Mexican Labor Bibliography

II – Mexican labor – review essays

• This page:   Bayon, Bergquist, Cockcroft, Hathaway, Hodges
  
• Page 2:   Lorenzo, Middlebrook, Pena, Xelhuantizi-López.

Maria Cristina Bayon. El sindicalismo automotriz mexicano frente a un nuevo escenario: una perspective desde los liderazgos. Mexico: Facultad Latinoamricana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) and Juan Pablos Editor, 1997. 207 pages. Notes, bibliography.

Maria Cristina Bayon's book represents an important contribution both to the study of the automobile industry and to the more general discussion of the nature of Mexican labor unions. Bayon's book opens with a detailed discussion of the state of the Mexican auto industry, and then moves to a fascinating discussion of the state of the Mexican auto workers' unions, based largely on interviews with local union leaders.

Mexico's auto industry is central to the country's economy, Bayon explains. In 1994 Mexico ranked 12th among 15 coutrnies which produced 92 percent of all cars. Mexico has 20 assembly plants in 11 states, 500 autoparts plants, and 1,000 distributors. Between 1990 and 1995 the auto industry invested more then seven billion dollars in Mexico. The industry represents 10 percent of the Mexican gross national product, and in 1994 generated 35 percent of manfacturing expoert and 18 percent of total exports. Auto exports are second only to petroleum in their importance to the Mexican economy. The Mexican auto industry is dominated by foreign multinational corporations such as Ford, General Motors, Volkswagen and Nissan. The only important Mexican company is Dina.

Bayon explains that Mexican auto workers have no national auto workers' union, but rather find themselves divided into company or plant unions which keep workers isolated. Bayon delivers a scathing criticism of Mexico's "corporative" labor unions such as the Confederation of Mexico Workers (CTM) which are controlled by the Institutional Revolutionary Party and the Mexican government. Bayon shows how these authoritarian unions, working with the government and the employers, made it nearly impossible for Mexican workers to resist the restructing of the national economy and of the auto industry during the 1980s and 90s.

During those years employers in Mexico introduced new technologies, and new forms of work organization such as quality circles and team concept. But without genuine labor unions to negotiate these issues, Mexican workers found that they were expected to work harder, for longer hours, and at a faster pace while accepting lower wages. The few more democratic or independent unions could not fight alone, nor did they have an adequate strategy to do so. The result has been that the auto workers remain weak, divided, unable to win higher wages and with unions that have little presence in the plant.

Bayon describes how the old, authoritarian unions allied with the PRI declined during the 1980s, and how the corporations succeeded in imposing a unilateral relationship, dictating terms to the unions. Her alternative is the creation of a new more democratic union movement, with both national and international ties; strong independent unions which take up the issue of productivity, and negotiate cooperation in improving productivity, as a way of creating a really bilateral relationship between the corporations and the workers.

While having learned much from Bayon's description, we reject her prescription. We would suggest there is another alternative: a radical, democratic labor movement which fights to suppress competition through national and international cooperation, while at the same time striving to take control over production, quality and decision making away from management. The long term goal of the labor movement should not be a bilateral union-coporation relationship, but a diffeent unilateral relationship, one where working people democratically manage a collectively owned and controlled economy.

Anyone interested in either the auto industry or Mexican labor unions should read this very informative and important study.

Charles Bergquist. Labor and the Course of American Democracy: U.S. History in Latin American Perspective. New York: Verso, 1996. Tables, illustrations, photographs. Recommendations for furthering reading. 209 pages. $20 paper/$60 hardbound.

Charles Bergquist's Labor and the Course of American Democracy: U.S. History in Latin American Perspective brings together five essays dealing with the relationship between the U.S. and Latin American all organized around the theme of the centrality of labor. The author puts the issues of democracy, social equality, and internationalism at the center of his discussion, arguing for democratic reform, and I think it would not be far wrong to call this a social democratic interpretation of U.S.-Latin American history. Rejecting both laissez-faire capitalism and Leninist Communism, Bergquist argues for a more democratic and egalitarian relationship between the people of the United States and those of Latin America.

Bergquist's book, outlined below, also represents an attempt to bring a more interdisciplinary approach to both U.S. and Latin American history, arguing that ultimately one cannot be a very good historian of the United States, without taking Latin America into account, and visa-versa; similarly he contends that one would be a better diplomatic historian by also doing labor history simultaneously. Finally Bergquist suggests that academic historians should write in such a way as to make their scholarly writings more available to the general reader.

Bergquist has organized this book around the literature; these are essays in historiography. Certainly Bergquist knows this classic literature inside out, and does a terrific job of presenting the material, as if one were listening to him in a seminar. His historical arguments about the U.S. and Latin America with their emphasis on the centrality of economic issues and the relationship between domestic and foreign economic and political issues, I think, mostly correct. His comments on the weaknesses of U.S. labor history in incorporating the issue of imperialism are right on target. Unfortunately, I think, the tone of the book is liberal, academic and edifying rather than radical, popular and engaging as it might have been.

