Collapse of Dignity (9 page)

Salazar also had personal reasons for defending Germán Larrea and his company. The new labor secretary owned two companies—Latinoamericana de Productos Químicos and Productos Químicos de San Luis—that supplied raw chemicals to Grupo México. On top of that, Salazar is a religious fundamentalist and rumored to be a member of El
Yunque (“The Anvil”), a right-wing and virulently pro-Catholic secret society that grew out of the Cristeros movement of the 1920s. The group is violent and heavily armed and counts many high-level politicians in its ranks. Salazar's code name in El Yunque was supposedly “Capablanca”—“White Cape.”

With this development, the Mexican people went from a labor secretary who was the former president of Mexico's staunchly procorporation employer's association and the relative of a right-wing militant—Abascal—and got in his place an antiunion religious fundamentalist and active leader of a militant, ultra-right group. We shouldn't have been too surprised. What else would one expect of Fox, who during his a campaign rally in 2000 had flouted Mexican law by waving a banner depicting the Virgin of Guadalupe, the emblem of the Cristeros movement, and declaring her an inspiration for his political career?

About two and a half months after Abascal's warning at Governor
Moreira's inauguration party, Mexico's labor leaders were scheduled to gather in the capital for a meeting of the Labor Congress, the leading federation of labor unions in Mexico. The Congress was founded in 1966 to give laborers a stronger voice in the political arena and help Mexican unions achieve their goals more efficiently. Over the years, though, it had become a supporter of the government's labor policies and had begun acting more like a corporation than an alliance of labor unions. The Congress had originally been closely tied to the PRI, but by 2006 it had aligned itself with the PAN government's political agenda, much to the detriment of workers' rights.

The occasion of the February 2006 meeting was to elect a new set of leaders to head up the Congress for the next year and also to hold a celebration of the organization's fortieth anniversary. Despite my misgivings about the Congress's recent cooperation with President Fox's reactionary agenda, I prepared for the meeting with hope. I was confident that my fellow labor leaders were also unhappy with the Congress's direction and would join me in making a democratic change.

When it was founded, the Congress elected a new president every six months, in order to give many union leaders the opportunity to serve and contribute their own ideas and experiences. As the organization matured, though, the president was elected for a one-year term with the possibility of reelection for a second year. The outgoing president was Victor Flores, head of the railway union, and he was at the end of his second term. I was glad that, according to the Congress's bylaws, he would have to be replaced; Flores himself was a big part of my dissatisfaction with the Labor Congress. As leader of the railway union, he had proven himself more loyal to the government and business interests than the workers he represented. He had cooperated with the government to sell state-owned Mexican railroads to foreign companies like Union Pacific and the Kansas City Southern Railways and to Mexico-based corporations like Grupo México and Grupo Peñoles. During those privatizations, 100,000 people lost their jobs, and Flores had willingly worked with the government to fire any remaining workers who protested the sales.

On Tuesday, February 14, 2006—Dia del Amor y la Amistad (“Friendship and Love Day”) in Mexico, and Valentine's Day in the United States—I attended a meeting at the Melia Hotel with several members of the Miners' Union and other delegates from the Labor Congress to discuss who would take over Flores's presidency now that his time had run out. In attendance were Isaías González Cuevas, from the Revolutionary Confederation of Workers and Peasants (CROC); Cuauhtémoc Paleta, from the Regional Mexican Workers Confederation (CROM), Joel López Mayrén, from the Revolutionary Workers Confederation (COR); Mario Suárez from the Workers Revolutionary Confederation (CRT), and several others—all of whom were committed to democratically electing new individuals to the leadership of the Congress. At the breakfast, we planned to discuss our options for Flores's replacement and then make the decision final at an official meeting the following day. All members of the Labor Congress had been invited to the Melia that day, but we began noticing conspicuous absences: Victor Flores himself was missing, along with about half the delegates expected. We
were missing delegates from the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM)—the largest federation of labor unions in Mexico—and several other smaller organizations. This was especially strange, given that they were the organizers of the election.

An explanation soon surfaced. Leaders of some of the smaller unions in the Congress reported that Flores and the others had the previous evening organized a secret meeting in Interior Secretary Abascal's office to reelect Flores, even though such an action violated the bylaws of the organization. They had agreed to reelect him, then gone straight to the Labor Secretary Salazar's office, where they were issued a
toma de nota
—the document through which the government officially recognizes a union leader as legitimate. Getting the
toma de nota
usually takes months, if not years, but coincidentally the document had already been prepared for Flores. He was immediately declared president of the Congress, with the full support of President Fox.

The union leaders who told us this had been caught in the middle of the break; Flores had tried to convince them to join his side, but they had refused. The breakfast table buzzed with the news, the excitement of a coming change in leadership turned to anger at Flores's betrayal.

On Wednesday, February 15, we reconvened at the Labor Congress headquarters, in a large complex many referred to as “the bunker.” Reports had confirmed that Flores had been elected as president in Carlos Abascal's office and been issued the
toma de nota
. We also knew that the missing members of the Congress were hiding out in the Lepanto, a nearby hotel supposedly owned by Victor Flores, and wouldn't appear. Nevertheless, we waited for an hour to begin the meeting, full of disappointment.

At the time the session was scheduled to begin, we opened the meeting and formally decided that we would stand unified and, independently of the government's will, refuse to support Victor Flores's presidency. Instead, we would move forward with the legitimate elections, as we had planned from the beginning. That day, we elected Isaías González, leader of the Revolutionary Confederation of Workers and Peasants (CROC), as the new president of the Labor
Congress. I was voted first vice president, and Cuauhtémoc Paleta of the Regional Confederation of Mexican Workers (CROM) was voted second vice president.

