MEXICAN LABOR NEWS AND ANALYSIS
IN THIS
ISSUE:
ON
SECOND ANNIVERSARY OF FOX ELECTION: MEXICO DISAPPOINTED
by Dan La Botz
A new song titled “Chronicle of Change” by the popular
Mexican group “Los Tigres del Norte” asks, “Now, my Zorro (Fox, in
Spanish), when are we going to really get this change?” The song tells of
workers and peasants who continue to suffer injustice, while the wealthy and
politicians continue to control the Mexican economy and government for their
own benefit. While many Mexican radio stations have declined to play the song,
fearing that it will get them in trouble with the government, it seems well on
its way to becoming a popular hit. The reason is that it speaks to the nation’s
frustrations, doubts and resentments about the performance of the president.
(To hear some of “Crónica de Cambio” and to learn more about Los Tigres del
Norte and their new song go to http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/kcet/arts.artsmain?action=viewArticle&id=381267&pid=70&sid=0).
Vicente Fox won Mexico’s presidential election two years ago in July. But on the second anniversary of his victory, most Mexicans appeared to be disappointed in his administration. Or so it appeared to me from television and news commentary, newspaper pundits, and conversations with Mexicans of all walks of life while recently visiting Mexico.
When campaigning for office Fox promised to bring Mexico economic prosperity, political democracy, and social justice. Millions of Mexicans from all the political parties, put their hopes in Fox, and gave him their votes. Yet, two years later, Fox has failed to fulfill any of those promises.
· THE ECONOMY – Fox promised that continued neoliberal (ie., conservative) economic policies such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), and his own pet Plan Puebla-Panama would bring Mexico economic prosperity. But, according to Banamex (Banco Nacional de Mexico), Mexico’s economy shrank by 2.0% last year, and by .25% last quarter. The steep economic decline results from Mexico’s integration into the U.S. economy which has also been in decline. Mexico’s economy in 2000, before Fox took office, grew at a rate of 6.8 percent. During the 1960s and 70s, when Mexico had a nationalist government and a protectionist economic policy, the economy grew at a rate of about 6.5 percent. With the U.S. economy now reported to be growing at a rate of 6.1 percent, Fox hopes that Mexico too will see a return to relative prosperity.
Nevertheless, Fox still has serious economic worries. If Mexico’s economy has not completely crashed, it is due in part to a rise in oil prices from about $15 to about $18 a barrel. But as the 1970s and 1980s demonstrated, oil prices are too volatile to be relied upon to give Mexico economic security.
The cutting edge of Mexico’s economic development over the last two decades has been a rise in manufacture for export led by the maquiladoras mostly located on the U.S.-Mexico border. But in the last two years more than 500 maquiladoras have closed down, and some 250,000 maquiladora workers have lost their jobs. Many of the maquiladoras have moved to Asia, particularly to China where labor costs may be as low as 25 center per hour, instead of the $1.50 to $2.00 per hour that some entry level workers now make in Tijuana. (For a comprehensive story on this issue see Mary Jordan, “Mexican border factories move to Asia,” THE WASHINGTON POST at http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/mcherald/2002/06/21/business/3516040.htm)
Mexico is failing to produce nearly enough jobs for its population growth—it needs to produce nearly one million per year, and is projected to produce only 150,000 this year. And of those jobs, 40 percent are temporary, not permanent positions.
· POLITICS – Fox promised that his election would dismantle the old one-party state of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and create a new democratic Mexico. While Fox’s election did lead to the end of the PRI-state, it has not brought about the hoped for flourishing of political democracy. True, the legislature and the courts are no longer a rubber stamp for the executive. Real debates and divided votes take place in Congress. Still, the new political democracy has proven disappointing.
Fox has proven unable to be an effective leader of his own National Action Party (PAN), and has consequently been unable to create political coalitions to put forward his own conservative political and economic program. Meanwhile the PRI, under Roberto Madrazo, has had some success in rebuilding its party organization and in forging some alliances with the left-of-center Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). The result has been a state of political paralysis in which president Fox has been unable to proceed with many of his most important projects, while the opposition also finds itself stymied.
Fox had intimated that as president he would privatize the electrical energy and petroleum industries. But strong opposition from the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) and its allies and from opposition political parties has delayed much movement in those areas now for a year and a half. More recently, when Fox pushed his plan for a new airport expansion to be built in the area of San Salvador Atenco, local farmers, many brandishing machetes, carried out a series of militant protests that finally forced Fox to retreat and withdraw plans for building an airport in that area. The electrical workers in one case and the Atenco community in the other, joined by the political opposition, dealt Fox serious defeats. Since taking office, Fox has proven unable to take the political initiative, leading to victories by both popular forces and by opposition parties. Ironically, because of the weakness and divisions in PRD, the PRI will likely be the principal beneficiary of these social movements.
