Mexican Labor News & Analysis

Tornel Workers Win Independent Union

By Bendicto Martinez and Dan LaBotz

Some 1,212 workers at the Tornel tire company confirmed their desire to remain in an independent union through a union representation election held in the first week of July.

Workers at the Tornel plant had worked to create their independent union for several years while still controlled by the CTM. Workers then won their independence from the CTM over a year and a half ago in a representation election, but the CTM returned to demand another election. In this most recent election the vast majority of the workers voted for the independent union. Such victories are few and this represents a significant victory for workers at this plant in throughout Mexico.

Secret Ballot Election -- Itself a Victory

The vote was carried out in the offices of the Federal Labor Board (JFCA), as the result of a decision of the Mexican Supreme Court. It was a secret ballot election, an important step in the fight for the democratization of unions in Mexico. Usually in such elections workers have to vote publicly -- often by throwing their ID card into the ballot box -- in front of the boss, rival unions, government officials, and sometimes gangsters who have been turned out to intimidate them.

In spite of many difficulties, the vote finally took place with 818 workers voting for the independent union and 394 voting for the charro (official) union headed by Gonzalo Ugalde Gámez, who is also president of the National Rubber Workers Coalition. The Coalition, through his negligence, failed last year to give strike notification to the rubber companies, jeopardizing the national pattern agreement of the rubber industry. The Continental company took advantage of his negligence to call for the end of the national contract, a matter which is still in the courts

Workers voted to belong to the independent National Union of Workers of the Tornel Rubber Company, and rejected becoming part of the Union of Workers and Employees of the Rubber Industry of the Mexican Republic, a union controlled by the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM). The CTM labor federation is affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

This entire process is preparing the workers for the defense of their contract, and it is possible that there will be yet another representation election, since the CTM has another petition before the labor board for a union headed by Jaime Cerón García. This matter is still waiting for resolution by a judge, but after this victory the workers would go into another union representation election with more confidence.

Back to July , 2009 Table of Contents

Oil workers win right to independent union

Mexican oil workers won the right to create an independent union after a judge ruled in their favor in early July. The judge ordered the Secretary of Labor (STPS) to grant legal registration to the National Union of Technical and Professional Petroleum Workers (UNTyPP). The workers had sought the registration more than a year ago but it had been denied. Union organizers report that they had been fired, threatened, and violently thrown out of their jobs by “paramilitary” gangsters.

“After great efforts and years of struggle, the technical and professional workers of PEMEX [the government-owned Mexican Petroleum Company] have achieved a great victory, winning their legal right to organize themselves,” said labor lawyer Arturo Alcalde Justiniani. “This decision is a breath of fresh air given the difficulty that Mexican workers face in attempting to come together democratically in organizations of their own choosing. We hope that the union will not confront new obstacles to its existence. It is a victory for all Mexican workers, for the industry, brought about by the efforts of the union’s members and the solidarity that they have created.”

Back to July , 2009 Table of Contents

Pilots, Flight Attendants, Grounds’ Workers Picket Airport

Hundreds of airline pilots, flight attendants, ground workers and administrators picketed the Benito Juárez International Airport in Mexico City during the second week of July to demand that the Mexican government end its suspension of operations of Aviacsa Airlines. An intermittent and on-going conflict between the government and the airline over financing has led to the suspension of operations and the layoff of hundreds of workers.

In the airport terminal among thousands of national and international travelers, workers changed, “I owe, I know, I’d pay you though, but the government has my dough!” The chant referred to hundreds of millions of dollars of payments owed by the Mexican government to the airline.

The airline workers’ fight with Aviacsa forms part of a broader fight for jobs in the industry. The Union Association of Airline Pilots (ASPA) and the Union Association of Aviation Flight Attendants (ASSA) have also been protesting the layoffs at other airlines and calling upon the government to stabilize the industry.

Back to July , 2009 Table of Contents

Documents of the Movement in Translation:

Solidarity with Pilots and Flight Attendants

By Arturo Alcalde Justiniani

This article originally appeared in Spanish in the Mexico City daily newspaper La Jornada on July 4, 2009. It has been translated here by Dan La Botz.

Airports have a special role, moving people from all over the world through their concourses with all sorts of different purposes: air operations are in that way enigmatic. Particular attention focuses on the pilots and flight attendants, men and women in whom we deposit our confidence for a safe and comfortable trip. These are people in professions who because they have chosen this as their vocation must submit to discipline and rigorous regulations.

The pilots’ and flight attendants’ work implies many hours of training and professional education which prepares them for the special tasks necessary in an emergency. Like cardiologists, anesthesiologists or fire fighters, their presence in indispensable in the event of danger. The stories of pilots who have succeeded in saving the passengers in a plane at risk thanks to their expertise and perspicacity are well known. Their working conditions are not easy, and they have submit themselves to long trips, to face the uncertainty of the assignment of rest days and to be constantly on call and prepared to change their personal and family plans.

At the union level, the flight attendants and pilots are also exceptional in our country: they have created genuine labor unions, such as those which exist in other parts of the world. In Mexico they have formed the Union Association of Pilots (ASPA) and the Union Association of Aviation Flight Attendants (ASSA). They are distinguished by the democratic rules that govern the election of their leaders by secret, universal and direct vote, and the discussion and approval of their contracts in union meetings, as well as the high level of participation by their members. Their union activity is not limited to solely to their profession, but has also traditionally included their interest in preserving and strengthening job opportunities in the industry. Their union role contrasts with other [union] organizations in these professions which are dedicated to providing ‘protection contracts’ to low cost employers, which not only means unfair competition, but also undermines professionalism with serious implications in terms of quality and safety of airline operations.

