Mexican Labor News & Analysis

Fox State of the Union Address Criticized as Empty Phrases

President Vicente Fox delivered the annual informe, the state of the Mexican union address, on Sept. 1, claiming that Mexico had achieved a more democratic society, that the era of economic crises had passed, and that the country was entering “a future of prosperity and social justice.” He stated that Mexico was achieving success in fighting poverty and inequality, that its citizens had access to health care and education, and that the nation was working to deal with the roots of crime. The presidential address made no substantial analysis of the state of Mexican society, offering few facts or figures dealing with the actual state of the economy, crime, health or education.

The political opposition parties, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and the Workers Party (PT), blasted the president for failing to present a genuine informe and instead making a political speech full of empty phrases.

Reality in Stark Contrast to Fox Informe

While Fox talked about the success of his administration, the next two weeks brought a series of reports and comments that stood in stark contrast to his informe.

Pope Benedict XVI expressed his concern about the extent of poverty, crime and corruption in Mexico in a meeting with Mexican Bishops. The remarks were surprising, considering that the Pope would usually attempt to offer support to the pro-Catholic National Action Party of president Fox.

The Bank of Mexico reported that Mexico was declining according to all international measures of competitiveness. Mexico’s projected growth rate will be around 3 percent for this year and about 2.2 percent for the entire Fox administration, far below his promises and the needs of the country. After six years of being among the top ten nations for direct foreign investment, Mexico has now fallen to 22nd among 25 national economies with which it is compared. The world competitiveness index of Switzerland places Mexico in 58 of 60 places. The World Economic Forum has Mexico in the 48th place and the Mexican Competitiveness Institute places Mexico in 31 out of 45. (La Jornada, Sept. 12). Banamex, a subsidiary of Citigroup, released a report with similar conclusions.

A United Nations Report on Human Development 2005 placed Mexico in 53rd place on a list of 177 countries with respect to life expectancy, education, and real wages and income. (The report can be read on line in English at: http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2005/ ) The report indicated that the inequality between rich and poor had reached such a point that 5 percent of the income of the top fifth of the country could lift 12 million Mexicans out of extreme poverty.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), of which Mexico is a member, reported that Mexico remained quite backward in comparison with the other 30 countries that make up that organization. The report suggested that imbalances in the financing and resources of the Federal government and other government agencies led to problems for citizens desiring to access public services. The report particularly criticized the failure to improve educational opportunities. (The report can be found at: http://www.oecd.org/document/1/0,2340,en_2649_201185_35321537_1_1_1_1,00.html )

Arguing that the Mexican countryside is a disaster, several peasant and farmers’ organizations reported that Mexico purchases 39 percent of its basic agricultural products from other countries, including rice, beans, milk, beef, pork, and chicken, mostly from the United States. They accused Fox of a policy of basing the Mexican national economy on workers’ remittance from abroad.

Julio Boltvinik, a professor at El Colegio de Mexico and a PRD representative in the Mexican Congress, accused the Fox government and its academic advisors of presenting a false picture of poverty in Mexico. Boltvinik argued that according to his method of analysis 80 percent of the Mexican people live in poverty.

Rodolfo de la Torre, a researcher at the Ibero-American University in Mexico city and a member of the Technical Committee for the Measurement of Poverty reported that the number of people living in extreme poverty in Mexico remained the same today as it was at the time Fox took office.

Independent Labor Federation Criticizes Fox

The Authentic Labor Front (FAT), an independent labor federation, held a press conference the day before the president made his informe at which they said that Fox’s six year term had been a total loss for labor. Benedicto Martínez, a member of the FAT’s national coordinating group, said that Fox had signed a document promising to carry out 20 demands of the independent unions for democracy and workers’ rights, and had not carried out one. Quite the contrary, said Martínez, he had placed obstacles in the path of those seeking to improve the situation for unions and workers.

Back to September , 2005 Table of Contents

Fox Proposes Private Role in Petroleum; Rejected by Opposition

President Vicente Fox proposed permitting foreign investors a greater role in the exploration and production of petroleum and natural gas, but the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), and the Workers Party (PT) all strongly opposed the proposal.

The three opposition parties rejected the Fox plan, arguing that it represents the first step toward the privatization of the Mexican Petroleum Company (PEMEX), a state-owned firm.

Since he took office, Fox has pushed for the privatization of electric power production and of the petroleum industry. PEMEX has been considered the third-rail of Mexican politics since it stands at the center of the modern Mexican economy since 1938. The nationalized oil industry not only represents the heart of the Mexican economy but also symbolizes Mexican revolutionary nationalism.

Unable to pass his privatization program in the first five years of his presidency, there is virtually no chance he could do so now.