But, in any case, for most Mexicans, Fox and the PAN do not appear to have brought about the democratic society they hoped for. Or, some suggest, if this is democracy, then it is not all it it’s cracked up to be.
· SOCIAL JUSTICE – Fox’s campaign two years ago also promised to initiate a new era of social justice, particularly in the areas of indigenous peoples’ rights, migrant rights, workers’ rights and human rights more generally.
In the area of the rights of indigenous people, the Fox administration has been a tremendous disappointment. While Fox initially offered encouragement and political support to the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) as they attempted to bring the Indians’ case before the Mexican people and the national legislature, in the end Fox failed to get the Mexican Congress to pass a new indigenous law that would have granted real autonomy.
Meanwhile conservative
politicians, local ranchers, the police and the military have been pushing for
a new offensive against the EZLN rebels. Consequently, over the last several
months the climate of violence has worsened, leading to violent attacks and
even murder in August of this year. José López Santiz, a member of the
Zapatista support community “17 de Noviembre,” was killed in early August.
López had been threatened by PRI-affiliated death squads in the days leading up
to his death. His murder followed an attack by death squads that left seven
Zapatista
supporters wounded just the week before. All of this reveals that Fox’s promise
to solve the problems of Chiapas with the snap of his fingers have failed.
Fox had also promised to bring a change in Mexican and U.S. policies that govern migrant workers, but those too have been a disappointment. The September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the United States led to new controls at the border which have only made the situation for Mexican migrants even more difficult. But Mexican politics have also caused problems. In July Mexico closed its “Presidential Office for Attention to Mexicans Abroad” headed by Juan Hernández Senter, apparently because Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge G. Castañeda resented the existence of such an office that was not under his control.
There has been some decline in the number of deaths of Mexicans crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. In the first six months of 2002, some 117 Mexicans died attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. The number was 210 in the same period in 2001 and 283 in the first half of 2000. The Mexican government attributes the decline to its work in alerting its citizens of the danger. Others say the decline may be because of the downturn in the U.S. economy and stepped up security measures on the border. Workers from Mexico and Central America who cross the border seeking jobs may die from exposure to heat or cold, drowning in the Rio Grande (Rio Bravo River), in auto accidents or for other reasons. In any case, there Fox has proven unsuccessful in creating a new migrant worker policy.
In the area of human rights, Fox has carried out one of his promises: opening the government archives dealing with the 1968 massacre at Tlatelolco (and with a similar massacre by government-trained gangsters (Los Halcones) in 1971) and supporting government investigations into those events. Last year Fox named a special prosecutor after the government's National Human Rights Commission confirmed at least 275 “disappearances” in the 1970s and early 1980s. This year that Commission called up and questioned former President Luis Echeverria, who, has Minister of the Interior under deceased former President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz. Echeverria denied responsibility for the massacre of the 300 students. Still so far no action has been taken against the officials, police officers or soldiers involved in the murder of student activists.
But, while the Fox government investigates former human rights violations, it also faces accusations of tolerating similar abuses. Most visible has been the case of the death of Digna Ochoa, an attorney involved in the defense of environmental activists, peasants accused of being guerrillas, and other human rights causes. Ochoa was found dead on October 19, 2001, in a confusing crime scene which some believe was designed to look like a suicide. Mexican human rights activists believe she was murdered, probably by military officers with whom she had had legal conflicts in the past.
In terms of workers’ rights, the Fox administration has made no progress. Some hoped that with the election of Fox, the old PRI controlled labor unions would wither away making room from a democratic labor movement operating in a transparent legal framework. But instead Fox held out his hand to the old PRI-controlled unions in the Congress of Labor (CT) and the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), while his Secretary of Labor Carlos Abascal gave aid and comfort to the company unions or “sindicatos blancos.” As a result, workers seeking to organize genuine independent labor unions have found themselves still in a hostile environment. The best example of the Fox position on unions is the case of the workers of Rio Bravo, Tamaulipas who sought to establish an independent union at the Duro Bag company last year. The company, state labor officials, and the corrupt labor unions colluded to violate basic workers’ rights, such as the right to a secret ballot election, and succeeded in defeating the organizing effort. Fox and Abascal refused to intervene to guarantee a secret ballot election.