The collective bargaining agreements of ASSA and ASPA include Aeromar, as well as economic units called Grupo Aeroméxico, including Connect Airlines, Travel Airlines, and Grupo Mexicana de Aviación, which also involves Click Airlines. An exception in this collective bargaining picture is the case of the Link firm, assigned by Mexicana de Aviación to a separate union with the clear intention of impeding the affiliation of its workers to ASPA and ASSA. This maneuver clearly tends to undermine job stability and creates an insurmountable obstacle to dialog and shared responsibility with its unions.

The pilots and the flight attendants who are members of ASPA and ASSA have initiated a struggle for the defense of jobs and workplace conditions. This is an effort with various dimensions in a very complex environment taking into consideration the difficult economic situation in this sector as a result of the world financial crisis, the special circumstances of the recent health issue [“swine flu” or H1N1], as well as other national issues, such as the increase in the cost of fuel and the absence of an airline policy that would create a plan for fair competition at both the domestic and international level.

In dealing with the employers, ASPA and ASSA demand respect for the contractual commitments and the rejection of unjustified layoffs. They hold, quite rightly, that there are other ways to solve the economic problems of the companies. There is a long list of concessions which have been given to the companies as a commitment to saving jobs, including agreement to change working conditions and to accept agreements with no wage increases.

The unions’ responsible attitude, however, have not been reciprocated by the employers. The companies have opted for a strategy of economic retrenchment putting the cost on the shoulders of their workers, in spite of the fact that the unions’ pensions were considered as part of the value of the company when they were privatized. Aeroméxico carries out massive layoffs of pilots and flight attendants, acts of dubious legality and in violation of the contract, leading to a situation which has naturally provoked labor protests. Mexicana de Aviación, in addition to announcing the layoffs, attempts to carry out flights with other personnel, also outside of the contract. As one can see, these companies do not share the notion that responsible and good faith labor relations are a major way to overcome difficulties.

With regards to the government, ASPA and ASSA call for a more active participation to maintain the source of employment, considering the importance of the airlines in the economic field, in tourism and even in national security. Their demands have been strengthened by a renewed internal cohesion and a growing spirit of solidarity.

Back to July , 2009 Table of Contents

Legislators, Union Leaders Visit Mexico to Support Miners

[MEXICO CITY, July 8] - Trade union and parliamentary leaders from 13 countries are visiting Mexico this week to support the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers (SNTMMRM), which has been under attack by the Mexican government and the Grupo Mexico mining company.

On July 7, 27 members of the U.S. Congress wrote to Calderón asking him to meet with the delegation. “Continued efforts by the Mexican government and Grupo Mexico to repress this democratic union in Mexico have raised serious questions about labor practices in your country,” the letter stated.

The delegation, organized by the International Metalworkers' Federation (IMF), www.imfmetal.org, the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), www.icem.org, and the United Steelworkers (USW), www.usw.ca, is seeking a meeting with President Felipe Calderón to discuss his government's handling of the Mineworkers conflict, which has been criticized by the international trade union movement.

“Workers around the world are outraged at Mexico's attacks on the Mineworkers union," said USW President Leo W. Gerard. Ken Neumann, the National Director of the United Steelworkers of Canada, said, “It is time that the international community pays attention to the disgraceful and unacceptable treatment of Mexican mineworkers.”

The Mineworkers are one of the few unions in Mexico that continues to strike for higher wages. The union has also criticized the government's labor law reform proposals and the lack of health and safety protections for workers.

In response, the government has twice removed the leader of the union, Napoleón Gómez Urrutia, from office. The Committee on Freedom of Association of the International Labor Organization (ILO), ruling in a complaint brought by the IMF, found that "the labour authorities engaged in conduct that is incompatible with Article 3 of of Convention No. 87, which establishes the right of workers to elect their representatives in full freedom.”

The government has repeatedly filed criminal charges against the union leadership, although these have been thrown out by the courts. The government has also tried repeatedly to declare illegal a strike at three Grupo Mexico mines which has run for nearly two years, but the courts have rebuffed these efforts. The government has also supported Grupo Mexico in establishing company-dominated unions at eight other facilities.

Four union members have been killed in the conflict. The government has not investigated or prosecuted these cases.

“We are concerned that the Calderón government, which claims to be fighting for rule of law, practices impunity when it comes to the rights of the mineworkers" said IMF General Secretary Jyrki Raina.

In Mexico City, the delegation will meet with Congressional and union leaders and will visit Mineworkers' official Juan Linares Montufar who has been jailed by the government.

The delegation will visit the Pasta de Conchos mine where 65 workers were killed in an explosion in 2006. An ILO report this year concluded that “the Government of Mexico did not do all that was reasonably expected of it to avoid or minimize the effects of the accident which had such devastating effects with the loss of life of as many as 65 miners.”

The delegation is headed by Jack Layton, leader of Canada's New Democratic Party (NDP) and includes parliamentarians from Australia and Peru.

The delegation includes trade union leaders from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Italy, Norway, Peru, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, and the United States.

“We intend to let our governments and employers know what is going on in Mexico, and to discourage them from further investments until it is clear that workers' rights are being respected,” said Manfred Warda, General Secretary of the ICEM.

Back to July , 2009 Table of Contents

Opposition Claims Teachers Union Leaders Selling Jobs

The National Coordinating Committee (la CNTE), a group of rank-and-file teachers, claims that Elba Esther Gordillo, leader of the Mexican Teachers Union (el SNTE), and her administration have been selling teaching positions. Pablo Hernández Morales of Local 9 of el SNTE claims that the whole teacher hiring system is “immersed in a network of corruption.” Teachers, he said, may pay as much as 40,000 pesos (or about $3,000) to take a test or to get a job.

La CNTE activists argue that the union also offers increases in class hours, opportunities for “double jobs” (holding two teaching jobs as once on different shifts), transfers, promotions, raises and home mortgage loans in exchange for money or for political work for the union. In particular the union exchanged jobs and other benefits for support for el SNTE’s political party, the New Alliance Party (PANAL).

