Mexican Labor News & Analysis

Santiago Rafael Cruz, Labor Organizer For U.S. Union, Killed In Mexico

By Dan La Botz

Santiago Rafael Cruz, an organizer for the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) based in Toledo, Ohio, was murdered in Monterrey, Mexico on April 9. Cruz was found bound and beaten to death in the union offices; there had been no forced entry and there was no robbery. Baldemar Velásquez, president of FLOC, believes that he may have been murdered because the union had disturbed the operations of corrupt individuals involved in labor contracting operations in Mexico.

Cruz, originally from Oaxaca, had gone to the United States in search of work to help support his family in Mexico. He became involved as a volunteer with FLOC working on immigrant rights issues. “We recognized his talent,” said Velásquez, “and hired him to work for the union.” Cruz worked both in Ohio and in North Carolina organizing agricultural workers for four years.

Earlier this year Cruz found himself in need of more money to help his family and took a factory job. During an immigration raid he was arrested and detained for some time and then deported to Mexico. Back in Mexico he learned that FLOC was looking for someone to work in its office in Monterrey, and the union hired him for the job. Still short on money to rent an apartment, Cruz was staying in the union office at the time he was attacked and killed.

Who Would Want Cruz Killed?

Who would want Cruz killed? To answer that question we have to understand the labor contracting system in Mexico. Labor contractors usually funnel as many as 70,000 workers into the H2A Visa program which permits them to work legally for agricultural employers in the United States. To get these jobs, which pay more than ten times what they could make in agriculture in Mexico, workers often have to pay the contractors and to bribe various other middlemen. While workers should have paid no more than $360 in fees, some contractor agents called runners or enganchistas charged workers as much as $12,000, according to Velásquez. The racketeers in Mexico were making thousand of dollars, perhaps millions by over-charging workers.

Then on September 16, 2004, after a five-year organizing campaign and boycott, FLOC won a contact for 8,000 H2A workers employed on 1,050 farms across North Carolina and working in a variety of crops. Under the contract, employers had to pay for the workers' visas and transportation, saving the workers two million last year alone, according to the union.

To support its members and to educate them about their rights before they arrived in the United States, as well as to protect them from exploitation by labor contractors, FLOC established an office in Monterrey. Rather than paying large sums in bribes for H2A jobs, now workers would simply fill out forms to be dispatched.

FLOC's Monterrey union office quickly came into conflict with the corrupt contractors and their agents who had been providing workers to the growers in North Carolina and in many other states from Georgia to New York. FLOC's presence in Mexico meant that the racketeers were losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in exorbitant fees and bribes. Soon after the FLOC office was opened in Monterrey it was broken into and equipment and files were destroyed.

While the Mexican police have yet to arrest or charge any suspects, the labor contractors had a motive and may well have been responsible. "It was a purely political attack," said FLOC president Baldemar Velásquez. "We think the motivation was that the union contract was adversely affecting the labor contractors, the recruiters.

“FLOC's agreement eliminated the extortion of illegal fees from workers by criminal elements. They have been unhappy with the union taking away their gold mine. We disrupted not only the recruiters working for growers in North Carolina, but all the recruiters who recruit workers for all the other states: from Florida and Georgia, through South Carolina and Virginia, all the way up to Pennsylvania and New York. That is because our precedent applied to all of those recruiters.”

Why in Monterrey?

While the murder of labor activists was common in the late 1960s and 1970s, few have been murdered in recent years. Usually employers or government-controlled unions will fire union activists, and sometimes they beat them up, but few are murdered. The recent killing of 20 union and community activists in Oaxaca over the last six months arises from an unusual labor, community and political conflict. It is not typical of the recent experience.

However, Nuevo Leon, the state of which Monterrey is the capital, is almost another country. One of Mexico's most industrialized states, all of its industries -- brewing, glass, steel -- were for decades owned by the Garza-Sada clan which strenuously opposed the organization of the workers in its factories. When Mexican labor unions organized into the powerful Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM) in the 1930s, Monterrey successfully fought off the union challenge. Later the CTM became a state-controlled and largely corrupt confederation, and in the late 1960s a rank-and-file insurgency swept the unions, but once again Monterrey remained virtually immune. In fact, the state of Nuevo Leon has its own its own labor unions, often called sindicatos blancos (white unions), company unions completely dominated by the state's most powerful corporations.

