With trade barriers falling, Latin America's auto industry is entering a new era Karla Fabiola Valdez' eyes sparkle as she talks about her new job. More than 1,000 workers applied for just 24 slots, half of them reserved for women only. Some 5,600 miles away in Betim, in Brazil's southeast, Paulo Duraes also thinks he has found his dream job. Duraes and his compatriots put their knowledge of Brazil's tropical climate and rough road conditions to work on the project. Valdez and Duraes are part of the cast of thousands that is staging a manufacturing revolution in Latin America.
Car manufacturing has a long history in the region, of course.
But until recently, high tariff walls forced companies to maintain operations in each country, where they were confined to selling locally. Now, the Latin American auto industry is entering a whole new era. With barriers to imports falling, manufacturers can supply several countries from a single plant, realizing the economies of scale that had long eluded them. They are spending millions to refurbish old plants or building new ones from scratch. In their eternal quest for greater efficiency, manufacturers have transformed their freshly minted factories in Latin America into laboratories of sorts.