Mexican Labor News & Analysis July , 2008: National Referendum on Privatization of Petroleum

The Mexican Congress has been carrying on an extraordinary debate over the last few months on the reform of the energy sector, or more specifically on the privatization of the petroleum industry. The government of President Felipe Calderón and his National Action Party (PAN), together with much of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) have been pushing for the privatization of petroleum.

Many believe that the left has won the debate against privatization, though the right may still have the votes to move ahead with at least part of its plan. Now the Mexican people will have an opportunity to express themselves on the matter through a consulta or referendum on the issue. Such popular referenda were popularized by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in the late 1990s when as many as one million participated in its unofficial consultations.

The “Legitimate Government” Promotes Referendum

Promoted by the “Legitimate Government” of Andrés Manuel López Obrador and supported by his left-of-center Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and by the alliance of left parties known as the Broad Progressive Front (FAP), the referendum will ask voters: 1) Do you believe that private business should now be allowed to participate in the petroleum business; 2) In general, do you agree or disagree with the energy reform now being debated in Congress.

The Mexican Congress and the Federal Electoral Institute refused to carry out the referendum, arguing that it has no basis in the Mexican Constitution or in Mexican law. In Mexico City, the referendum will be organized and carried out with the support of the PRD government there. Throughout the rest of the country it will be an entirely voluntary affair organized by groups almost entirely opposed to the privatization of petroleum.

Voting in Three Stages

The overall organizer of the Consulta is Manuel Camacho Solís, a PRD politician and the former mayor of Mexico City. Lending their experience and their weight to the referendum will be two civil society organizations: the Civic Alliance (AC) and Civic Proposal (PC) which will act as citizen observers.

The referendum will be carried out in three stages, with Mexico City and the central states of Mexico voting on July 27; the southeastern states and a couple of others voting on August 10; and the northern and western states voting on August 24.

Labor, Feminists to participate in Referendum

The National Union of Workers (UNT), an independent labor federation, declared that its affiliates will promote the referendum in the first stage in Mexico City and consult with its member organizations about participating in the provincial referenda. “The Alliance of Streetcar Workers (ATM) has taken the lead in organizing for the referendum and the UNT will follow its example,” said UNT leader Hernandez Juárez. The National Coordinating Committee of the Mexican Teachers Union (la CNTE) also pledged to mobilize its members to support the consulta.

Feminist organizations will participate in the consulta too, according to Axela Romero Cárdenas, general director of Integral Health for Women (SIPAM).

(See the Letter to the Editor on the Referendum at the end of this issue which criticizes our past coverage of the referendum.)

President Felipe Calderón’s proposed privatization of the petroleum industry will not only leave in place the notoriously corrupt Mexican Petroleum Workers Union (STPRM) but will actually increase the union officials’ power. Three professors from the National Autonomous University of Mexico who have analyzed the proposed reform and its impact on the union—Raúl Robles Segura, Alfredo Sánchez Castañeda and Irán Lagos Chávez—argue in a study that the union officials will not only continue to enjoy the benefits of their relationship with the company, but may actually see their power increase. The reform proposes to increase the number of union officials on the board of the corporation.

Calderón’s administration, no friend of unions, proposes to increase the union’s power in order to win its support for the proposal to privatize the industry. Carlos Salinas de Gortari behaved similarly when he privatized TELMEX in 1990, leaving the union’s power virtually untouched. In that way he won the support of Francisco Hernández Juárez, head of the Mexican Telephone Workers Union (STRM), who supported Salinas’s privatization of TELMEX.

The Mexico City daily newspaper La Jornada reported in mid-July that documents from one union local, Local 20 in Minatitlán, Veracruz showed that union officials engaged in undemocratic practices, controlled millions of dollars in union dues and company contracts, as well as prospering from rents on union property. The paper reported that during his six years as general secretary of Local 10 Jorge Wade González managed 120 million pesos (US$1.2 million) in union dues, 290 million pesos (US$29 million) received for providing transportation to petroleum workers, income from the Casino Petrolero, the union-owned gambling business, and other monies from rent of union owned property. Local 10 used some of this money to buy a watch costing US$6,662 for Carlos Romero Deschamps, the general secretary of the national union. Yet, with all that money, workers in the local were expected to kick in 200 pesos (US$20) apiece to buy a gift as part of the celebration of Wade’s saint’s day. Such practices are common throughout the union.

[The following is a translation of “Corrupción laboral en Pemex,” an opinion piece which appeared in the Mexico City daily La Jornada on July 19, 2008. The author, Arturo Alcalde, is a leading Mexican labor lawyer, highly respected for his work in promoting democracy in the labor movement. Translation by Dan La Botz]

Putting PEMEX in the national spotlight has given the public an opportunity to think about its importance for the future of the country. We have entered into hard facts that in other times were the exclusive province of specialists. Now, for example, there is criticism of the absurd policy of drawing off the largest part of the company resources in the form of general revenue for the government and of the poor use made of the petroleum earnings. Today we hear indignation when people learn that, in the last eight years, those earnings would have been sufficient to pay off the Mexican foreign debt. The conviction that oil is our common national inheritance involves all of us in a new dynamic and it is important to use that knowledge in a positive way.

Ordinary citizens who have few resources, accustomed to administrate their small family budget, know that any extra earnings should be used to fix up the house or to pay off debts, never for outlays which will be impossible to keep up in the future. This is what has generated the demand to decide public policies that were previously the private decisions of government administrators. All of this has been due to the mobilization that forced [the government] to open up the [proposed] energy reform to the entire country.

One issue that comes up in the national debate is the labor question and the type of unionism that exists in PEMEX. There is some resistance to speaking clearly about the problems and about the relationships implied in this issue because they touch many private interests and very few politicians are willing to take the risk. Nevertheless, the information is getting out, confirming that the system of labor relations has been submerged in enormous corruption and inefficiency that involves the company, the union and the government. This system has been used as a form of control, immobilizing workers and flexibilizing working conditions, a process which during the last twenty years has seen an increase in subcontracting or in the complete displacement of production from the company to outside contractors. This scheme of private interests has been approved by a pact agreed upon by the National Action Party and the Institutional Revolutionary Party, a treaty celebrated in order to achieve the majority necessary to pass laws, including the energy reform.

This agreement has permitted the petroleum union to keep its position as an instrument of great power and benefit for its leaders. The union holds five of the 11 current seats on the company board. It receives 2 percent of the costs of all contracts and possibly a larger percentage for all drilling work. It is involved in all aspects of the work, including hiring and promotion of rank-and-file workers. It uses these significant resources to increase its mechanisms of control. Anyone who is against the union leaders will find it hard to be promoted, nor could he ever achieve the dream of every oil worker of being able to recommend some family member for a job; nor even less would he ever have a part in the many deals in which some workers are involved. His very job would be permanently at risk of being put on one of the special layoff lists that are repeatedly negotiated.

Any kind of change is difficult to achieve without the consent of the union and there does not exist a constructive bilateral relationship that would allow the union to act in favorable political circumstances so as to develop the quality of life of the members it represents. On the contrary, the union tends essentially to increase the privileges of the representatives and the delegates, at both the national and the local level. Given this state of things, internal opposition is difficult, above all when the company, as part of the cost it must pay, suppresses dissidents, either openly or by forcing them to resign or to retire early. It also sacrifices the immense professional value of technical workers and professionals who are so important in an enterprise like this. In every area, the complaints are constantly repeated that the union is a superpower and an obstacle. PEMEX itself suffers from this, even as it provides the resources to perpetuate this situation. That is why it is necessary to create a standard that can break this corrupt symbiosis.

