these workers could do was work an extra shift, and wait for the buses to arrive later in the morning. Realizing that they were essentially being held against their will at the remote factory, and perhaps fueled by recent lay-offs on the assembly line and consistent pressure to work extra shifts, anger erupted in the crowd. By the end of the night, workers had set fire to the cafeteria, smashed the managers’ dormitory windows, and collided more than once with security guards. Days later, despite Foxconn's assurance to the press that there would be no reprisal, around 75 night-shift workersFootnote 2 were identified and fired from the company.

For those who know a bit about the maquiladora industry, this story isn't out of the ordinary. Like other border cities, Ciudad Juárez’ maquiladoras (the often foreign-owned export-manufacturing plants that dominate the border region) have a historical record of sub-par labor conditions and repressive management tactics that date back to the 1960s. Likewise, despite the absence of independent trade unions, workers have continuously organized within an otherwise repressive workplace environment, coordinating wild cat strikes, work stoppages, and anonymous acts of sabotage. Yet for those familiar with the history of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., otherwise known as Foxconn, this story is even less exceptional.

In January of 2010—just one month prior to the arson at the Ciudad Juárez plant—a worker named Ma XiangqianFootnote 3 leapt to his death from his high-rise dormitory at Foxconn's industrial “campus” in China's Shenzhen Special Economic Zone. Like the protestors at the Ciudad Juárez plant, Ma Xiangqian also worked the night shift, spending eleven hours a night, seven days a week producing electronic parts. He too had worked long hours beyond his normal shift, accumulating 112 hours of overtime in the month before he committed suicide. By the end of the year, seventeen more suicidesFootnote 4 would follow, leading the company to set up suicide-prevention nets around the high-rise dormitories and to try to supposedly begin reforming workplace conditions. These reforms were ultimately unable to prevent future suicides, notably that of Xu LizhiFootnote 5 in 2014, a worker who had been popular among his peers for his poetry about the harsh conditions in the factory.

Much has been written in the past decade about Foxconn's labor conditions, the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer that first entered mainland China in 1988, and which has since extended its export-manufacturing operations across the world. Premier in the market of sub-contract manufacturing, transnational electronics companies continue to privately swoon for Foxconn's rapid and low-cost assembly operations. Of course, this reputation for speed and efficiency has come at great cost to its workforce. In its facilities scattered throughout China, the company is notorious for pressuring workers to do prolonged overtime,Footnote 6 for running a dubious student “internship” program,Footnote 7 for its waves of worker suicides, recently leaked reports of shop-floor sexual harassment,Footnote 8 and periodic labor unrestFootnote 9 over consistently exhausting working conditions. Meanwhile, the company's CEO Terry Gou has done his best to transform himself into an entrepreneurial guru and would-be politician in Taiwan, whose self-help aphorisms are pressed company-wide onto employees. And in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, Foxconn was quick to seek a special negotiation for reopening factoriesFootnote 10 in the midst of the disease's initial outbreak.

Yet reviewing the history of Foxconn in China and at the US-Mexico Border over the past decade, one also sees a parallel history of hyper-exploitation and labor militancy. Foxconn's Chinese and Mexican workers have not only simultaneously suffered under similar labor abuses but have also organized around very similar demands, all while working within the same supply chain assembling goods for the world's largest electronics companies. In a recent article,Footnote 11 I've argued that the history of the maquiladora needs to be contextualized within the shifting global orbit of export-manufacturing, and that rather than relying exclusively on the hopes of North-South solidarity, activists need to start imagining more profound internationalist labor organizing across export zones in the Global South. In this article, I would like to suggest that Foxconn's global reach offers a material space to think through the possibility of such international labor organizing, as well as its significant (and perhaps overwhelming) challenges. Indeed, what would be the implications if workers in China and Mexico—or in Hon Hai's other global facilities in India, Vietnam, Brazil, Malaysia, and the Czech Republic—were to simultaneously and consciously strike together against Foxconn's consistent history of intimidation and hyper-exploitation? How could active communication between these laborers and local activists contribute to a stronger labor movement in each region?