The establishment of a FLOC office in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon represented not only a direct challenge to corrupt labor contractors, but also an implicit challenge to the Monterrey elite who have for years controlled the political and economic life of the city and had excluded genuine labor unions. While it is unlikely that anyone in the corporate elite would dirty his hands in a killing, and while they may not have had any direct role in the murder, the capitalists of Monterrey, the bastion of company unionism in Mexico, have created a climate that makes unions unwelcome and organizers pariahs.

Murder and Impunity in Mexico

Lamentably, Santiago Rafael Cruz's death represents just another murder among many in Mexico. Over the last decade, hundreds of women have been ritually murdered in Ciudad Juárez, and to date the murders remains unexplained. During this year alone 600 people have been killed in the struggle between rival drug cartels in Mexico, and most of those murders remain unsolved as well. Most recently, local and state police and the Federal Preventive Police have been used to crush social movements by steel workers at the SICARTSA plant in Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán, at the town of Atenco, Mexico, and in Oaxaca. Approximately 25 people have been killed, several women raped, and many tortured and beaten in those operations. No police have been convicted and imprisoned.

In all of these cases -- the women, the drug cartel wars, and the repression of social movements -- many believe that the police are implicated in and possibly responsible for many of these killings. While that has not been proven, what is known is that in Mexico murderers and other criminals enjoy impunity, a situation that suggests the collusion of the police and the justice system. Mexican human rights organizations and international organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, as well as U.S. State Department reports have called upon the Mexican government to reform its justice and police systems.

The Nuevo Leon state police have suggested that they think Cruz's murder was the result of a "struggle between unions." This is not impossible. Mexico's corrupt and violent union officials, the charros as they are called, have been known to kill their rivals. But those who know Mexico also recognize that this is the political line of Monterrey's establishment always anxious to discredit the unions by suggesting that all unions are only rival mafias.

Santiago Rafael Cruz, FLOC's man in Monterrey, may well have fallen afoul of all of these: the labor contractors, Monterrey's anti-union environment, and Mexico's faulty criminal justice system. FLOC wants justice and rightly so, but it will be a battle.

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Urgent Action Campaigns in Response to Cruz Murder

This article contains information regarding FLOC's urgent action campaign. For an easy way to send a protest message, we encourage you to also participate in Labour Start's campaign. Just click here!

FLOC asks supporters to contact the Governor of Nuevo León to demand:
● A formal, timely, honest, and thorough criminal investigation.
● A just prosecution and punishment for the murderers.
● Official measures to ensure that FLOC members and human and worker rights defenders are not subjected to political and economically motivated threats.
● Restitution for Santiago's family.

Below is a draft letter to Governor José Natividad González Parás. Please modify it to reflect your organizational and individual concerns, and FAX, email, or mail it to:

José Natividad González Parás
Gobernador de Nuevo León
Zaragoza y 5 de Mayo, Colonia Centro
Monterrey, N.L.
México 64000
Telephone from the U.S.: (011-52) (81) 2020-1226 or 2020-1509
Fax from the U.S.: (011-52) (81) 2020-1087 or 2020-1085
Email: gobernador@nl.gob.mx

With a copy to state Attorney General Trevino:
Attorney General Luís Carlos Treviño Berchelmann
Procurador de Justicia de Nuevo León
Ocampo 470 Poniente, Colonia Centro
Monterrey, N.L.
México 64000
Telephone from the U.S.: (011-52) (81) 2020-3333 and 2020-3317
Fax from the U.S.: (011) (52) (81) 2020-4094, 2020-4038 or 2020-4088
Email: ltrevino@nl.gob.mx

