In 1998, Sergio De La Torre, a photographer and artist living in San Francisco, and Vicky Funari, a filmmaker, traveled to De La Torre’s hometown of Tijuana, Mexico, to meet with organizers at Factor X, an advocacy group for women working in maquiladoras.
That visit turned into “MAQUILÁPOLIS” (“City of Factories”), a groundbreaking documentary, released in 2006 that used footage made by women working inside maquiladoras — factories known for poor working conditions that are found throughout Latin America, but especially on the Mexican side of the border — to show the everyday lives of people living around them.
Twenty years later, De La Torre, Funari, and Lourdes Luján, one of the documentary’s protagonists and collaborators, return for a 20th year anniversary screening at the Roxie, to talk about what has and hasn’t changed since the film was released.
Tijuana houses over 570 foreign-owned assembly factories that span over thousands of acres of land.
Maquiladoras first began to appear in the 1960s under the Mexico Border Industrialization Program, but their numbers boomed after the 1994 approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement which removed tariff barriers between Canada, United States and Mexico. The Border Industrialization program still continues today under a new tariff agreement called Manufacturing, Maquila and Export Service Industry.
In MAQUILÁPOLIS, women share stories of labor violations, wage theft and exposure to harmful chemicals. Luján describes how her family struggles to survive on factory wages — one jug of water for her family costs nine pesos, equivalent to one hour’s pay.
A resident of Colonia Chilpancingo, a neighborhood in Tijuana, Luján became an advocate and organizer after she watched her neighbors become sick from exposure to deadly chemicals like lead. The Almar River, which she once played in as a child, became a dumping ground for toxic waste.
MAQUILAPOLIS documents how Luján, navigates a successful battle to get the Mexican and U.S. government to acknowledge and clean up the toxic waste site left behind by a U.S.- owned battery recycling plant. Today, the former site of Metales y Derivados is a community soccer field.
“The impact was positive for everyone involved in the community struggle,” Luján said in an interview in Spanish. “The community benefited too. We managed to get the government to take responsibility.”
Still, problems remain.
Residents of Chilpancingo and neighboring communities complained of green and foamy water running through the Almar, and frequent water runoff and flooding as recently as 2025. The Mexican government and maquiladoras claim that precipitation is to blame, while a study published in the journal Social Sciences found that illegal dumping from maquiladoras plays a dominant role in the river’s pollution and flooding.
“I do not believe that the world has gotten better in the 20 years since the film was made,” said Funari. “But what is important to me everywhere all the time is that people have agency and they use that agency. I think the film is a message that you can do that and it can work. No matter how big the antagonist is.”
Co-director De La Torre, agrees. “I feel like we succeeded in the film project because it is a documentary that tells you their lives,” he said.
Luján, who now works at a laundromat in southern California, says the labor abuses she documented at the maquiladora still persist.
“You leave the job, and they can just hire someone else. In other words, the maquiladora never loses, while the worker always loses,” Luján said. “Missing out on family time due to work, and earning a wage that, honestly, isn’t enough to buy the basics in Tijuana or any other city in Mexico.”
Luján left the maquiladora industry in the early 2000s and is no longer a promotora, or activist But, she keeps in close touch with her former coworkers and promotoras.
“They’ll keep fighting until the end,” she said. “My personal satisfaction is that we learned to not stay quiet and to fight for not only our environmental rights, but our labor rights.”
The first 20th anniversary screening of MAQUILÁPOLIS was held in Tijuana, said Funari. At that screening, she said, attendees asked if they would consider making another film, to document the conditions today.
Funari and De La Torre say they are ready to pass the torch. “We just kept saying ‘We’re in our 60’s now. You have to do it.’”
“MAQUILÁPOLIS” is showing at the Roxie Theater at 3:45 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 12. You can buy tickets here.