In the following sections, I hope to situate (and problematize) these questions by offering a brief chronology of militant labor organizing in Foxconn's facilities in Ciudad Juárez. It is my hope that this abbreviated history can quickly highlight some of the major events in Foxconn's short history in the Mexican border city, and provide a useful site of comparison for activists and scholars researching Foxconn's global expansion. Yet most importantly, I also hope this piece will contribute to ongoing discussions on the need for a new wave of internationalist organizing in the twenty-first century. In this sense, it is not only important to identify sites of possible collaboration but to also take stock of some recent challenges in North-South and Transpacific solidarity networks that have relied on resources, scholarship, and activism based in the United States. By assessing these contrasting examples, I hope that those of us looking to support a new internationalism might soberly comprehend its inherent challenges, as well as its persistent importance.

Foxconn and the workers of Ciudad Juárez

Given that Foxconn is primarily reliant on its assembly operations in China, where it employs nearly 1.3 million workers,Footnote 12 it is reasonable that the company's steady expansion in Mexico's maquiladora industry has received less attention. Nevertheless, the pace and profundity of Foxconn's penetration into border export-manufacturing is nothing less than astonishing. Having first established itself in Mexico in 2003, by 2013, Foxconn had already had become the nation's second largest exporter.Footnote 13 As is the norm in the maquiladora industry—which has grown in leaps and bounds alongside local currency devaluations and uneven trade deals—Foxconn's expansion rode the tidal waves of social and economic crisis. From 2010 to 2011, in the wake of industry-wide restructuring following the 2008 recession, the company acquired Cisco's large-scale facility in Ciudad Juárez, as well as Sony's maquiladora in Tijuana, both of which produced parts for television sets. Foxconn made these acquisitions during one of the most violent periods in Ciudad Juárez’ recent history, when the city saw rising rates of femicide and the Mexican government's disastrous war on drug cartels transformed the city into an open battlefield, briefly granting Juárez the moniker of “World's Most Dangerous City.”

Yet Foxconn's pivot to Mexican border cities and its rapid ascent in the industry can also be contextualized with Mexico's shifting position within the global web of export-manufacturing. As one of the principal pilot cities for the global factory in the Americas, Ciudad Juárez’ consistently low wages, ongoing social crises, and proximity to the United States have increasingly granted it and other border cities competitive status with export industrial zones in China and Southeast Asia. Beginning in 2011, wages in Chinese assembly plants finally rose above those of Mexico's maquiladoras, and Ciudad JuárezFootnote 14 emerged as one of the cheapest cities to manufacture goods in on the border. It also doesn't hurt that the majority of the maquiladora industry is unionized through a handful of highly compromised trade unions, known as charro unions, with historically proximate relationships to employers and the once-ruling dictatorial party, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). In Juárez, even fewer maquilas are organized under these unions, but Foxconn has had a light affiliation with the once hegemonic Confederación de Trabajadorees de México (CTM) since at least 2010. Yet like their colleagues in China—who are also often unknowingly affiliated with the state-sanctioned All China Federation of Trade Unions—Mexican assembly workers have not passively accepted the global demand for cheap, obedient labor as mediated through state-sanctioned unions and transnational assembly plants. Over the years, strikes in the maquiladora industry have been on the uptick, and workers at Foxconn's assembly plants have often been some of the most vocal participants.

The 2010 bus incident at Foxconn's maquiladora in San Jeronimo presaged a new wave of strikes that were about to challenge the status quo of the maquiladora industry. In a comment threadFootnote 15 for a YouTube video of the bus-related arson, other maquila workers continued to add comments indicating that little had changed at Foxconn in the years after the arson. In a string of angry posts, other workers cited ongoing malpractice surrounding overtime, the inability to go to the bathroom while on shift, and continued substandard wages. In 2015, those tensions finally came to the surface when Foxconn workers joined other maquilas in an unprecedented wild cat strike wave in Ciudad Juárez.