While this book has a very compelling central question--the relation of workers and unions to foreign policy and their impact on U.S.-Latin American history--the author tends to deal with these questions in very broad and general way that seems more informed by the debates of the 1960 or 1970s than those of the 1990s or the coming millennium. Bergquist, for example, does not explore the centrality of the conflicts between the labor bureaucracy and the workers, the importance of alliances between workers and the social movements, or the significance of the changing character of labor around the world as it becomes more female and more multicultural almost everywhere. Contemporary issues--control, gender, globalism, post-modernism--are quite literally tacked on to the book's last few pages, rather than being integrated into the discussion.

In each of the first four essays, Bergquist organizes his discussion around a critical review of important works on Latin American history. The first essay, "The Paradox of American Development," dealing with the role of race in U.S.-Latin American history, takes off from Samuel Flagg Bemis's The Latin American Policy of the United States (New York, 1943) and Eric Williams's Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill, 1944). In this essay, Bergquist argues that Bemis's book, while in many respects the best introduction to the subject, was based on racial, climatic and cultural assumptions, assumptions successfully challenged by Williams who focussed on exploitative economic relationships.

The second essay, "The Social Origins of U.S. Expansionism," uses Walter LaFeber's The New Empire, "the best single study of the origins of U.S. imperialism," as it's spring board, but then turns to look at Democratic Promise: The Populist America by Lawrence Goodwyn (1976), Workers' Control in America by David Montgomery (1979), and Segmented Work, Divided Workers by David Gordon, Richard Eduards and Michael Reich (1979). In this essay Bergquist argues that LaFeber's political, economic, and intellectual history made the case for the centrality of imperialism to the maturing U.S. economy, but that U.S. labor historians have tended to ignore that argument. Labor historians should have shown how U.S. workers' struggles both shaped and were shaped by the rise of U.S. imperialism, but instead tended to ignore the issue.

Bergquist suggests that Philip Foner's "orthodox Marxist-Leninist interpretation" could be a partial corrective to Goodwyn, Mongtgomery, Gordon et al, but Bergquist believes that Foner, like Lenin, is too much of an economic determinist. Bergquist also criticizes David Brody, who saw how labor struggles led to imperialism, but could not understand how imperialism led back to labor struggles. Bergquist argues that imperialism affected many aspects of U.S. society--such as industrial growth and immigration--but that imperial domination in the Americas also gave the U.S. elite the resources and the confidence to face down the challenge from labor unions and socialists. Perhaps because the questions discussed here are close to my own interests, I particularly liked this essay.

The third essay, "Latin American Revolution, US Response," uses liberal Cole Blasier's The Hovering Giant (1976) and conservative Jeane Kirkpatrick's Dictatorships and Double Standards (1982) to show how U.S. historians have emphasized security issues over economic issues. (He mentions Jorge Castaneda's Utopia Disarmed as a Latin American version of the same sort of argument.) Bergquist argues that U.S. hostility to Latin American revolutions had more to do with threats to U.S. corporations' economic interests than challenges to U.S. security concerns.

The fourth essay dealing with cultural criticism seems rather out of place in this collection focussing diplomatic or labor history. Bergquist organizes this chapter around a critical review of Ariel Dorfman's and Armand Mattelart's How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic (1971, 1975). Chilean Marxists Dorfman and Mattelart, influenced by the Frankfurt School and a radical version of dependency theory, had argued that Donald Duck spread "racist and ethnocentric values that reinforce and perpetuate an exploitative capitalist world." (119) Bergquist contends that Dorfman and Mattelart give a reading of Donald Duck which is "intellectually misleading, politically suspect, and fundamentally undemocratic." (121).

Dorfman and Mattelart, says Bergquist, never ask: Why was Donald Duck so popular? Bergquist contends that cartoonist Carl Barks's genius was to show the democratic struggle of Donald and the nephews against the authoritarian and acquisitive Scrooge. Donald's nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie symbolized "rebellion against authority" and that gave the cartoons and comic strip its appeal. By following the Frankfurt School and dependency theory, Dorfman and Mattelart recognized the imperialist message, but missed the democratic content of Disney and his ducks. From this Bergquist draws the conclusion about dependency theory: "The nationalist capitalist reformers among them placed their faith in a cadre of technocratic bureaucrats, the Marxists in vanguard political parties. Both groups exalted the role of state power and neglected the idea that truly democratic organization of society must emanate from participatory institutions in the workplace and the local community." (157). Long live Huey, Dewey and Louie and their participatory-democratic-anarchosyndicialist commune! (I always like those ducks.)

