Frontera NorteSur
International labor activists and their supporters are ramping up pressure on the Mexican government to resolve several outstanding disputes. On a five-day visit to Mexico this past week, a delegation of several dozen labor leaders representing millions of workers from the US, Canada, Europe, South Africa, Australia, and South America renewed their backing of Mexican colleagues locked in conflicts with the federal government and the big transnational corporation Grupo Mexico.
The immediate issues at stake include settling a two-year old strike at Grupo Mexico’s Cananea copper mine near the Sonora-Arizona border, guaranteeing the recovery of the remains of miners killed in the February 2006 Pasta de Conchas coal mine disaster in Coahuila state, freeing imprisoned labor leaders, and allowing Mexican mine workers’ union leader Napoleon Gomez Urrutia to return unmolested from Canadian exile. Among other demands, the international movement is seeking a meeting with Mexican President Felipe Calderon to discuss its issues of concern.
Labor attorney Marco Antonio del Toro said the visit showed the vibrancy of international support for Mexican labor causes, adding that Mexico could not continue billing itself as a democratic nation as long as “unjust jailings and alliances between businessmen and government” continued.
Representatives of the United Steelworkers, International Metal Workers Federation and the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers Unions helped form the group that traveled to Mexico. The labor delegation arrived to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the founding of Mexico’s mine and metallurgical workers’ union, which falls on July 11. This year’s celebratory event was scheduled for the port town of Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan.
Also a member of the delegation, Canadian parliamentarian and New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton met with Mexican Labor Secretary Javier Lozano. “We made it clear that the government’s interference in union governance, its jailing of union leaders and freezing of union bank accounts, declaring strikes illegal and failing to prosecute the killers of union leaders are serious and unacceptable violations of basic human rights,” Layton said in a statement after the meeting.
According to one Mexican press account, Lozano assured Layton that Mexico’s federal government, which ordered Napoleon Gomez removed from the union leadership and pursued legal actions against the veteran labor leader for alleged embezzlement of union funds, based its actions in strict accordance with Mexican law.
While in Mexico City, Layton and Australian Labor Party parliamentarian Graham Perret also met with Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, who is increasingly mentioned as a possible 2012 presidential candidate.
Anti-Gomez union members used the occasion of the 75th union anniversary and international visit to stage a demonstration outside a press conference and run a large media ad.
In the ad, a group of 13 union leaders from Chihuahua, So-nora, Zacatecas, Coahuila, and Durango slammed Gomez for using the union to his own benefit. Calling for the renovation of the organization, the statement accused Gomez’s leadership of bringing workers to the point of internal “confrontation.” Pro-Gomez union forces have charged that dissidents are manipulated by Grupo Mexico and anti-labor elements of the federal government.
Accompanying the foreign visitors, Mexican senator and longtime human rights activist Rosario Ibarra charged that almost 100 oil industry workers have “disappeared” since the advent of the Calderon presidency in 2006, because of labor disputes.
Although the high-level international labor leaders’ tour marked a significant escalation of foreign support for burning labor issues in Mexico, the visit generally received scant attention in the country’s press, especially in the electronic broadcast media.
Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news Center for Latin American and Border Studies New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico.