The weekly newsletter of the México Solidarity Project

April 13, 2022/ This week's issue/ Meizhu Lui, for the editorial team

Pinkertons and the 1892 Homestead Strike: PhotoQuest/Getty Images

Goons and the War on Workers: A Short History

Way back in 1850, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency started up in Chicago as a private police force designed to protect railways from train robbers. But the robber barons that would come into their own after the Civil War needed more than protection from thieves. They needed to protect their absolute authority over their workers. They hired the Pinkertons for that job too. The Pinkertons would soon become notorious for their brutality in stamping out union organizing with fists, clubs, and guns.

Years later, United Auto Workers co-founder Walter Reuther and two other organizers would encounter Pinkertons when they first went to the Ford plant in River Rouge Michigan. The Pinkertons trapped them on a bridge from the parking lot to the plant, then beat them and threw them off the 20-foot bridge, breaking ribs and bones. But this sort of physical violence as an anti-union tool would largely end after the 1935 Wagner Act gave workers the right to organize.

In México, goons and physical violence against workers have never faded off the labor relations scene. During the recent landmark union representation election at GM Silao, modern-day thugs threatened the rank-and-file general secretary of the independent SINTTIA auto workers union at her home.  

But in México not just companies bring on the goons against workers. The corrupt CTM union has regularly inserted thugs into Mexican labor relations, and local governments have been just as regularly complicit. And, as we find in this week’s interview with Rob McKenzie, Mexican workers struggling for an independent union voice have historically come up against the vast resources of the US government. The United States has had a heavy hand in stifling worker movements beyond US borders.

We need to understand how this complex web of interests plays out in global capital’s war on the working class. Workers won’t triumph in this war just by focusing on one workplace, one industry, one country. Workers of the world must unite. Now more than ever. Looking for ways to help? How about signing this petition calling for a fair contract at GM Silao. And please consider donating to a fund SINTTIA is going to use to buy a truck for organizing.

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‘The Coup’ at Ford: Political Intrigue Across Borders

Auto jobs started moving from the US to México in the 1980s. In 1990, word of the shooting of nine workers at the Cuautitlán Ford plant reached you in Minnesota.

We were shocked to hear about the attacks on the Mexican Ford workers. We hadn’t had any labor-related bloodshed in US factories since the 1930s.

Just what happened at the Cuautitlán plant?

Dissidents in México were challenging the corrupt CTM union at Ford. I learned later that they belonged to the PRT, the Partido Revolucionario de Trabajadores. Their movement had been gaining ground. In 1987, the workers at the Cuautitlán plant had gone on strike because Ford wouldn’t match the 27-percent wage increase authorized by the government. In response, Ford terminated the existing contract and fired everyone. The CTM negotiated a new contract that cut pay by 40 percent and left 600 workers without jobs.

Then, in 1989, Ford fired four members of the local union executive committee who planned to run for national office in the Ford CTM — and probably would have won. After that, right before Christmas, Ford announced it was slashing the yearly bonus. In protest, workers began organizing a work stoppage.

Workers captured a few of the thugs and turned them over to the news media. The initial reports that circulated claimed that a CTM official and a local gangster had hired the thugs.

That story sounds straightforward. What rang false to you about that initial claim?

I could see that getting all those thugs in there had been a massive operation, well above and beyond what it would have taken to resolve a simple labor dispute. This seemed to me like an attempt to wipe out an entire movement not just at Ford, but in all of México.

Another clue that the shooting story had more to it came after my local and others reached out to extend support to the Mexican workers. The US ambassador to México then wrote to the US secretary of state and urged him to get someone to stop us. The ambassador said our solidarity efforts were creating a problem.

In the 1980s, remember, Ronald Reagan was worrying deeply about the Sandinista victory in Nicaragua and the socialists contending for power in El Salvador. Reagan felt the US couldn’t afford to “lose México,” and the strength of the progressive presidential candidate in México’s 1988 election, Cuauhtémoc Cardenas, had taken him aback. Reagan officials, entrenched in a Cold War mentality that saw Latin America as a collection of US client states, undoubtedly supported the stealing of that 1988 election by the pro-US Carlos Salinas. The Iran crisis had just ended, and Reagan was calling México “the Iran next door.”