Fight Continues over Ace

Meanwhile teachers continue to demonstrate as they did at the end of June against the Alliance for Quality Education (ACE), the alliance between President Felipe Calderón’s administration and the Gordillo administration in the union. Teachers argue that ACE represents an attempt to break the power of the union and an attack on public education. Some 1,500 teachers demonstrated at government office in Mexico City against the program at the end of June.

Activists in Local 9 in Mexico City, a local taken over by Gordillo through a sort of coup d’etat, continued to fight to get their union back, though there were no signs that the teacher’s union leaders was prepared to give up control of an important local in the country’s biggest city. Teachers in Local 22 in Oaxaca, a flashpoint for conflict both in the union and in the society, continued to demand that the state and federal government meet and deal with them over a series of unattended issues.

Back to July , 2009 Table of Contents

Economic Crisis Deepens: a Look at the Economic Statistics

Mexican economists—to say nothing of the Mexican people—have been astounded by the continuing collapse of the economy, far out of line with earlier predictions. When the economic crisis began last year, Mexican officials claimed that earlier reforms of their financial system would save them from ruin. Since then, it has become clear that Mexico’s integration into the U.S. economy has resulted an in economic situation far worse than that of most other Latin American economies.

While only a few months ago economists were predicting a downturn of 3.7 percent, now the International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts that Mexico’s economy will shrink by 7.3 percent. Brazil, in contrast, is expected to contract by 1.3 percent.

At the center of the economic crisis in Mexico is the decline of manufacturing, in particular manufacture for export. The Mexican Institute of Statistics (INEGI) reported in May that there had been a 26 percent decline in industrial exports, equivalent to a loss of 25 billion dollars compared with 2008. This was accompanied by the highest level of industrial layoffs in 14 years, an 8 percent reduction in the number of industrial workers.

Mexican workers are paying for the crisis not only in terms of layoffs, but also in terms of declining real wages. While wages increased slightly between 2005 and 2007, since 2008 and into 2009, negotiated wage increases have been below the inflation rate.

At the same time, workers in the United States are sending less money home to Mexico. In May remittances from the United States to Mexico fell by 19.9 percent, a decline of almost one-fifth in money received from abroad. Remittances dropped from US$2.4 billion in May 2008 to US$l.9 billion in May 2009. Many families in Mexico depend upon money sent home from family members in the United States to help pay for basic necessities: rents, utilities, clothing and food.

Back to July , 2009 Table of Contents

Election Special:

PRI Wins Mid-term Elections; Democracy, Progress Lose

By Dan La Botz

Back to the past—and with a landslide. The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) which for 70 years, from 1928 to 2000, ruled Mexico as a one-party state and according to some the “perfect dictatorship,” won a decisive victory in the mid-term elections on July 5. The PRI’s victory represented a defeat both for the conservative economic and social policies of President Felipe Calderón and his National Action Party (PAN) as well as for the bitterly divided left-of-center Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). The PRI emerges as Mexico’s dominant party once again.

“With regard to the elections, I think that we haven’t learned much about exercising our right to vote,” said Benedicto Martínez, a leader of the Authentic Labor Front (FAT), an independent labor union. Giving expression to the sense of disappointment that many share he continued, “Once again in these election there were handouts of everything: money construction materials, and so on. Our historic memory doesn’t function, and now the PRI is the big winner in these elections. The hope of having a strong left has gone up in smoke, and things don’t look good.”

The landslide has practically buried the other parties. With Mexico suffering its worst economic crisis since 1994 and with no clear winner in the two-and-a-half year drug wars that have claimed almost 11,000 lives, voters turned against the president Calderón and the governing PAN. The PRI won 37 percent of the vote, the PAN 28 percent, and the PRD, with just 12 percent, suffered by far the worst defeat in the race.

In terms of total votes cast, the PRI received over 12.5 million the PAN over 9.5 million and the PRD just a little over 4 million. The PRD stands in danger of being virtually eliminated from Mexican politics in the 2012 elections, while the PRI foresees winning the presidency in three years.

Pri in Command of the Legislature

The PRI will now dominate the Mexican legislature. In the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house, the PRI will now command 48 percent of the vote, adding some 135 legislators to the 106 it possessed before the election, giving it a total now of 241 of the 500 deputies. The PAN lost 59 of its former 206 deputies, leaving it with only 147 or 29.4 percent of the lower house. The PRD which had 126 deputies lost 54, leaving it with just 72 deputies or 14.4 percent. While the PRI remains a few votes short of a majority, it should easily pick those up from minor parties, such as its satellite the Mexican Green Environmental Party (PVEM) .

Similarly, the PRI now controls more than half of the states and governs about two-thirds of all Mexicans. The PRI also won most of the elections for governor that were being contested and now runs 16 of Mexico’s 32 entities (31 states plus the Federal District). The PRI also governs another 4 through the PVEM. The PAN now governs eight states, while the PRD holds power in only 4, though the PRD’s control of the Federal District means that it remains a political factor.

López Obrador, the Pt and Convergencia

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the PRD presidential candidate in the 2006 election who claimed to have won and proclaimed himself the “Legitimate President of Mexico,” broke with his former party in this election, supporting instead the candidates of two small left-of-center parties, Workers Party (PT) and Convergence. Those parties received only 3.7 and 2.5 percent of the vote, respectively. The PT won one seat in the Chamber of Deputies; the PT-PRD-Convergencia coalition won 3.

In the Federal District’s Legislative Assembly which governs Mexico’s City’s ten million inhabitants, the PRD which had had 14 seats fell to 12. The PT, backed by López Obrador, won the seat in the Iztapalapa burrough of the DF, while the PAN, which already held two seats, won another in the Cuajimalpa burrough. So the PRD still maintains its hold Mexico City, though now not as firmly as before.

