OPPOSITION DEMANDS REFERENDUM ON PETROLEUM PRIVATIZATION
The Mexican Congress, the media, and the people continued throughout the months of May and June to debate the issue of reform of the Mexican oil industry and the state oil company Mexican Petroleum (PEMEX). President Felipe Calderón and the National Action Party (PAN), with support from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), pushed for the reform which involves greater participation in the oil industry by private industry. The measure is opposed by Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who claims to be “legitimate president” and head of the “Legitimate Government” of Mexico, by his Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), its allies in the Broad Popular Front (FAP), and by an alliance of labor unions lead by the Mexican Electrical Workers (SME), the National Union of Workers (UNT) and others.
López Obrador has been touring the country and organizing the resistance of the PRD and the FAP. Elected PRD officials have taken an oath opposing the privatization of petroleum and López Obrador has challenged ordinary Mexicans to become brigade members (brigadistas) prepared to engaged in a campaign of massive civil disobedience should that become necessary. López Obrador has invited his followers to a meeting in Mexico City on June 29 to make plans for further actions. Meanwhile the opposition in the Congress has succeeded in tying up the reform proposals which will not be taken up again until September.
The opposition has demanded that the government hold a referendum on the issue of the proposed reform, but the Calderón government and its allies have been strongly opposed. Marcelo Ebrard, head of the Government of the Federal District (Mexico City and environs) said that he will conduct a referendum there, and some other PRD local governments have done the same. Jesús Reyes Heroles, general director of PEMEX, who holds that the proposed reform of the petroleum industry is unconstitutional, also opposes the notion of a referendum, saying that the issues are “too complex.”
The issue of the referendum on the petroleum reform has cut across Mexican institutions and social groups. The Catholic Church is split on the issue. Norberto Rivera Carrera, the conservative Archbishop of Mexico City, opposes it, while Felipe Arizmendi, the liberal Bishop of San Cristóbal de Las Casas, supports the idea of hearing “the voice of the people.” Some semi-official referendum seems likely to take place, at least in Mexico City.
Overall, the opposition to the reform has been successful in blocking the measure and appears likely to kill it this year.
OIL WORKERS “ABOUT TO EXPLODE”; 30 DISSIDENTS DISAPPEARED
The opposition in the Mexican Petroleum Workers Union (STPRM) say that the union is about to explode and that the opposition is growing, despite the disappearance of thirty dissident oil workers in one northern city.
Jorge Fuentes, leader of the National Democratic Alliance of Petroleum Workers, says that the union opposition is growing in locals 11, 14, 22, 26, 35, 38, and 48 located in the cities of Altamirano, Tampico, Ciudad Madero, Tamaulipas Cadereyta (Nuevo Leon), Minantitlán, Veracruz, Villahermosa and Tabasco.
At the heart of the growing opposition, he says, is the corruption of Petroleum Workers Union officials who have set up their own subcontracting companies with PEMEX, the Mexican Petroleum Company, sometimes in conjunction with company officials. This process, says Fuentes, has led to the “gangsterization” of the union. Union members, said Fuentes, are fed up.
Fuentes and the Alliance have presented many petitions of grievances to the Mexican Secretary of Labor, Javier Lozano Alarcón, alleging misuse of union funds, corruption, bribery, threats, and repression of union members. Dissidents in Local 10 have taken similar action against Jorge Wade González, the head of that union.
Disappeared: 30 Dissidents
Petroleum workers in Cadereyta, Nuevo Leon say that 30 dissident petroleum workers were disappeared during 2007 for “political reasons,” though their disappearances were made to look like part of a wave of criminal kidnapings taking place at that time. Kidnaped more than a year ago, the men may have been murdered; none have reappeared.
The kidnapings of the oil workers began on May 16, 2007 shortly after the local union convention. Hilario Vega Zamarippa, a leader of the local union, was preparing to form a strike committee and to register it with the authorities in view of the coming negotiation of the union contract. Just then he received a call telling him he should come to negotiate the liberation of his brother David and three others who had been kidnaped a few hours earlier. If he did not come to negotiate the ransom, he was told, the kidnapers would send back their heads and then proceed to kidnap the rest of the family. Hilario Vega went to negotiate and was never heard from again.
