ARTICLES

Stem That Brown Tide

AND MAKE MONEY, TOO!

By Bob McPhail

A Planned Parenthood campaign to reduce the birth rate in Mexico has reached into the workplaces of Tijuana. More than a third of the border city's 300 maquiladoras have agreed to distribute condoms and birth control pills in their plants.

According to Rosa Valiente, industrial coordinator for the Border Projects Foundation, Planned Parenthood's Tijuana affiliate, between 120 and 125 maquiladoras have signed up to dispense contraceptives through on-plant medical clinics. Valiente said that number is slightly midsleading because some maquiladoras operate as many as eight different plants. In such instances, she said, one plant serves as a contraceptive distribution center for other commonly owned plants in the city.

Maquila giants like Matsushita, a Japanese-owned manufacturer of Panasonic and Quasar televisions (three plants, 2000 employees), and Video Tec, whose 4235 workers make color television sets for Sony in four plants, participate in the program. Of the top 25 maquiladoras located in Tijuana in 1995, more than half -- 13 -- are participants in the on-the-job contraception program. As of Janauary 1996, negotiations were underway between the Border Projects Foundation and six others.

Maquiladoras in the top 25 currently participating include: Video Tec de Mexico, Matsushita Industrial de Baja California, Levimex de Baja California, JMP Mexico, Hyundai de Mexico, Hitachi Consumer Products de Mexico, Conair Rotron de Mexico, Especialidades Medicas Kenmex, Rectificadores Internacionales, Mexhon (Honeywell), Neilcor de Mexico, SMK Electronics, and Samsung Mexicana.

Only three maquilas in the top 25 have rejected the idea -- Mabamex, a toy factory owned by Mattel (1200 employees, one plant); Industrias Electronicas Pacifico, a two-plant maquila with 950 workers that make circuit breakers and other electrical products for the Chicago-based Schneider Group; and Componentes Technico de Baja, a French-owned maquila with two plants and 800 workers who make rechargeable batteries. Valiente said maquila managers who reject the program usually give one of two reasons. "Most of them say we cost money," she said. "Some of them say it is not the business of the company to interefere in the personal lives of its employees."

Valiente said she finds it hard to believe that cost is the real reason the program is rejected. The Border Projects Foundation gives a maquila two options to pay service fees. For a flat fee of $100 a month per plant, the foundation will provide an unlimited number of condoms and four different brands of birth control, plus referrals to its downtown surgical clinic, where tubal ligations and vasectomies are performed. Or a physician or nurse at the on-plant clinic can keep track of how many condoms are taken and how many contraceptives dispensed, and the foundation will bill the maquila at highly discounted prices for the items used.

In addition to condoms and contraceptives, the foundation also provides a maquiladora with free posters promoting birth control, and free sex-education pamphlets and videotapes encouraging condom use, contraception, and family planning. As an inducement for workers to participate, maquilas must provide birth control pills or condoms at no cost to their workers.

As industrial coordinator, it is Valiente's job to persuade maquiladora managers to join the foundation's family planning program. First, she contacts the doctor or nurse in charge of the on-plant medical clinic. She said medical personnel are virtually unanimous in their support of the program. The doctor or nurse will then recommend it to the plant manager, and set up a meeting with Valiente. At the meeting, Valiente pitches the plan as both socially responsible and corporately profitable.

In a three-page, typewritten handout provided to plant managers, the Border Projects Foundation pushes the cost savings:

"With a well-coordinated Family Planning Program, you can achieve a savings of up to 28 percent in labor costs," says the pamphlet in a section titled "Did you know, Mr. Businessman...?". "The savings are the result of a reduction in absenteeism and of less need to train subsitutes for those mothers who have other children and now cannot work."

Elsewhere the handout notes, "Of every 100 women of fertile age -- between 15 and 49 years old -- who work in businesses, 40 are at risk of becoming pregnant. About 20 percent of women of fertile age become pregnant in their first year of sexual activity. For each birth, women workers are entitled to 84 days of disability, during which it is necessary to hire temporary substitutes.

"The more efficient use of contraceptives can reduce the frequency of pregnancies in a business up to 20 percent. The more effective use of contraceptives can reduce the rate of absences because of pregnancies up to 30 percent."

According to the handout, birth control will reduce absences for medical appointments, lower the number of disability days used, reduce the number of substitute workers that have to be hired and trained, bring down the amount of money lent to employees to pay for childbirth, and generally keep the factory humming along smoothly without procreation getting in the way of profitmaking.

The foundation claims that statistics compiled from monthly reports filed by maquiladoras participating in the program show an almost 50 percent decrease in pregnancies among their workers.

The so-called "industrial program" is but one prong of a multi-pronged campaign launched more than seven years ago by Planned Parenthood of San Diego and Riverside Counties and the Tijuana-based Border Projects Foundation, which began with a $10,000 Planned Parenthood grant. Since its 1988 founding, the foundation has received money directly or indirectly from Planned Parenthood. Valiente says Planned Parenthood "finds donors" for the Border Projects Foundation, who then contribute anything from clothing and canned foods to thousands of dollars in cash. The foundation is also affiliated with MexFam (Mexican Foundation for Family Planning), Mexico's nationwide family planning organization.