· FOREIGN POLICY
Fox and his Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jorge Castañeda, a former leftist, have carried out a significant turn in Mexico’s foreign policy. Breaking with a long tradition of relative autonomy in foreign affairs, Mexico has now become utterly subservient to U.S. foreign policy demands. The most important example of this new policy is Cuba. Despite U.S. demands to the contrary, Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) had for decades given political and economic support to Castro’s Communist Cuba. (And Cuba in return declined to support leftist guerrillas in Mexico who wanted to overthrow the government there.) But Fox and Castañeda have now broken with the old policy, working with the U.S. to isolate Cuba.
Fox has also traveled throughout Latin America acting as a salesman for the policies of the United States and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), at a time when many Latin American governments, political parties, and the Latin American people at large have become disillusioned and disgusted with those policies.
While Fox’s foreign policy positions represent the logical culmination of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) treaty, they also reveal the degree to which Mexican sovereignty and independence have been undermined, as well as the politically servile character of the Mexican president. As Los Tigres del Norte sing, “Oh, now that change has come, we can all toast it with a glass of Coca-Cola.”
Two years since his election, and Fox has failed to carry out any of his promises. He has disappointed not only the Mexican people, but far more significant for him, he has also disappointed his conservative supporters. However, he has pleased the U.S. government, and that, after all may be the most important of all.
Continuing to mix religion and politics in the way that many Mexicans have thought inappropriate, Secretary of Labor Carlos Abascal Carranza invited his ministry’s employees and Mexican labor officials to meet Pope Juan Pablo II during his visit to Mexico. They were invited to both the Presidential reception for the Pope, and to the act of canonization of Juan Diego, the Indian who was reported to have been visited by the Virgin of Guadalupe almost 500 years ago. Federal employees would be free to attend the event as their beliefs dictated.
The National Union of Workers (UNT), Mexico’s independent labor federation, has rejected the proposed revisions to the Federal Labor Law, and says it may take to the streets in protest. Upon his election Vicente Fox directed his Secretary of Labor Carlos Abascal Carranza to organize a discussion among Mexico’s employer organizations and labor unions to come up with reforms to “modernize” Mexico’s Federal Labor Law (LFT). Abascal convened discussions among the parties, including both the old government controlled labor federations such as the Congress of Labor (CT) and the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), as well as the UNT. Fox and Abascal promised that any new law would come out of a consensus among the parties.
Unhappy with the discussions, the UNT took its proposals to the Mexican congress and to the people in a proposal that put emphasis upon both the workers’ right to unions of their own choosing, and defending the historic legal conquests of the labor movement.
Then Abascal announced that based on the discussion, the government would be putting a new labor law proposal before congress.
Francisco Hernández Juárez, one of the three co-presidents of the UNT, complains that the agreement was not reached by consensus, and the UNT was in effect excluded, and there therefore the proposal should not go forward. He has promised that his federation will take action. The proposal has been supported by the Congress of Labor (CT) and the Business Coordinating Council (CCE), as well as the Secretary of Labor.
Mexico’s maquiladora sector has entered a crisis affected by both long-term trends and short-term developments. The combination of changing patterns of investment (as corporations move plants to Asia), the U.S. war on terrorism with its implications for border traffic, and the recent U.S. and Mexican recession have result in plant closings, layoffs, and a severe decline in the economies of the border region.
Every maquiladora city has been hard hit by the decline in maquiladora production. Ciudad Juárez in the state of Chihuahua has lost 80,000 workers and seen a 20 percent decline in commercial activity. Throughout the state of Chihuahua some 115,000 jobs have been lost. Since the beginning of the year 545 maquiladoras have closed throughout the country, and 155,065 jobs have been lost. Some 250,000 jobs have been lost in the last two years. Altogether 6.83 percent of the maquiladoras on the Mexico-U.S. border closed, while employment fell by 17.3 percent in 2001.
The Workers University of Mexico (UOM), associated with the independent labor movement, argues that the “maquiladoras model” is dead. UOM claims that from October 2001 to June 2002 some 310,000 jobs were lost.
In response to this situation, President Fox created the President’s Council for
Competitiveness, headed by the Secretary of the Economy, Luis Ernesto Derbez and the Secretary of Labor, Carlos Abascal. The Council has given the industry “fiscal stimulation,” that is, tax incentives, but no subsidies. Derbez argues, however, that it will take long term structural reforms in labor, energy, education and finance to set the maquiladoras and the economy aright.