In his final chapter, Bergquist set his historiographical method aside, writing a straight forward essay about the history of the U.S. labor movement. Influenced by David Brody among others, the essay describes the apparent rise and definite fall of U.S. labor in since World War II. Unfortunately Bergquist did not turn to Stanley Aronowitz, Kim Moody, Staughton Lynd or others who might have helped him also describe the way in which the employers and labor bureaucracy took control of the unions from the workers. In this final section Bergquist mentions very much in passing issues of gender, globalism, and post-modernism and alludes to the "new labor history," though by that he seems to mean the "old new labor history" of Thompson and Gutman. Unfortunately, Bergquist really has little to say about gender or globalism, topics which could have enriched his arguments throughout. (Those interested in picking up where Bergquist leaves off might try Kim Moody's new book Workers in a Lean World: Unions in the International Economy [New York: Verso, 1997].)

Some general readers might be attracted to this book, but unfortunately Bergquist did not follow his own advice and write for the general reader. While the book is quite very lucidly written, it is not a popular presentation. This is an historians book, organized around historiography, and its real appeal should be to graduate student for whom it provides an intelligent and insightful commentary on a dozen important books in Latin American studies. I would think it difficult to use this book with undergraduate for whom it would be too dry; there are few stories here. U.S. labor and social historians could read the second chapter profitably, and should take its arguments to heart. Major research libraries should certainly acquire this book for their collections.

James D. Cockcroft. Mexico’s Hope: An Encounter with Politics and History. New York: Monthly Review, 1998. 435 pages; tables, notes; index.

Jim Cockcroft has written over a score of books which have educated a generation or two of Americans about Mexico, Latin America, and Latinos in the United States. He began his career brilliantly with the Intellectual Precursors of the Mexican Revolution: 1900-1913 and has periodically punctuated his work with some major revision of our understanding of Mexican history. Fifteen years ago Cockcroft published what was at the time the best historical analysis of Mexico available: Mexico: Class Formation, Capital Accumulation and the State (New York, Monthly Review, 1983). Over the years I recommended it scores of people as the most comprehensive and compelling explanation of the economic, social and political forces that shaped Mexico. But now I will have to recommend a new and better book.

Cockcroft–-having written a dozen books in the meantime-–has returned to write a new, and yet more comprehensive and compelling synthesis: Mexico’s Hope: An Encounter with Politics and History. What began as a re-writing of the earlier book became an entirely new work, one which incorporates not only recent scholarship, but also reflects the impact of new social movements, particularly those of indigenous people and women. This is a history of Mexico informed by the struggle of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and by the women who work in the maquiladoras on the U.S.-Mexico border. It is a history of the Mexican people in all of their diversity.

At the heart of Mexico’s Hope is Cockcroft’s view that capital accumulation, class struggle, revolution and reaction have driven Mexico’s history as he traces it through the conquest, the colonial period, the Bourbon reforms, the Independence struggle, the Reform, the Porfirian dictatorship, the Revolution, and now through the era of neo-liberalism. This is fundamentally a political-economic history, a Marxist history, which sees capitalism and its combined and uneven development as the driving force of Mexico’s 500 years of history. In Cockcroft’s history ordinary men and women engaged in the daily struggle for survival not only shape their own lives but also shape Mexico and its history. But they do so not simply as they wish, but within the context of Mexico’s particular development, in many ways a distorted development, the legacy of Spain’s relative backwardness, a series of unfinished revolutions, and a failed great leap forward into the neo-liberal future.

But what strikes me as particularly original about Mexico’s Hope is Cockcroft’s integration of an historical materialist analysis (which he had done so well in his earlier book) with feminist and indigenist perspectives, creating a new synthetic understanding of Mexican history. In Mexico’s Hope women and Indians have become integral to the texture of life, to the history of the country, to questions of power and politics as they so seldom appear in other histories. While maintaining his convincing Marxist analysis of Mexico’s economic development, Cockcroft has also written a multicultural and gendered history of Mexico which responds to the contemporary problematic.

Yet, above all, this book is a good read. The political- economic, indigenous and women's viewpoints are not just juxtaposed, they are analytically integrated in a vigorous prose. Clearly and forcefully written, accompanied by 17 tables, and with extensive notes, Cockcroft’s Mexico’s Hope represents the most sophisticated history of Mexico available to the general reader. Mexico’s Hope will no doubt become a standard in Latin American and Mexican history courses, but labor unionists, human rights workers, social movement activists, and anyone interested in our nearest neighbor should buy and read this book. University, high school and public libraries should add this book to their collections, for it will find many readers.

Maria Lorena Cook. Organizing Dissent: Unions, the State, and the Democratic Teachers' Movement in Mexico. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996. Photographs, appendices, notes, bibliography, index. 359 pages.

