The Terror of the Machine: Technology, Work, Gender, and Ecology on the U.S.-Mexico Border

The Terror of the Machine: Technology, Work, Gender, and Ecology on the U.S..Mexico Border, by Devon Pena. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997. 460 pp. $45.00 cloth. ISBN: 0292-76561-4. $19.95 paper. ISBN: 0-29276562-2.

The Terror of the Machine is both an insightful critique of global Fordism and a hopeful account of the grassroots struggles that oppose its deleterious effects on Third World workers and the environment. Basing his analysis on a dozen years of research on the Mexican maquiladora industry, Devon Pena counters the common image of women maquila workers as docile, deskilled, easily exploited victims of transnational capitalist domination with a compelling description of their resistance and creativity. He also provides a thorough account of COMO (the Center for the Orientation of Women Workers), which since the mid- 1970s has educated, empowered, and organized women maquila workers in Cuidad Juarez, and has helped them forge alliances with other community groups to support their struggles within and beyond the workplace.

Pena documents COMO's success in organizing the pepenadores,...