From Border Industrialization to Neoliberal Integration: The Maquiladora Industry in Chihuahua, 1965–2005

Abstract

This article analyzes the evolution of the maquiladora export industry in Chihuahua between 1965 and 2005, drawing on world-systems, dependency, and neoliberalism approaches. It argues that the maquiladora industry initially emerged within Mexico’s developmentalist model but established productive, institutional, and labor mechanisms that later facilitated the economic liberalization process initiated in 1982. The study shows that, with economic liberalization and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the maquiladora industry became a central mechanism for Mexico’s integration into transnational production chains. Although it promoted employment, foreign investment, and technological development in Chihuahua, it also deepened dependence on the U.S. market, limited linkages with domestic industry, and labor precarization. The article concludes that the maquiladora experience constituted a significant territorial and institutional antecedent to the subsequent consolidation of the neoliberal model in Mexico.