As a three-color, glossy flier published by Planned Parenthood of San Diego and Riverside Counties puts it, "MexFam had the field force, but not enough resources. Planned Parenthood of San Diego and Riverside Counties had the resources, plus the expertise and commitment to generate funding. Together we've accomplished what neither one of us could do alone."

Much of the money used to build a system of eight community clinics in some of Tijuana's poor- est neighborhoods has come from Planned Parenthood or donors located by Planned Parenthood. The small clinics are often the only source of acute medical care available to the poor. Staffed by a doctor, the clinics offer basic medical care along with birth control. Contraception is a service heavily publicized at the clinics, with posters, pamphlets, and readily available condoms. Volunteers, almost exclusively women, fan out each week in the neighborhoods around each clinic explaining and encouraging birth control among the poor. Those interested are directed to the nearby clinic, where the contraceptives are provided. Patients pay a 20-peso (just under $3) all-inclusive fee per visit to the clinic. The clinic program has grown rapidly; two new clinics opened in 1995. The foundation operates clinics from its headquarters in Colonia Las Brisas near the Plaza Carousel Shopping Center, in Camino Verde, Tecolote, El Florido, Matamoros, Colonia Hidalgo, El Pipila, Colonia Lazaro Cardenas, and at the Ibero-American University in Playas. Altogether, foundation officials credit their programs for providing birth control to an estimated 25,000 women in Tijuana.

Catholic officialdom in Tijuana has had nothing critical to say of the Border Projects Foundation's programs, Valiente said. In fact, she said, many priests work alongside foundation volunteers in joint efforts to provide social services to Tijuana's poor. "Sometimes we have problems with Catholic people in the communities," said Valiente. "But not the fathers -- just the people."

This assertion was denied by Monsignor Sergio De La Cerda, vicar general and acting bishop of the Tijuana diocese.

"She is a liar," he said in an interview with News Notes from the chancery in downtown Tijuana. "We have sent out pastoral letters. We have sent out circulars against these kinds of programs. They go against the very source of life and are against the doctrine of the Church. Never and in no way would it be acceptable for a priest -- any priest -- to help them."

Msgr. De La Cerda expressed particular contempt for the methods employed by Planned Parenthood and its agents in Tijuana. "This is a great hypocrisy," he said. "They tell people these clinics are for health, or they put up very nice signs saying they are there to help women. But in some maquiladoras they pressure women to participate in birth control, and if they refuse they tell them, 'Get out of here.'"

The acting bishop, saying that Planned Parenthood has targeted maquiladoras because they are foreign-owned, noted that most of the money behind birth control programs in Mexico comes from other countries, particularly the U.S. "There is great pressure on Mexico from groups in the United States and from the government of the United States -- pressure on all third world countries -- to develop these kinds of programs," he said.

In February 1994, backed with $120,000 in Planned Parenthood money, the Border Projects Foundation opened a surgical center in downtown Tijuana, where tubal ligations, vasectomies, Norplant, and IUD implants are performed. Valiente is in charge of a publicity campaign that began last October because few people were availing themselves of the low-cost but often permanent birth control techniques employed at the surgical center. "It was dying," said Valiente of the surgery center. "Between February 1995 and October 1995, there were only seven surgeries." Although she had no specific numbers, she said a television-radio-newspaper-flier campaign has resulted in an increase in the number of surgical procedures being performed.

One procedure not available, according to Valiente, is abortion, which is illegal in Mexico. "We never, never encourage abortion," she said. "We're against abortion. When this issue comes up as a question from a woman, the only thing we can say is that our job is to give them information on what will happen if they make bad decisions regarding sexuality. We can give her support. Free hospitalization for childbirth. Free clothes. Free food. But we do not approve of abortion."

The foundation is also taking Planned Parenthood's birth control message to Tijuana's youth in a program called Gente Joven ("Young People"). Organized through the school system, the program provides sex education and birth control information to school-age children from elementary school through high school. Valiente said parents must sign a consent form before a child is allowed to participate in the program. Girls and boys are also separated for the counseling sessions, she said. The topics covered include how to report sexual abuse at the hands of an adult, how to prevent sexually-transmitted diseases, how to discuss sexual matters with family and friends and family planning.

Planned Parenthood, which has a full-time binational coordinator to assist with the various Tijuana programs, is apparently well pleased with the activities of its Mexican counterpart. A plaque prominently displayed at the Border Projects Foundation headquarters was awarded to the foundation in October 1992 at the 40th annual International Planned Parenthood Foundation assembly in New Delhi, India. The George and Barbara Cadbury Award was presented to the foundation "for the most significant contribution to the Planned Parenthood movement during the past three years."