And a copy to the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico:
Ambassador Antonio Garza, Jr.
U.S. Embassy
Paseo de la Reforma 305
Colonia Cuahtemoc
Mexico, D.F. 06500
Telephone from the U.S.: (011-52)(55) 5080-2000
Fax from the U.S.: (011-52)(55) 5525-5040
Email: ccs@usembassy.net.mx

Also, please send a copy to FLOC and to their allies in Mexico, so we can follow up on Santiago's case: lzavala@floc.com in the N.C. office and to mhale@floc.com in the Ohio office, and the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center bencokelet@solidaritycenter.org

Draft Letter

[date]

José Natividad González Parás
Governor of Nuevo León
Zaragoza and 5 de Mayo, Centro
Monterrey, N.L.
México 64000

Dear Governor González Parás:

I am writing to inform the State of Nuevo Leon government that I am outraged by the brutal murder of migrant farmworker union organizer Santiago Rafael Cruz in Monterrey on April 9. Santiago was a human and labor rights defender who worked hard to ensure better working conditions for Mexicans coming to the U.S. as H2-A guest workers.

The office of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee AFL-CIO was opened in Monterrey to protect the rights of its members as they travel from their home states through Monterrey en route to work in the U.S. As you know, the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey processes the majority of H2-A visas.

This office was established as a result of a historic collective bargaining agreement in 2004 to represent nearly 7,000 Mexican H2A farmworkers, who now have the right to directly voice their own concerns about their human rights and conditions. Since the office opened, many workers have contacted us about the abuses and irregularities of different labor recruiting agencies. The FLOC staff in the Monterrey office have played an important role in protecting Mexican workers from exploitation by corrupt and often unauthorized field agents, who in the past have overcharged workers and extorted hundreds of dollars to find them jobs in the U.S. Developing a more open and accountable recruitment system has jeopardized the interests of irregular and illicit labor recruiting agents.

Since FLOC established its office in Monterrey in 2005, it has been the victim of attacks in the media, deportation threats, several robberies, and violent intimidation. Documentation of this harassment has been submitted to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which has been asked to review the case of Santiago Rafael's brutal murder, and which has already instructed the Mexican government to take preventive measures.

I respectfully request that your government ensure the following steps:

● A formal, timely, transparent, and thorough criminal investigation (averigüación previa).
● A just prosecution and punishment for those who committed this brutal murder, as well as those who may be behind the crime.
● Measures to ensure that FLOC and human and labor rights defenders are not subject to political and economically-motivated intimidation.
● Restitution for Santiago's family.

I look forward to your timely response.

Sincerely, [ Your name. ]

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Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Tells Mexican Government to Take Action to Protect FLOC Staff in Mexico

[April 24, 2007] Monterrey, Nuevo Leon – The Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC, AFL-CIO) announces that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has granted it preventive measures petition, following the brutal assassination of union organizer Santiago Rafael Cruz in Monterrey on April 9. The IACHR has instructed the Mexican government to “adopt the necessary measures to guarantee the life and physical security” of FLOC staff in Mexico and to keep the IACHR informed of the judicial process to bring Santiago’s killers to justice.

The approval letter, addressed by the IACHR Executive Secretary’s office to FLOC, stipulates that the Mexican government has seven (7) days to implement these instructions, beginning April 23. FLOC awaits contact from the government to negotiate the preventive measures are needed and how soon they can be implemented. It is urgent that FLOC staff in Monterrey be afforded all necessary security measures and that FLOC’s office in that city be fortified against any further attacks.

The assassination of Santiago Rafael Cruz came after more than two years of media attacks, deportation threats, robberies, and violent intimidation of the FLOC office and its staff in Monterrey. FLOC believes that the murder was a targeted political attack on the union. The office was opened after winning a collective agreement to represent nearly 7,000 H2A "guest worker" farmworkers, in order to support them in traveling from Mexico to the U.S. The FLOC agreement and a court case have helped eliminated bribes, extortion, and other corruption in the recruitment of these workers in Mexico, jeopardizing the lucrative interests of corrupt field recruiters.