The teachers' movement, it could be argued, has been the single most important labor movement in Mexico in the last twenty years. The movement in the teachers union (el SNTE), Mexico's largest labor union, began in the mid-1970s and came to involve tens of thousands of teachers in marches, demonstrations, sit-ins (plantones) strikes, and myriad other forms of confrontation with their employer, the Secretary of Public Education (SEP). These were usually struggles for higher wages and better benefits, but above all for union democracy.

Over a period of fifteen years rank and file teachers in the state of Chiapas and Oaxaca, and to a lesser degree in other states, as well in Mexico City, succeeded not only in creating a mass movement, but more remarkably in an authoritarian regime such as Mexico's, in creating an on-going national rank-and-file organization, the National Coordinating Committee (la CNTE) of the teachers union. La CNTE succeeded in winning control of the Chiapas and Oaxaca state organizations, and later played a key role in bringing down the dictatorial regime of Carlos Jonguitud Barrios, head of Vanguardia Revolucionaria, the political machine that controlled the union.

Maria Lorena Cook, assistant professor at the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, asked, "How was this possible?" And in response to that question has written an excellent account of this important rank and file labor movement. Most studies of social movements or of labor reform movements ignore or neglect the importance of the movement's own organizational structures, procedures and values, but Cook puts those issues at the very center of her study. What makes this book important is its emphasis on the democratic self-organization of the teachers movement as essential not only to its survival, but also to the achievement of its goals of democratizing the union, and--at least for some of its members-- the larger goal of democratizing Mexican society.

After the excellent introduction come two chapters which some lay readers may find tedious. The first two chapters show the origins of this book in her dissertation, and review half a dozen theories of social movements, particularly in authoritarian societies. The point of those chapters seems to be the truism that workers take advantage of differences between the government, the employer, and the union bureaucracy to advance their cause.

However, Cook goes on to tell in a quite readable and interesting style the important history of this movement, beginning with the struggle of indigenous bi-lingual teachers in the early 1970s, through the organization of la CNTE in 1979, to the great teacher mobilizations of the early 1980s, and finally the overthrow of Jonguitud Barrios and Vanguardia in 1989. (The history is told in Chapters 3, 4, 5 and 7.)

The heart of this book, however, is Chapter 6, "Sustaining the Movement: Democracy as a Survival Strategy," in which Cook argues that democracy became central to the teachers movement. Cook makes a valuable contribution by specifying the democratic structures, procedures and values that this movement created.

La CNTE itself was a "coordinadora" a "loose network of regional dissident movements in state and federal locals of the SNTE." (145) La CNTE consciously decided not to attempt to form a rival independent union--a strategy adopted by some other union reform movements in this period--rather la CNTE defined itself as an opposition current within the official union, fighting for the right to elect its own local leaders. La CNTE's strategy was usually moderate and legalistic, but based on constant mobilization of the membership to pressure the employer and the state. The movement's central demand became the members' right to control their own local unions.

How did it happen that la CNTE adopted profoundly democratic procedures and values? First, the teachers knew what they were against: the dictatorship of Jonguitud Barrios and his political machine Vanguardia. They were opposed to the dictator and that made them democrats at least in theory. Second, since Jonguitud Barrios and Vanguardia represented the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) inside the union, the teachers decided they wanted la CNTE to be independent of political parties. Political organizations, mostly Maoists, Trotskyist, and Communists (usually acting under the cover of some caucus name) were permitted to operate within the CNTE, but those groups had only one vote, compared with five for each of the "struggle committees" made up of rank and file members. (147) Thus la CNTE took advantage of the political groups' analyses and strategies, without necessarily being controlled by them. "Most of the time the existence of political factions within the movement had a positive impact," says Cook. (250) Perhaps because the PRI and Vanguardia were centralized organizations, la CNTE adopted the form of a decentralized coalition.

Since this was a movement which constantly mobilized the teachers, the basic organizational form of la CNTE was the local "struggle committee" or regional "central councils of struggle," extra-legal forms of organization not recognized by the union statutes. There might also be "municipal struggle committees" and strike committees, and "brigades," teams of teachers who carried information and support to other areas. La CNTE's members demanded that they be consulted and have a vote on decisions, and they felt that leaders should not be fully trusted.

By the mid-1980s both the Chiapas and Oaxaca rank and file movements succeeded in winning control of the state conventions and the executive committees. How did they then attempt to democratize the union? First of all, la CNTE did not disband as a rank and file organization, feeling that the struggle committees and councils would continue to play an important role, even though the reformers now had control of the official structure. They decided to have two structures, one legal and official, the other legal and unofficial. In the event they lost control of the state-wide local, they would still have their parallel organization.

