A maquiladora is an assembly plant where duty-free imported parts are assembled by cheap labor, and the completed items are exported to another country, paying duty only on the value added through the assembly process and not on the parts themselves. The Maquiladora arrangement was set up during the 1960s in an effort to avoid paying U.S. customs fees on imported parts. Most maquiladoras are located along Mexico’s border with the United States, and many are owned in trust by American companies. During the 1990s Asian and Mexican companies began to use the system and maquiladoras arose in other countries of South and Central America.