The AFL-CIO at that time also maintained a Cold War mentality, in lockstep with the US government. The AFL-CIO’s American Institute for Free Labor Development, AIFLD, undermined foreign unions and destabilized foreign governments to prevent any left electoral victories. AIFLD, as I note in my book, essentially amounted to a government-created organization managed by the CIA.

Owen Bieber, the UAW president at the time of the incident at Ford, denied any knowledge about the violence. But Bieber had met with CTM officers and served on the AIFLD Board. That leads me to believe that Bieber knew more than he let on. As I kept investigating, the shadowy forces behind the assault at Ford began to take more substantial shape — in the form of the CIA.

Back in the 1980s when Ford went to México, few UAW locals got involved in solidarity work. We missed an opportunity. Today, more than ever, the US labor movement needs to make international solidarity a core value.

And our labor movement must also confront its past. You can’t make a course correction unless you explore what you did wrong, with an open mind and an open heart. US labor was on the wrong side of history. And that’s the truth.

Why AMLO Promoted a Recall Against Himself

“None of, ‘They chose me for six years and I can do whatever I want,’” López Obrador said. “If one who governs is not up to the task and obeying the people, revoke their mandate and out!”

Many view a referendum, authorized by a 2019 constitutional reform spearheaded by the president, as proof of his honest character when compared with decades of presidents accused of corruption.

“AMLO is the first president that dares to put himself to the test before the people,” said Debanhi Andrea Garcia, 22, who drove 14 hours from the state of Nuevo León with her boyfriend [to hear AMLO speak]. “Because he’s like that, we support him.”

“He does conceive his power as being a function of people reiterating their support actively,” said Francisco González, a professor of Latin American politics at Johns Hopkins University. López Obrador is in constant dialogue with his electorate, holding press conferences every morning that last hours.

María de los Angeles Resendiz, a grandmother of 10 from the state of México, will support López Obrador without hesitation. She called López Obrador a “simple” man who has won her confidence with his anti-corruption platform. She eagerly described how his government has set money aside for youth job training and expanded welfare payments to the elderly.

“He’s given us back our dignity,” she said. “I am proud to say that I am Mexican and that he is my president.”

Photo: Manuel Velasquez/Getty Images

Recent news reports and commentaries, from progressive and mainstream media,
on life and struggles on both sides of the US-México border

Natalie Kitroeff, The Biggest Promoter of Mexico’s Presidential Recall Election? The President. New York Times. Until this year, Mexican presidents have served out six-year terms without fail, whether or not they were fairly elected — or came to be despised by much of the population.

Lillian Perlmutter, Stay or go? Mexicans vote on AMLO’s performance in historic recall election, Guardian. Says one voter: “Now with the recall in place, future presidents will have to think hard before they betray the people.”

Ulises Rodríguez López, EU se queja de reforma eléctrica; AMLO le responde y reculan, Polemón. Dice AMLO: “En la democracia el pueblo es el que decide, el pueblo manda y el gobernante tiene que mandar obedeciendo. Y no solo obedeciendo, sirviendo al pueblo, al soberano.”

María Verza, México high court OKs preference for state power plants, AP. The court has deemed constitutional a controversial energy law pushed by the López Obrador administration that gives government-owned power plants preference over private competitors. Private energy companies had sought injunctions blocking enforcement of the year-old law.

Drazen Jorgic, México’s president, a media critic, to provide benefits to poor journalists, Sydney Morning Herald. His government will channel a quarter of its publicity budget into paying for health insurance and pensions for poorer journalists.

US lawmaker wants to deny visas to politicians behind Russia friendship group, México News Daily. The move targets 25 deputies in the Mexican legislature.

The Mexico Solidarity Project brings together activists from various socialist and left organizations and individuals committed to worker and global justice who see the 2018 election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador as president of México as a watershed moment. AMLO and his progressive Morena party aim to end generations of corruption, impoverishment, and subservience to US interests. Our Project supports not just Morena, but all Mexicans struggling for basic rights, and opposes US efforts to undermine organizing and México’s national sovereignty. 

Editorial committee: Meizhu Lui, Bruce Hobson, Bill Gallegos, Sam Pizzigati, Courtney Childs, Victoria Hamlin, Agatha Hinman, Steven Hollis. To give feedback or get involved yourself, please email us!

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