Collapse of Dignity (39 page)

By now, Ancira could see that I wasn't going to accept the offer, but he wasn't ready to end breakfast yet. I took the opportunity to get some more information out of him. “Why,” I now asked, “did President Calderón decide to continue all this? It started under Fox's watch, and at first he acted like he didn't want it to be his problem. Why keep it alive?”

“I think you know the answer to that question,” Ancira said. “Germán Larrea, Alberto Bailleres, the Villarreals—they all donated enormous sums of money to Calderón's campaign, just like they did for Fox. In exchange, Calderón gave them Lozano.” I recognized this as the truth, even coming from a man who had no scruples. Lozano had been at these
businessmen's beck and call from the beginning. “It's to these businessmen that he owes his position—not the population at large, much less the working class,” Ancira said.

That was true, I replied, but once the president of Mexico assumes his duties, he has all the legal power to become a statesman, a king, or a dictator. Calderón could have begun his administration by looking for a true solution to the conflict. He could have behaved like a great negotiator who faces and resolves challenges and problems as they arise.

“You expected that of a short, ugly, conflicted person who had no personality?” Ancira replied, in his typically offensive manner. “All he does is yell and bang his hands on tables. He makes terrible rash decisions just for the sake of feeling like he's the president. Add to that the fact that he drinks a lot while he's making these decisions, and you'll see why his choices have been poor.”

Ancira's characterization of Felipe Calderón immediately reminded me of how Germán Larrea had always referred to Vicente Fox as stupid and ignorant, and of Larrea's insulting nicknames for Lozano. I couldn't imagine what Larrea now called Calderón behind his back. It's a shame that men like Calderón exist, but it's even worse is that there are those—like Ancira and Larrea—who recognize the faults and failings of these government officials and yet cynically protect and defend them as if they were close friends.

“Calderón won't end the conflict on his own.” Ancira continued. “That's why I strongly recommend that you accept their offer. If you don't”—and here came the threat—“things are going to get worse. They are going to attack you, invent things, and slander you, your wife, your children, and your colleagues. You know they can get the media to print whatever they tell them to. And,” he added with an unmistakable air of complacency, “that's just the way Mexico is: the corruption, the illegality, the abuses of authority; they can apply or interpret the laws any way they feel like it.” The people, he told me, are asleep, stultified by the propaganda that's all over TV, newspapers, and radio. “The Mexicans are afraid. They live in terror, and that culture was created intentionally, to control their businesses, the economy, and the political environment.

“You broke from that system,” Ancira continued, “and you became a danger to it, an obstacle. And besides, you have education and intelligence that many of us don't. The extreme right is in power, and to these PAN politicians, social and union leaders like you are enemies of God and the Church. To them, unions are like a cancer on society and have to be removed. Calderón told us he feels precisely that way many times during the campaign.”

I had to agree with Ancira on this last point. It had been two or three decades since Mexico had seen such vitriolic hatred toward the lower and working classes. The PAN government had brought these extreme violations back, fueled by arrogance and unbridled ambition.

“That is why,” Ancira insisted, “you should accept the offer. If you don't, things are going to get worse for you, your family, and the union. Think about it. You can take the money, free and clear, then just walk away.”

I refused once again.

Ancira insisted on giving me his numbers and told me to think about it. “If you don't accept this, you'll be making a mistake, and you will come to regret it.”

“Is that a threat?” I asked. “Are you trying to intimidate me? My colleagues and union friends in Mexico and all over the world are prepared to deal with whatever happens. They haven't deserted me so far, and they never will.”

By then, the meeting had lasted more than four hours; it was now past one in the afternoon. I finally told Ancira I'd had enough, that I had to get back to Oralia. Before I left, I once more gave him a clear and emphatic answer. I then stood up from the table and walked out of the hotel restaurant without looking back.

That night I went out to dinner with Oralia to celebrate her birthday. After a while, I told her I had just rejected a very important offer, but that I felt good about having made the decision. “They offered me $100 million, Oralia,” I said.

“In exchange for what?” she asked, unperturbed.

After I recounted the whole conversation, she said, “You know what? You made the right decision. You are like your father—a man of integrity, honesty, and courage. I know you would never lower yourself
to their level. It would torment you forever. You know that the whole family is with you, and that we'll keep supporting you until the truth is known. Things seem to be getting worse sometimes, but the time will come when that will change.

“The repression, corruption, and irresponsibility of a few do not represent the vast majority of Mexicans,” Oralia continued. “When the transformation begins, you will be there. Men of courage, decent men with ability and knowledge, consistent and honest men who love their country and are ready to commit everything to her are very rare. You are among this small group, and that is why you are and you will be the best example for me, for our children, for the whole family. You are a great inspiration for the workers of the world. They have been and will continue to be with us through this struggle.”

Oralia's words had touched me deeply, and we enjoyed the rest of our dinner quietly. I had never been happier to celebrate another year of having this generous and marvelous woman by my side.

Ancira's visit had been a straightforward attempt at bribery.
I have never believed—and still don't—that a union should be treated as a business, subject to bribes and personal interest, and I do not say this romantically or idealistically but with all the realism and toughness of character of which I am capable.

Many have asked why we continue the struggle. What's the point in so stubbornly maintaining our position? My answer is that we are not the stubborn ones. We have been willing to discuss the problems at the root of the conflict. Ours is not a personal dispute with one or more businessmen or politicians. Our fight is for the noble values in which we believe. It is for justice, respect, dignity, and equality—values that no one should throw overboard in exchange for a comfortable position or a fat check.