Back to September , 2005 Table of Contents

Independent Unions Join with Opposition, Employers in Coalition

The most important parties of the left, the independent unions, and an important employer organization agreed in the first week of September to form a “great coalition” to support a presidential candidate in the coming election. Presumably that candidate will be Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the former mayor of Mexico City and likely candidate of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).

The PRD, the Workers Party (PT), and Convergence, another left-of-center political party, together with the National Union of Workers (UNT), the Union, Peasant, Indigenous, Social and Popular Front (FSCISP), and the Front of Peasant Organizations, will be joining with the National Chamber of the Manufacturing Industry (CANACINTRA) in a great coalition aimed at supporting a presidential candidate in 2006.

The cross-class coalition brings together workers and peasants with employers represents, a shift from the previously held positions of both the UNT and the FSCISP. The UNT had previously advocated the creation of a working class party, while the FSCISP has typically described itself as revolutionary and anti-capitalist. Now both organizations join with employers in this new coalition.

The UNT and FSCPI alliance with the PRD is less surprising, since the latter has frequently carried the independent labor unions’ proposals to the legislature.

While some had held out hope that the UNT and FSCPI might create a labor party, this new coalition seems to indicate they might be creating something more like the Democratic Party with its cross-class basis of corporations and unions.

Broad Union Coalition against Tax

At another level, the UNT has entered into a common front with the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), the Revolutionary Confederation of Workers and Peasants (CROC), and the Revolutionary Confederation of Mexican Workers (CROM) to oppose “tax on rent” or ISR taxes on workers’ benefits. The tax was approved last November. The unions demonstrated at the legislature when President Fox presented his informe, a kind of state of the union message.

Back to September , 2005 Table of Contents

Party Political Struggles on All Sides as 2006 Election Nears

With the 2006 national presidential election approaching, political contests and struggles within and between parties have heated up.

Felipe Calderón former Secretary of Energy in the Fox government, won the first round of internal voting in the National Action Party (PAN) with 45 percent of the vote over his rival Santiago Creel, another Fox cabinet member, who received 35 percent of the vote. Voter turnout for the election was very low.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, former mayor of Mexico City and likely candidate of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), continues to travel and to campaign throughout Mexico.

Within the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) the struggle continues between party leaders Elba Esther Gordillo and Roberto Madrazo. At the moment it seems very likely that the PRI will vote to expel Gordillo, a long time leader of the teachers union, for disloyalty to the party and its program.

Partricia Mercado, it appears, will be the only woman candidate on the 2006 ballot as the likely standard bearer for the Social Democratic Party, which will appear on the ballot as the Social Democratic and Peasant Alternative Party (PASC). The peasants who have joined the Social Democrats come from a split in the PRD.

Back to September , 2005 Table of Contents

Zapatista Leader Marcos Opens “the Other Campaign”

Sub-Comandante Marcos, leader of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, issued a series of statements in September anticipating what he called “the other campaign.” He said the other campaign would open up in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas on January 1, anniversary of the 1994 Chiapas uprising, and would end on June 24.

Planning for the campaign began with a meeting in the EZLN redoubt in Chiapas in mid-September. Marcos and the EZLN, joined they claim by 200 non-party organizations and movements, will be campaigning against the parties and the elections of 2006. The campaign he said will not have a military character.

Marcos indicated he will be concentrating his criticism on Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the former Mexico City mayor and candidate for president of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). The EZLN leader criticized López Obrador and the intellectuals who surround him and advocate a vote for the lesser of two evils.

Back to September , 2005 Table of Contents

Miners-Metal Workers Union Wins Victory in Steel Strike

The Mexican Miners and Metal Workers Union (SNTMMRM) won a 46-day strike against two steel companies in Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacan, in what may be one of the most important strikes in Mexico a decade. The local union and its 2,400 members succeeded in winning an 8 percent wage gain, 34 percent in new benefits, and a 7,250 peso one-time only bonus.

Workers struck SICARTSA, Mexico’s most important steel mill which is operated by Grupo Villacero, and ATIBSA, a related mill, over wages and in an attempt to extend unionization to the ATIBSA plant.

Napoleón Gómez Urrutia, head of the union, had reached a tentative agreement with the owner of the company, meeting in the presence of the Secretary of Labor, Francisco Javier Salazar Saenz. However, when he took the tentative agreement to the workers on Sept. 1, the 32nd day of the strike, they voted to reject the proposal 781 to 731 with 8 votes voided. The strike continued another two weeks as the local union sent Gómez Urrutia back to the table to get a better offer.

ATIBSA went to the Mexican Labor Board (JCA) and had the strike at that plant declared illegal. But the union succeeded in having the matter overturned in the labor court.