The alternatives to be able to achieve this transformation of the PEMEX labor model are complex. The political situation is explained by the repeated Pemexgate scandals, the government’s refusal to touch the big players, and its consent to the reelection of [Petroleum Union Workers Union] leader Romero Deschamps until the year 2015, without any possibility of internal or external influence. What will happen here depends upon the fate of the proposed energy reform which is doubtless tied to the theme of government revenue. Other elements are linked to the [proposed] labor law reform, the fundamental aspect of which will be to create conditions to democratize the union by way of new institutions and mechanisms that permit workers to decide the future of their union organizations. With regard to the internal aspect, it will be important to take advantage of the discussions that are being held in Congress today about the fundamental [energy] law, the composition of the administrative council, the proposal for a petroleum council, and related standards of the institution. Among them should be included a plan for the complete transparency of the administration and of the utilization of the firm’s resources, putting special emphasis on the contracts and agreement reached with the union on the national as well as the local level. A new policy of openness should include the administration of positions and vacancies as well as the measures related to health and safety, particularly in high-risk jobs. A positive step would be taken by facilitating public access to information about the use of the company’s resources through contracts and other agreements that today constitute giant funds about which there is no accounting. It would be a good way to defend our common national inheritance.

For the last four months the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) has been paralyzed by a fight over the results of its flawed internal election. The two dominant political currents in the party, the United Left led by Alejandro Encinas and the New Left, led by Jesús Ortega, have both accepted the resolution by the PRD’s National Commission of Guarantees, the body that oversees internal affairs, that the previous election be annulled.

The PRD internal leadership election was alleged to have involved widespread fraud. For sometime it appeared that the PRD’s problems were irreconcilable and that the party might split between the more leftwing faction led by Encinas and the rightwing group led by Ortega.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the dominant public figure of the PRD, praised the decision saying that otherwise the PRD would appear to be no different than the other corrupt parties which had stolen the election from him in 2006 when he ran for the office of president of Mexico.

The PRD will conduct a new election though not until after the national referendum on energy reform and privatization of the petroleum industry in which it is involved.

The Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO), the organization that led the civic rebellion against Governor Ulises Ruiz in 2006, was on the streets of Oaxaca again in mid-July. The group carried out a march on July 16 to protest an attack on demonstrators on that date a year before.

A longtime resident of Oaxaca writes, “In the Zócalo [the authorities] put up pictures by Ariel Mendoza of essentialized indigenous peoples—this after chasing out all the real people, such as the vendors from indigenous communities. Then the APPO came in, we were there, and knocked over the pictures, ripped them off their stands, and sprayed them.”

Local 22 of the Mexican Teachers Union that was at the center of the events of 2006, organized the “Guelaguetza magisterial y popular,” the Teachers and Peoples’ Guelaguetza, a display of poplar culture intended as an alternative to the city’s official Guelaguetza celebration for tourists. The demonstration and the alternative celebration suggest that the Oaxaca movement remains alive despite the 20 deaths, hundreds injured, and many tortured and arrested in 2006.

(See the Book Review section below for more on Oaxaca.)

Mexico is a human right disaster. A series of incidents and government reports during the month of July suggested that Mexicans do not enjoy the most fundamental human rights and that the principal violator of those rights is the Mexican government, its army and its police forces. The Mexican Army was found responsible for human rights violations including murder, rape and torture; videos revealed a U.S. contractor teaching torture techniques to Mexican police, the Federal government was accused of spying on Senators and Congressional representatives; and Mexico City police turned a police raid into a tragedy that killed 12.

National Commission of Human Rights Finds Army Kills and Tortures

Mexico’s National Commission of Human Rights (CNDH) found in July that the Mexican Army had engaged in serious human rights violations in its fight against drug dealers. The CNDH found that in the states of Michoacán, Sinaloa, Sonora, and Tamaulipas that the military had engaged in murder, torture, arbitrary detention, illegal searches, and robbery, among others. The CNDH presented to the Army eight recommendations to end the illegal practices.

In one case, José Fausto Gálvez Munguía who was waiting for a coyote or contraband smuggler to take him across the border to the United States was detained by soldiers. Shouting, “Where’s the marijuana?” the soldiers beat and kicked him, fired off guns near his head, covered his eyes, forced a tube in his mouth and poured alcohol into him, stuck pieces of wood under his fingernails and toenails and then left him unconscious in the desert.

In another case, soldiers arrived shouting and swearing at the home of Óscar Cornejo Tello in Morelia, Michoacán on June 13, 2007. When he opened the door, 15 soldiers entered his house, beat him for 30 minutes, covered his head and then doused him in water, and used electric shock on his testicles. He was handcuffed and taken to a military base and then to the Mexican Attorney General’s offices where he was accused of drug trafficking.

CNDH President José Luis Soberanes Fernández called upon the Army to punish those responsible for such abuses and to stop such practices at once. The Secretary of National Defense (SEDENA) said that he could carry out the eight recommendations of the CNDH. He said that the Army was committed to respecting human rights.

U.S. Contractor Trains Mexican Police in Torture

Videos showing a U.S. contractor teaching torture to Mexican police appeared on television news programs in León, Guanajuato in early July. Torture is illegal in the State of Guanajuato. The revelations of the torture training sessions came a day after President George W. Bush signed the US$1.6 billion Plan México or Mérida Plan which will provide US training, equipment and weapons to Mexico.

The trainer, a British man working for an unknown U.S. security company showed police how to use such sophisticated techniques as putting seltzer water up a victim’s nose, holding a person’s head in a toilet, and pushing someone’s head into a hole full of excrement. The program was part of 160-hours of training given to police in April 2006.

The torture training was performed by their teacher on the police officers themselves. Alvar Cabeza de Vaca, the Secretary of Public Security in León, says the participants volunteered to be tortured as part of the training.

León mayor Vicente Guerrero Reynoso initially said that the training would continue and no public official would be punished for involvement in the torture training. He demanded that the media “be more responsible.” Guerrero is a member of President Felipe Calderón's right-wing National Action Party.

Alvar Cabeza de Vaca, Secretary of Public Security for León, defended torture training, saying, “It is essential to have a special group that responds to certain conditions. More and more we see the clear involvement, not only in León, but in the whole state, of organized crime, and there is a need to have these groups.”

Carlos Tornero, police chief in the central city of León, was fired at the recommendation of the Guanajuato state attorney general's office for human rights, Public Safety Secretary Alvar Cabeza de Vaca told the press.

Does Mexican Intelligence Spy on Senators and Congressmen?

In early July it was revealed that the Center of Investigation and National Security (CISEN), Mexico’s FBI, had signed a contract with a private company to study the Mexican Congress. Many took this to mean that CISEN had been spying on Senators and Congressmen. Juan Camilo Mouriño Terrazo, Secretary of the Interior (Gobernación) who oversees the secret police said, however, that CISEN did not spy on legislators but only studied public information about the legislature. He said that there was no reason to fire CISEN Director Guillermo Valdés Castellanos, since no proof of the accusations had been presented.

Mouriño said that CISEN exists to fight organized crime and works to guarantee national security. “No one,” he said, “was being spied on without a court order, including legislators and state governors.”

Valdés, the CISEN director, commented that there was no reason to believe that any of the legislators were involved with drug dealers, though the attempt of the cartels to influence legislators remained a possibility. “Congress is not exempt [from drug influence],” he said, “and we do not rule out the possibility that drug many may have already found its way into political campaigns.”

The comments by Mouriño and Valdés left many feeling that CISEN was, if not spying on Mexican legislators, at least keeping an eye on them in ways that may be inappropriate if not actually illegal.

The News Divine Tragedy

Responding to reports of drug and alcohol violations, Mexico City police raided the News Divine Disco on Friday, June 21. The police raid panicked the over-capacity 500 people present who ran for exits only to find them blocked by cases of beer or by the police. A dozen people were killed, nine students and three employees as well as three police officers. The three youngest who died were 13, 14, and 16. Many had come to celebrate the end of the school year.

Some 108 people were detained as witnesses and several women reported being sexually molested by the police.

Two weeks later, the Mexico City police chief and the top prosecutor both resigned over the incident. Precinct Commander Guillermo Zayas who was responsible for the raid was charged with 12 counts of homicide.

Emilio Álvarez Icaza, president of the Human Relations Commission of the Federal District (CDHDF) said that he believed that the Federal District government’s handling of the News Divine Disco case showed progress in the area of human rights.

The Congress of Labor (CT), the umbrella organization that brings together many of Mexico’s labor federations, has readmitted to its ranks the Revolutionary Confederation of Workers and Peasants (CROC) and the Regional Confederation of Mexican Workers (CROM). The two federations left the CT in 2006 during a power struggle for control of the organization.

The CT is made up principally of what were the unions and federations once loyal to the Institutional Revolutionary Party. Many have moved toward an accommodation with the ruling National Action Party (PAN) of President Felipe Calderón and some have metamorphosed into company unions.

“This agreement,” said CT head Enrique Aguilar Borrego, “will strengthen the unity of the labor sector and will support the struggle for the defense of workers’ rights in the entire country.” Such unity he said is necessary at a moment when inflation is harming workers’ purchasing power.

Victor Flores Magón, who had been the principal antagonist of the CROC and the CROM in the 2006 power struggle said that he welcome the federations back and that their return “showed maturity, intelligence, and a great desire to unite forces.” In 2006, Flores Magón had tricked the other unions by moving the meeting location at the last moment in order to win election to leadership of the CT. Flores Magon’s leadership was disputed by Isaías González Cuevas of the CROC, but the Secretary of Labor supported Flores Magón.

The Mexican democratic teachers’ movement which for almost thirty years has organized in the National Coordinating Committee (la CNTE) of the Mexican Teachers Union (el SNTE) held its first Rank-and-File National Convention (Congreso Nacional de Bases) in mid-July in Mexico City where it pledged “to throw out Elba Esther Gordillo and her gang.” With 1,600 delegates from 58 union locals in 28 of the country’s 32 states the delegates voted to create a national shadow leadership for the union, still it remained unclear whether the democratic teachers plan to continue to operate as a rival caucus within the union or to bolt from el SNTE and create a new union.

The delegates elected Sergio Espinal García, head of Local 18 in the State of Michoacán to be the general secretary of the new National Democratic Executive Committee (CEND), the shadow leadership of the union. The CEND with its 38 members will hold office for three years. The next National Rank-and-File Convention will be held in one-and-a-half years.

Dissident leaders called upon teachers to take over their schools and unions and to drive out the follower of Gordillo. They told the teachers that they should occupy the teachers’ union facilities throughout the country, the vacation centers, hotels, restaurants, union halls, and other properties belonging to the union. In several states—the Baja California, Chiapas Sur, the Federal District, Guerrero, Michoacán, Tlaxcala, and Zacatecas—SNTE Locals have already created parallel leaderships and organizations. These organizations are not, however, recognized by either the Mexican Teachers Union, by the Mexican Secretary of Education (SEP), or by state officials.

Democratic Teachers Program

During the five-day convention, the teachers adopted a program for their union and also took positions on national social and political issues. The teachers pledged that they would:

· Fight to remove union head Elba Esther Gordillo and her associates from leadership of the union.
· Defend free, lay, scientific, obligatory education.
· Stop the Alliance for Quality in Education, the agreement for educational reform reached by Gordillo and Mexican President Felipe Calderón.
· Develop a national union education program.
· Create a program of struggle against the National Action Party government.
· Participate in the national referendum on the petroleum industry as opponents of Calderón’s proposed energy reforms.
· Oppose the PAN’s labor law reform.
· Carry out a national strike on the first of September.
· Hold another National Rank-and-file Convention in one-and-a-half-years.

The CEND leaders said that they would not seek legal recognition from the Secretary of Labor through the process known as “taking note” (toma de nota). They said they derived their power from the teacher rank and file.

This important convention of democratic teachers left unclear whether or not it intended to remain a caucus or to become a kind of unofficial union. What was clear was that they delegates plan to fight to remove Gordillo and her followers in the union.

During July, the Mexican Miners and Metal Workers Union (SNTMMRM) continued its two-year struggle against Grupo Mexico, the country’s largest mining company and against the Mexican government. During those years, the government has removed Mine Workers Union leader Napoleon Gómez Urrutia from office, indicted him for embezzlement, closed mines, and taken legal actions against the union. The union for its part has carried out local and general mining strikes, demonstrations and protests in the mining states and in the national capital, and fought battles in court to defend its independence from the state.

The Secretary of Labor (STPS) announced at the end of June that it would not recognize Gómez as general secretary, that is, top officer of the union because his election was not legal since he does not live in the country and because of his outstanding orders for his arrest. For almost two years Gómez has lived in Vancouver, British Columbia in order to avoid being jailed by the government. He was, however, re-elected general secretary in absentia at a union convention held in May of 2008.

During July the Mine Workers Union continued its year-long strike at Cananea, the country’s largest copper mine, and two other strikes, carried out a one hour strike in mines throughout the country, and struck steel mills. The Mine Workers Union also denounced Grupo Mexico and the Mining Chamber of Mexico (CAMINEX), the employer association, for creating phony mine workers’ organizations.

International Support for Mexican Miners

On July 11, the National day of the Miner, general secretary Napoleón Gómez Urrutia declared that Grupo Mexico would fail in its attempts to destroy the union he leads. The Mexican Mine Workers Union has the backing of the International Metalworkers Federation (IMF), of the United Steel Workers of the United States and Canada, and of other international organizations. At the International Mine Workers Conference held in St. Petersburg, Russia, 170 organizations pledged their support to the Mexican union.

The United Steel Workers has raised $40,000 to support the Mexican miners’ families. The USW will file complaints with both the International Labor Organization and with the Commission for Labor Cooperation of the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation, otherwise known as the NAFTA side agreement. “We consider the situation at Cananea a travesty. It’s not about Natpoleón Gómez, it’s about the government trying to crush independent unions,” said Jerry Fernandez, assistant to USW president Leo Gerard. “The government and Grupo Mexico are working hand-in-hand. All the evidence is there. So we’re playing an active role to pressure the government because the only person who can end this now is Mexican President Felipe Calderón.”

Meanwhile in Mexico City, the Chamber of Deputies has adopted at least two resolutions calling for government mediation of the existing strike.

A group of miners calling itself the Workers Democratic Union (UDO) has said it will file suit against Napoleón Gómez for embezzlement of 18 million pesos (US$1.8 million) won by the workers in the negotiation of a contract with the steel company Altos Hornos de Mexico (AHMSA). The same group has filed a petition with the Secretary of Labor to annul the contract and to change the union rules.