Second, they made changes in the official structure as well. Most important, the state-wide assembly became the ruling body, rather than the smaller state executive committee. The state-wide assembly schedule was changed so that it met once a month or more often if necessary, and the assembly was expanded to include not only the official representatives, but also rank and filers from the coordinadora. Individual offices were replaced with collective commissions, to spread the knowledge and the responsibility. Also rank and filers were incorporated into these collective commissions along side elected officials, to keep everybody honest.

The membership demanded the right to make decisions. In the state assembly itself, delegates were required to take the debate back to their local areas before voting and adopting a decision. This process of "consulta" or consulting with the rank and file was essential to la CNTE's vision of democracy. Delegates to state assemblies often had to produce an "aval," a document proving that they had actually consulted with their members and were representing their position. "It was this daily practice of discussion and decision making that was at the root of the new political consciousness movement leaders wanted to instill in union members." (228)

In addition to looking at union organization and procedure, Cook also looked at the role of women and ethnic minorities in this process of building a democratic movement. Though indigenous bilingual teachers had been among the earliest activists in the contemporary teachers union movement, the Indians seldom became the leaders of la CNTE. "Teachers from the Mixe, Mixteco, and Triqui regions of the Sierra Juarez became the foot soldiers, but never the officers of the emerging movement," writes Cook. (233) In part this came from the condescension of other Indians: "In spite of the indigenous ethnic background of most teachers in the state, urbanized and more highly educated Zapotecs, Mixtecos and mestizos in the teachers' movement tended to treat members of the indigenous teachers' coalition with a high degree of paternalism." (234) Nevertheless, Cook argues that some of the democratic qualities of the Chiapas and Oaxaca movements may have come from indigenous traditions of democratic self-government.

Similarly, while women make up a majority of teachers, or a very large minority in some states and more rural areas, few women were found among the rank and file leaders, at least initially, this despite the fact that women played a key role in mobilizations. "In spite of this large presence of women in the union, the representation of women in leadership positions at both local and national levels has been highly disproportional in favor of men," Cook found. (235). However, Cook also found that women's participation in leadership grew, apparently as a result of the movement's generally democratic practices.

Cook argues that despite such weaknesses, the movement created a democratic collective identity which united men and women, primary and secondary school teachers, bilingual indigenous and urban teachers. Moreover, the teachers developed a sense of identity with the parents, students, the community, and other workers. Cook argues that not only was their a movement identity, but also a "greater class consciousness." (243)

While this was an impressive movement, it was not without its faults and weaknesses. One weakness, Cook explains, was its neglect of educational issues such as pedagogy and curriculum. Mostly concerned with wages, benefits, and union democracy, the teachers spent little time on their professional concerns. Also, while teachers and parents might appear to be natural allies, sometimes the teachers' job actions, strikes, demonstrations and meetings meant that in certain periods they spent little time teaching, leading to friction with parents.

In 1989 la CNTE played a key role in organizing huge teacher demonstrations in Mexico City which brought down Jonguitud Barrios. But, Cook points out, la CNTE failed to provide leadership at that crucial moment. Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari succeeded in installing as the new union leader Elba Esther Gordillo, a member of Jonguitud's Vanguardia, and a person whom some believed to be responsible for the assassination of a la CNTE activist. Gordillo then successfully divided la CNTE's leadership, winning some of them to join her new executive committee, while isolating others. La CNTE split into several rival currents, while the rank and file demobilized.

Ironically by 1990 the union had become more democratic and more independent of the PRI, but the union also became closer to president Salinas, and became part of the model union federation he was sponsoring which advocated higher productivity and flexibility. Salinas, it could be argued, had successfully used la CNTE to help unseat Jonguitud--an old dinosaur who would have resisted Salinas's "modernization" of labor union contracts and attitudes--and replaced him with Gordillo who was a more pliant union official. (She is now a leader of the Foro group of unions and at this moment, as head of FNOP, playing a key role for the PRI in the up-coming elections.)

Cook's book leaves us with a number of questions. First, if these groups succeeded in building such strong democratic organizations, why in the end did the teachers fail to control their leaders, many of whom made deals with Gordillo and the PRI?

Second, why did leaders formed by such a movement make such deals? What was the role of the Maoists, Trotskyists, Communists, and of the National Democratic Front (FND) which became the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) in the deals with Gordillo? What was the relationship between the democratic social movement and the political reform movement and various self-conceived revolutionary movements? Perhaps the greatest merit of Cook's book is that it leads us to want to know more and understand better.

This book takes a place in studies of the teachers union alongside Susan Street's Maestros en movimiento: Transformaciones en la burocracia estatal 1978-1982 (Mexico: CIESAS, 1992) and in general Mexican labor studies is in a class with Kevin J. Middlebrook's important The Paradox of Revolution: Labor, the State and Authoritarianism in Mexico (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1995). Anyone interested in Mexican labor today should get and read this book.