During 2007 approximately 60 residents of Cadereyta were kidnaped, but not one of the thirty petroleum workers among them was ever released. Josué Hilario Vega Estrada, the son of Hilario Vega, believes that his father was kidnaped because he opposed the privatization of PEMEX and because he was a likely candidate to stand for head of the union against Carlos Romero Deschamps, the union’s current leader. Many of the others who were kidnaped were also part of the union opposition, he said.
MINERS RESUME FIGHT TO DEFEND THEIR UNION FROM GOV’T
Mexico’s mine workers are once again in a struggle for the independence of their union from government control and using a variety of strategies—strikes, a cross-country caravan, legal appeals, protests and publicity—to defend their right to elect their own union leaders.
Napoleon Gómez Urrutia was reelected general secretary of the Mexican Miners and Metal Workers Union (SNTMMRM) on May 9, but the Mexican government refused to recognize him as the union’s leader under a legal procedure known as toma de nota. Fearing that he would be jailed if he appeared in Mexico, Gómez Urrutia has been leading the union from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
For two years the government has been attempting to remove Gómez Urrutia from the leadership of the union. First it charged him with swindling $55 million dollars from the union; later it refused to recognize him as the union’s leader and put another man in his place. The Mexican government appears to be acting at the behest of Grupo Mexico and other Mexican mining companies who want Gómez Urrutia out because of his leadership of a series of militant strikes that led to large wage gains for workers.
The union has been on strike at Grupo Mexico’s Cananea mine for over 10 months over health and safety issues and on strike at two other Grupo Mexico mines since July. Eight other copper and zinc mines continue to operate since workers there belong to a rival mine workers union created with support of the companies and the government.
A Variety of Strategies
Demanding that the government and Grupo Mexico recognize Gómez as their leader, 20,000 miners carried out a 24-hour work stoppage on May 26. Since 2006 the union has carried out 19 strikes, three against Grupo Mexico, and has cost Mexican mining companies US$2.5 billion, according to the Mexican Mining Chamber.
The union has also filed a writ (amparo) demanding that the Department of Labor (STPS) recognize Gómez Urrutia as head of the union.
On June 6 a caravan of miners rolled out of Cananea, Sonora “to demand respect for the union’s autonomy, independence and the right to strike.” Other caravans also moved out from the states of Guerrero and Zacatecas, all three of them bound for Mexico City. When they arrived in Mexico City the miners presented a complaint to the Mexican National commission of Human Rights, delivered a letter to Mexican President Felipe Calderón asking him to intercede, and a similar letter to the Minister of the Interior (Gobernación). Such miners’ caravans are a tradition in the union dating back to the 1950s struggles for union independence from the government.
Gómez Urrutia says that his union may call a national health and safety strike against all mining companies over two recent deaths, one of a miner and the other a steel worker.
OAXACA TEACHERS REACH AGREEMENT WITH NATIONAL UNION
Teachers in Oaxaca reached agreement with Elba Esther Gordillo, head of the Mexican Teachers Union (el SNTE), on the election of the leaders of their state teachers union. The agreement, negotiated between Local 22 and the National Executive Committee of the SNTE headed by Gordillo and the Mexican Minister of the Interior Juan Camilo Mouri o, brings an end to months of strikes, protests, occupation of government buildings and blocking of highways by Oaxaca’s teachers. Gordillo also argued that it would bring an end to the thirty year conflict between the Oaxaca teachers and the national union.
The accord, reached on June 8 in the Bucareli house, the office of the Minister of the Interior, and agreed to by the leadership of Local 22 on June 9, provides for a secret ballot election by all 70,000 of the state’s teachers. Oaxaca has until now elected its state teachers’ union leaders through a pre-convention and convention open only to elected delegates. It was Gordillo who insisted upon the secret ballot election. The agreement which provides for participation by all Oaxaca teachers also means that members of both Local 22, the historic teachers union local, and Local 59, a local created in 2006 by Gordillo as a counterweight to the radical and militant Local 22, will also vote in the state election.
Local 22 began its fight to elect its state leaders back in the mid-1970s and became a founder of the National Coordinating Committee (la CNTE) of the Mexican Teachers Union, the union’s left-wing dissidents. Over the next thirty years la CNTE mobilized hundreds of thousands of teachers every year to fight for the right to elect their own leaders, for higher wages, and for the equalization of wages among teachers by raising all to higher levels (rebasicificación). Oaxaca’s Local 22, together with Local 7 in Chiapas, made la CNTE the most active and militant labor organization in the nation, a role it has held for decades. La CNTE has been part of virtually every progressive labor and social movement in Mexico since it was founded.