The Independent Unions and the Far Left

Independent and far left groups took various positions on the election. The National Coordinating Committee of the Mexican Teachers Union (la CNTE), for example, called upon its members to give “No vote to the PRI, the PAN or the PRD.” The Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT), a small left group, and others on the far left, called voters to reject the PRI and the PAN and to cast a “differentiated vote” for progressive candidates running in the PRD, PT or Convergencia.

Other small left groups, such as Worker and Socialist Unity (UNIOS), argued that political developments had proven that Subcomandante Marcos and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) had been correct in issuing their Sixth Declaration of the Lancandon jungle rejecting partisan politics and calling for the “Other Campaign” against capitalism. However, there was no “Other Campaign” in this election as there had been in 2006, and so the group simply endorsed abstention (the voto nulo) and called for building social movements.

Implications for Labor and Workers

The PRI’s victory was also a victory for its labor organization, the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), headed by Joaquín Gamboa Pascoe. The CTM will hold seven of the 12 congressional seats now occupied by labor union officials. A union spokesperson said that the CTM had more than doubled it representation. In addition to the CTM representatives there are also representatives of other unions. Victor Flores, head of the railroad workers, and Isaías González, general secretary of the Revolutionary Confederation of Workers and Peasants (CROC), both members of the Congress of Labor (CT), were also elected to the Mexican legislature.

All of these organizations are known as “official” unions, that is to say unions which have historically formed part of the PRI and its pervasive one-party state. Their election to congress will strengthen these unions and the union officials who now double as representatives. These unions, while cooperating with the state and often colluding with employers, have historically opposed Mexico’s independent and democratic unions and movements. All of this will create difficult obstacles for workers in Mexico who seek democracy in their unions, power in their workplaces, and social justice in their nation.

The Campaign for Abstention

The campaign for abstention in the election proved to be personally satisfying for those unhappy with the political alternatives available, relatively successful and ultimately politically irrelevant. Mexico, with a population of 111 million, has 71.3 million eligible voters. Polls which had predicted a record low voter turnout of 30 percent proved wrong as 43.7 percent of voters turned out to cast ballots, higher than in the 2003 mid-term election. Still, an estimated record of 1,800,000 voters went to the polls and voided their ballots, a protest against all parties, programs and candidates, though that represented a relatively insignificant number of voters as a whole.

The president of the National Action Party, Germán Martínez, resigned in the wake of his party’s disastrous showing at the polls. Within the Party of the Democratic Revolution, calls went up for the resignation of Jesús Ortega, the man who led the fight to take the party away from López Obrador and in the process, the election suggests, apparently destroyed it. He and his supporters said he had no intention of giving up his position even though his party has been reduced to a shadow of its former self.

Back to July , 2009 Table of Contents

The PRI:

A Short History of the Perfect Dictatorship

By Dan La Botz

The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) which ruled Mexico for 70 years, and which many believed, after its defeat by the National Action Party (PAN) nine years ago, had been permanently defeated, has now returned to life, winning the July midterm elections. While many Mexicans voted for the party, many others fear this could lead to a return to the authoritarian system of patronage, corruption, and political repression which dominated Mexican life for decades. What was this thing called the PRI which only ten years ago still ruled Mexico, and what might result with its return to power?

The PRI has its roots in the defeat of the plebeian leftwing of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1940). In 1917, Venustiano Carranza, self-proclaimed Jefe Máximo of the revolution, called a Constitutional Assembly which laid the basis for the modern Mexican state. The Constitution, written under the pressure of revolutionary armies, called for the distribution of land to the peasants (Article 27) and for the right of workers to organize unions (Article 123), as well as ending the Catholic monopoly on education. Forced by circumstances to grant those concessions to the country’s working people, Carranza’s real objective was the creation of a modern state which could develop Mexico along capitalist lines.

Carranza sent his friend the painter Gerardo Murrillo (Dr. Atl) to talk with anarchists of the House of the World Worker (Casa del Obrero Mundial) and win their support. A faction of the Casa agreed to support the new state and to provide Red Battlions to fight on its behalf—while another faction went off to join Emiliano Zapata, leader of the army of southern peasants. Carranza then turned against the radical Conventionists, Francisco “Pancho” Villa and Zapata, the leaders of the revolution’s plebeian forces, southern peasants, and northern miners and railroad workers. Carranza’s military leader, General Álvaro Obregón, defeated and assassinated Zapata (and several years later Villa). Obregón himself, however, turned on Carranza who was in turn assassinated in 1920. Obregon became president.

The Sonoran Dynasty

Obregón, leader of the victorious forces, and his co-thinker Plutarco Elías Calles, both from Sonora, then founded the modern Mexican state in 1920. Observing that no general can withstand a barrage of $100,000 pesos, Obregón bought off the various generals who had headed the revolutionary armies and they retired to manage the estates they had confiscated fom the ancien régime. Obregón served as president the first four years, Calles the second, the presidents of the so-called Sonoran dynasty.

When Obregón contemplated a second term, he was assassinated by a militant Catholic opponent of the government. The assassination of Obregón threatened to return the nation to civil war. To meet the crisis Calles convened the leaders of the various revolutionary factions each of which controlled a different state or region of the country. Out of that meeting came the National Revolutionary Party (PNR), a party which would be made up of government officials and employees. The state had created a party to manage its affairs, a party that won office through fraud, held it through patronage, and benefited from it through corruption. Calles, while never again holding office as president, remained the power behind the throne while others held the presidency.

Lázaro Cárdenas and the Crisis of the 1930s

The world economic crisis of the 1930s also brought economic depression and social upheaval to Mexico, a situation complicated by the revolutionary government’s war against the Catholic Church in western Mexico. In 1934, Calles, with the intention of continuing his game as political puppeteer, decided to put forward another man for the presidency, his Secretary of War, Lázaro Cárdenas. Cárdenas, however, already popular with the army, also won the support of labor unions and peasant leagues, and soon drove Calles out of Mexico. Under the new six-year presidential term, Cárdenas would serve until 1940, channeling the widespread discontent in Mexico—workers strikes, peasant land seizures, and political discontent—into the official party.