Dale Hathaway. Allies Across the Border: Mexico’s “Authentic Labor Front” and Global Solidarity (Cambridge, Mass.: South end Press, 2000. Notes, index, graph. 267 pages.

Dale Hathaway, a community activist and professor of political science at Butler University in Indianapolis, has written a readable, useful account of Mexico's most politically important independent labor union federation the Authentic Labor Front or FAT. Hathaway sets his history of the FAT in the context of the new movement's fight against corporate globalization, a movement in which the FAT has played an enormously important role. Based on interviews with FAT leaders and activists, original documents, and a wide-array of secondary sources, this is both a good read and a reliable historical account.

The book opens with the Battle of Seattle in November 1999 and closes with a discussion of the importance of international solidarity in the era of globalization. Using that as the framework, Hathaway not only tells the story of the union, but also places it in the context of the Mexican labor and political system, of economic globalization, and of the new movements for international labor solidarity. In doing so, he has written a book that is essential reading for Canadian and U.S. labor union activists, and for all of those interested in the Mexican labor union movement.

The FAT was founded in October of 1960 as a Christian labor union, inspired by Roman Catholic social teachings. The union established itself in Leon, Guanajuato, then Mexico's shoe manufacturing center and soon spread to the garment shops in Irapuato. From there the union spread to Chihuahua in Northern Mexico, the home of several of its current leaders.

The early FAT leaders such as Nicolas Medina and Antonio Velazquez found that they had to fight not only the employers but also the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM) and the Mexican labor authorities, all of whom colluded to defeat the new independent labor union.

During the late 1960s the combination of Liberation Theology, the student movement of 1968, and the working class upsurge known in Mexico as the "worker insurgence" transformed the FAT into a secular, militant labor union. In the 1970s the FAT fought for contracts in auto-parts plants such as Spicer, but also developed a radical syndicalist ideology based on the notions of workers' democracy and self-management (or autogestion as it is sometimes called).

During the economic crises of the 1980s, the FAT like other unions came under pressure to enter into productivity partnerships with employers like Sealed Power. While the FAT attempted to bargain from as democratic and strong a position as possible, still the union's experience with such programs was mixed at best.

In the 1990s, the FAT became an important leader of forces fighting to develop an independent labor union movement and ties of international labor solidarity with unions in Canada and the United States. The FAT participated in the union forums of the early 1990s, and joined the independent labor federation, the National Union of Workers (UNT) where it played a leading role as a voice for workers' democracy.

In addition to organizing labor unions, the FAT also organized peasants and farmers in its campesino sector, organized cooperative ventures in the cooperative sector, and brought together low-income community people in its colonos, or neighborhood sector. In addition the FAT has been a leader in organizing and empowering women to take leading role in their communities, their workplaces and in their unions. Finally, the FAT has been pillar of the Mexican Network on Free Trade (RMALC), an alliance of labor and environmental groups that fought against the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

When social struggles by Mayan peasants in Chiapas and bankrupt farmers in Zacatecas and Jalisco erupted in the 1990s, the FAT worked with both the Zapatistas and el Barzon (which grew to be a large, national organizational or debtors) in their movements for social justice for the rural producers. But more than any other Mexican labor organization, the FAT has sought out alliances with Canadian and Mexican workers. In particular, it created a strategic organizing alliance with the United Electrical Workers (UE) to support organizing efforts both in Mexico and the United States. The mutual and reciprocal relations between those two unions have become a model for labor unionists in North America and around the world.

Hathaway's book will be must reading for U.S. and Canadian unionists, and for all of those working for international solidarity as an alternative to corporate political domination and exploitation. Clearly and directly written, this book is readily accessible for all audiences. Professors of political science, economics, labor studies, and Latin American studies will want to use this book in classes with both undergraduate and graduate students.

Donald C. Hodges. Mexican Anarchism After the Revolution. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995. Notes, index 251 pages.

Donald C. Hodges is the author of several books on the politics of Mexico and Nicaragua, founding editor of Social Theory and Practice and professor of philosophy and political science at Florida State University. Many readers will have read

several years ago Hodges' and Ross Gandy's interesting book Mexico 19101982: Reform or Revolution?

Mexican Anarchism After the Revolution claims to be a history of anarchism in contemporary Mexico. But in reality this book is really two things. The first half of the book is a biography of Ruben Jaramillo and a political history of his radical movement in Morelos from the 1930s to the 1960s. The second half of Hodges's book is a fundamentally confused and confusing essay on Mexican political theory and leftist organizations. Let me take up these two parts of the book in that order.

What is new, interesting and valuable in this book is Hodges's account of Ruben Jaramillo's peasant movement in the state of Morelos. Using interviews with participants and previously unpublished documents, Hodges has written an important chapter in Mexican social history and political movements.

