Michael Perelman wrote:
Maybe he was with the miners. He is
supposed to be very well known.
His first name is Napoleon. The steel
workers were defending him. He
is probably with the steel workers in the
US now. The government charged him
with corruption, but it seemed like he
was doing too good of a job.
Anyway, I have not heard about his case
for a while.
Okay. Yes, Napoleón Gómez Urrutia is the leader of the union. What I
posted on this has been composed and passed along on the basis of
e-mails I receive from a friend in Mexico whom I trust. The
information is a bit telegraphic, but there's not much in the
newspapers.
So, based on the very little I know, I'll try to provide some broader
context for those interested.
The unionized workers' movement in Mexico is what is. Like in most
other countries (rich and poor) it is not characterized by high
standards of honesty or democratic practices. In Mexico, the movement
started in earnest in the mid- and late 19th century by anarchists and
then socialists and Christians, who organized workers in various
industries. They played a key role before, during, and after the
Mexican revolution of 1910. As the revolution became an
institutionalized regime in the 1920s, the unions were purged of
anarchists, socialists, and communists, and co-opted as political
structures providing a popular-base prop to the regime, an electoral
base, and even shock troops against the opposition -- all under the
political umbrella of the PRI (originally under a different name).
There was some give and take -- obviously. A progressive labor
legislation was enacted, etc. But, basically, the design was to keep
the workers' movement as a political appendix of the state under the
PRI and to preempt the political independence, democratic, and
militant development of the working class in Mexico. Paramount among
their fears was communism. The leaders at the time were rabidly
anti-communist and used everything to keep the communist out.
Not surprisingly, the unions became extremely corrupt and brutal in
their practices. Again, no doubt, base workers continued to receive
something -- incremental advances in their working and living
conditions, better real wages, etc. as Mexico's economy boomed ahead
almost without pause during 50 years or so. Until the macroeconomic
conditions became much more volatile -- in the 1970s.
For decades (and until the present), the radical left had a very hard
time penetrating the union movement. Of course, there was brutal
repression and all that. There were many episodes used to teach
exemplary lessons to the communists. Recently, Elena Poniatowska, a
Mexican writer, was given the Romulo Gallegos Prize in Venezuela for
her book on the history of the bloody repression of the railroad
workers then led by Demetrio Vallejo in the late 1950s. (Elena was in
Caracas to receive the prize and interviewed Chavez. The interview is
available on youtube. In Spanish. But that's another thread.)
All in all, the main reason for the failure of the left was a
disconnect between the strategy of the left and the outlook and
disposition of the base workers themselves, who -- to some undeniable
extent -- had been deeply corrupted by decades of corporatism,
political submission, prevarication, and mafia brutality.
Throughout this whole period, just like the union movement in general
was under the iron grip of Fidel Velazquez, a very picturesque icon in
Mexico's political system under the PRI, the miners and metal workers'
union was under the control of a similarly corrupt and brutal PRI
leader, Napoleon Gomez Sada -- a metal worker from the norther state
of Nuevo Leon (the father of the current leader, Napoleon Gomez
Urrutia).
To give a sense of the way in which the mining and metal industries
evolved in Mexico, let me say that, historically (of course),
intensive mining in Mexico goes back to colonial times. The Spanish
crown extracted huge amounts of silver and gold from Mexico's subsoil
and the colonial economy was largely dominated by extractive
activities. There are many mining regions all over the country. In
the mid 19th century, some serious metal manufacturing emerged in the
north of Mexico: Nuevo Leon and then Coahuila.
Let's skip to the 1970s, when the government of Luis Echeverria
created a large state-owned steel company in a port along the Pacific,
facing Asia, the port of Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan (Michoacan is a
state in the central/southwest of Mexico). When I was student in the
Universidad Michoacana, as political activists in the student movement
in Morelia, my comrades and I (we were all teenagers) supported the
attempts made by various leftists groups to infiltrate the union in
Sicartsa (the steel making company in Lazaro Cardenas). The fights
were bloody and the press rarely reported anything. At the time (mid-
to late 1970s), the press was very intimidated and controlled. The
government was waging a dirty war against the radical leftists groups
that had chosen the rural and urban guerrilla paths, and they were
hellbent in preventing the infiltration of the political wings of the
guerrillas to gain influence in the unions.
So, aside from the mines spread all over the country -- although more
prominently in Sonora, Coahuila, Zacatecas, Hidalgo, and Guerrero --
there were now the steel and other metal industries in Nuevo Leon,
Coahuila, Michoacan, and Estado de Mexico. (Oil workers were
organized separately.) After the Echeverria government, like the
mines, most of these steel companies came to be state-owned: Altos
Hornos de Mexico and Sicartsa. At the time, I estimate direct mining
and metal workers to be in the tens of thousands.
When, under the crisis of the debt that hit Mexico in the late 1970s
and early 1980s, president Miguel de la Madrid submitted to the IMF
diktat, most of these companies were privatized in record time.
Sicartsa (en Lazaro Cardenas) became Villacero, given to
The unions, of course, were dismayed by these policies, but there was
little opposition from them. That's what the system of co-opted
unions honed by the Mexican revolution under the PRI umbrella was
designed for -- to submit the workers to state policies even when
those policies were frontally against the workers' interest! It
worked. There were a few rebels (corrupt union leaders like Joaquin
Hernandez Galicia, head of the powerful oil workers' union). Some of
them even supported (although in secret) the electoral insurrection of
Cuauhtemoc Cardenas Solorzano. But they were put into place. The
first thing Carlos Salinas, the president after de la Madrid, did once
in power was to jail Hernandez Galicia in a spectacular commando
operation that established Salinas as a decisive m*****f****r.
The main leader of the union movement, Fidel Velazquez, wasn't so
foolish as to oppose the "neoliberal" juggernaut. He died finally in
1997, during the Ernesto Zedillo government. Zedillo didn't confront
him or the union movement, but he didn't care much for them either.
Fidel Velazquez was replaced by his lieutenant, Leonardo Rodriguez
Alcaine, a very pliant fellow, who continued conducting business as
usual. Zedillo didn't need them politically, since he had got some
mandate due to the fiasco of Cardenas' second electoral attempt.
A later-day rebel from the old corrupt union leadership was Napoleon
Gomez Sada. He clashed with Rodriguez Alcaine, but he was already too
old and died in 2002. He inherited the leadership position to his
son, Napoleon Gomez Urrutia, and with it the fight against Rodriguez
Alcaine and the government, now led by Vicente Fox of the conservative
PAN.
[I'll continue later. And can't proofread. Sorry.]