Baldemar Velasquez, President of FLOC, insists this development be viewed with caution. “While I applaud the IACHR for obligating the Mexican federal government to protect our staff and take Santiago’s case seriously, I’m concerned by the slow and incomplete steps taken by the Nuevo Leon authorities in their criminal investigation.” FLOC lawyers met again last week with the Nuevo Leon attorney general’s office, and Velasquez says, “it’s clear that the authorities are still not considering the economic-political motive behind Santiago’s murder.”

Those wishing to donate money for Santiago Rafael Cruz’s funeral costs and securing FLOC’s Monterrey office from further attacks can make checks payable to: FLOC c/o Santiago Tragedy Fund, 1221 Broadway Street, Toledo, OH, USA 43609.

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Death of Alejandro Pérez in Ciudad JuÁrez

The Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras (CJM), The Mexico Solidarity Network (MSN), and The United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) are saddened by the death of Alejandro Pérez of Ciudad Juárez. Alejandro was a maquiladora worker for many years. At 15 he joined the Youth Christian Workers [la Juventud Obrera Cristiana], and he dedicated his life to worker justice and worker rights. He was a member of the executive committee and board of directors of CJM and had worked with MSN, CETLAC (a worker’s center of the Frente Auténtico del Trabajo, FAT) and Comité Fronteriza de Obreros (CFO) for a number of years. All of us will miss him, and his death at such a young age will deprive the movement of a dedicated and valiant fighter.

On April 25th at 37 years old Alejandro passed away. He leaves three children, José Alejandro 14, Claudia 10, and María Margarita 5 years old. The family has nothing to pay for his funeral. Our organizations are asking our members and friends to help with a donation. Make it out to The Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras with a note that it is for the children of Alejandro Perez and mail it to 4207 Willow Brook Street, San Antonio, TX 78228. If you have any questions, call Martha Ojeda at 210-732-8957. Contributions to CJM are tax deductible.

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UN Labor Panel Finds U.S. Violates International Labor Rules; Calls for Repeal of North Carolina Anti-bargaining Law

It comes as a shock to most people that in North Carolina public sectors workers are prohibited from engaging in collective bargaining and that N.C. state law declares that such contracts are illegal, null and void.

The United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) relied on experience gained by its international allies to combine organizing and the creative use of international law in an innovative campaign which has made headlines for both its organizing and legal work.

In a strongly-worded decision, the International Labour Organization (ILO), an agency of the United Nations, issued an unprecedented call for the United States to “promote the establishment of a collective bargaining framework in the public sector in North Carolina,” and called specifically for the repeal of North Carolina General Statute § 95-98, the state law that prohibits public employee collective bargaining.

The ILO finding comes in response to a complaint filed in December 2005 by the United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE) and UE Local 150, the North Carolina Public Service Union. The UE was joined by the FAT, ZENROREN (the Progressive labor Federation in Japan) and the SFPQ and CSQ (public sector unions in Quebec in serving the governor with the complaint. In February 2006, UE was also joined in its complaint by Public Services International (PSI), a worldwide federation of trade unions representing more than 20 million public sector workers in 160 countries.

The ILO ruling is a major victory for labor and civil rights organizations in North Carolina who have been demanding full collective bargaining rights for public employees. UE Local 150 leaders say they expect the ILO’s call for changes in North Carolina labor law to have an immediate impact on the General Assembly, and intend to hand-deliver copies of the ILO decision to the office of each member of the Assembly.

The complaint charged the U.S. with failure to uphold its obligations, as a member state of the ILO, to protect the internationally-recognized rights of public employees in North Carolina to freedom of association and collective bargaining. North Carolina General Statute § 95-98 prohibits collective bargaining and declares any agreement between a labor union and any city, town, county, or the state to be illegal and null and void. The union alleges in the complaint that, by failing to take actions to overturn this law, the U.S. government is violating international law and ILO rules. The ILO’s decision sustains these charges.

In the Autumn of 2005, the International Commission for Labor Rights (ICLR) sent an independent delegation of international labor rights experts from around the world to North Carolina to document working conditions for public sector workers in the state. Among the lawyers who participated was Patricia Juan Pineda, a Mexican lawyer who specializes in human rights.