Back to September , 2005 Table of Contents

Independent Teachers Group Calls Strike of 70,000 in Oaxaca

The National Coordinating Committee of the Teachers Union (la CNTE) succeeded in moving the parent union, the Mexican Teachers Union (el SNTE) in the state of Oaxaca, leading 70,000 teachers to strike in opposition to Vicente Fox’s educational policies. The strike, which affected 1.3 million students, took place on Sept. 1 as Fox made his presidential address on the state of Mexico to the legislature. The demonstrations also called for Elba Esther Gordillo to be expelled from el SNTE, the organization she had led for twenty years.

The strike in Oaxaca shows the power of this independent union caucus which can carry out a successful strike of such enormous proportions, even though it is opposed by the national union, el SNTE, and by the Secretary of Public Education (SEP).

Back to September , 2005 Table of Contents

Public Health Workers in Local Struggles

Mexico’s public health workers remain among the most militant labor groups in the country, often carrying on local fights over what are really national issues.

In the state of Durango, in northern Mexico, workers of the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS) and the Institute of Social Security of Unions of State Workers (ISSSTE) seized offices of both social security institutions as a way of exerting pressure regarding its demand for medical supplies.

In Cuautitlán Izcalli, in the State of Mexico, workers demonstrated inside and outside of Hospital Zone 57, also known as La Quebrada. They were demanding an increase in the more than the 1,000 workers at the IMSS hospital who attend to 1.2 million IMSS cardholders in the region.

Back to September , 2005 Table of Contents

Peasant Ecologist Freed from Prison; Amnesty International Calls for His Protection

Felipe Arreaga Sánchez, a peasant ecologist from the mountains of Petatlán, Guerrero, was free on Sept. 16 after a judge found him innocent of the 1998 murder of Abel Bautista, son of a political boss in the timberlands.

Thirteen other peasant ecologists remain accused of the crime of which Arreaga has been exonerated. Other peasant ecology leaders have been tortured and one man’s two sons were recently killed in an ambush. Amnesty International has called upon the Mexican government to protect Arreaga, his wife and children.

The Sierra Club Foundation had awarded Arreaga the Chico Mendes prize for his environmental work while he was imprisoned.

Back to September , 2005 Table of Contents

Mexican Women’s Movement: One Victory, One Defeat

The Mexican women’s movement won a victory in September when the Supreme Court of Mexico upheld the 20 year prison sentence of Armando Medina Millet for having killed his wife Flor Ileana Abraham. Women’s groups praised the decision as a step toward ending domestic violence, which is almost usually aimed at women.

Women’s groups, however, protested the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn a decision of the Federal Judicial Council that would have removed circuit judge Héctor Gálvez Tánchez from his post for sexual harassment. The Supreme Court said that this was not a serious crime. Instead, the Court opted for administrative sanctions. Women’s groups argued that this decision sends the wrong message.

Sexual harassment of women remains widespread in Mexican workplaces, from offices to factories and farms.

Back to September , 2005 Table of Contents

Twenty Years Since the Mexico City Earthquake: What Happened to Civil Society, Where Are Things Now?

– by Dan La Botz

Twenty years ago on September 19, 1985, an earthquake measuring 8.1 on the Richter scale struck Mexico City killing thousands and destroying tens of thousands of buildings. The Mexican government put the estimate of the dead at six to seven thousands, while the Economic Commission on Latin America (ECLA) estimated 26,000. Other estimates went as high as 40,000. The Mexican officials appeared on television and told the people to sit tight until help came—and it never did.

The earthquake and its aftermath represent an important turning point in modern Mexican history. Out of the rubble and the suffering, Mexican essayist Carlos Monsiváis observed the emergence of a new force in the life of Mexico, ordinary citizens who joined together to help each other when the state failed. Monsiváis and others came to call this force “Civil Society,” a term that originated in Eastern Europe to refer to social groups not dominated by the Communist governments of that region. In truth, often at the center of the groups that rescued the survivors from fallen buildings, were networks of the leftist parties and local activist organizations.

Between 1985 and 2000, the Civil Society that had arisen from the earthquake grew to be an important force in Mexican society. In Mexico, as opposed to some other countries, Civil Society generally referred to non-governmental organizations and social movements fighting for democracy and social justice. Some of these groups might be called liberal, other leftist, and yet others popular in the Latin American sense of that word, that is poor peoples’ movements. Over time they came to a common conclusion: Mexico could not go forward without ending the rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

Civil Society seemed to find a political expression in the 1988 election when the newly formed National Democratic Front nominated Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas for president. Cárdenas won the election, as many were aware at the time, but the PRI stole it for Carlos Salinas, and Mexico suffered through another six years of PRI-rule. Salinas, however, was a new kind of PRI leader, the technocratic, neoliberal, globalizing auctioneer who sold off the Mexican people’s patrimony at bargain basement prices. The old state structures, the state-union relationships, the social pact, the subsidized prices of tortillas and gasoline, everything that had represented some degree of security collapsed, as if it had been hit by an earthquake.

