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Marcos and Zapatistas reach out to workers

category north america / mexico | workplace struggles | non-anarchist press author Thursday February 23, 2006 23:07author by Dan La Botz - Mexican Labor News and Analysis Report this post to the editors

Subcomandante Marcos, speaking for the Zapatista Army of National Liberation and its “other campaign,” has begun to reach out to workers and unions, including dialogues with workers during campaign stops. The new emphasis on a discussion with workers about their unions represents a qualitative change in the political approach of the EZLN. While the EZLN has always spoken about Indians and the poor struggling for their basic needs, it has never before in its 12 years of public political activity made such an explicit approach to unionized workers, and never before engaged them in dialogue.

Speaking before some 2,000 people in the gymnasium of the Iberoamerican University (the “Ibero”) of Puebla on Feb. 17, Marcos addressed the issues facing many of the blue collar and white collar workers in attendance. He talked about the economic system driving workers to the edge, about the loss of labor union contracts that represented historic achievement of the working class, about the way in which the media portrayed unionized workers as a privileged sector, and about the failure of union leaders to defend the workers’ interests. Marcos expressed his sympathy and solidarity with the situation of the Social Security workers, teachers, and telephone workers. He also praised the Euzkadi and Pascal workers and their worker-run enterprises, suggesting that workers should run the plants of the nation. Finally, he promised that he and the EZLN would be in Mexico City for an “anti-capitalist and leftist” May First (International Labor Day). (You may wish to read the translation of Marcos’s words in the article below before continuing with the analysis presented in this article.)

Attack on the UNT

While Marcos suggested that the EZLN would join workers in the May Day demonstration, he rejected the notion of cooperating with the leadership of the large and important unions of the National Union of Workers (UNT). Marcos singled out for criticism Francisco Hernández Juárez head of the Mexican Telephone Workers Union (STRM) and Roberto Vega Galina leader of the Social Security Workers Union (SNTSS). Hernández Juárez and Vega Galina are two of the three top officials of the UNT.

Presumably it goes without saying that Marcos also rejects the leadership of the Congress of Labor (CT) and the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), the unions historically affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) which have also reached a modus vivendi with the National Action Party (PAN). Certainly Marco’s criticism of union leaders who fail to fight for workers would apply to virtually all of them.

Marcos does not reject all union leaders, however. He has held some meeting with officials from the Mexican Electrical Workers (SME), the union which represents the main force in a third constellation of labor unions, the Mexican Union Front (FSM). The FSM, which has an anti-capitalist program, has expressed support for the EZLN. Marcos and the EZLN’s followers could join with the FSM for the May Day demonstration and, more important, in building the left of the labor movement.

Marcos’s attack on the National of Union of Workers parallels his attack on the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). He argues that the Mexican people should completely reject all of the political parties, including the PRD, the party on the left, and he singles out for attack Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the former mayor of Mexico City who is the PRD’s candidate.

The Significance of Marcos’s Remarks

Marcos’s support for rank-and-file workers in their struggles to protect their collective bargaining agreements and their standard of living and his attack on labor union officials who fail to fight to protect their unions’ members will no doubt contribute to raising workers’ consciousness and inspiring workers to fight. His call for an anti-capitalist and leftist labor movement will help to legitimize these ideas among some Mexican workers.

At the same time, Marcos’s outreach to workers accompanied by a strong criticism of the UNT’s leaders raises interesting and important questions about building a democratic, militant and radical labor movement. Marcos’s words suggest that labor unions should be anti-capitalist, a position nominally held by only a small number of unions and workers, namely the Mexican Union Front (FSM) led by the Electrical Workers Union (SME). His words also suggest a desire to work with the members of unions with more conservative leaders, but a refusal to work with their leaders for common aims. The question arises, will Marcos, if he refuses to deal with the unions’ leaders, be able to get workers to join with the EZLN.

The History of Revolutionary Unionism in Mexico

While the EZLN is a unique organization, sui generis, nevertheless its political position bears an interesting resemblance to other moments in working class history. The anarchist and syndicalist left of the 1910s and 1920s around the world generally refused to participate in reformist labor unions (“yellow unions” they called them). In Mexico, the anarchists organized the General Confederation of Workers (CGT) which fought a decade-long battle with the state-sponsored Regional Confederation of Mexican Workers (CROM). The CROM, backed by the government and often by the employers, defeated the CGT and other independent unions.

The position is also similar to that adopted by the Communist International and its affiliated Communist Parties throughout the world during the period from 1928 to 1935. The Communist International, then controlled by Joseph Stalin, took the position that it could not work with the Socialist Party and that Communist and Socialist labor unions could not work together. The Socialists, the Communist International decided, had become “social fascists,” and no alliance with them was possible. The Communists, refusing to work with Socialist union leaders, appealed for the Socialist labor unions members to join them in mass actions against the bosses and the government. The Communists’ “left turn” and its strategy of the “united front from below,” as it was called, failed, and in Germany the failure of Communists and Socialists to unite in joint actions led to the rise of Hitler.