After meeting with workers, visiting work sites, and taking substantial testimony at hearings attended by hundreds of public sector workers, the ICLR delegation determined that North Carolina’s prohibition of collective bargaining had resulted in deplorable working conditions for state and municipal workers and that, if they were to gain the right to bargain collectively, these workers could significantly improve their working conditions.

Frustration with the lack of collective bargaining and effective voice on the job has led to increasing protests by North Carolina public employees. The most dramatic recent instance was a strike by Raleigh sanitation workers on September 13-14, 2006.

In addition to the ILO complaint, UE has recently been involved in other actions before international bodies, as part of its effort to bring about a change in state law. In October 2006, at UE’s request, the FAT filed a petition signed by 53 labor organizations from Mexico, Canada and the U.S., charging that North Carolina’s ban on public employee bargaining violates the labor side agreement to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
“We are very excited and gratified that the ILO has endorsed what our union had been saying for years,” said Angaza Laughinghouse, a state worker and president of UE Local 150. “This ruling by an important body of the United Nations adds tremendous weight to the push for collective bargaining rights for all North Carolina workers. We call on Governor Mike Easley to provide leadership to bring our state into harmony with international principles of democracy and human rights for working people.”

UE’s national Director of Organization Bob Kingsley echoed those sentiments. “This decision is an international wake-up call to state lawmakers in North Carolina,” Kingsley said. “The world is watching. It’s time to change the law and erase the disgraceful human rights deficit in the state today.” "

“The Committee on Freedom of Association has once again proven its immensely valuable role in defending the rights of public sector workers,” said Hans Engelberts, General Secretary of Public Service International. “In this important test case in North Carolina, the PSI affiliate, UE, submitted a detailed case to defend the right to collective bargaining on behalf of over 30,000 government workers, the majority of whom are women and people of color. The US government has been requested to meet its obligations as a member of the ILO and to establish a collective bargaining framework in consultation with representative workers' organisations. We urge the US government to do just that! " said Hans Engelberts, General Secretary of Public Services International.”

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Miners’ Union Leader Reinstated; Partial Victory For Union

A Mexican federal court ordered the Secretary of Labor to reinstate Napoleon Gómez Urrutia as general secretary of the Mexican Miners Union (SNTMM) in a decision handed down on April 13. Within a few days the Secretary of Labor recognized Gómez Urrutia as head of the union, but he did not immediately return to Mexico to resume his duties because he is also wanted by the police on charges of misappropriating union funds, a charge he denies.

Gómez Urrutia had been removed as head of the union in February of last year and the Mexican government recognized Elías Morales, a man friendly to the mining industry, as head of the union. The government’s intervention in the union led to a national strike by the union’s 250,000 members. Some union locals continued to engage in strikes, job actions and other protests until Gómez was reinstated.

A spokeswoman for the union said that Gómez Urrutia plans to remain in Canada until the charges against him are dropped. He is accused of having misappropriated $55 million paid by Grupo Mexico to the union at the time that the mines were privatized in 1990. The funds were to have been distributed to the workers and retirees of the union. He denies that any misappropriation took place.

The union plans to file a court action to stay criminal proceedings against Urrutia.

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Public Employees Act Against Privatization of Pension Funds

Mexican public employees are mobilizing throughout the country to protest the privatization of the public employees’ pension funds. The Mexican legislature voted last month to privatize the pension funds of the public employees’ social security system (known as ISSSTE). Many public employees who oppose the privatization are engaged in collecting petition signatures against it, seeking injunctions to stop it, and planning for a public employees’ strike to take place on May 2.

The law passed by the Mexican Congress in April will transfer US$4.51 billion of worker pensions now managed by banks to a new agency. The new institution, PensionISSSTE, will manage the pension assets of both the old system and the new system for three years.

Under the new plan, current workers will remain with the old system, but will have to accept gradual increases in the retirement age. The minimum age for retirement benefits has been raised by the law by 10 years to 58 years for women and 60 for men. The law will also affect some other services and benefits of the system.

