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The giraffe’s arrival was a point of pride for Ciudad Juárez, a tough, dusty city across from El Paso, Texas, that is known for its hundreds of maquiladora assembly factories and its endemic gang violence.

For 10 years, they shared a room and worked long hours for low wages with no benefits in maquiladoras, the foreign-owned factories that dot the length of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Mr. Colom had success in textiles and Guatemala’s entry into large-scale production through assembly plants known in Spanish as maquiladoras.

Employees at the maquiladora, as the border plants are known, had long been represented by a union affiliated with the Confederation of Mexican Workers.

The movement won 20% pay raises at all 48 maquiladora factories in Matamoros.