The movement initially began in May of 2015, when thirty-eight workers at the Irish-owned EATON maquiladora were fired for trying to organize for better conditions within the maquiladora. Yet rather than sending a message to other workers, the retaliation may well have struck a final nerve, as a wave of discontent began sweeping through the city's maquiladoras. On August 12, 2015, two hundred Foxconn workers staged a work stoppage,Footnote 16 calling attention to rampant abuse, sexual harassment, unfair firings, and starvation wages of around 650 pesos a week, which in 2015 equated to less than $45 USD. Just as it had done prior in 2010, the company quickly responded with a round of retaliatory lay-offs,Footnote 17 targeting 125 workers. Nevertheless, the protest wave continued in Ciudad Juárez, as walk-outs and work stoppages emerged at other maquiladoras such as Lexmark, Commscope, Delphi, and Lear. In the ensuing months, hundreds of Foxconn workers continued to march in the streets demanding higher wages and an independent union, even as the company continued to haphazardly threaten anyone participating in the organizing. By November, workers had set up encampments in front of the above maquiladoras, refusing to leave until their demands had been met.

After many months of intimidation, waning media interest, and a brutal winter where dozens of workers maintained twenty-four hour shifts at the encampments outside of the maquiladoras, the wild cat strike wave finally began to die down. In its aftermath, some workers opted to continue to work alongside local lawyers like Cuauhtemoc Estrada or Susana Prieto Terrazas in addressing labor conditions in Mexican courts, and many more returned to work out of fear and economic desperation. Nevertheless, it was clear that something had shifted, and after many years of silence in the industry,Footnote 18 workers had once more begun considering militant political action.

On May 11, 2018, nearly 5,000 workersFootnote 19 at Foxconn's San Jeronimo plant halted work on the assembly lines and walked off the job. Workers were protesting Foxconn's failure to completely pay workers their annual reparto de utilidades, a legal requirement that forces large employers in Mexico to share a small percentage of profits with their workforce. Yet worker demands also included a wider range of grievances, including stagnantly low wages, transport buses without heat or air conditioning, poor cafeteria food, and delayed wage payments. Within days, Foxconn's management agreed to sign a new deal with workers,Footnote 20 ensuring full payment of bonuses at the standard rate and higher wages for assembly workers.

Given this longer history of upheaval, it is no surprise that Foxconn workers have also been some of the loudest voices opposing the unilateral re-opening of factories during the COVID-19 pandemic. In early April, workers at Foxconn once again halted work to protest the company's decision to keep its factories running,Footnote 21 without implementing social distancing measures or maintaining sanitary standards, all while reports of workers falling ill were on the increase. In the ensuing weeks, particularly after the revelation that dozens of maquiladora workersFootnote 22 had died from COVID-19 contracted at work in the city, Foxconn began offering packages that allowed workers to voluntarily report for work, or stay home with significantly reduced wage rates. Still, some Foxconn workers opted to keep the momentum going and marched with the employees of other maquiladorasFootnote 23 in mid-May to demand full compensation and time off during the pandemic. Despite all of these actions, in a recent videoFootnote 24 uploaded on July 3, 2020, to a Facebook meme page run by Foxconn's workers, it is clear that the factory has failed to implement any meaningful social distancing in their transport services.

Although the advances in organizing of the past decade are surely important, Foxconn's workers in Juárez—along with maquiladora workers throughout the industry—still have a long way to go to achieve the loftier demands of the 2015 movement. Likewise, the recent arrestFootnote 25 in early June of the Ciudad Juárez-based labor attorney Susana Prieto Terrazas—who has on multiple occasions collaborated with workers from Foxconn—has put a dark cloud over the future of labor organizing in Mexico, particularly at a moment when Mexico is pushing new legal reforms that promise to pave the way for independent union organizing.

Often a quick and easy response on the US Left to these types of repressive clamp-downs in the industry is to call for more solidarity amongst US workers with Mexican workers. Yet it is worthwhile to ask ourselves, what that solidarity should actually look like, and how it would actively differ from what labor unions in the United States have already been doing for years. These types of questions also provide a good entry point for analyzing recent attacks on attempts at building even bolder transnational solidarity networks, and the implications they carry for organizations within the United States’ institutional orbit.