Many of the activists of Locals 22 and 7 are rural, bilingual school teachers who teach in Spanish and in one of the many indigenous languages spoken in those states. While most of the unions’ elected leaders have been men, women have been conspicuous as local activists in those southern unions.
Gordillo Thanks Local 22 and La CNTE for creating a Pluralistic Union
Gordillo became head of the Mexican Teachers Union in 1989 after being chosen for the role by Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, but in order to solidify her position as head of the union, she formed an alliance with the dissident southern Locals 22 of Oaxaca and Local 7 of Chiapas. Later, once her position in the union was secure, she broke with the leftists moved to the right, and found herself engaged in conflict with them throughout her tenure in office.
At the conference at the Bucareli house Gordillo, a Machiavellian politician and ruthless antagonist, was all sweetness and light, congratulating Local 22 and la CNTE for having fought to end the control of the union by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and for having made el SNTE a pluralistic organization. Gordillo, a former National Secretary of the PRI, led the Teacher Union out of that party only a few years ago, and she has now become an ally of President Felipe Calderón. Most recently she has entered into an alliance with Carlos Romero Deschamps, head of the Mexican Petroleum Workers Union (STPRM), a notoriously authoritarian and corrupt union.
Whether this agreement between Gordillo and Local 22 means remains to be seen, but it seems unlikely that she really intends to clutch the dissidents to her bosom. Leaders of Local 22 for their part remain cautious. While the election will ultimately take place by secret ballot, the local union still intends to hold its historic delegated convention.
SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS REFORM OFPUBLIC EMPLOYEE PENSIONS
The Mexican Supreme Court upheld on June 17 the reform of the public employee health and pension system (ISSSTE). The Court ruled that since current employees were not affected unless they chose to opt in to the new system, it had not violated the rights of the workers. The decision does not constitute approval of the entire system adopted in April of 2007.
Under the new reformed system, old workers may opt into and new workers must participate in a system of options for their pensions. One of those options is to place the funds in individual investment accounts. The government’s justification for the reform of the system was its state of technical bankruptcy.
The National Action Party (PAN) and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) congratulated the court on its decision. Andrés Manuel López Obrador called the decision just “one more injustice” committed against the Mexican people. “The only purpose of the Supreme Court is to legalize the assault and looting committed by the powerful” against the people, he said.
Arturo Alcalde Justiniani, a labor lawyer associated with the country’s independent and democratic union movement, writing in La Jornada warned workers that opting for the personal pension bonus was the worst decision they could make. Based on false actuarial assumptions, with hidden commissions to the pension funds and their insurers, and with no provision for worker’s beneficiaries, all of the financial uncertainties of the system would be born by the workers if they chose that option. The best decision for workers was simply to decline to fill out any document in which case they would continue to remain under the old plan, he wrote.
MEXMODE WORKERS FACE DIRTY TRICKS, POTENTIAL VIOLENCE
From USLEAP and Campaign for Labor Rights
Workers at the SITEMEX union at the Mexmode (formerly Kukdong) factory in Puebla. Mexico have just reported that the union president, Josefina Hernández, is in imminent danger. An organization widely-recognized as the paramilitary arm of the Mexican Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI), Antorcha Campesina, has taken hold in the factory and is threatening and intimidating the union leadership. As we believe that the situation could turn physically violent quickly, please email the Puebla government immediately to demand that they cease their support for violence against the SITEMEX workers and step in immediately to ensure the safety of union members.
In an illegal move to oust the union leadership, state labor officials announced on June 18 that they were calling a meeting of workers to hold an election between Josefina Hernández, the current union president, and the Antorcha Campesina sponsored group. This action is illegal under Mexican law, which establishes union autonomy and prohibits the government from interfering in the internal affairs of unions. Demand that the Puebla government halt all illegal interference with the union, including the illegal election!
These events come in the context of increasing anti- union violence, which has at times been instigated by local government officials. Marito a Espejel, director of culture for the Municipality of Atlixco, has repeatedly been seen and photographed outside of the factory during working hours leafleting workers. During a work stoppage, pictures show Espejel calling on workers to lynch a group of observers from atop the company's wall. Espejel also illegally entered the factory to instigate workers to assault the elected SITEMEX leaders. The state government was duly notified but has refused to take action against Espejel.