The Mexican Petroleum Workers Union (STPRM), representing 36 local labor unions, 90,000 permanent and 27,000 temporary employees, and 50,000 retirees continues negotiation with the Mexican Petroleum Company (PEMEX). The union is seeking a wage increase of 15% while the government-owned company would like to keep any wage gain below the 5% seen as inflationary.
The union’s leaders are involved in a scandal, accused of having served as a conduit to move millions of pesos from the company to the presidential campaign of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). At the same time rank and file activists, local union reformers, and bureaucratic rivals seek to oust and replace the existing leadership.
Union activists in the Sole Union of Electrical Workers of the Mexican Republic (SUTERM) complain that the company and the union leadership continue to fire and otherwise harass them. The union, headed by Leonardo Rodríguez Alcaine who also heads the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM) and the Congress of Labor (CT), will hold union elections in a few months. Apparently Rodríguez Alcaine would like to get rid of his opponents before the voting takes place.
Workers at the Euzkadi tire plant in El Salto, Jalisco, near Guadalajara continue their fight for a just settlement. The tire plant closed on December 16, 2001, and since then workers have been fighting to get the company to reopen it. Workers took their fight to the stockholder’s meeting of Continental Tires in Germany, where they were promised consideration. But nothing came of the promises. So far only 20 percent of the workers have accepted their severance pay, and the other 80 percent continue to hold out for either their jobs or a more lucrative settlement. The union continues meetings and protests.
UNITED ELECTRICAL WORKERS (UE) TERM
HANDLING OF NAFTA LABOR CASE A FARCE
(The labor side agreement of NAFTA – the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC) – is administered by a National Administrative Office or NAO in each of the three countries. These offices are responsible for accepting and processing complaints and making recommendations to the secretary or minister of labor. The following letter from the United Electrical Workers (UE) addresses the recent decision of US and Mexican officials to hold a seminar in Monterrey – an ineffective remedy which precludes participation by the workers who were involved in the campaign which led to the filing of the case. We are including the letter because we believe the background outlined by the UE describes an important experience under NAFTA – Ed.).
July 24, 2002
Elaine Chao, Secretary of Labor
United States Department of Labor Re: Submission No. 9703
200 Constitution Ave., N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20210
Dear Secretary Chao:
I am writing to you on behalf of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE), the lead Petitioner in the Itapsa case (Public Submission 9703), to advise you that we will not be participating in the seminar you are planning for Monterrey pursuant to the Ministerial Agreement regarding that submission because we do not choose to lend any further credibility to a process which has so totally failed to protect workers’ rights.
It has now been more than 4 1/2 years since we first filed the case, and almost exactly four years since the decision. In the better than two years since the Mexican government committed itself to “promote secret ballot elections” Mexican workers have had their rights violated and have suffered physical and emotional abuse in connection with elections where they must still vote out loud in front of company officials and oftentimes in front of thugs. It was precisely this continuing failure by the Mexican government to protect the associational rights and the safety of workers in representation cases that led us to file the ITAPSA case.
.
The case focused on some of the most egregious ways in which Mexican workers are deprived of their rights, and the NAO decision found serious problems in all of the following areas: the absence of secret ballot elections, the lack of public registries of unions and contracts, the use of exclusion clauses, violence against workers who were conducting lawful organizational and informational activity in public places, and the lack of transparency and inherent bias of a system in which the labor representatives on the Mexican labor boards are virtually always from the CTM.
The case involved a brake plant just outside of Mexico City where predominantly young workers suffered serious exposures to asbestos and solvents in the course of their work. Not surprisingly, testimony revealed chronic deficiencies in worker protection, training, the labeling of chemicals and an inspection system where inspectors were clearly not competent to detect violations related to occupational exposures or disease and where a minor slap on the wrist was the most serious sanction assessed. To put it bluntly, many of the young workers from that plant who courageously stood up for their rights and were fired for their efforts may well be dead twenty years from now as a result of asbestos exposure at work.
We were impressed with the NAO's concern with the issues we raised during the hearing process and felt that while the decision was not all that we had hoped for, it laid strong groundwork for serious consultations on a ministerial level.
