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Salvadoran Pres. Flores Promotes CAFTA/Maquilas at US Textile and Footwear Conference

from La Presna Grafica (El Salvador), June 15, 2003
by Julio Marenco

President Francisco Flores gave a talk yesterday to the presidents of the most important U.S. textile and footwear companies, who were meeting for there annual conference in San Francisco.

The presence of Flores at the annual conference of the American Apparel and Footwear Association (AAFA) was meant, according to the President, to gather more support for the negotiation of the Central America Free trade Agreement (CAFTA).

Flores espoused to the owners some of the benefits that El Salvador had to offer to maquilas in its country. “The time it takes to transport goods to the US is very short. We are modernizing our customs structure, to the point that we have already been able to establish production operations 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This significantly reduces the operation costs in our country,” he said.

The President also emphasized that the majority of the workers in the Maquila industry were women, many of whom who single mothers. “These new frontiers of work are radically changing the reality of the poor in rural areas of our country,” he added.

The Maquila industry generates 90 thousand workers in El Salvador. The goal of the government is to double that number, to provide 180 thousand jobs within two years.

CAFTA, Life or Death

Flores imposed another grave note in his official speech about the free trade agreement with the Unites States. “This is for our poor people in the rural areas, and it is about life or death,” he said, implying that the sources of employment that the maquilas generate, according to him, are the best way to confront the problem of unemployment in rural areas, especially given the depressed state and crises of the agricultural sector.