The latest move by the State government – to hold an illegal election under these conditions – is no less than a statement of full support to Antorcha and the violence that has occurred. Workers will be caught between supporting Antorcha Campesina and their imposed leadership or risking physical violence which they know will go unpunished.Write to the Puebla government and request that they cease activities by government employees that support violence against Mexmode workers, end impunity for the instigators and supporters of the violence, and cases to use Antorcha Campesina to instigate conflict between workers.
To voice your support for the workers go to this site:http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/1618/t/3757/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=24705
DEATH SQUADS IN OAXACA: RADIO JOURNALISTS MURDERED
by John Gibler, In These Times
[Tuesday 10 June 2008] Teresa Bautista Merino, 24, and Felícitas Martínez Sánchez, 21, radio journalists at an independent Oaxacan station, were assassinated in April. The Oaxacan government has yet to substantively investigate the killings.
The Mexican government ignores the assassination of two community radio activists
San Juan Copala, Mexico - Driving through the back roads of western Oaxaca state in southwestern Mexico, one could often hear 94.9 FM, Radio Copala, "The Voice that Breaks the Silence." In one of the station's tag-lines played several times a day, a slow, piercing violin gave way to the languid voice of a woman singing in Spanish: "I am a rebel because the world has made me that way, because no one ever treated me with love, because no one ever wanted to listen to me."
But amid such overwrought sadness, a strong - and perhaps hurried - young woman's voice would interrupt: "Some people think that we are too young to know." And then a second young female voice interjects: "They should know that we are too young to die."Those voices belonged to Teresa Bautista Merino, 24, and Felícitas Martínez Sánchez, 21, two of six young producers and hosts at Radio Copala - a project of the recently autonomous municipality of San Juan Copala, and the first radio station to broadcast in both Spanish and the Triqui indigenous language.
The broadcast launched in January. By April, Teresa and Felícitas were dead.
Political Assassination
On April 7, Teresa and Felícitas rode in the backseat of Felícitas' cousin, Faustino Vásquez's car on their way to a community radio workshop in Oaxaca City. They held Faustino's 2-year-old son, Augustín, between them. In the front passenger seat rode Faustino's wife, Cristina, and their 4-year-old son, Jaciel.
"We were going downhill, with a bald cliff on the right," says Faustino. "Before we went down, I noticed an access road from the highway and said, ‘Look at that new white pickup parked there.'"
Seconds later, as they rounded the curve at the bottom of the hill, Faustino looked again to the right. "There were seven men up on the hill," he says, "and they began to shoot at us."
Bullets pierced the windshield, hitting Faustino's left wrist and shoulder, and grazing his right arm, leg and head. Two bullets also grazed the back of Jaciel's head; he lost consciousness. A bullet shattered Cristina's left arm.
"The motor shut off," Faustino recalls. "I tried to start it again, but it wouldn't go. I took the key and ran. When I ran, Teresa and Felícitas were still alive. I shouted, ‘Run! They're shooting at us!'"
State police later collected some 20 spent shells from AK-47 assault-rifles by the side of the road. The gunmen had descended the embankment and had shot out the back of the car. Teresa and Felícitas died almost instantly. Faustino, Cristina and their two sons survived.
Violence Among the Triquis
For centuries, the small Triqui indigenous region - a 300 square-mile green oasis situated in the middle of the dry and eroded indigenous Mixteca region of western Oaxaca - has been known for endemic violence. The Triquis resisted Spanish colonial incursions and, in 1823, were the first indigenous people to rise up against the independent Mexican state, successfully beating back an attempt to evict them from their land.
After the Triquis were victorious in defending their territory in two wars - one in 1823, the other in 1843 - the Mexican government decided to shift its approach from direct, armed confrontation to a divide-and-conquer strategy, says Francisco López Bárcenas, a Mixtec indigenous lawyer, historian and author of the forthcoming, "San Juan Copala: Political Domination and Popular Resistance."
From the late 19th century to the present, internal divisions in the Triqui region, fomented by the state government, have led to cycles of political killings and massacres.Although local Oaxacan governors have long attributed the violence to indigenous cultural practices, Lopez Bárcenas argues that it stems from the "social decomposition that comes on the heels of the political and economic domination of the state. And it has a history."
That history, he says, has pit Triqui communities - fighting to maintain autonomy - against those collaborating with the state.