The initial phases of the case took approximately seven months: The Submission was filed on December 15, 1997; the hearing held on March 23, 1998; and the Public Report (decision) issued July 31, 1998. However, it was not until almost two years later (May 18, 2000) that an agreement was reached with the Mexican Ministry of Labor. A review of the terms left us highly skeptical of the process. Instead of firm commitments regarding changes in policies and practices which constitute major violations of Mexican and international law, we found platitudes, commitments only to "promote" change, rather than to change itself, and more seminars, when we had made it very clear from the beginning that we were not interested in discussions, that we wanted serious change.
The first of the seminars specified in the agreement took place on June 23, 2000, in Tijuana, the location of the Han Young plant which was the site of the violations which were documented in Submission 9702. As you are no doubt aware, this seminar was to be held to educate workers about their right to freely organize trade unions. Ironically, no time on the agenda was allotted for worker participation and instead of constituting a forum which advanced the cause of workers' rights in Mexico, particularly the rights of workers at the Han Young facility, this seminar became the site of further brutalization of Mexican workers when maquiladora workers assembled at this seminar, including workers from Han Young, were viciously attacked by thugs from the CROC (a federation which is noted for its protection contracts and opposition to independent unions.
When we protested the manner in which the seminar had been conducted, we were assured by Secretary Herman that, among other things, “that the UE and other interested organizations [would be] consulted on the planning of the tri-national seminar on labor boards.”
We were subsequently assured by Mr. Karesh, Acting Secretary of the U.S. NAO, that the next seminar would be conducted in Mexico City, as we suggested, and that the principal focus would be on the issue of how the Labor Boards handle representation questions and specifically the question of secret ballot elections. We were also assured that he welcomed our suggestions regarding the agenda. We worked closely with organizations in the U.S., Mexico and Canada to prepare an agenda which was designed to take advantage of the experiences in each of our countries and to promote the active participation of workers and their legal representatives both as panelists and members of the audience. Mr. Karesh advised us that there was some discussion about including the TAESA case as well and asked our opinion. After consulting with our Mexican colleagues we informed him that we had no objection and worked that into the proposed agenda. Although Mr. Karesh warned us that it was likely that there would be some changes when the details were worked out with the Mexican NAO, we believed that our proposal was being seriously taken into account.
And then we waited. And waited. And quite by accident, a friend who attended a seminar recently in Toronto reported that in response to a question from the audience, the secretary of the Mexican NAO had said that the seminar in the ITAPSA case was to be held in Monterrey. This seemed unlikely since the intention of the Ministerial Agreement which first described the seminar was to hold it in a location accessible to the workers in the case. There was certainly no connection with Monterrey, some 1000 kilometers away.
However, when we inquired of the US NAO what was going on, we were finally faxed the Joint declaration and press release which had been reached over a month earlier. We were told that the meeting would be held in Monterrey because the President of the Mexican labor board was from that area, that no part of the agenda we had proposed was being used, and that the only presenters would be government officials.
Given this history, we believe that the NAO process has deteriorated into a farce, and under these circumstances we see no value in participating further.
Sincerely,
John H. Hovis, Jr.
President
According to a recent report of the Mexican National Commission on Human Rights (CNDH), 27 Mexican state discriminate against the handicapped. According to official statistics 2.3 million people suffer from severe handicaps, and 10 million have some sort of disability out of a total population of 100 million. Political parties have said that they will put forward some law to protect the rights of the handicapped during the next legislative period.
The Mexican government and Mexico’s elderly face a crisis. The number of retirees in the Mexican Institute of Social Security system will more than double in the next ten years from 103,000 to 236,000. Ninety percent of these retirees can expect their pension payments to equal the minimum wage, or less than $4.00 per day. Faced with an inability to pay higher pensions to more retirees, there is a proposal to raise the retirement age to 70 years. Life expectancy in Mexico today is 75.3 years.
Latin America Unemployment – Latin America’s economy is expected to shrink by 3.6 percent in 2002, and in the first third of 2002 the unemployment rate had reached 9.4 percent or 18 million persons, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO). This will be the lowest growth rate since 1983 when the Latin American economies shrank by 2.9 percent. (“Afecta el desempleo a 18 milliones de personas en Latinoamerica, señala estudio de la OIT,” NOTIMEX.)
Mexico’s Economically Active Population – Mexico’s total population is about 100 million. Mexico has a population of working age of 60 million, but only 48.7 percent of that group (less than 30 million) have any income, and thus constitute its Economically Active Population (PEA), according to the Center of Economic Studies of the Private Sector (CEESP). (Guadalupe Cadena, “Baja tasa de participación labor en Mexico,” EL FINANCIERO, July 29, 2002.)