The story is a fascinating one which goes back to the beginning of the 20th century. William O. Jenkins, an American, became the owner of the gigantic Civil and Industrial Company of Atencingo, Puebla, not far from the old Zapatista territory in

Morelos. Jenkins who also managed this sugar plantation was a despot who sometimes used pistoleros or gun thugs to control the peasants and sugar mill workers.

Jenkins's employees, Celestino Espinosa Flores, his wife Dolores Campos de Espinosa (Dona Lola), and their son Rafael Espinosa Campos organized the independent, underground Sindicato Karl Marx, to fight Jenkins and the company. When Celestino died and Rafael was murdered by Jenkins's thugs, Dona Lola continued to lead the labor union. Eventually Dona Lola and the union successfully pressured the Mexican government which eventually wrested 115,000 hectares of land from Jenkins in 1934, and his last 8,000 hectares in 1938. Jenkins held on to the sugar mill, and in 1945 his gunmen killed Dona Lola.

The organizers and activists in the Karl Marx union included followers of the anarchist Ricardo Flores Magon and members of the Mexican Communist Party. One young man who became active in the movement was Ruben Jaramillo, who would later gain national attention as the leader of a broad movement for land reform in Morelos. Jaramillo, originally influenced by Flores Magon, became at various times a Communist, a mason, and a Methodist preachers, but throughout remained a leader of the peasant land reform movements of Puebla and Morelos.

In 1943 Jaramillo recruited peasants, including former Zapatistas, to a radical land reform movement, and published the "Plan de Cerro Prieto," to explain the rebellion. After a failed attempt at armed uprising, Jaramillo organized the Agrarian Labor

Party of Morelos in October 1945 and ran as its candidate for governor, and lost. In 1952 Jaramillo and his Agrarian Labor Party joined the Federation of Peoples Parties that supported Gen. Miguel Henriquez Guzman in his campaign for president against the official candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Two years later in March of 1954, Jaramillo lead an uprising, attacking the village of Ticuman. The movement was suppressed, and Jaramillo was jailed, but later released under an amnesty granted by President designate Lopez Mateos in 1958.

Still Jaramillo did not give up his organizing activities. In February of 1960, Jaramillo organized a series of peasant land seizures which came into conflict with the interests of politically connected businessmen. Not only had Jaramillo threatened the economic interests of leaders of the PRI and big business, but he had also expressed sympathy for Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution, and threatened to embarrass the Mexican government by asking for funds from John F. Kennedy's Alliance for Progress. The state was no longer prepared to put up with him. In 1962 Jaramillo, his wife and their three children were kidnapped and then murdered at the ancient city of Xochicalo by Mexican Army officer Jose Martinez, who was supported by head of the state judicial police Heriberto Espinosa.

In this book, Hodges explores the political biographies of Jaramillo and his associates, and publishes the previously unknown Plan of Cerro Prieto. The story is a good one, but unfortunately Hodges's explanation and interpretation of events is not. Hodges, who sees Ruben Jaramillo as an anarchist, attempts to make Jaramillo the bridge between the anarchism of Ricardo Flores Magon and the Mexican new left of the 1960s and 70s which he also sees as anarchist. But the problem is that the facts of Jaramillo's biography simply will not bear the weight that Hodges wants to put on them. Jaramillo, an inspiring radical, appears to have no consistent ideology as his wanderings between the masons, Methodism, Mexican nationalism and Communism clearly indicate. And he was certainly not an anarchist as his membership in several political parties, participation in elections campaigns, and calls for the nationalization of property would indicate.

The problem is that, as we see in the second half of this book, a panorama of Mexican political theory and practice, Hodges uses the word "anarchism" to mean any radical political theory or leftist organization which appeals to him. For Hodges, "anarchism" means simply, "What I like" or "What I support." And Hodges likes all sorts of political theories and social movements which he then defines as anarchist. These include the genuine anarchism of Ricardo Flores Magon, the radical peasant communalism of Emiliano Zapata, the peasant rebellions of Genaro Vazquez and Lucio Cabanas in the 1960s and 70s, the 1959 Cuban Revolution, the Stalinist Communist Party's socalled "third period" from 1929 to 1935, Mao TseTung's Communism of the Long March of the 1930s and the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, Trotskyism, the Mexican terrorists of the September 23 Communist League, and finally, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). For Hodges, all of these different movements become expressions, albeit not always complete expressions, of what he calls anarchism. So the reader will not think I am exaggerating, led me give a few examples of Hodges's interpretations:

*Hodges writes that the National Liberation Movement led by former Mexican president Lazaro Cardenas represented "the legacy of Ricardo Flores Magon." (p. 81)