A group called Beltrán and Associated, apparently at the behest of Grupo Mexico, carried out a survey in Cananea in which it supposedly found that 93 percent of the people in that community wanted the strike to end and 79 percent consider the union’s argument unjustified. In addition, the company said, 74 percent of miners believe that the government was justified in refusing to recognize Napoleón Gómez Urrutia as head of the union.

JUXTLAHUACA, OAXACA, MEXICO (7/9/08) - For almost half a century, migration has been the main fact of social life in hundreds of indigenous towns spread through the hills of Oaxaca, one of Mexico's poorest states. That's made the conditions and rights of migrants central concerns for communities like Santiago de Juxtlahuaca.

Today the right to travel to seek work is a matter of survival. But this June in Juxtlahuaca, in the heart of Oaxaca's Mixteca region, dozens of farmers left their fields, and women weavers their looms, to talk about another right, the right to stay home.

In the town's community center two hundred Mixtec, Zapotec and Triqui farmers, and a handful of their relatives working in the U.S., made impassioned speeches asserting this right at the triannual assembly of the Indigenous Front of Binational Organizations (FIOB). Hot debates ended in numerous votes. The voices of mothers and fathers arguing over the future of their children, echoed from the cinderblock walls of the cavernous hall.

In Spanish, Mixteco and Triqui, people repeated one phrase over and over: the derecho de no migrar - the right to not migrate. Asserting this right challenges not just inequality and exploitation facing migrants, but the very reasons why people have to migrate to begin with. Indigenous communities are pointing to the need for social change.

About 500,000 indigenous people from Oaxaca live in the US, 300,000 in California alone, according to Rufino Dominguez, one of FIOB's founders. These men and women come from communities whose economies are totally dependent on migration. The ability to send a son or daughter across the border to the north, to work and send back money, makes the difference between eating chicken or eating salt and tortillas. Migration means not having to manhandle a wooden plough behind an ox, cutting furrows in dry soil for a corn crop that can't be sold for what it cost to plant it. It means that dollars arrive in the mail when kids need shoes to go to school, or when a grandparent needs a doctor.

In Oaxaca the category of extreme poverty encompasses 75 percent of its 3.4 million residents, according to EDUCA, an education and development organization. For more than two decades, under pressure from the World Bank and U.S. loan conditions, the Mexican government has cut spending intended to raise rural incomes. Prices have risen dramatically since price controls and subsidies were eliminated for necessities like gasoline, electricity, bus fares, tortillas, and milk.

Raquel Cruz Manzano, principal of the Formal Primary School in San Pablo Macuiltianguis, a town in the indigenous Zapotec region, says only 900,000 Oaxacans receive organized healthcare, and the illiteracy rate is 21.8%. "The educational level in Oaxaca is 5.8 years," Cruz notes, "against a national average of 7.3 years. The average monthly wage for non-governmental employees is less than 2,000 pesos [about $200] per family [per month], the lowest in the nation. Around 75,000 children have to work in order to survive or to help their families."

"But there are no jobs here, and NAFTA [the North American Free Trade Agreement] made the price of corn so low that it's not economically possible to plant a crop anymore," Dominguez asserts. "We come to the U.S. to work because we can't get a price for our product at home. There's no alternative."

Without large scale political change most local communities won't have the resources for productive projects and economic development that could provide a decent living. Towns like Juxtlahuaca, don't even have waste water treatment. Rural communities rely on the same rivers for drinking water that are also used to carry away sewage. "A typical teacher earns about 2200 pesos every two weeks [about $220]," says Jaime Medina, a reporter for Oaxaca's daily Noticias. "From that they have to purchase chalk, pencils and other school supplies for the children,"

Because of its indigenous membership, FIOB campaigns for the rights of migrants in the U.S. who come from those communities. It calls for immigration amnesty and legalization for undocumented migrants. FIOB has also condemned the proposals for guest worker programs. Migrants need the right to work, but "these workers don't have labor rights or benefits," Dominguez charges. "It's like slavery."

At the same time, "we need development that makes migration a choice rather than a necessity -- the right to not migrate," explains Gaspar Rivera Salgado, a professor at UCLA. "Both rights are part of the same solution. We have to change the debate from one in which immigration is presented as a problem to a debate over rights. The real problem is exploitation." But the right to stay home, to not migrate, has to mean more than the right to be poor, the right to go hungry and homeless. Choosing whether to stay home or leave only has meaning if each choice can provide a meaningful future.

In Juxtlahuaca Gaspar Rivera Salgado was elected FIOB's new binational coordinator. His father and mother still live on a ranch half an hour up a dirt road from the main highway, in the tiny town of Santa Cruz Rancho Viejo. There his father Sidronio planted three hundred avocado trees a few years ago, in the hope that someday their fruit would take the place of the corn and beans that were once his staple crop. He's fortunate -- his relatives have water, and a pipe from their spring has kept most of his trees, and those hopes, alive. Fernando, Gaspar's brother, has started growing mushrooms in a FIOB-sponsored project, and even put up a greenhouse for tomatoes. Those projects, they hope, will produce enough money that Fernando won't have to go back to Seattle, where he worked for seven years.

This family perhaps has come close to achieving the derecho de no migrar. For the millions of farmers throughout the indigenous countryside, not migrating means doing something like it. But finding the necessary resources, even for a small number of families and communities, presents FIOB with its biggest challenge. This was the source of the debate at its Juxtlahuaca assembly.

Gaspar Rivera-Salgado says, "we will find the answer to migration in our communities of origin. To make the right to not migrate concrete, we need to organize the forces in our communities, and combine them with the resources and experiences we've accumulated in 16 years of cross-border organizing." Fernando, the greenhouse builder and mushroom farmer, agrees that FIOB has the ability to organize people. "But now we have to take the next step," he urges, "and make concrete changes in peoples' lives."

Organizing FIOB's support base in Oaxaca means more than just making speeches, however. As Fernando Rivera Salgado points out, communities want projects that help raise their income. Over the years FIOB has organized women weavers in Juxtlahuaca, helping them sell their textiles and garments through its chapters in California. It set up a union for rural taxis, both to help farming famiies get from Juxtlahuaca to the tiny towns in the surrounding hills, and to provide jobs for drivers. Artisan co-ops make traditional products, helped by a co-operative loan fund.

The government does have some money for loans to start similar projects, but it usually goes to officials who often just pocket it, supporters of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which has ruled Oaxaca since it was formed in the 1940s. One objective debated at the FIOB assembly was organizing community pressure to win some of these resources. But any government subsidy is viewed with suspicion by activists who know the strings tied to it.

Another concern is the effect of the funding on communities themselves. "Part of our political culture is the use of regalos, or government favors, to buy votes," Gaspar Rivera Salgado explains. "People want regalos, and think an organization is strong because of what it can give. But now people are demanding these results from FIOB, so do we help them or not? And if we do, how can we change the way people think? It's critical that our members see organization as the answer to problems, not a gift from the government or a political party. FIOB members need political education."

Political abstention isn't an option, however, warns Juan Romualdo Gutierrez Cortez. "We aren't the only organization in Oaxaca - there are 600 others. If we don't do it, they will." But for the 16 years of its existence, FIOB has been a crucial part of the political opposition to Oaxaca's PRI government. Gutierrez, a school teacher in Tecomaxtlahuaca, was FIOB's Oaxaca coordinator until he stepped down at the Juxtlahuaca assembly. He is also a leader of Oaxaca's teachers union, Section 22 of the National Education Workers Union, and of the Popular Association of the People of Oaxaca (APPO).