Unemployment – Mexico had almost one million unemployed persons, an unemployment rate of 2.39 percent in the month of June according to the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS). Mexico has many under-employed workers and millions of workers in the informal economy who may not have been counted.
Job Creation – President Vicente Fox, Secretary of Labor Carlos Abascal, and the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS) claimed that 260,000 jobs had been created in the last quarter in Mexico, indicating that the country was leaving recession behind. But that figure did not take into account jobs were lost in the same period. Other analysts give a different picture. In the first half of 2002 Mexico created a total of 66,842 jobs, of which 52,886 were temporary and 13,956 were permanent, according to the Mexican Center of Economic Analysis and Projections (CAPEM). (Guadalupe Cadena, “Solo se crearon 66,842 empleos hasta julio: Capem,” EL FINANCIERO, Aug. 7, 2002.)
Wages – Mexican workers’ wages rose somewhat in the first half of the year, with wage gains in the private sector of 6.6% and in the public sector of 5.4%. Annual inflation this year is expected to be 4.4% (Noe Cruz Serrano, “Más inflación con salarios por arriba de 7%,” EL UNIVERSAL, August 2, 2002.)
Purchasing power – Mexicans have less ability to purchase their basic diet of tortillas, beans, milk, corn and eggs, according to a study by Prof. Emilio López Gámez of the Autonomous University of Chapingo (UACh) and Federico Valle Vaquera, general secretary of the Independent Central of Agricultural Workers and Farmers (CIOAC). The minimum wage in 2001 of 37.5 pesos would buy 8.3 kilograms of tortillas, but in July of 2002 the minimum wage of 42.15 pesos would buy only 7.6 kilograms of tortillas. And similarly for the other basic foods. (Carolina Gómez Mena, “En el gobierno foxista se ha desplomado el accesso a productos de las canasta basica,” LA JORNADA, July 7, 2002.)
Similarly the Center for Multidisciplinary Analysis (CAM) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) found that between December 1, 2000 and July 1, 2002 the workers’ basic shopping basket of essential commodities rose 19 percent, while the minimum wage (to which other wages are linked) rose only 11 percent. (Edgar Amigon Domínguez/Finsat, “Creciente deterioro del poder de compra: UNAM,” EL FINANCIERO, July 25, 2002.)
Construction Workers – In Mexico City about 5.4% of the urban population is employed in construction. Of those employed in construction 4.9% work on piece rate. The minimum wage for a construction worker is 61 pesos (about US$6.00 per day), and for plasterers 57 pesos (about US$5.7 per day). (Verónica Martínez, “A Ver si Cae Algo,” REFORMA, July 29, 02).
We want to call our readers’ attention to several recently published books that will be of interest to those concerned about the workers’ movement and human rights.
Ana Alicia Solís de Alba, El movimiento sindical pintado de magenta: Productividad, sexismo y neocorporativismo (Mexico: Editorial Itaca, 2002, bibliography). Anyone studying the history or current state of the Mexican labor movement should read this important feminist study of Mexican labor. This is a book to make us all rethink our conception of the Mexican working class and union movement. Using Marxism and feminism, Solís has rethought the Mexican labor movement from a woman-centered perspective. While some will find the opening chapters and some other sections too theoretical or abstract, the book also analyzes important workers struggles both for union democracy and against employers and the state.
Sergio Aguayo Quezada, editor, México en Cifras (Mexico: Hechos Confiables and Grijalbo, Publishers, 2002, tables, charts.) One of Mexico’s leading human rights activists has produced this handbook “Mexico in Figures.” The book is made up of various sections on topics such as health, education, women, security and insecurity, economy each introduced by a short, thoughtful and well written essay, followed by statistics on the subject under consideration. Anyone working on Mexico would find this book a useful reference. It should be at your fingertips.
Sergio Aguayo Quezada, La Charola: Una historia de los servicios de inteligencia en México (Mexico: Grijalbo, 2001, photographs, bibliography.). This book is both a history of Mexico’s intelligence services, and of their repression of Mexico’s guerrilla movement and of other social movements. A must read for those interested in human rights, social movements and revolutionary struggles in Mexico.
Héctor Díaz-Polanco and Consuelo Sánchez, México Diverso (Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 2002, bibliography). Written to update the struggle of Mexico’s indigenous people for their rights, this book is one of the most thoughtful accounts of one of Mexico’s central human rights issues. With the Chiapas Rebellion and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation at the center of events, this book provides the most lucid accounts of developments in Mexico’s indigenous rights movement over the last eight years.