Public employees unions plan to submit tens of thousands of petitions in support of injunctions to the Mexican courts, though some judges have already announced that they will not grant injunctions because they do not have jurisdiction. The matter, they say, would have to be heard by a labor court.

The National Coordinating Committee of the Teachers Union (la CNTE), a decades-old caucus within the Mexican Teachers Union (el SNTE) which has a large activist following, has called upon other public employees to join them in striking on May 2. The strike is being called a “national civic work stoppage.”

CNTE leaders have linked the passage of the law privatizing pensions to other issues, such as the rise in the price of tortillas, the value added tax on food and medicine, and labor law reform.

The Federation of Unions of Workers at the Service of the State (FSTSE), the national public employees’ union has said that it will attempt to prevent the demonstrations. FSTSE will instead seek to strengthen union representation on the board of the newly privatized pension system (PensionISSSTE) and to orient workers as to their rights.

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Human Rights and Labor Rights in Mexico

Mexican human rights and labor rights are constantly violated and public safety is in danger throughout Mexico, according to a number of recent reports.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH) told the Mexican Secretary of Foreign Relations in April that throughout the Americas and in particular in Mexico human rights activists and their families are in danger of murder, disappearance, torture, beatings, threats, harassment, defamation campaigns, and bombings.

At the same time, the Mexican Secretary of Public Security’s intelligence office reported that so far this year there had been over 600 executions carried out by criminal organizations, principally drug cartels. Several of those killed have been police officers.

The United Nations High Commission for Human Rights also reported in April that murders and other attacks on reporters and other members of the media continue to go unpunished. There was, said Amerigo Incalcaterra, a wave of such attacks from 2005 to 2007. Renewed attention focused on this issue after Televisa reporter Amado Ramírez was murdered in Acapulo, Guerrero on April 8. He is suspected of being killed by a drug cartel.

The Center for Reflection and Labor Action (CEREAL), a Catholic labor rights organization, reported in April that there had been a grave deterioration of human rights in Mexico. This had to do both with economic conditions and labor rights issues.

The Center for Labor Investigation and Union Consultation (CILAS) reported in April that employer and government violation of workers' rights continued to be a serious problem in Mexico.

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Oaxaca: APPO, Teachers Mobilize

The Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) and Local 22 of the Mexican Teachers Union based in Oaxaca are back in action and back on the streets. Last year during massive political demonstrations, more than 20 people were killed, 349 arrested, and 370 injured. Police and death squads carried out the killings. Yet the people of Oaxaca still refused to back down.

APPO took to the streets on April 19 to once again demand the removal of governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz and freedom of prisoners of conscience being held in Mexican prisons.
Two days earlier teachers in Local 22 seized two educational centers in Oaxaca in an attempt to disrupt a new teachers’ union, Local 59, created after last year’s protests. The next day, Local 22 struck in support of the teachers involved in the building occupation.

Meanwhile, intellectuals, lawyers and other prominent citizens of Oaxaca held a popular tribunal, a kind of peoples’ court, where they tried governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz for crimes against humanity. The court—claiming to speak for the majority of the people of Oaxaca—found Ruiz guilty of murder, torture, unjust imprisonment, threats, and other anti-democratic actions.


PEASANTS AND FARMERS PLAN NATIONAL PROTESTS FOR APRIL 30

Peasants and farmers from throughout Mexico will engage in protests, including blocking highways and sit-ins at the Secretary of Agriculture’s office in Mexico City, to protest what they call the “abandonment of the Mexican countryside.”

Led by the National Council of Rural Organizations, the Permanent Agrarian Congress, the National Confederation of Peasants, el Barzón Popular, a debtors’ group, and many local farmers’ organizations and peasant unions, to demand more government support for Mexico’s rural working people. The National Union of Workers (UNT), Mexico’s major independent labor federation will also support the protests.

The actions come on the anniversary of the signing of the National Agreement on the Countryside four years ago. Many rural organizations claim that the Mexican government has not fulfilled the terms of the agreement.

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Railroad Workers and Pensioners Protest

Mexican railroad workers and pensioners protested against their national union on two separate occasions in April. Both are members of the Mexican Railroad Workers Union (STFRM).