In June of 2006 a strike by Section 22 led to a months-long uprising, led by APPO, which sought to remove the state's governor, Ulises Ruiz, and make a basic change in development and economic policy. The uprising was crushed by Federal armed intervention, and dozens of activists were arrested. According to Leoncio Vasquez, an FIOB activist in Fresno, "the lack of human rights itself is a factor contributing to migration from Oaxaca and Mexico, since it closes off our ability to call for any change." This spring teachers again occupied the central plaza, or zocalo, of the state capital, protesting the same conditions that sparked the uprising two years ago.

Gutierrez himself was not jailed during the uprising, although the state issued an order for his detention. But he's been arrested before. In the late 1990s he was elected to the Oaxaca Chamber of Deputies, in an alliance between FIOB and Mexico's leftwing Democratic Revolutionary Party. Following his term in office, Gutierrez was imprisoned by Ruiz' predecessor, Jose Murat, until a binational campaign won his release. His crime, and that of many others filling Oaxaca's jails, was insisting on a new path of economic development that would raise rural living standards, and make migration just an option, rather than an indispensable means of survival.

Despite the fact that APPO wasn't successful in getting rid of Ruiz and the PRI, Gaspar Rivera-Salgado believes that "in Mexico we're very close to getting power in our communities on a local and state level." He points to Gutierrez' election as state deputy, and later as mayor of his hometown San Miguel Tlacotepec. Other municipal presidents, allied with FIOB, have also won office, and activists are beginning to plan a FIOB campaign to elect a Federal deputy.

FIOB delegates agreed that the organization would continue its alliance with the PRD. Nevertheless, that alliance is controversial, partly because of the party's internal disarray. "We know the PRD is caught up in an internal crisis, and there's no real alternative vision on the left," Rivera Salgado says. "But there are no other choices if we want to participate in electoral politics, so we're trying to put forward positive proposals. We're asking people in the PRD to stop fighting over positions, and instead use the resources of the party to organize the community. We can't change things by ourselves. First, we have to reorganize our own base. But then we have to find strategic allies.

"Migration is part of globalization," he emphasizes, "an aspect of state policies that expel people. Creating an alternative to that requires political power. There's no way to avoid that."

Also by David Bacon

For more articles and images on Mexico and immigration, see
http://dbacon.igc.org/Mexico/mexico.htm http://dbacon.igc.org/Imgrants/imgrants.htm

Coming in September, 2008, from Beacon Press:
Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants
http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002

See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US
Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006)
http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575

See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004)
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html
--

__________________________________

David Bacon, Photographs and Stories
http://dbacon.igc.org

__________________________________

University Union in Crisis

The Independent Union of Workers of the Autonomous Metropolitan University (SITUAM) found itself in crisis in July following a long, debilitating strike. While Hermelinda Hurtado Guzmán remained the general secretary, the majority of her executive board resigned and the union found itself unable to hold its 32nd union convention for lack of a quorum.

Struggle Against ISSSTE Continues

Public employees—university workers, school teachers, and government workers of all sorts—continued their protests and demonstrations in July against the reform of the public employees social security system (ISSSTE). The public employees have also engaged in massive legal protests, filing for injunctions in cities across the country.

Flight Attendants Not Permitted to Strike

Flight attendants employed by Mexicana filed the legal papers to strike in mid July, but the Federal Labor Board (JFCA), the Secretary of Labor and the Courts denied the workers the right to strike to improve their wages. At the same time, workers at Azteca Airlines petitioned President Calderón, asking him to intervene to stop irregularities and corruption affecting the unions 1,200 workers. Azteca was shut down in March 2007 because of safety issues.

Dissidents bring Charges Against Telephone Union Leader

Various groups of dissidents in the Telephone Workers Union (STRM) have brought charges to the Secretary of Labor against Francisco Hernández Juárez, general secretary of the union, for illegally changing the unions constitution. They argue that he has extended the term of general secretary from four to eight years and created a new post of adjunct general secretary. Hernández Juárez has headed the union since the 1970s but now plans to step down and pass power to a successor.

Goodyear Workers Protest Loss of Union Funds

Rubber workers at Goodyear Oxo protest that their union leaders have stolen 444 million pesos (US$44 million) which they contributed during their working lives and which have never been returned to them despite a court order. The Ex-Workers of the Rubber Industry say that they have been fighting for this money for 12 years, and despite a court order, the union continues to use legal tactics to refuse to give them their money.

Mexican Workers’ Labor Rights Denied

At an event in July to celebrate Convention 87 of the International Labor Organization (ILO), the right to workers’ free association in labor unions, Mexican and international organizations said that right did not exist in Mexico. The National Union of Workers (UNT), the Center for Labor Investigation and Consultation (CILAS), the International Metal Workers Federation (IMF), and the Labor Secretary of the “Legitimate Government,” Betha Luján, concurred that Mexican workers could not exercise the right to organize because of the system of “protection contracts.”

Canadian and U.S. Utility Workers Visit Mexican Utility Workers

A small delegation of 'energy experts' participated in a four-day visit sponsored by the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center. The visit was a follow-up activity agreed to at the meeting of Energy Sector Union members in April in New Orleans. Ben Davis led the group's meetings with various utility workers unions.

Information circulated by the area of communications and promotion of CENCOS. Translation by Manuel Pérez Rocha

Call to the second phase of the national campaign Sin Maíz no hay País campaign.

Considering that:

The National Campaign “Sin Maiz no hay Pais” was launched a year ago because of the profound crisis which we have observed in the Mexican countryside, with the objective of highlighting this theme for all Mexicans.

We demand that there be a reactivation of the Mexican countryside, and that the government renegotiate the agricultural chapter of NAFTA.

It is incomprehensible that we allowed this model to be imposed on the Mexican countryside during the last 25 years, because it forces millions of peasants to look for work in the United States in deplorable conditions and in turn Mexico has to import expensive and poor quality food products. Recently, it was announced that the amount spent on the importation of food is equivalent to the remittances sent back by Mexicans.

During this campaign, we have planted corn in the middle of roads, parks and gardens of Mexico City and other cities; we launched campaigns in 18 states and collected almost a million signatures; organized concerts, festivals and fairs; carried out meetings and took over government intuitions. On January 1, 2008 we were on the Las Americas international bridge in Ciudad Juárez and we accompanied a tractor caravan from el Chamizal to Mexico City to participate in the National Peasant March on January 31st.

Food Prices Increase by 70%

The response of the federal government to the now worldwide anguishing reality has been indifference and disdain. In the last 18 months, the price of food has increased by more than 70%, severely affecting the economy and nutrition of the majority of Mexican families, while salaries have increased less than10%.

Expensive food has provoked enormous suffering for Mexican families, mainly the poorest. Twenty million Mexican people suffer malnutrition and anemia; at the same time, there has been a growth in obesity rates. Today, a third of the population is overweight. Over half of the population, more than 60 million Mexicans, live in conditions of poverty.

The persistent stagnation of the national economy deepens our dependency on agricultural imports. Because the existence of a crisis is consistently denied by the Calderón regime, the structural causes of the food crisis in Mexico are not faced. All of their proposed solutions only favor large Mexican and transnational corporations, which dominate the agricultural market in Mexico. This only deepens the political and social crises in the country and erodes our fragile social, economic and political stability.

