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Anti-Government Strikes Sweep Through Mexican Mines
Mexican workers the other side of the border are also having their
say. They’ve shut down a copper mine in a Sonoran mining town, as
work stoppages spread to other mines and steel mills.
By David Bacon, New America Media
NAM Editor's Note: Mexican President Vicente Fox's refusal
to recognize the leader of the country's miners' union has sparked
strikes and demonstrations across Mexico. David Bacon is an
associate editor at New America Media and author of "The Children of
NAFTA" (University of California Press, 2004).
CANANEA, Mexico–This month Mexico celebrated the 100th anniversary
of the battle that started its revolution a century ago — the
uprising in Cananea. In this tiny town, just 50 miles south of the
Arizona border, Mexican miners organized an insurrection, meant to
topple not just Colonel Greene, the U.S. owner of what was even then
one of the world's largest copper mines, but the Mexican government
itself.
Today, miners in Cananea are again on strike, having stopped the
mine on the anniversary date, June 1. But they still refuse to go
back to work. Miners here joined their coworkers in Nacozari,
another Sonoran mining town not far away, who have been on strike
for over two months. Other miners and steel workers throughout
Mexico are also refusing to work.
The strikes sweeping through the mines have provoked huge
demonstrations in Mexico City, the occupation of the Mexico's main
steel mill and the killing of two workers there. The crisis
challenges the imposition of the economic reforms that privatized
the mines and many other government enterprises. Meanwhile, the
miners' union has sought support across the border in the United
States and Canada.
This is not an ordinary strike over wages, although the economic
condition of miners has plummeted in the wake of the privatization
of the mines over a decade ago. Mexican labor is in crisis because
the government of President Vicente Fox will not permit Napoleon
Gomez Urrutia, the president miners elected twice to head their
union, to hold office. Fox has accused Gomez of corruption. Two
federal judges in Mexico City refused to press charges against him,
however, forcing Fox to find a state judge in Sonora to do so.
Fox would like to replace Gomez with a more amenable leader. Gomez
incurred Fox' wrath when he declared that mine owners and the
government were guilty of "industrial homicide" after dozens of coal
miners were killed in a coalmine disaster near the U.S. border in
February.
Large Mexican corporations, which benefited from the privatizations
and are strong supporters of the current government, also want Gomez
out. In wage negotiations, Gomez demands that workers get a bigger
share of currently record-level copper prices. The government sold
the Cananea mine to Grupo Mexico, the world's seventh-largest copper
company, in 1992 in one of the country's largest handovers of state
property. The corporation belongs to the wealthy Larrea family, who
now also own American Smelting and Refining Co., and mines on the
U.S. side of the border.
The miners' union also faces another company that benefited from
privatization -- Grupo Villacero. In the early 1990s, its owners
bought Mexico's huge Sicartsa steel mill in Michoacan for a tenth of
its real value. This past April, Sicartsa workers not only went on
strike when their company refused to recognize Gomez as their
leader, but occupied the plant itself. When authorities tried to
evict them, two workers were shot and killed by police.
Bitter strikes followed the privatizations of Cananea, Nacozari and
Sicartsa, trying to stop huge layoffs and the gutting the union
contracts. Those strikes were lost. As a result, copper miners
displaced after the 1998 strike in Cananea streamed across the U.S.
border as undocumented migrants. The anger fueling the present
conflict has its roots in the plummeting conditions and lost jobs of
the last decade. Gomez' father was head of the union at the time,
and much more cooperative with mining interests, but the son is
definitely not following in his father's footsteps.
Fox accuses Gomez Urrutia of pocketing $55 million, from a fund set
up by the government and Grupo Mexico to buy off miners' anger in
1992 over the privatization. Gomez says most of the money has long
since been distributed, and has documents to show that. Most Mexican
unions, even conservative ones, think the charges are bogus, and
have organized huge demonstrations to protest his attempted removal.
If Fox succeeds in punishing the miners for resisting economic
reforms, they reason, he or his successors will do the same to other
unions.
Faced with the arrest warrant, Gomez fled to Canada, where he's
being supported by the United Steel Workers. The Mexican and U.S.
unions have a long relationship, dating back to the radical Mine
Mill union of the 1940s. The Steel Workers brought big truck
caravans of food to Cananea during the 1998 strike, picketed the
Mexican embassy in Washington, and sent delegations to Mexico.
Mexico's presidential election will take place on July 3. Fox is
opposed by the left-wing Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Party of
the Democratic Revolution, as well as by the old ruling party and
its candidate Roberto Madrazo. Lopez Obrador says he'll renegotiate
NAFTA and opposes the conservative economic reforms and policies of
the last two decades. He would be much less friendly to mining
interests, which would like Fox to get the union under control
before a new government takes office.
More than just a rebellion among workers, the miners' conflict
presents Mexico with a choice over the country's political
direction. Miners and other unions would like to end the disastrous
reforms, and have been willing to oppose them with strikes, plant
occupations and mass demonstrations. With a wide base of public
support, they believe a change in direction is within reach.
"Cananea is the seed of all this and it is not over," Francisco
Hernandez, leader of the Cananea section of the national mine union
told Reuters. "Where there is a miner, there is a person fighting
for labor rights and social justice."
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