In 1994, Mexico seemed ripe for change. On January 1, 1994 a new force erupted in Mexico, another sort of earthquake, this one political. The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), headed by the romantic radical and raconteur Subcomandante Marcos led several hundred poorly armed Mayan Indians and mestizo peasants in an uprising in the state of Chiapas, aimed at stopping NAFTA and overthrowing president Salinas. Attacked by the Mexican airforce and army, the EZLN appealed to Civil Society to come to its aid, and forced the government to stop the attack. Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, meanwhile, had succeeded in forming the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), and his militant followers demanded another run for the presidency. So it seemed that Civil Society, the EZLN and the PRD might coalesce into the force that could overthrow the PRI.

The assassination that year of PRI candidate Donaldo Colosio, however, created a sense of profound fear among the Mexican people. Ernesto Zedillo became the PRI’s candidate in his stead, and his party played upon the fear of violence, urging the people to vote for the party they knew and the security that it represented. Zedillo won: another six years of the neoliberal PRI, but also the worst economic crisis since the 1930s. La crisis of 1994-1996, a result of Zedillo’s botched tinkering with the exchange rate, the passage of NAFTA, and the profound problems of the Mexican socio-economic system, caused suffering for millions.



Once again, people hoped for change. When the time came for the 2000 election, it was clear that Cardenas no longer enjoyed sufficient popular support to be able to win. Therefor, many voters, including a substantial portion of the left opted to cast a “useful vote” – a vote for the party of the right, the National Action Party – believing that in defeating the PRI they would be paving the way for greater democracy in the future. Vicente Fox, Coca-Cola corporate executive, cowboy boot manufacturer, and farmer, put on his cowboy outfit, mounted a horse, and put himself forward as the larger than life face of change, the face of democracy and economic progress.

Fox won the election, coming to power standing on a pile of votes cast against the PRI. He might have credited that victory to the 1985 earthquake that had set in motion a series of shock waves which were still being felt. He might even have thanked Marcos and the EZLN who had helped to reveal the bankruptcy of the old state-party system. People looked to Fox with hope, optimistic that he would bring about real change and open up spaces for democracy and social justice. In reality, neither of those ever formed part of his agenda. The PAN, a party led by bankers and Catholic bigots, represented a Mexican version of neoliberal conservatism and religious fanaticism all too common in North America and around the world.

Fox won the election, coming to power standing on a pile of votes cast against the PRI. He might have credited that victory to the 1985 earthquake that had set in motion a series of shock waves which were still being felt. He might even have thanked Marcos and the EZLN who had helped to reveal the bankruptcy of the old state-party system. People looked to Fox with hope, optimistic that he would bring about real change and open up spaces for democracy and social justice. In reality, neither of those ever formed part of his agenda. The PAN, a party led by bankers and Catholic bigots, represented a Mexican version of neoliberal conservatism and religious fanaticism all too common in North America and around the world.

Twenty years later, the Mexican earthquake’s shock waves, that is, that civil society made up of non-governmental organizations and social movements can still be felt. The tens of thousands who demonstrated to defend Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s right to run for office were an expression of that movement. The Zapatistas who are rallying the anti-electoral left draw strength from that movement. Even the conservative march for security in Mexico City several months ago could trace its roots to that movement. We might say that the earthquake of 1985 brought down not only buildings, but also the rigid structure of the PRI, setting loose that broad mass called civil society. Within that society efforts continue to build the force that might construct Mexico on a new basis, and the independent labor unions play an increasingly important role in that process.

Back to September , 2005 Table of Contents

United Electrical Workers (UE) to Host Frente Auténtico del Trabajo (FAT) in Chicago

The United Electrical Workers (UE) will be hosting eleven rank and file activists, organizers and national leaders of the Frente Auténtico del Trabajo (FAT) from October 1 - 8, in their second intensive training for organizers and activists. The two organizations have enjoyed an extremely close and productive relationship for more than a decade.

Back to September , 2005 Table of Contents

Resources

American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)

New web pages on labor across the border.
AFSC's Mexico-US Border Program is pleased to announce its new web pages, featuring original commentaries on:
- Building more effective cross-border solidarity;
- Current grassroots initiatives that are empowering workers in Mexican maquiladoras;
- An innovative approach to corporate social responsibility that brings shopfloor perspectives to corporate officials and shareholders.
Also included is background information on the maquiladora economy and maquiladora activism, as well as links to related AFSC projects and other organizations.
Visit our new pages at http://www.afsc.org/mexico-us-border. And while you're there, you can sign up for the Maquiladora Updater, an e-newsletter co-sponsored by AFSC and the Comité Fronterizo de Obrer@s, AFSC's grassroots partner across the border.

Back to September , 2005 Table of Contents

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

Archived MLNA issues.