It had been proposed that I serve as president of the Congress, but I ultimately decided to refuse that possibility. Abascal's warning rang in my ears: The Mexican government, along with several powerful companies, were highly displeased with the Miners' Union and the determination with which we fought for our rights, and I knew there was a strong possibility that outright aggression would begin soon. Having a president with that target on his back risked the integrity of the Labor Congress.

In the end, we stayed at the Labor Congress headquarters until that weekend. We organized a formal ceremony to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of its creation and held it in the courtyard of the building without Flores and the union leaders who had joined him. After that event, we returned to normal activities in our unions. We reaffirmed our commitment to preserve unity, and we called for the strengthening of it in partnership with other national organizations of workers, which we invited to join in this fight for union democracy and freedom. The adversity we were experiencing only reaffirmed our commitment to fight for the defense of the interests of workers. Our motto was, “An assault against a union is an aggression against everyone.”

The government of Vicente Fox had succeeded in imposing Victor Flores on the Labor Congress without a democratic vote of all the organization's members. Flores had struck a deal with Abascal and Fox: He would remain as the head of the Labor Congress with official consent and presidential endorsement, and in exchange he would support Fox's labor reform project that the president had thus far been unsuccessful in getting past Congress and the Senate. Flores and his supporters seemed to have no concerns about the deep divide their actions would cause in the Labor Congress, and as I reviewed these developments in my mind, it occurred to me that perhaps that's exactly what Abascal had hoped to do. Divided and arguing amongst ourselves, the Labor Congress would be much easier for our external opponents to deal with.

The consequence of this mistake was the immediate splitting of the Labor Congress and the creation, at the initiative of several participants, of a broad coalition of unions and national confederations aimed at democratizing the leadership and the whole labor movement. The National Workers Union (UNT), the Mexican Electricians Union (SME), the Social Security Union (SNTSS), the National University Workers Unions (STUNAM) and many others—all of which had long fought for freedom and autonomy among workers—agreed to stop attending Labor Congress meetings and cut off contact with Flores and his followers. They had proven themselves servants of the government of President Vicente Fox.

By Friday afternoon, we had put together most of the details of the
anniversary celebration that would take place the next day. Around 4:00 in the afternoon, some of my colleagues in the new union coalition and I held a press conference at the Marquis Reforma Hotel in Mexico City, where several of us gave speeches denouncing the reelection of Flores and questioning how he'd been able to secure a
toma de nota
so quickly. After we'd wrapped it up, I decided to head back to the Miners' Union headquarters with three of my colleagues. I needed to finish up some work and collect a few documents I planned to read over the weekend. On car ride over, at about 5:30 p.m., my cell phone rang. It was a member of the union, and he was frantic. He said that a group of over 300 thugs, assailants, and gangsters, armed with sticks, stones, knives, and firearms and led by a group of former miners, including Elías Morales—the man who had betrayed the union and vied to take my father's place—had assaulted the headquarters of the Miners' Union and were trying to take control of the building. Morales, the caller said, was declaring that he was now general secretary of the union. He was waving around a
toma de nota
that supposedly proved it, and accusing the union's leaders of misusing the $55 million Mining Trust we had won from Grupo México in 2005.

The caller told me that the small band of secretaries and union staff present at the building had been helpless to keep the attackers out. Morales and his band were stealing documents, destroying property, and physically intimidating the union workers. The police had arrived with a grand total of two patrol cars and left right away, saying that they would seek reinforcements. They hadn't returned.

I tried to calm the caller down, advising that they should not confront the gang, since they were armed, assuring them it wasn't worth it to risk anyone's life. Yet I could hardly believe what I was hearing. How could Morales, who'd been expelled from the union for years, have the nerve to say he was the true leader of the miners? How could anyone believe that the Mining Trust—handled with great care, in the interests of all the union's members—had been mishandled? There was only one way it was possible: He had to have powerful backing, from the government and from the reactionary mining companies that wanted me gone. I'd become too troublesome. I'd finally pushed too hard on labor rights, and now they were trying to break our union and remove me by force. Morales was an ideal replacement. Abascal was right—things had gotten complicated, but not out of control.

As we drove, I explained to my colleagues what was happening. I insisted that we get to the headquarters as soon as possible, but they wouldn't allow it, arguing that it was too dangerous. We changed course, heading toward my home. On the way, I was already lining up interviews with the press to denounce this unprecedented violation of our organization and defend the union's leaders against the spurious allegations of mishandling the Mining Trust.

We also called the fellow miners who were still gathered at the Labor Congress, asking them to return to union headquarters and help restore order. Word spread to Morales and the attackers that Los Mineros were on their way back to defend the building, and, less than an hour after descending on the building, they fled the scene. Defenseless female secretaries and other members of the administrative staff had been severely beaten, and important documents and many valuable items had been
stolen. In the chaos, union members had managed to detain four of the assailants, whom they locked in the building and interrogated.

After intense questioning, the four detainees would say that they were hired in Iztapalapa in Mexico City for a fee of 300 pesos (approximately $30) and that they had been given their choice of cocaine, marijuana, amphetamines, and alcohol to help them muster the courage to carry out their assignment: steal valuable documents, take control of the offices, and impose Morales as the new general secretary. They could hardly articulate a word as a result of the drugs and alcohol they had consumed, and though they confessed who hired them, it had been done through several middlemen. It was clear to all of us that the AFI (Federal Investigation Agency, a creation with which Fox wanted to imitate the USA's FBI) and the secretary of the interior had knowledge and certainly planned this operation. The police response had been pathetic, and the tactic of using a gang of hired violent criminals was a classic trademark of the Mexican government. Most likely, they planned this attack to coincide with the meeting held on February 13 before the elections for president of the Labor Congress, with full endorsement of the government of Vicente Fox through Abascal and with the cooperation of antiunion companies and certain members of the Labor Congress.