Our Corn at Risk of Contamination

Our corn is facing a real risk of contamination via genetically modified (GMO) corn, which results in a privatization of our main cultural and sustaining wealth; maize. At the same time, the result is the devastation of peasant production that is substituted by low quality, expensive products.

Today the President insists on handing over our food and energy sovereignty to private corporations, as it has been attempting for years with PEMEX, the national oil company. The neoliberal dream of having a countryside without peasants and a Mexico without Indians; where its natural resources can be extracted with impunity (water, minerals, germ plasma) etc. is a false calculation. Either there is a Mexico with peasants and indigenous peoples or there is no Mexico. Because Without Corn there is No Country.

Peasant, indigenous, women, environmental, human rights, consumer, non governmental, researchers, scientific, artists, intellectual and “people standing up”, we elevate our voices once again to call society to embark upon the defense of our right to eat well, the right to Mexican corn and peasant agriculture, the right of peasants and indigenous peoples to exist with their own culture and forms of living; to establish agricultural policies that promote the national production of a great diversity of corn and Mexican products. We have sounded the alarm about the real risk of having our corn contaminated by GMOs.

Today, Launching the Second Stage

Today, June 23rd, 2008, we launch the second stage of the Campaign and call all Mexicans and citizens of the world who agree with what we have just stated, to support the following urgent measures:

1. Food Sovereignty. Adopt the principle of food sovereignty as the base and central column of a new agricultural and alimentary policy to address the crisis, short, medium and long term.

2. Alternative public policies and a responsible Government. In the face of a dependent model, based on ‘free trade’, which deepens food insecurity and vulnerability, active public policies must be adopted and a renewed role of the State must lead to self- determination and food sufficiency. This must include the entire food system and the processing, distribution and access of food produced by peasants throughout the country. The gravity of the food crisis requires the wide, plural and exclusive participation of all of society and the powers of the Republic.

3. Re-value and stimulate peasant agriculture. In the last 25 years, the contribution, potential and ecological virtues of small and medium scale agriculture have been underestimated, and the contribution of women in the strategy of sustaining rural life in the face of the crisis has been ignored. Peasants have in their hands 80% of the lands where strategic resources are found; water, germ plasma and minerals that have been sustainably maintained; and have the potential of responding to the food needs of the Mexican people.

4. Sustainable agriculture and recognition of the multifunctional character of peasant agriculture. The model of agriculture based on large expanses of single crop farming, the increased usage of water, machinery and contaminating chemicals is no longer viable. We propose to move to a sustainable peasant agriculture that promotes the production of healthy products, the conservation of biodiversity the environment and the preservation of cultural and ethnic diversity. In sum, we propose a recuperation of the multiple contributions of peasant agriculture to society and the economic development of the country.

5. Moratorium on the planting of GMO corn. The genetic richness of Mexico, especially of corn, includes a wide number of varieties adapted to climate change. Moreover, Mexico´s heritage as the center of origin of corn must be preserved. Modern biotechnology will not solve the problems of hunger; rather, transnational companies create dependency when they appropriate germ plasma and charge for the property rights for using their seeds. There is not sufficient evidence that GMOs are not dangerous to health.

6. Prohibition of the use of food crops to produce bio-fuels. The use of corn and other food to produce ethanol is a crime in the midst of this crisis, especially since our country is an oil producer. It is recognized that bio-fuels are not environmentally sustainable, because they use a great quantity of water and fossil fuel for their production.

7. The right to Food. Sustenance is a basic human right that should be guaranteed by the Constitution and enforced by the Mexican State. The right to food means that all people have physical and economic access, regularly and permanently, to adequate and sufficient food, and to the means to produce it according to the cultural tradition of each sector of the population, thus guaranteeing a dignified life. Also, this relates to other rights such as the right to health, labor rights, cultural and environmental rights, among others. Malnourishment, anemia and obesity must be eradicated.

8. The struggle against the food monopolies and misleading food propaganda. As consumers, we must exercise our right to decide the food we want to eat and whom we want to favor. Large corporations encourage unhealthy consumer patterns through publicity campaigns that lie or exaggerate the nutritional values of the products they sell. It is necessary to encourage responsible consumption through a regulation of the commercials promoted by monopolies.

We demand:

1) Actions to increase production and implement sustainable measures with small farmers.

a) A medium term program for the substitution of agricultural imports as a way of moving towards the elimination of the trade deficit.

b) A legislative agenda for the countryside that includes:

*Approval by the Senate of the initiative “Planning for Food and Nutritional Sovereignty and Security” and the Natural Gas Processing bill.

*Approval by the Congress of an administrative mechanism regarding external trade of basic and strategic foodstuffs, in conformance with the Law for Sustainable Rural Development.

c) Urgent actions to support peasant agriculture and the promotion of sustainable production technologies.

d) Program for widening the hydroponic agricultural infrastructure and the introduction of irrigation technologies focused on sustainable usage of water.

e) A restructuring of rural sector programs and institutions

f) The renegotiation of NAFTA and Agricultural Agreements at the WTO in order to guarantee food sovereignty and the right to food.

2) Actions to guarantee universal access to food at reasonable prices.

a) Approval by the Deputies Chamber of the Senate initiative which elevates the right to food to a constitutionally guaranteed right.

b) Establishment of a ‘basic food basket’ which includes national products with controlled prices, promoting food purchasing from Mexicans producers associations.

c) Increase the budget for DICONSA to promote the number of regional stores and community shops to 100 and 5,000 respectively, to increase their coverage in rural areas. The renovation of their truck fleets in order to maintain prices at January 2007 levels.

d) Establishment of regulations which stipulate the requirement of local and regional production purchasing via producers associations.

e) A 100% increase in the support levels to families who benefit from the ‘Opportunities Program’ and the redefinition of support programs to rural women based on the recognition of their role as producers, and conservers of natural resources and as administrators of land and remittances.

f) Promotion of a program for rural employment for community reforesting, territory improvement, construction of roads and access routes, recovery and maintenance of water resources and the expansion of social and productive infrastructure.

3) Strategic Food Reserve: administered by SAGARPA (Department of Agriculture) and an interdepartmental and inter-sector council, which would maintain 3 million tons of corn, one million tons of wheat, 200,000 tons of beans and a 4 months’ supply of milk powder.

4) Protection of Corn:

a) Public research oriented to value agricultural ecology and the potential of native seeds.

b) Incentives for using sustainable practices which have demonstrated a high value for solving environmental problems in agriculture

c) Protection of our native corn from transgenic contamination

d) Support to local initiatives to protect native corn species.

e) Bio-security measures that respond to the reality of the country as center of origin and genetic diversity of corn.

f) Creation of a Special Protection Regime of Corn, to be established under the ‘Bio-security Law related to GMOs’, that protects Mexico as center of origin and genetic diversity of corn, and guarantees the preservation of diversity of corn in all of the national territory, as well as human and animal health.

g) Establishment of systems for the protection, responsibility and payment to peasants whose conventional or organic cultivations have resulted affected by the contamination through genetic bleed.

h) Required labeling of all products that contain GMOs, as is applied in many countries, responding to the basic right of information to choose.

5) Required budget and sources:

a) 20% reduction of the ordinary budget of the bureaucracy of the Federal Government, Judicial Power and Legislative Power; including salaries, benefits and the elimination of insurance for major medical expenses.

b) Apply oil profits to a National Fund for Food and Nutritional Sovereignty and Security.

c) Extraordinary income for the collecting of the IETU (Tax)

e) Seizures from organized crime (25%)

How to Participate?