A left nationalist and a political genius, Lázaro Cárdenas took advantage of the economic crisis to end the hacienda system which had dominated the Mexican economy for four-hundred years. He distributed forty million acres of land from the economically failing haciendas to villages of peasants and Indians in the form of ejidos, state-owned lands given in perpetuity to those communities as long as it was farmed. Cárdenas also recognized and supported the labor unions. Most important, in 1938 Cárdenas nationalized the oil companies owned by Royal Dutch Shell and Standard Oil Company. During those years Cárdenas changed the state party’s name to the Party of the Mexican Revolution (PRM) with the slogan “For a Socialist Mexico.”

The Reorganization of the State Party

Cárdenas reorganized the state-party on the basis of three pillars: the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), the National Confederation of Peasants (CNC), and the National Confederation of Popular Organizations (CNOP). When a worker was hired into a factory, he automatically became a member of the CTM, and, as a member of the CTM, also a member of the ruling party. Cárdenas’ profound social reforms provided the still authoritarian state-party with a new social base of support. While working people had little control over those organizations or over the party, the party was capable of using those organizations to support its political campaigns.

When in 1940 Cárdenas left office, he was succeeded by Manuel Ávila Camacho who turned the party to the right once again, and changed its name in 1946 to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). The PRI-government, a one-party state, oversaw an economy based on a mixed economy of nationalized industries (oil, telephone, railroads, electrical power), foreign owned corporations heavily invested, for example, in mining, and Mexican owned companies of all sizes from great corporations such as the brewing and glass companies of Monterrey to the many family businesses found throughout the country. Throughout this period from the 1940s to the 1960s, the PRI oversaw what was called the “Mexican miracle,” the economic expansion paid for by the low wages of workers and peasants.

The Cold War, Anti-Communism and the Crushing of Popular Movement

With the coming of the Cold War starting in the late 1940s, both for its own reasons and to comply with the wishes of the U.S. State Department, the Mexican government carried out its own anti-Communist campaigns similar to McCarthyism in the United States, only more brutal. The Communists and other radicals were driven out of the PRI and out of its Confederation of Mexican Workers. When the industrial unions of railroad workers, miners, and oil workers showed signs of independence, the PRI sent the army, police and sometimes gangsters to remove union leaders and replace them with PRI-loyalists. The union violently imposed union bureaucrats were called charros, or “dudes” after one of them who liked to dress up in cowboy clothes.

By the 1950s, the Mexican state-party come to rule with a heavy hand. When workers fought for higher wages, as in the great railroad strike of 1959, the PRI-government turned out the army to smash the strike and sent the strike leaders to prison for long terms. When students marched for democracy and in support of Cuba at Tlatelolco (the Plaza of the Three Cultures) in 1968, President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, head of the PRI-government, sent the army to crush the movement; officially 40 were killed though most believe that hundreds died. Similarly in 1976 the PRI-government sent in the army and gangsters to break the electrical workers and the Democratic Tendency, a union coalition they had created.

The PRI Faces the Challenge of the 1960s and 1970s

During the 1960s and the 1970s, students moved to the left, and some joined guerrilla groups determined to overthrow the PRI government by force. Other young activists joined leftist organizations which worked with workers and peasants to build a social force capable of overthrowing the government through an upheaval from below. These years saw a wave of labor protests and strikes known as the insurgencia obrera, the worker insurgency. The government’s response to the upsurge was repression, a dirty war—kidnapings, torture and murder by police and military—that left 500 dead. But a political response was also necessary and to tame the movement the PRI-government decided to encourage the left to enter politics.
Politics now became more complicated. A right-wing party, the National Action Party (PAN) founded by bankers and Catholic activists, had existed since 1939. Now there would also be left parties, three major ones: a left nationalist Mexican Workers Party (PMT) led by Heberto Castillo, a Communist Party whose name would change over the years to the Unified Social Party of Mexico (PSUM), and a Trotskyist Revolutionary Workers Party whose candidate Rosario Ibarra de Piedra would make history as the first woman to run for president. Throughout the late 1970s and 1980s the right and left parties would each generally win about 10 to 15 percent of the vote, while the PRI won virtually all of the elections.

The Mexican earthquake of 1985 represented an important turning point in the development of a new movement called “civil society,” that is non-governmental organizations and social movements. The September earthquake devastated Mexico City, killings thousands as buildings throughout the central city collapsed. When the PRI-government failed to respond to the disaster, citizens groups, often led by local leftists, undertook the search and rescue operations. While the earthquake took 10,000 lives, it revived a sense of self-confidence at the grassroots of Mexican society. The Mexican people emerged from the crisis prepared to change the government.

The Debt Crisis, the Split in the PRI, Cárdenas and the PRD

Mexico, an oil rich nation, in the late twentieth century found even more oil and used it as collateral on billions of dollars in loans—eventually about 100 billion. When in the mid-1980s the price of oil fell, Mexico was essentially bankrupt. The U.S. banks and the U.S.-dominated international financial institutions forced Mexico to change its nationalist economy. The PRI-government began to split into two factions: a technocratic faction which both under international pressure and for its own reasons wished to end the nationalist economy and enter into the global markets and a nationalist faction which hesitated to break with the past.

As the technocratic faction began to strengthen its hold on the party, the nationalists formed the Democratic Current to fight to control the PRI. When by 1988 it had become clear that they could not do so its leader, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, son of the former president, led his group out of the PRI and ran for president against the PRI government. Most observers believe that Cárdenas won the 1988 election, but President Miguel de la Madrid and the PRI-government announced that their candidate, Carlos Salinas, had won and he became president.

After being cheated out of the election, Cárdenas and his group from the PRI joined with others from the PSUM and other leftists to create the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). The PRD militants fought throughout the country to defend their local electoral victories in the period from 1988 to 1994, with over 600 PRD members killed in the attempt and many others seriously injured.