The trials and tribulations of “solidarity”

In a very formal sense, major US-based labor unions have actively participated in pressing for maquiladora workers’ demands for decades. In the early 1990s, US unionsFootnote 26 tried to support study centers in border cities, and even tried to help workers establish independent unions inside the maquiladoras. The crises of the 1990s and early 2000s hampered these efforts, however, as post-NAFTA economic disparity and rising urban violence radically transformed many border cities. Yet in 2015, this sort of attempted collaboration saw a resurgence, and the AFL-CIO sent representatives to Ciudad Juárez to visit encampments, meet with workers, and later published a statement of solidarity.Footnote 27 When the 20/32 movement'sFootnote 28 forty-eight factory–strong strike exploded in Matamoros in 2019, the AFL-CIO once more issued a statementFootnote 29 praising the organizing of maquiladora workers. Most recently, with the arrest of labor attorney Susana Prieto Terrazas, the president of the AFL-CIO Richard Trumka even personally issued a statement decrying the arrest (just weeks before he spoke in defense of police unions remaining in the AFL-CIO).Footnote 30 Yet aside from providing a quick morale boost and additional pressure for striking workers, one has to ask themselves whether or not these statements and brief partnerships have meaningfully contributed to cross border labor solidarity? To what extent have these efforts produced lasting political relationships, and if this is not the case, then why not?

Much of this has to do with the difficulty of establishing, and maintaining, rank-and-file relationships across borders; an activity that is already hard enough amongst the organizational staff of larger unions and NGOs. Yet it also raises questions concerning the utility of representatives from major US-based unions that seek to meet with wild cat strikes organizers in the Global South, who have otherwise opted to organize outside of existing union structures in their own countries. Although I do not doubt that many of these international union reps truly believe in the labor movements they are trying to support, it seems difficult to ignore the significant organizational and political discrepancies that exist between both camps. Although many workers in Juárez have recently opted for the creation of independent unions, this has not been the only historical organizational form in industrial upheavals on both sides of the border.

Indeed, in the 1980s, many workers in El Paso's textile industry and Juárez’ then-booming maquiladora industry opted to create worker centers like the Centro de Orientación de la Mujer Obrera in Juárez, and long-standing organization La Mujer Obrera in neighboring El Paso, Texas. In the latter case, the decision to organize around women-led worker centers rather than within major trade unions came from a history of bruised relations with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA), who had organized predominantly Chicana assembly workers at the Farah Manufacturing CompanyFootnote 31 in the 1970s. Although the ACWA and the AFL-CIO had undoubtedly supported workers in gaining international recognition of their movement, many women workers felt increasingly isolated by the union's organizational tactics and its willingness to accede to company demands. By the end of the 1970s, after a series of politically targeted lay-offs and large-scale reversals of prior demands, most militant workers had sworn off the union. Although many major unions have supported recent wild cat strikes in Mexico, worker accusations of charrismo in Mexico could easily be applied to union politics in the Farah's struggle. And to this day, many movement elders in El Paso who had collaborated with the ACWA still make jokes about the “buckets of bud light” required to work with major unions, and the underlying problem of overwhelmingly white, male leadership.

Aside from questions of political organization, the presence of US-based labor organizations have also inadvertently worked to undermine transnational organizing efforts. Indeed, many powerful interests within Mexico have tried to suggest “foreign meddling,” in the face of active participation from US-based solidarity organizations. Such was certainly the case in 2012, where in a struggle over communal rights to land being used for a large-scale mining operation in DurangoFootnote 32, the Canadian-based mining company Excellon Resources Inc.Footnote 33 accused activists from the Mexico-based organization ProDESC of maintaining affiliations with the AFL-CIO's solidarity center, which “ensure well-paying salaries for the NGO's employees.” More recently, in an editorialFootnote 34 in the Mexican newspaper El Universal, Raúl Rodríguez Cortés accused the US-based Grupo Poder, an organization that had been organizing in solidarity with local communities against a mining project in Hermosillo, Sonora, of secretly following Richard Trumka's leadership in the United States.