In Mexico, the left turn led the Communists to withdraw from other labor unions and in January 1929 to form the Unified Union Confederation of Mexico (CSUM). The sudden lurch left led important worker and peasant leaders to resign from the Communist Party and refuse to join the new, leftist labor federation. The Communists expelled others for lack of enthusiasm about the new radical labor federation. The CP and the CSUM denounced the lead left-wing labor and political figures as “social fascists.” The Mexican government unleashed a ferocious repression of the Communists and their new union, driving the party underground. The CSUM carried out some heroic organizing activities, for example among the unemployed, but failed to build a mass left labor movement.

New Leftists Recapitulate Revolutionary Unionism

During the 1960s and 1970s some Mexican new leftists were attracted to this “Third Period” of the Communist Party as it is known (1928-1935), and attempted to recapitulate the building of independent revolutionary labor organizations. However, efforts to create revolutionary unions usually failed when faced with the repression of the Institutional Revolutionary Party government and the opposition of the employers. Eventually some of the new left’s energy went into the building of the independent labor unions created in the labor upheaval (la insurgencia obrera) of the late 1960s and early 1970s. In any case, the idea of creating anti-capitalist and revolutionary unions remains a recurrent theme in the history of the Mexican left.

The United Front

What will Marcos’s proposal of an anti-capitalist and revolutionary labor movement mean for Mexico, and especially for the progressive forces in the labor movement? During the last two years the UNT and the SME worked together to create the Union, Peasant, Social, Indigenous, and Popular Front (FSCISP), bringing together dozens of popular organizations to struggle against government policies. Will Marcos’s call for a more radical union movement contribute to building such broad movements or will it tend to divide these efforts at a united front?

At this point, there is no way of knowing what the impact will be, but for the moment, Marcos suggests workers should fight to build a stronger labor movement to defend their unions and contracts.

MARCOS’S WORDS TO THE WORKERS

[The following translation of Marcos’s words comes from the article by Herman Bellinghausen, “En ambiente de comprensión, conviven en Puebla el EZLN y sindicalistas,” published in the Mexico City daily La Jornada, February 18, 2006. The subheads and text surrounding the long quotations from Marcos are Bellinghausen’s. Translation by Dan La Botz.]
One moment in particular was the dialog between unionized workers and subcomandante Marcos. With their specific trade union concerns, the years of activism, the episodes of the working class struggle, they are not going to heaven and even less keep up with what’s happening in Mexico.

After listening to dozens of workers, Marcos began by saying, “to the sister [compañera] who is worried because they are going to rescind her contract, I believe the person whose contract is going to be rescinded is Marío Marín [the governor of Puebla currently embroiled in scandal]. It’s necessary to demand that they rescind his contract and those of all of the politicians, as has been explained here, they have put themselves completely on the side of the bosses in order to steal from us the little that we have.”

He pointed out: “What we have seen is that there is a kind of operation, a brutal machine that beings to drive workers to the edge, to the precipice, and there is a job done by the mass media to present all workers in the city who have unions as a kind of privileged sector, and to convince the majority of the population that those worker have to lose those privileges, forgetting that often they won them with their blood, their vigilance and their struggle, and that we should all become equal at the same low level. There is a great campaign of disinformation against the Social Security workers, against the brothers and sisters of the teachers union, against the telephone workers, against all workers who have a collective bargaining agreement, who have a wage and a secure job. The media are all in agreement with the employers not only that people like you who are fighting to defend your historic labor contracts lose them, but also that that your defeat should be applauded.
Suit and Tie

Among the hundreds of attentive labor unionists, some wearing suits and ties, which, in a Zapatista event, in my memory, is unusual, Marcos mentioned “the most recent case, that of the brothers and sisters from Social Security, where there was a media campaign to convince the population to take away the rights that they had,.”

“This operation begins to throw the workers and their labor union contracts to the basement of the country. We do not believe that the future of Mexico should be that we are all in the basement, rather the opposite, we want to learn from you and to conquer for all of the workers of the countryside and of the city not only what you want, but even more.

“During these last several years, since Salinas, and perhaps before, then with Zedillo, now with Fox and what will continue with whomever heads the Mexican government, there has been an offensive against labor, to make workers lives more precarious, to remove all impediments in the way of capital and to treat us like slaves. This places us then, if memory doesn’t fail us, in the great worker and peasant mobilizations that preceded the Mexican Revolution of 100 years ago.”

A Kind of Dream Fulfilled

Even though everyone who is present doesn’t agree with every aspect of the other campaign [the non- electoral campaign of the Zapatistas], the ambience of acceptance and mutual understanding represents a kind of dream fulfilled. An encounter between the indigenous poor peoples’ army of 1994 with the independent workers of 2006. And they talked with each other directly; not that they didn’t know each other but now they are building something together.