The New Neoliberal PRI

President Salinas, having taken the presidency, now began to transform Mexico. With the exception of oil and electric power, Mexico’s nationalized industries such as telephone and railroad were sold off to private investors, often foreign investors. Salinas approached the U.S. and Canadian presidents about the creation of a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), first working with Brian Mulroney of Canada and George H.W. Bush of the United States and later with U.S. President Bill Clinton. In preparation for the NAFTA negotiations, Salinas pushed through Congress the revision of Article 27 which had given land to Mexican peasants. Under the revised articles, the communities and owners could sell the land. Salinas also used his power to break the power of the PRI’s own labor unions, sending the Mexican Army to occupy the Cananea copper mine on the eve of its sale to private investors and sending police to arrest the leaders of the Petroleum Workers Union on trumped up charges.

Under Salinas and his neoliberal government, the PRI-government lost many of its traditional sources of political support. The nationalized industries which had been a source of patronage had been sold. The labor unions which got out the vote on election day had been weakened and alienated. The traditional peasant communities had been weakened by the revisions to Article 27, undermining another traditional base of support. At the same time, Salinas created new government poverty programs to keep poor people under party control.

Challenges from the Left and from a New Right

Meanwhile, the PRI-government, Salinas and his successor Ernesto Zedillo, faced new challenges as well from new social movements, most importantly the Chiapas Uprising of 1994 led by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). The uprising by Mayan people in the south of Mexico inspired the growing “civil society” movement which demanded human rights and civil liberties. The middle class feminist movement played an important role among civil society activists, while working class women in the urban slums continued as they had since the 1960s to lead local urban popular movements. The combination of the EZLN led by Subcomandante Marcos, the PRD led by Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, and the growth of civil society – together with many other grassroots movements of environmentalists, women, and labor – seemed to represent the forces that could bring democracy and social justice to Mexico. But other forces arose on the right as well.

During the 1980s and the 1990s, the National Action Party underwent a transformation as it continued advocating conservative free market policies it decided to adopt the political action model taken from Ghandi, Corozón Aquino and Martin Luther King, Jr. The driving force behind the new PAN was COPARMEX, the conservative Mexican Association of Employers. During the 1980s PAN members began to engage in civil disobedience to challenge the PRI’s corrupt electoral system, for example, blocking the bridges and crossing points at the U.S.-Mexico border. At times, PAN leaders even sought alliances with parties of the left against the government’s oppressive policies. PAN’s new found activism galvanized its younger members, and the party’s image improved as its influence spread.

The Fall of the PRI

Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas ran for president again in 1994, winning 17 percent of the vote and, coming in third. However, in 1997 he was elected mayor of Mexico City, putting him in a position to run for president again in the year 2000. By then, many Mexicans of all political persuasions had come to two conclusions. First, it was necessary to end the rule of the PRI. Second, the PRI– by fair means or foul, or by force – would never permit a party to its left to win the presidency. Therefore, many (although not all) on the left concluded that one had to cast a voto útil, a useful vote, a vote that could end the PRI dictatorship. The way to do this it appeared would be to vote for Vicente Fox, the rancher, boot manufacturer, representative for Latin American of the Coca Cola company, and governor of Guanajuato, who had become PAN candidate for president. In 2000, Fox won a plurality of 43 percent of the vote, defeating the PRI candidate Francisco Labastida who gained 36% and Cárdenas 17 percent.

The election of Fox in 2000, succeeded by Felipe Calderón in 2006, together with the contempt and disdain in which the PRI was held by many Mexicans, seemed to have assured that its era had ended, perhaps forever. Now, just nine years later, it appears that the PRI is back, positioned to become once again the ruling party of Mexico. Many things have changed since the era of the PRI’s one-party state: Mexico’s economy has been integrated and subordinated to that of the United States; nationalized industries were sold off; the constitution was amended to permit the sale of the ejido lands. All of these things mean that the old state cannot be rebuilt on the same basis. Whether or not it can reestablish its one-party state remains an open question, and highly doubtful, but that it has become the Mexican elite’s political alternative seems clear. After having experienced the alternation of political parties, and after a twelve year hiatus in the PRI’s power, the PRI in power in the 21st century will not be the PRI in power in the 20th. But, if different, if might turn out to be equally disasterous for the Mexican people.

Back to July , 2009 Table of Contents

‘Party of No’ Set to Sweep Mexican Midterms

By John Ross

The following article, written before the Mexican elections had taken place, originally appeared in the July 3-5, 2009 edition of Counterpunch. We print it here because we think it provides valuable context and a good feel for the situation on the eve of the election. Thanks as always to John Ross for his willingness to share his articles with us. – Ed.

John Ross's "El Monstruo - Dread & Redemption in Mexico City" will be published by Nation Books in December. If you want further info write johnross@igc.org

[Mexico City] The Left has held power in many of the world's great cities. The Commune once ran Paris and the Communists Marseilles. Milan, Naples, Rome, Madrid and Barcelona (administered by anarchists’ collectives) have all been under Left rule as have São Paolo, Lima, Caracas, San Salvador, Managua, and Montevideo - but no left party has ever run a more monstrous megalopolis than Mexico City, the most contentious urban stain in the Americas which the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) has held in thrall for the past 12 years.

Over the course of this extended run, the PRD has done its damnedest to tame this savage beast of a city despite simultaneous assaults from killer air quality, homicidal traffic, yearly floods, a failing water supply, 20,000 tons of daily garbage, a deteriorating infrastructure, and a restless population of 23,000,000 mostly poor and pissed-off citizens.