Whereas in the above mentioned cases it is not clear that accusations of AFL-CIO affiliation caused these movements irreparable damage, labor organizers in China have not been so lucky in the wake of similar smear campaigns. In 2015, after a period of relative tolerance for wild cat strikes in Guangdong's industry-heavy Pearl River Delta, authorities suddenly initiated a rapid crack-down on labor organizers and local NGOs.Footnote 35 Amongst those caught in the raids, authorities broadcasted a particularly vicious smear campaign against Zeng Feiyang of the Guangzhou-based Panyu Workers Service Center. In ensuing media broadcasts, state authorities accused Zeng of embezzlement and receiving funding from overseas organizations interested in meddling in Chinese politics, inciting workers to riot. Part of these accusations potentially stem from the Panyu Workers Center's collaborationFootnote 36 beginning in 2011, with the China Labor Bulletin, a HK-based labor NGO that some claim received funding from the US government. Yet regardless of the accuracy of these claims, presumed affiliation with US- funded labor organizations has undoubtedly come at great costs for labor organizers in China.

Unfortunately, even on the Left, accusations of receiving funding from the US government have been mobilized to smear genuine attempts at building transnational solidarity networks. The recent attemptsFootnote 37 to smear the Lausan Collective as some sort of CIA-funded puppet cell is a good example. Although (as in every leaderless protest movement) there are undoubtedly right-wing and uncritically pro-US elements in the HK protest movement, Lausan represents an entirely different political trajectory. Established in 2019, the Lausan Collective has attempted to provide an analysis of Hong Kong's recent protest movement from a decolonial and an anti-imperialist, anti-neoliberal position. More importantly however, Lausan and other HK-based leftist organizations have attempted to coordinate strategic exchanges between HK activists and organizers active in antiracist and anticapitalist organizing around the world. Nonetheless, various internet cliques and even prominent intellectuals have attempted to derail these efforts, claiming that the entirety of the HK protest movement is little more than a homogenous mass of reactionary elements, with funding packages fresh from the US State Department. Recently, internet trolls bombarded the Sunrise Movement's twitter account after it tried to coordinate an activist exchangeFootnote 38 between Black Lives Matters organizers and HK-based leftist activists. In a particularly embarrassing moment, Ben Norton mistookFootnote 39 Johnson Yeung for Joshua Wong, and falsely accused Jonathan of meeting with Marco Rubio based on photos of Wong circulating on the internet. Although some of these smear campaigns and misrecognitions are certainly laughable, the damage these accusations can do should not be taken lightly. The potential for directly harming transnational organizing through mistaken or even light affiliation, present significant challenges to solidarity networks that to some degree rely on funding, research and activist support in the United States.

If solidarity between worker-led movements in the export zones scattered throughout the Global South were ever to materialize, these problems would have to be taken into account. Indeed, who exactly is presuming to mediate conversations between disparate parts of the globe, with significant linguistic differences? If the answer is either US-based solidarity networks or academics from the Global North, then many of the previously mentioned challenges will inevitable arise and threaten movements’ long-term success. Although this work is desperately needed, especially in an industry where worker militancy prompts manufacturers to threaten capital flight, the consequences of labor organizing in cities like Ciudad Juárez or Guangzhou can be severe; much less organizing across borders.

Yet these examples are not meant to disempower ongoing attempts at building such transnational, anticapitalist and anti-imperialist organizing efforts. Indeed, as someone who participated in group solidarity efforts with the 2015–6 Juárez strike wave, I can without hesitation say that the work of other transnational solidarity networks indirectly supported our ongoing analysis of the maquiladora insurgency. I am here referring to the work of Parisol, a Seattle-based Asian-American political formation that grew out of local Chinatown organizing, but which eventually actively participated in trying to build transpacific networks of solidarity between diasporic communities and working class struggles in East and Southeast Asia. In 2014, Parisol members helped to translate and diffuse the poetryFootnote 40 of the previously mentioned worker-poet Xu Lizhi, who used his poetry to detail the exploitative conditions of Foxconn's operations in Shenzhen. In 2016, after the protest wave had subsided, these texts—alongside generous phone conversations and online exchanges—nourished my (now defunct) group's analysis of what we were facing, and helped us to understand the extent to which the class struggle in the maquiladoras were part of a much larger collision between labor and transnational capital on a global scale.