Marcos insisted in his warning. “It is a question of workers losing their conquests, the collective bargaining agreements. That unions become converted into a thing of the past or a caricature with what they are today putting forward. Yesterday there was a meeting of Francisco Hernández Juárez [leader of the Telephone Workers Union and of the National Union of Workers or UNT] with some of the union locals and he announced that he was reuniting with the Chapultepec Pact [the business alliance created by Carlos Slim, a longtime Salinas ally], with the political parties and with all of those that want to help him defend the workers. That he was ready to meet with Marcos, even though the idea didn’t appeal to him very much. Well, it doesn’t appeal to us at all, not even a little and for that reason we will not meet with him.”

A recognition of the workers’ struggle: “We remember that a few years ago, up there in the mountains, we received news of workers’ mobilizations to advance their historic conquests, and in the last 12 years we have only received news of workers fighting to keep what they have or to keep them from taking it away. This process, which has us on the defensive, against the wall, doesn’t only affect city workers, but also the peasants, the Indian communities and all of those who work through these lands.”

And once more the sense of urgency: “The only way to keep from falling over the precipice which would make us disappear from the country, is to go over to the offensive, it may sound exaggerated right now when we are talking about one thing or another that they are taking away from us, but we think, and this is the proposal of the other campaign, that we have to go over to the offensive on a national level. To take the offensive, to go for them, to put them where they ought to be. Where Marín [governor of Puebla], Slim [Mexico’s richest man], and Fox [the Mexican president] ought to be is in jail.”

“A Frightening Show”

There are also successful resistance struggles, like those of the EZLN: “There are the workers like those of Euskadi [rubber worker who defeated a plant closing effort and created a kind of worker cooperative] and Pascual [a worker-owned bottling plant], who have demonstrated that they can run the plants and make them produce for the workers, and we think the same thing.” And he announced, “We are going to be in Mexico City on May 1st [International Labor Day] and our proposal is to make May Day a demonstration throughout the entire country. In every city where there are brother and sister workers they should come out and we should make a frightening show, because all this time we have been accumulating fright. Let’s change things, so that those who will have to be afraid are those on top.

“Above all, it is a question reaching the Indian people, so that they understand that in the labor movement the people are not on the other side, but rather the labor movement is a brother, just as we signed the Sixth [Zapatista declaration] and said that we want another country and a new Constitution. And we are not just talking about the rights and culture of the Indians. We say that this new Constitution should have labor rights but now in a new Mexico without bosses and with out charros [bureaucratic union leaders]. The paradox is that the neocharrismo [new group of bureaucratic union leaders, presumably referring to Hernández Juárez and the UNT] is only 30 years old.”

The other campaign, like the covered faces of the Zapatistas, has revealed that which nobody wanted to see, that “there are people that have absolutely nothing and that these people are our brothers and sisters. People like this are those that touch the heart and put before us the challenge that we have to do things for them and for ourselves. Another country, there is no other choice. That’s why our proposal is to look down, to magnify the voices of each one, the struggle of each one, and together create a great uprising, a great upheaval.”

To the working class that responded to the call of the Sixth declaration of the Lacondón Jungle, Marcos observed, “we think that it is not just that only we have this privilege of being students. The entire other campaign should learn just what the working class of Mexico is, not that of Roberto Vega Galina [head of the Social Security Workers Union] and Francisco Hernández Juárez [head of the Telephone Workers Union, both are leaders of the UNT], but of the other. And where better than in Puebla, beginning with a call to the workers of the other campaign so that the whole country can begin to work toward another May 1st, anti-capitalist and leftist.”

---

From MEXICAN LABOR NEWS AND ANALYSIS
February 2006, VOL. 11, NO. 2

About Mexican Labor News and Analysis
Mexican Labor News and Analysis (MLNA) is produced in collaboration with the Authentic Labor Front (Frente Auténtico del Trabajo FAT) of Mexico and the United Electrical Workers (UE) of the United States, and with the support of the Resource Center of the Americas in Minneapolis, Minnesota. MLNA can be viewed at the UE's international web site: www.ueinternational.org

For information about direct subscriptions, submission of articles, and all queries contact editor Dan La Botz at the following e-mail address: labotzdh@muohio.edu or call in the U.S.(513) 861-8722. The U.S. mailing address is: Dan La Botz, Mexican Labor News and Analysis, 3503 Middleton Ave., Cincinnati, OH 45220.

If there is no byline, republication is authorized if the reproduction includes the following paragraph: This article was published by Mexican Labor News and Analysis, a monthly collaboration of the Mexico City-based Authentic Labor Front (FAT), the Pittsburgh-based United Electrical Workers (UE) www.ueinternational.org, and the Resource Center of the Americas, www.americas.org.

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