In many respects, the Left has succeeded. During a dozen years under social democratic tutelage, the Mexican capital has been transformed into a livable, socially conscious and culturally savvy enclave that holds many things in common with quintessentially liberal San Francisco California. Same sex couples exchange vows at City Hall, the plazas are always thrumming with cultural offerings, abortion is available on demand, and condoms passed out at public events. Health care, unemployment benefits, and pensions are extended to the most downtrodden chilangos (Mexico City residents) and a right-to-die law is available for hundreds of terminally ill patients. Sundays are car-free Bicycle days, and decriminalizing marijuana enlivens debate in the legislative assembly. Such are some of the amenities of living in Left City.

Nonetheless as the July 5th mid-term elections that will install a new national congress, a fresh legislative assembly, and elected officials in the metropolis's 16 delegations or boroughs loom, the PRD's hold on power is being severely tested at the grassroots.
With a population of 1.8 million and the highest crime rates in the metropolitan zone, the Iztapalapa delegation in the impoverished east of the capital, is a glaring example of the left party's decomposition. Ever since PRD founder Cuauhtemoc Cardenas's overwhelming victory in 1997 to become Mexico City's first-ever elected mayor,Iztapalapa, the largest and most populous delegation of the capital's 16 such demarcations (if it was a state it would be the 20th in the Mexican union) has been a driving force in keeping city government in the left lane.

First settled by migrant farmers driven off their lands in a dozen central Mexican states, Iztapalapa became the seed bed of the urban popular movement which rose from the ashes of the devastating 1985 earthquake that killed as many as 30,000 here. Demanding social services and decent housing, groups like the UPREZ and the Francisco Villa Popular Front kept the feet of those who governed the city to the fire. Their grassroots organizing was instrumental in bringing the PRD to power. During the 12 years that the Party of the Democratic Revolution has run the city, Iztapalapa has been vital in returning three PRD mayors to power and the left party dominates the delegation's social and political milieu. But in 2009, the Left's hand is clearly slipping.

Iztapalapa was once a lakeside settlement before the lake dried up and blew away. In Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, "Izta-Palapa" translates to the "place of clay" or more colloquially "the slippery place", a place name that encapsulates the current political push and pull in the delegation where the PRD is split into warring factions.
The hostilities represent residual fall-out from the 2006 presidential elections in which the wildly popular Mexico City mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) was swindled out of victory by the right-wing PAN Party's Felipe Calderón. After months of protest, López Obrador was ultimately reduced to forming a shadow government and AMLO, who took on the persona of "the Legitimate President of Mexico," refused to recognize Calderón's right to hold the office. But a rival faction, "Nueva Izquierda" or "New Left", led by so many party apparatchiks named Jesús that it became familiarly known as "Los Chuchos", bridled at the AMLO-imposed constraints at dealing with the Calderon administration. Led by chief Chucho Jesús Ortega, a PRD senator who touts Nueva Izquierda as "the responsible Left", the Jesuses began negotiating with the PANista president behind López Obrador's back - for which they were rewarded with the presidency of the lower house.

The schism came to a boil in March 2007 internal party elections. Although AMLO had the numbers, the Chuchos controlled influential legislators in both houses of congress in addition to the PRD's electoral machinery - the Party of the Democratic Revolution's internal elections are notorious for self-inflicted fraud. Reports of disappearing ballot boxes and the counting of votes that were never cast were rife - exactly the same charges AMLO had leveled at Calderon in 2006 - but in the end, the Chuchos prevailed and kicked Lopez Obrador's "Legitimate Government of Mexico" out of Mexico City party headquarters. The war of words ratcheted up to fever pitch.

Then this past March, as the first federal elections since the Great Fraud heaved into sight, López Obrador reversed fields and struck a temporary deal with Ortega and his Jesuses. AMLO would get to name his candidates in Mexico City and his native Tabasco state and Ortega's New Left could have the rest of the country. Focused on preserving a vehicle that he can ride onto the 2012 presidential ballot, AMLO, rather than supporting PRD candidates that were not of his choosing, would endorse and campaign for the nominees of two tiny satellite parties - the Party of Labor (PT) and Democratic Convergence, both of which need to corral 2 per cent of the popular vote this July 5 to maintain their registration. The PT and Convergencia are seen as a hedge for a spot on the 2012 ballot should López Obrador be expelled from the PRD, not an unlikely post-July 5 scenario.

AMLO's candidate to head the delegation out in Iztapalapa, Clara Brugada, is a youthful 40-something-year-old with a broad smile and tough as nails reputation who made her bones in the trenches of the urban popular movement. As "lideresa" of the Emiliano Zapata Popular Revolutionary Union (UPREZ) in Iztapalapa, Brugada served in both the Mexico City legislature and the lower house of congress, often spicing up debates with her attack-dog delivery aimed squarely at the rival PRI and PAN and Ortega's PRD. Brugada has repeatedly clashed with the long-time PRD ward boss in Iztapalapa, Rene Arce, a true-blue Chucho, and when López Obrador named her as the candidate for chief of the delegation or "delegada", Arce and Ortega counterpunched with Sylvia Oliva, Arce's ex-wife.

Although Brugada won the nomination by a slim margin, the Chuchos lodged an appeal with the Judicial Electoral Tribunal (TEPJF), which has the last word in such disputes. The TEPJF is seen as a loyal ally of Calderón whose fraud-tarred election it upheld in 2006. The TEPJF also signed off on Ortega's tainted victory over López Obrador's faction in internal PRD elections, over which the Tribunal has no jurisdiction. Chief Justice María del Carmen Alanis is, in fact, a schoolgirl chum of Calderón's first lady, Margarita Zavala.

As might be expected, on June 12, three weeks before the election, the Tribunal nullified the results of the Brugada-Oliva face-off in 47 polling places alleging election officials were not residents of the precincts where the voting was conducted or did not establish their membership in the PRD, a decision that shaved just enough votes from Brugada's winning totals to hand Oliva a 300 vote victory.