I was never tempted to accept any bribe, yet the dream of returning home is always with me. Without question, we have had painful times due to our separation from our beloved Mexico. In 2009, in the midst of
a long illness, my wife's mother had a long period of physical incapacity. She always said that she was going to wait until this conflict ended and we returned to be together again, and we were in constant communication with her by telephone and videoconference. However, that was no substitute for personal, caring contact. When my mother-in-law eventually passed away, she hadn't fulfilled her dream of having us back in Mexico. For all of us, but especially for my wife, it was extremely painful to not to be able to caress her or kiss her in her final moments. It was one of the incredibly high costs we had to pay to maintain our integrity—but better to pay that price than to lose ourselves, to buy our return to Mexico by selling out the miners of Mexico. As painful as it was to be separated from our homeland, that betrayal was an impossibility.

Violence solves no social problems; it merely creates new and more complicated ones.

—
DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

On November 4, 2008, Juan Camilo Mouriño, Felipe Calderón's
secretary of the interior, was flying into Mexico City in a Learjet that had departed from a small airport in San Luis Potosí. In the plane with Mouriño was security advisor and former federal prosecutor José Luis Santiago Vasconcelos as well as several other officials. As they approached the heart of Mexico City, the pilot suddenly lost control, and the craft plummeted toward the earth. The jet slammed into rush-hour traffic on a street in the middle of Mexico City, less than a mile from Los Pinos. It burst into flames on impact, killing all eight people on board, in addition to six people on the ground.

Though the cause of the crash was eventually determined to be pilot error, there was wide speculation of a terrorist attack perpetrated by one of Mexico's powerful drug cartels, particularly in light of the fact that Vasconcelos and, to a lesser extent, Interior Secretary Mouriño had been key figures in Calderón's war on drugs. By November 2008, that war had already cost thousands of lives, and violence against government officials was rising. But regardless of the cause of the crash, Mexico was in shock at the loss of Mouriño, the country's second-most-important public official. (In Mexico, the office of interior secretary is much like the vice president's in the United States.)

Mouriño had been a controversial figure and certainly no friend of the miners—in fact, he'd allegedly been instrumental in recruiting General Arturo Acosta, killer of leftists, to come to Vancouver and assassinate me. Mouriño had taken over the job of interior secretary the previous January, when Calderón fired Francisco Javier Ramírez Acuña, a provincial and repressive official who did nothing to resolve the mining conflict but instead threw up roadblocks all along the way. Some groups had called for Mouriño's resignation immediately after his appointment, saying that he had rewarded his father's company with government contracts while holding the office of undersecretary of energy. But Calderón supported his appointee, and Mouriño kept his job. The underhanded dealings of which he was accused were, after all, commonplace in the administration. During his tenure as interior secretary, Mouriño had done nothing to resolve the problems the union faced, besides a few just-for-show meetings (and of course, the effort to—according to General Acosta—send a hit man after me).

The day Mouriño's jet went down, the United States held its presidential election, and the people selected Barack Obama as their first nonwhite president. This development built great hope in our American colleagues, including the AFL-CIO, the USW, the UAW, and many others, all of whom had contributed thousands of organizers in support of Obama's campaign. It sparked hope in me, too, and the other members of Los Mineros. With a more liberal president who respected workers' rights, we hoped the United States would join with Canada to exert pressure on President Calderón to end the aggression and political persecution against us and the ongoing lack of respect for human rights. After all, the Mexican government's actions clearly violate the parts of NAFTA that cover labor rights and freedom of association.

As harmful as Mouriño had been to our cause, when I got news a few days after the plane crash of whom Calderón had appointed as his successor, I was sure we had moved from bad to worse. Calderón's pick was a man named Fernando Gómez Mont. Like so many appointees in the last two PAN cabinets, Gómez Mont was by profession a corporate lawyer. But it got
a lot
worse: This man—as part of the law firm
Esponda, Zinser, and Gómez Mont—had for years been retained as a criminal attorney by none other than Grupo México itself. Up to the very day he took public office, Gómez Mont had been Germán Larrea's professional defender.

The entire mining union was distraught. We couldn't believe that the legal counsel of our number-one enemy, with no political experience at all, had been given the enormous responsibility of conducting Mexico's interior policy. We saw nothing but sharpened persecution in our future. Earlier in 2008, several of my colleagues on the national executive committee had been in a meeting in Javier Lozano's office along with Gómez Mont and another Grupo México lawyer. The group had been very close to reaching an agreement that would end the conflict—and they might have done so had not Gómez Mont strongly opposed one of the conditions. The business lawyer, with an arrogant and insensitive attitude, insisted that the false accusations against me and my colleagues remain in place. Gómez Mont's opposition ended the meeting, and no agreement was reached.

Days after Gómez Mont took on his new role in the interior department, our defense lawyer, Marco del Toro, got a flurry of phone calls from him. Gómez Mont called Marco repeatedly and left insistent voice-mails asking if the two of them could meet. It was strange: Typically one doesn't have the second-highest government official in the land beating down your door for a meeting. Curious, Marco called Gómez Mont back and agreed to meet with him and Alberto Zinser, one of Gómez Mont's colleagues in his law firm. (Esponda, the third lawyer in the firm, had been best friends with Calderón in law school.)

The meeting was held in a Mexico City hotel on a Sunday morning, even though Marco knew that Gómez Mont rarely (if ever) worked early or on weekends. Gómez Mont and Alberto Zinser arrived via helicopter. During the meeting, Marco was surprised to see before him a person whose attitude toward Los Mineros seemed to have changed dramatically. “Listen,” Gómez Mont told Marco, “now that I've been appointed as interior secretary, I'm no longer on Grupo México's side. I'm not going to even pursue the case anymore. I'm not even going to
follow it. I won't go against you or Napoleón in any way—I just want to help find a solution.”