That class struggle continues today in cities like Ciudad Juárez, in Foxconn's global assembly plants around the world, in the resurgence of neo-colonial mining projects in the Americas, and in the everyday upheavals in the detention camps that are sinking their roots into the communities along the US border cities. Although this article chose to highlight Foxconn as a site to conceptualize the challenges and possibilities of creating new networks of internationalist organizing, there are no shortages of struggles that urgently need to begin building along lines of working-class solidarity. At a moment when capital's mobility continues to outweigh the political rights of migrants; when antiblackness, settler-colonialism, and transphobia's global imprint continues to haunt communities; and when xenophobic rhetoric, pandemic-related border closures, and imperialist repositioning is threatening to plunge countless societies into ever-deeper confrontations with fascist political movements; the need for fervent internationalism is as important as ever. It is my sincere hope that the working-class movements on the US-Mexico border can actively participate in those desperately needed networks. Foxconn might be a good place to start.

References

NOTES

1. SD Maquila, February 26, 2010, “Ciudad Juarez Foxconn: Trabajadoras queman maquiladora [Workers burn down a maquiladora].” http://sdmaquila.blogspot.com/2010/03/ciudad-juarez-foxconn-workers-burn-down.html.

2. Industriall Union, March 4, 2010, “Foxconn dismisses workers after protest.” http://www.industriall-union.org/archive/imf/foxconn-dismisses-workers-after-protest.

3. The New York Times, June 6, 2010, “After Suicides, Scrutiny of China's Grim Factories,” David Barboza. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/business/global/07suicide.html

4. Wired, February 28, 2011, “1 Million Workers. 90 Million iPhones. 17 Suicides. Who's to Blame?” Joel Johnson. https://www.wired.com/2011/02/ff-joelinchina/.

5. Libcom, “The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker: Xu Lizhi (1990–2014). https://libcom.org/blog/xulizhi-foxconn-suicide-poetry.

6. The New York Times, June 11, 2018, “Foxconn is Under Scrutiny for Worker Conditions. It's not the First Time,” Jamie Condliffe. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/business/dealbook/foxconn-worker-conditions.html.

7. CNBC, October 11, 2013, “Foxconn admits to interns working overtime, night shifts,” Matt Clinch. https://www.cnbc.com/2013/10/11/foxconn-admits-student-intern-labor-violations-at-china-plant.html.

8. SupChina, January 26, 2018, “‘I am a woman worker at Foxconn, and I demand a system that opposes sexual harassment’: A translated essay,” Jiayun Feng. https://supchina.com/2018/01/26/i-am-a-woman-worker-at-foxconn-demand-system-opposes-sexual-harassment/.

9. The Guardian, October 5, 2012, “Foxconn workers on iPhone 5 line strike in China, rights group says,” Adam Gabbatt. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/oct/05/foxconn-apple-iphone-china-strike.

10. Reuters, February 9, 2020, “Apple's main iPhone maker Foxconn to resume some Chinese production: source,” Yimou Lee. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-foxconn/apples-main-iphone-maker-foxconn-to-resume-some-chinese-production-source-idUSKBN20403Q.

11. Spectre Journal, May 18, 2020, “Crisis and the Global Factory at the US-Mexico Border,” Gabriel Solis. https://spectrejournal.com/crisis-and-the-global-factory-at-the-u-s-mexico-border/.

12. Business Insider, May 7, 2018, “Inside ‘iPhone City,’ the massive Chinese factory town where half of the world's iPhones are produced.” https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-iphone-factory-foxconn-china-photos-tour-2018-5.

13. El Economista, May 21, 2013, “Filial de Foxconn, segunda firma exportadora del país.” https://www.eleconomista.com.mx/empresas/Filial-de-Foxconn-segunda-firma-exportadora-del-pais-20130521-0125.html.

14. The Atlantic, January 21, 2016, “Upheaval in the Factories of Juarez,” Alana Semuels. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/01/upheaval-in-the-factories-of-juarez/424893/.

15. YouTube, February 22, 2010, “Incendian Maquila Foxconn en CD Juarez.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhbrnK_PQ5w.

16. La Izquierda Diaro, August 13, 2015, “Paro en la maquila Foxconn en Ciudad Juárez.” https://laizquierdadiario.com.mx/Paro-en-la-maquila-Foxconn-en-Ciudad-Juarez.

17. La Opcion, August 15, 2015, “Corren a empleados de Foxconn en Ciudad Juárez por protestas.” http://laopcion.com.mx/noticia/104175.