Pensioners demanded that the Mexican House of Representatives investigate the state of a 16 billion peso fund created to cover the retirement of some 56,372 railroad retirees. The retirees accuse union leader Victor Flores Morales of paying high salaries to administrators while the railroad retirees live on inadequate pensions.

In a separate action, rank-and-file members of Local 20 in Orizaba, Veracruz seized their union hall to protest repressive measures taken against their local by the national union headed by Victor Flores.

The local members claim that the problems began because they supported and then elected Carlos Manuel López Arenas to be their general secretary, with 75 percent of the votes cast. Flores, who had supported another candidate, Emilio Merino Bello, say the protestors, then colluded with the company, Ferrosur (Southern Railroad), to fire López Arenas from his job. Protestors said they seek a peaceful solution to the issues.

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Telephone Workers Settle Contract; 8.6% Gain

The Mexican Telephone Workers Union (STRM), led by Francisco Hernández Juárez, negotiated a new contract with the Mexican Telephone Company (TELMEX) owned by Carlos Slim, a billionaire and Mexico’s richest man. The contract provided for a 4.5 percent increase in wages, a 2.2 percent gain in benefits, 1.46 more in productivity, and a .044 increase in cost of living. The total package was an 8.62% gain.

The union had originally sought increases of 15 percent in wages and 5 percent in benefits.

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Former Braceros March to Demand Long Over-due Pay

A group of former braceros, contract laborers who worked in the United States during the period from 1942 to 1964, protested at the Secretary of the Interior’s office in Mexico City and marched in Guanajuato in April to demand that back pay long due to them be paid.

During World War II, the Mexican and United States government agreed to establish a contract labor program for temporary workers, most of them in agriculture. The “bracero” program, as it came to be known, was eventually extended, with various modifications, from 1943 through 1964. Altogether some 4.2 million Mexican migrant workers, virtually all men, entered the United States under the program, the majority working in agriculture, though some also worked for the railroad industry.

Between 1943 and 1946, about 49,000 workers came each year; between 1947 and 1954, about 116,000, and between 1955 and 1964, about 333,000 annually. The year of highest immigration was 1956 when 445,197 workers were issued contracts, according to U.S. authorities.

Some of the workers’ pay was sent to Mexico and was supposed to be paid to them when they returned. But the wages went unpaid for decades. Last January, the Mexican government ordered that 300 million be set aside to pay former braceros. The Secretary of the Interior says that they have so far received applications for the funds from 212,218 workers, but that so far only 42,633 have met the government’s requirements and qualified to be paid. Workers say that less than half of the 300 million has been paid.

Their protesters they say will continue.

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Social Statistics

Poverty in Latin America

The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLA/CEPAL) reports that 250 million people in Latin America live in poverty.

Poverty among the Young in Mexico

60% of Mexicans under 14 live in poverty in Mexico according to a study Violence and Health among the Young. The study uses government statistics.

Inequality

In 2007, Mexico was number 15 among 182 nations in terms of its GNP, but it was 58 in terms of its GNP distribution among its citizens, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Monopolies Dominate Mexican Economy

The World Bank warned Mexico that the domination of the Mexican economy by a small elite that controls the country’s monopolies is harming the economy, blocking development and leading to inequity. The World Bank included the state-owned oil company PEMEX in its list of monopolies.

Mexico Spends Minimum on Social Security

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Mexico spends only 6.2 percent of the GNP on social security, while this figure should reach 7.6 percent by 2015 according to the World Health Organiztaion.

Education

A UNICEF study found that 32 percent of the young people in the Federal District of Mexico (Mexico City) do not attend school.

In Mexico 50 percent of young people between 12 and 29 do not study, according to the National Youth Survey 2005.

Only 5.4 million people in Mexico’s economically active population have a B.A. or post- graduate degree. Mexico’s total population is approximately 105 million.

Inequality – Women

Wage inequality persists in Mexico with women earning 8.8 percent less than men who are doing similar work, according to the National Women’s Institute (Inmujeres).

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