Make a commitment to defend our corn! Plant corn in homes, on sidewalks, in medians and in public parks. Make declarations against GMO products. Promote and safeguard GMO free zones all along the country. Demand the recognition of Mexico as center of origin of corn. Support and make our own the demands of peasant and indigenous organizations to achieve justice and sovereignty in Mexico.

Consume responsibly, giving preference to national products, and those which are fresh, non- industrialized that come from small and medium size producers under the “Comercio Justo Mexico” seal. Buy in local shops and markets and food stalls, not in super markets. Avoid buying industrialized products from large agro-industrial companies such as: Bimbo, Maseca, Minsa, Bachoco, Nestle, Cargill, Monsanto and others.

Carry out educational activities and diverse actions to denounce the abuses of agro-industrial monopolies. Promote national production and national consumption and inform the people about the risks of authorizing GMO corn in Mexico, as well as in national and regional forums, peasant fairs and concerts in favor of peasant agriculture and food sovereignty.

We call on all Mexicans; women and men, from the cities and the countryside to take up this historical task; to defend our corn and promote an alternative project for the countryside and the country; a rural an national, inclusive, fair, sustainable and solidarity project.

To save Mexico: save the Mexican countryside.

Respectfully,

National Peasant Organizations: Consejo Nacional de Organizaciones Campesinas (AMUCSS, ANEC, CNOC, CEPCO, FDCCH, MAÍZ, RED MOCAF, UNOFOC), Coordinadora Nacional Plan de Ayala (CNPA), El Barzón, Alianza Nacional de Productores Agropecuarios y Pesqueros (ANPAP), Alianza Mexicana por la Autodeterminación de los Pueblos (AMAP).Organizaciones Campesinas Regionales: Integradora Estatal de Productores de Frijol de Zacatecas, Frente de la Cordillera Norte, Mixteca de Oaxaca, La Red Nacional de Promotoras y Asesoras Rurales, Comisión Estatal Huertos Tecoxdico (Veracruz), Cactus (Oaxaca), Comercializadora, Venado Azul, (Oaxaca), Frente de Pueblos en Defensa de la Tierra, Atenco, Frente Campesino Democrático "19 de Octubre" (FCD), Organización Campesina Emiliano Zapata (OCEZ), Unión de Lucha de los Trabajadores Campesinos(ULTCV), y muchas más.

Unemployment

The unemployment rate in Mexico in June was 3.55 percent according to the National Institute of Statistics (INEGI). Some 143,000 more Mexicans are unemployed this year as compared to last June.

Maquiladora Employment Falls

Employment in the maquiladora industry in Ciudad Juarez (neighbor of El Paso, Texas) fell by 18,500 according to the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS).

Wages Fail to Keep Up with Inflation

Wages negotiated in Mexican contracts in June had average increases of 4.3 percent, or one percent below the current level of inflation. This is the worst showing by workers in the last 20 months according to a report by the Mexican Secretary of Labor.

Food and Energy Push Up Inflation

Food and energy costs are pushing up inflation in Mexico to 5.26 percent in June, according to the Bank of Mexico. Rice and cooking oil rose by more than 50 percent.

Workers Retirement Funds Fall

The Mexican system of retirement funds (Afore) that forms part of the system of retirement savings (SAR) fell by 50 billion pesos (US$5 billion dollars) in June of this year. This is the largest loss since the private sector workers’ retirement funds were privatized in 1992.

Bean Producers in 10 States May Go Under

Bean producers in ten Mexican states could go bankrupt soon according to the Mexican National Confederation of Peasants (CNC). This is because of the importation of 100,000 tons of duty free beans.

Cuauhtémoc Blas López. Oaxaca: Ínsula de rezagos: Critica a sus gobiernos de razón y costumbre. Oxaca: Editorial Siembra, 2007. 279 pages.

Victor Raúl Martínez Vásquez. Autoritarismo, movimiento popular y crisis política: Oaxaca 2006. Oaxaca, Mexico: Universidad Autónoma “Benito Juárez” de Oaxaca 2007. 296 pages. Photos.

What lay behind the crisis of Oaxaca 2006, the civil uprising against the government of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz? Between May and December of 2006 a strike by the Mexican Teachers Union (el SNTE) Local 22, later joined by the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) became a virtual civic rebellion. Teachers, parents, students, and workers, peasants and citizens from many walks of life joined mega-marches of tens of thousands, put up barricades in every street, resisted the police, and built alternative institutions. The movement only subsided after fierce repression in which 20 were killed, hundreds wounded, hundreds arrested, and many tortured.

What is the political, social and economic program that could solve Oaxaca’s programs and bring social justice and peace to this poor, southern state of Mexico? These two books, one by a professor of sociology at the “Benito Juarez” Autonomous University of Oaxaca and the other by a journalist and writer for the Oaxaca newspaper Noticias offer us two distinct interpretations of the issues facing Oaxaca, though their programmatic suggestions coincide in a number of important points.

Island of Backwardness

For Cuauhtémoc Blas López, author of the book whose title might be translated as Oaxaca: Island of Backwardness: A Critique of its Governments Based on Traditional Practices, the principal issue facing the state of Oaxaca is its lack of development and economic backwardness. The newspaper Noticias where he works was one of the first to condemn the government of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, who then attempted to shut down the paper by having one of the local unions call a strike. Noticias survived to remain an important source of information and a critical voice in Oaxaca. The author begins his book reminding us that Oaxaca is a state of 10,000 local communities, most of them populated by indigenous people, who come from 15 of Mexico’s 62 indigenous groups. Written before the upheaval of 2006 but not published until afterwards, this book does not deal with those events, but rather with the economic, social and political conditions which may have contributed to them.

Blas López documents in the first two chapters of Oaxaca: Island of Backwardness the failure of the state of Oaxaca under the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to bring economic development to the state. Plans to build tourist centers such as Huatulco, to establish industrial parks, to develop the isthmus of Tehuantepec, and to create local college campuses all floundered and failed. Oaxaca is a state with virtually no industry outside of the Mexican Petroleum Company (PEMEX) refinery at Salinas Cruz, a brewery and a paper factory in Tuxtepec, and a few maquiladoras in the would-be industrial parks. The lack of development has left the state dependent on the Federal budget and its largest source of income is the education budget for public schools and universities campuses.

The middle chapters of Oaxaca: Island of Backwardness critique Oaxaca’s unique political system. Oaxaca has 570 municipios (administrative units similar to counties or boroughs), but in only 152 of those does the usual system of political parties exist. In the other 418 municipios the government for local, state and Federal purposes, is based upon what are called usos y costumbres, that is, traditional practices. While many have praised Oaxaca for taking the lead in recognizing the legitimacy of indigenous institutions and processes, Blas López condemns these “traditional” institutions as creatures of the Catholic Church and the Institutional Revolutionary Party which routinely violate human rights and generate violent conflicts. He condemns these “traditional” institutions for often denying women political and property rights, for denying villagers the right to practice the religion of their choice, for excluding voting rights to those who do not live in the county seat (cabecera municipal), for punishing people by taking away their land, exiling them, for the practice of the death penalty, and for their constant battles with neighboring groups. Blas López condemns academics who invoke “diversity” and “multiculturalism” as an apology for the corrupt, undemocratic, and violent system of usos y costumbres and heaps condemnation on governments which have granted supposed political rights to indigenous people while leaving them in an abject poverty which forces them to emigrate.