18. The Nation, November 20, 2015, “The Maquiladora Workers of Juárez Find Their Voice,” David Bacon. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/the-maquiladora-workers-of-juarez-find-their-voice/.

19. La Izquierda Diario, May 12, 2018, “Paran la produccion 5,000 obreros en 3 plantas maquiladoras de Foxconn.” https://laizquierdadiario.com.mx/Paran-la-produccion-5-000-obreros-en-3-plantas-maquiladoras-de-FOXCONN.

20. La Jornada Baja California, May 13, 2018, “Decide fabrica de Cd. Juarez pagar utilidades completes a sus empleados.” https://www.jornadabc.mx/tijuana/13-05-2018/decide-fabrica-de-cd-juarez-pagar-utilidades-completas-sus-empleados.

21. Puente Libre, April 1, 2020, “Indigna a trabajadores de Foxconn que no tomen medias por COVID-19.” http://puentelibre.mx/noticia/trabajadores_foxconn_santa_teresa_indignados_falta_medidas_covid_19_ciudad_juarez/.

22. The Los Angeles Times, April 18, 2020, “US factories in Mexico are still open. As the coronavirus spreads, workers are dying.” https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-04-18/u-s-factories-in-mexico-are-still-open-as-the-coronavirus-spreads-workers-are-dying.

23. Animal Politico, May 18, 2020, “Empleados acusan que los obligan a trabajar pese a muertes por COVID en maquiladoras de Chihuahua.” https://www.animalpolitico.com/2020/05/empleados-maquiladoras-chihuahua-protestan-muertes-covid19/.

24. https://www.facebook.com/memesdefoxconn/.

25. Reuters, June 16, 2020, “ US unions urge Mexico to defend workers’ rights after labor advocate's arrest.” https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-mexico-labor/us-unions-urge-mexico-to-defend-workers-rights-after-labor-advocates-arrest-idUSKBN23N3JW.

26. The Nation, November 20, 2015, “The Maquiladora Workers of Juárez Find Their Voice,” David Bacon. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/the-maquiladora-workers-of-juarez-find-their-voice/.

27. AFL-CIO, January 11, 2016. “Worker Protests in Ciudad Juarez Shine a Light on Ongoing Workers’ Rights Violations in Mexico.” https://aflcio.org/2016/1/11/worker-protests-ciudad-juarez-shine-light-ongoing-workers-rights-violations-mexico.

28. Dissent Magazine, April 4, 2019, “Mexican Labor Reawakens.” https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/mexican-labor-reawakens.

29. AFL-CIO, February 11, 2019, “US Unions bring Solidarity to Striking Mexican Workers.” https://aflcio.org/2019/2/11/us-unions-bring-solidarity-striking-mexican-workers.

30. AFL-CIO, June 10, 2020, “Workers’ Rights Advocate Must Be Immediately Released.” https://aflcio.org/press/releases/workers-rights-advocate-must-be-immediately-released.

31. Texas State Historical Association, “Farah Strike.” https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/farah-strike.

32. Durango. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMrSdpSSQYk.

33. Excellon Resources. http://www.excellonresources.com/news/details/index.php?content_id=135.

34. El Universal, “El doble juego de Napito con el outsourcing.” https://www.eluniversal.com.mx/opinion/raul-rodriguez-cortes/el-doble-juego-de-napito-con-el-outsourcing.

35. Quartz, December 23, 2015, “China has seen a 13-fold increase in labor strikes and protests since 2011 – and it's cracking down.” https://qz.com/580553/china-is-cracking-down-on-labor-rights-ngos-in-its-worlds-factory-with-a-state-media-smear-campaign/.

36. https://wolfsmoke.wordpress.com/2017/07/29/2015-labor-ngo-crackdown/#_ftn8.

37. New Bloom, “The Qiao Collective and Left Diasporic Chinese Nationalism.” https://newbloommag.net/2020/06/22/qiao-collective-nationalism/

38. Lausan, June 18, 2020, “We can't let China apologists stop us from supporting Black Lives Matter.” https://lausan.hk/2020/we-cant-let-china-apologists-stop-us-from-supporting-black-lives-matter/.

39. https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1273083253298266112?s=20.

40. https://parisolnet.wordpress.com/2014/12/15/5/.