The Tribunal then instructed the Mexico City chapter of the PRD to register Oliva's candidacy for Iztapalapa delegada with the local electoral authorities (IEDF) - but the Mexico City PRD, which is under Lípez Obrador's spell, flat-out refused. Mexico City party president Alejandra Barrales resigned rather than carry out the court orders. The Tribunal's midnight deadline passed with no resolution.

Nonetheless, Ortega was granted an extension by the TEPJF to register Oliva with the IEDF, the maximum electoral authority in the capital - which, like the local chapter of the party, is controlled by Lopez Obrador's people. When the commissioners questioned the court's decision to substitute Oliva for Brugada, Alanis threatened them with 36 hours arrest for contempt and their resistance collapsed.

But the Chuchos faced one more seemingly insurmountable obstacle to getting Oliva's name on the ballot. Ortega had challenged Brugada's vote totals at the last minute and the ballots had already been printed with her name inscribed as the PRD candidate. To finesse this final hurdle, the TEPJF ruled that all votes cast for Brugada would be counted for Oliva.

AMLO was infuriated by the flimflam. Summoning tens of thousands of his followers to a meeting in the center of Iztapalapa, he invited voters to back the unknown PT candidate Rafael Acosta AKA "Johnny" instead of checking off Brugada's name on the ballot. If he were to win, "Johnny" pledged to abdicate (a precedent most politicos would be wise to follow.) AMLO's successor as Mexico City mayor Marcelo Ebrard would then appoint Brugada to fill the vacancy in Iztapalapa. But the mayor, a presidential hopeful himself for 2012, told TV monopoly Televisa, López Obrador's most visceral foe, that AMLO had never consulted him about the proposed switcheroo.

The electoral St. Vitas dance in Iztapalapa is a microcosm, albeit an exaggerated one, of the sort of foul play across the political spectrum that is driving the voters away in droves as July 5 approaches. Some political pollsters estimate that as many as 80 per cent of Mexico's 77,000,000 voters may sit out the election, disaffected by the parties for the frustrating chicanery of 2006 and the political class's egregious betrayal of public will ever since. Many will stay home and others cast blank ballots or scrawl dire imprecations across them to nullify their vote. Still others will write in fake candidates such as "Esperanza Marchita" or "Wilted Hopes" - the PRD bills itself as "The Party of Hope." The "Marchita" campaign is not just a negative, insist prime movers Sergio Aguayo, founder of the long-lived electoral watchdog "Alianza Civica" and prominent political columnist Denise Dresser. Rather than throwing away their suffrage, voters for the "wilted hopes" option want reform - independent candidates, referendums and plebiscites and public consultations and a second-round of voting to loosen the stranglehold of the parties on the electoral process.

How many protest votes will be cast remains murky. In 2003, the last mid-term election, nearly a million votes were declared null and void, 3 per cent of the total votes cast. Under electoral law, if more "votos nulos" are cast than the difference between the first-place and second-place candidates than a recount must be conducted.

Although all parties will be impacted by such activist voter rejection, the PRD and AMLO's satellite parties would be particularly stung. Both the PRI and the PAN have a "hard vote" ("voto duro") that will automatically turn out at the polls no matter how unexcited they are about their parties' candidates but the PRD and its allies depend on that third of the electorate that is not commited to any party and whose vote is often cast in protest, the so-called "voto de castigo" or "punishment vote." It is precisely that segment of the electorate that is most apt to express its disgust at the political class by casting a ballot that will not be counted.

The possibility of an abundant "voto nulo" has drawn universal condemnation from Calderón to the most powerful Cardinal in Mexico and the leaders of the major political parties. Battling for their mutual survivals, both López Obrador and Jesus Ortega are frenetically trying to animate voters. "Annulling one's vote is a perversion," Ortega lashes out. AMLO labels the "voto nulo" a trick perpetrated by the PRI and the PAN to consolidate their majorities.

He also accuses his Televisa nemesis, in collusion with its junior partner TV Azteca, of fomenting the idea of a blank or annulled ballot as retaliation for electoral reform that deprived the two-headed television demon of juicy political advertising revenues - because abuses of political spots were so prevalent in the 2006 debacle, the amount of time the parties can now buy has been severely restricted. A counter-reform favoring the TV titans is expected to be introduced in the new congress by the so-called Mexican Green Environmental Party (PVEM) which Televisa appears to be underwriting.
A week before the July 5 mid-term elections, the PRI, which ran the lives of Mexicans from the cradle to the grave for seven decades before finally ceding power to the right-wing PAN in 2000, appears to have a four to six point lead over Calderón's party. In alliance with the Televisa-backed Mexican Green Environmental Party which is campaigning for the restoration of the death penalty (sic), the PRI could take as many as 252 seats out of a total 500 in the lower house July 5th.

The PAN, battered by a devastating downturn that will shrink the economy by 8 per cent this year - the steepest slide in 72 years, Calderón's terrifying drug war that has taken over 10,000 lives, and even the swine flu "PANdemic" panic, may only clock 21 to 25 per cent of the national vote this time out, 10 points less than in 2006.

For the PRD, a party that came within a heartbeat of winning the presidency three years ago (and probably did), the prospects are even dimmer - 12 to 14 per cent of the national vote for both the López Obrador and Ortega parts of the party. One doomsday scenario has the PRD ceding its place as the nation's third political force to the PVEM.

In Mexico City, the pickings could be slimmed down radically. Of the 16 delegations up for grabs, the leftists could lose six and while the PRD will probably retain its majority in the legislative assembly, the party will be limited in moving its left agenda for the first time since it took power in the capital a dozen years ago. Iztapalapa, from where this reporter covered Córdenas's jubilant triumph in 1997 to become the first elected mayor of Mexico City, could well be the party's graveyard.

Despite the delirious claims of impending victory by the big political parties, there is little question that between absent voters and the votos nulos the big winner this July 5 will be the Party of No.

Back to July , 2009 Table of Contents

Back to Table of Contents of Mexican Labor News & Analysis articles.

Archived MLNA issues.