Blas López also condemns the undemocratic and corrupt practices of the principal labor unions of Oaxaca, Mexican Teachers Union (STNE) Local 22 and the five labor unions at the Benito Juárez Autonomous University of Oaxaca. The author argues that Local 22 has become an undemocratic and corrupt union with no interest in the education of Oaxaca’s population. He condemns the Benito Juárez Autonomous University of Oaxaca—where there is one employee for every instructor (about five times the normal ratio) as an utterly corrupt institution in which the five labor unions simply fight for a larger share of the booty.

For Blas López, change must come to Oaxaca by bringing about transparency and democracy in all of the political institutions as well as more access to the media in the state of Oaxaca. Surprisingly the author has little to say about economic development.

Oaxaca 2006

Victor Raúl Martínez Vásquez, the author of Autoritarismo, movimiento popular y crisis política: Oaxaca 2006

(Authoritarianism, the popular movement and political crisis: Oaxaca 2006), is a professor at Benito Juárez Autonomous University of Oaxaca. A popular left intellectual, he was chosen to be one of the 240 counselors of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca.

Martínez Vásquez’s Oaxaca 2006 provides a very useful narrative of the principal events of that tumultuous year, as well as an 80 page chronology and several pages of color photos. The author’s sympathies lie with the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO) and in particular with SNTE Local 22, which he sees as the inevitable center of all social movements in the state because of its size and significance. While he recognizes problems of undemocratic practices and corruption in the union, he sees it nonetheless as a working class organization which leads the struggle against the dictatorial Institutional Revolutionary Party and its leader, Ulises Ruiz.

Two points stand out in Martínez Vásquez’s narrative and critique of the movement. The first is that he believes the leaders and the rank-and-file of the movement made a mistake in failing to accept the proposal made by President Felipe Calderón’s government to allow Ulises Ruiz to continue to hold office but to limit his power over the police. The rank-and-file of both SNTE and APPO rejected that proposal, still believing then that it would be possible to drive the governor out of office. For Martínez Vásquez, this was the key moment, a missed opportunity to have dealt a crucial blow against Ruiz.

The second issue is the division that arose between SNTE Local 22 and the APPO. Martínez Vásquez believes that the Popular Revolutionary Front (FPR), the self-described Stalinist party and its faction in the teachers union, the Union of Education Workers (UTE), led an unwarranted attack on the SNTE leadership which resulted in weakening the union and dividing it from the APPO.
When I spoke with Martínez Vásquez in Oaxaca in early July 2008, he said that the Popular Revolutionary Front (FPR) and the Consejo Indigena Popular de Oaxaca (CIPO) had engaged in a series of ideological debates which had tended to drive other organizations and individuals out of APPO.

In the Epilogue of Oaxaca 2006, Martínez Vásquez offers a program for achieving democracy in Oaxaca. He calls for citizen participation, transparency, electoral reform, more open media, a state that respects all, and a democratic regime.

What about an Economic Program?

Both of these books, with their quite different perspectives, contribute to better understanding the experience of Oaxaca 2006. And both propose a more transparent and democratic government for Oaxaca. Neither, however, has anything to say concretely about how to deal with the economic problems of the state. While Blas López writes a great deal about the failure of development, he offers no development proposals of his own. Both authors talk about poverty, but neither discusses how to break the Oaxaca ruling class’s hold on economic power in land and commerce.

The problems of Oaxaca are problems of political democracy, but they are also problems of economic and social democracy. How can workers, farmers, peasants and the poor gain the power to change Oaxaca? Neither author offers a strategy for workers’ power in Oaxaca within the larger context of Mexico. Nevertheless, both give us insights into the origins of the political and social crisis of 2006.

Dear Dan,

Thanks for your hard work putting together Mexican Labor News and Analysis. I find it extremely valuable and always look forward to reading it.

Just a couple of comments on your note on the referendum.

1) The call for the referendum has been issued by a mass movement that goes way beyond the PRD and the FAP. It's called the Movimiento Nacional en Defensa del Petróleo (MNDP). It goes beyond the Brigadistas. There are Comités en Defensa del Petróleo springing up all across Mexico -- many with strong union backing.

2) The PRD is split over what to do: A wing, led by current provisional PRD national secretary Acosta Naranjo favors working together with the PRI to issue an alterative reform program. By the looks of this alternative plan, it is a privatization-lite program. AMLO has said he will not accept any such plan that contains even one gram of privatization. This is significant. He is not budging on this principled stance.

3) You leave out the essence of the referendum: AMLO and the MNDP have issued a call for a nationwide referendum: the first phase, in the municipalities where PRD elected officials agree with this proposal, there will be official referendums on July 27. The most important will be held in Mexico City. Then, two weeks later (on Aug. 7), in every other of the 2,500 municipalities across Mexico, the MNDP and the Legitimate Government of Mexico will hold a referendum.

4) I don't understand your quotation marks around Legitimate Government. It's not just what AMLO claims. It's what millions, I believe, feel very deeply, based on evidence, based on facts. The Tribunal on Electoral Fraud headed by Elena Poniatowska proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was massive fraud. Why your hesitation to characterize the Lopez Obrador government as the Legitimate Government of Mexico? I cannot understand it.

5) You say it is likely the reform will be stalled this year. I would not be so quick in predicting anything. Calderón is set on going forward. And he has the support of the PRI and a wing of the PRD to give him critical support through an alternative plan. Things are a lot more dire, more urgent than you make them seem. And this question of oil is not just one more issue among many. It is at the heart of the political situation in Mexico today. It is at the heart of the defense of Mexico's sovereignty against the empire to the North.

I think it is in order to issue a far more urgent appeal for solidarity with the people of Mexico who will be holding a nationwide referendum on July 29-August 7th. Every unionist in Mexico understands that if the Calderón-Bush reform passes, they are next on the chopping block with the Reforma de la Ley Federal del Trabajo.

I'd be interested in your comments.

Abrazos,

Alan Benjamin

Editor’s Response

Dear Alan,

We appreciate the information and comments made in your letter. We believe the 2006 election most likely fraudulent as suggested by Poniatowska’s tribunal. We have frequently written that it was a contested election which many believe was stolen by Presidents Fox, Calderón, and the PAN, with the support of the PRI. We put Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s “Legitimate Government” in quotation marks because it is not a government and does not exercise governmental power anywhere in the country. It is a shadow government with much popular support. We agree that the privatization of the oil industry is at the center of the struggle between the Mexican ruling class and the working people of Mexico as well as the context between the U.S. government and the Mexican people. We are not, however, engaged in a propagandistic or agitational campaign on these issues either in Mexico or the United States. Mexican Labor News and Analysis reports the news about labor and social movements in Mexico in order to provide a context for those who wish to engage in labor solidarity with Mexican workers. We feel that providing accurate news from a point of view identified with Mexican workers and their interests is a valuable service in itself.

Un abrazo,

Dan

Mexican Labor News & Analysis

July , 2008, Vol. 13, No. 7

Contents for this issue:

National Referendum on Privatization of Petroleum

The “Legitimate Government” Promotes Referendum

Voting in Three Stages

Labor, Feminists to participate in Referendum

Petroleum Industry Reform to Benefit Union Bureaucrats

Labor Corruption in Pemex

Party of Democratic Revolution Moves to Mend Break

Oaxaca Movement: On the March and on Stage

Mexico: Human Rights Disaster