*"...the Cuban Revolution contributed to reviving vestiges of Magonism latent in the [Mexican Communist] Party." ( p. 86)

*Lucio Cabanas's Revolutionary National Civic Association"...qualifies as 'anarchoCastroite' [sic] because of its reliance on direct action and struggle for a new social order." (p. 103)

*"In adopting Guevarism as their credo, [Lucio] Cabanas and [Genaro] Vazquez unknowingly committed themselves to a philosophy of guerrilla warfare with an anarchist dimension." (p. 105)

*"Most of Mexico's leaders in urban guerrilla warfare eventually joined the umbrella organization, the September 23 Communist League. They also subscribed to its unique mix of anarchist and communist themes." (p. 130)

*"Maoism stand out among the heterodox marxisms as having the greatest affinity for anarchism." (p. 139)

*"The anarchist character of the popular defense committees [such as the Chihuahua Popular Defense Committee] should be evident." (p. 146)

*"Like the guerrillas in neighboring Guatemala, the EZLN embraced a Maoist strategy with a strong dose of anarchism." (p.193).

In a chapter on anarchist political theory, Hodges suggests that Spanish anarchist Abraham Guillen, Trotskyists Jose Revueltas, Manuel Aguilar Mora, and Adolfo Gilly, the Catholic theologian and philosopher Jose Porfirio Miranda, the communist philosopher Enrique Gonzalez Rojo, the Viennese priest and educator Ivan Illich, and the socialist publisher Manuel Lopez Gallo all somehow contributed to the Mexican anarchist current. Hodges ends his book ends with a postscript on the Zapatista Army

of National Liberation (EZLN) and the Chiapas Rebellion of 1994 in which the Subcomandante Marcos and the EZLN, which Hodges likes, are also defined as anarchist.

This blurring of all intellectual and political distinctions is both bad history and bad political theory. Hodges wants to argue that throughout Mexican history there has been a significant anarchist undercurrent which reappears in all moments of crisis to provide inspiration to revolutionary movements. The problem is that this is simply not true. If anarchism means anything, it means a rejection of political parties and the state. Anarchism was a revolutionary theory of Proudhon and Bakunin, of Kropotkin and Malatesta which stood for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, religion and the state.

But anarchists rejected the organization of political parties as the means to do so. Strongest in Eastern and Southern Europe, and particularly in Italy and Spain, anarchism became an important ideological current in Latin America, including Mexico.

In Mexico anarchism was introduced in the mid19th century, and perhaps became the dominant radical current by the early 20th century. Ricardo Flores Magon, his Mexican Liberal Party and his newspaper Regeneracion evolved from liberalism to anarchism, and played an important role in the opening phase of the Mexican Revolution. But during the course of the Mexican Revolution the nationalist forces succeeded in absorbing and neutralizing both the Mexican Liberal Party and the anarchosyndicalists of the House of the World Worker in Mexico. Anarchism then virtually ceased to exist as a political current, Hodges claims notwithstanding. The partial survival of anarchist ideas in the movements in Morelos in the 1930s or among a few Communist Party members even later is interesting, but does not have the significance Hodges wants to attribute to it.

Mexican anarchism was more or less eliminated from the Mexican political spectrum during the 1930s by the rise of nationalism and Stalinist Communism, never to reappear as a significant force. Certainly other Mexican political currents such as Stalinist Communism, Maoism, and Trotskyism were all in different ways utterly antithetical to any genuine anarchist theory or political movement. All advocated building political

parties, struggling for state power, and attempting to build some new kind of state. Nearly all believed in creating a parliamentary political party and participating in elections.

None of this could be farther from anarchism.

Most disturbing to me, however, are the ethical and political issues raised in the book. Several times Hodges expresseshis admiration for Mexican revolutionary groups which engaged in kidnappings and assassinations. At times Hodges seems to delight in this use of such violence which he calls "direct action." Hodges seems to miss the point that these groups some of which were inspired by Che Guevara's foco theory, turned to kidnapping and violence as a substitute for the organizing of peasants or workers, as an alternative to building social movements for democracy or social justice. Such "direct action" violence was the antithesis of a genuine mass revolutionary movement such as had occurred, say, during the Paris Commune or the Russian Revolution.

In this book Hodges explains that he himself rejoined the Communist Party in 1968, apparently thinking it important to locate himself in the current of anarchists working within the Communist Party. (p.189) In his own mind, Hodges justified his membership in the Communist Party in terms of his support for the Cuban Revolution, and his anarchist principles. But Hodges joined the Communist Party to support Cuba just at the moment that Cuba supported the Soviet Union in the violent suppression of the Czechoslovakian reform movement. Communism was from the 1930s to the 1960s a world movement which included the murderous dictatorships of the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and China and Vietnam. One has to wonder, and to ask Donald Hodges, what kind of anarchism is this?