One early battle began over the control of land for coffee production. In the 1920s, non-indigenous speculators brought coffee into the region, often paying Triqui farmers with guns and alcohol. Some Triqui coffee farmers assassinated other Triquis who refused to substitute their traditional corn, bean and squash production for coffee.
"The state first tried to oppress the Triquis economically with the transition to coffee production," says Lopez Bárcenas. "They then tried to control them politically with the division [in 1948] of the Triqui region into five municipalities and the militarization of the area."
In the '70s, the Triqui council of elders tried to end the violence by passing down their community powers to a coalition of young Triqui men who pledged to peacefully unite the region. That peace lasted less than two years. One of the newly appointed communal authorities aligned with the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and killed off his rivals.
During the '80s, violence escalated again when the Triqui created various political organizations, such as the Movement for Triqui Unification and Struggle (MULT, by its Spanish acronym). The group, one of the most powerful, started as a land-defense organization that directly confronted the state. By the '90s, however, the organization had evolved into a quasi-paramilitary group controlled by a non-Triqui man, Heriberto Pasos, who had longstanding connections to the Oaxaca state government.
Pedro Matías, a Oaxacan journalist who has reported on the region for more than 10 years, says, "Pasos runs the MULT with a leftist discourse but, in reality, they act in relation to the powers of the state." After the group took control of the region, the killings started again, he says.
In 2006, more than half of the Triqui region split off from the MULT, creating the MULTI (the added "I" standing for "Independent").
Later that year, in June, when Oaxaca erupted in a civil disobedience uprising to protest Gov. Ulises Ruiz's repression of striking teachers, the MULTI joined the protesters' organization, the Oaxaca Peoples' Popular Assembly, or APPO, while the MULT sided with the state government.
The first people killed during the conflict were three Triquis from the MULTI, who were shot down by men wielding AK-47s while on their way to an APPO meeting in Oaxaca City.
"The MULT participated directly in the death squads in Oaxaca in 2006," says López Bárcenas.
A Community Radio Station Is BornJorge Albino Ortiz had a program on Radio La Ley, the APPO station, during the 2006 uprising. "We observed how the radio called people to participate in the various actions of the movement and we wanted to do something like that in our region," he says.As a result, Radio Copala was born.
Albino Ortiz, who is coordinator of Radio Copala, says the station decided to have three men and three women working at the radio because one of its primary tasks was to encourage women's participation in the new autonomous municipality of San Juan Copala - which MULTI created after it dissolved.
The town, located in the Triqui region, is an amalgamation of 20 Triqui communities. San Juan Copala is cut off from all relations with the Oaxaca state government: it has no cell phone service or telephone lines. Which is why Radio Copala, with its approximately a nine-mile radial reach, was often the only source of news, and frequently focused on themes of autonomy and indigenous rights.
"When we started, we felt really excited to have a radio station in Copala," says Yanira Vásquez, who worked with Teresa and Felícitas at the station. "Women do not participate much and we were just beginning to promote women's participation in assemblies and meetings and to include their perspectives and interviews about how they see what is happening in the region."
Radio Copala is currently playing only music, though it plans to continue its social and political programming soon. Two signs on the door to the station bear the names of Teresa and Felícitas, declaring: "You will always be present."
Impunity
On April 7, news of the killings traveled around the globe in a matter of hours via e-mail and the Internet. Dozens of national and international human rights organizations, reporters' defense groups and even the United Nations and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights condemned the assassinations and demanded that the Mexican government conduct a rigorous investigation and punish the guilty.But three weeks after the killing, no government official had gathered testimony from the surviving witnesses.
On April 18, Oaxaca State Attorney General Evencio Martínez told reporters: "What is clear is that the attack was not directed at the two announcers, but at the person [Faustino Vázquez] who was driving the vehicle."
Not true, says Faustino, who says state investigators never interviewed him. Instead, he had to arrange a meeting to give his testimony. Faustino also points out that he was able to easily escape without being pursued, while gunmen appeared to target Teresa and Felícitas.
On April 21, Juan de Dios Castro Lozano, a sub-director of the federal attorney general's office, told a group of Mexican and international human rights investigators that the two young women were not really journalists - they had no journalism degree - but were housewives who just changed the music when callers made requests at the station. His comments provoked immediate criticism, including from the committee of the National Journalism Award, which had given the accolade to Teresa and Felícitas posthumously.María Dolores París, a professor of rural sociology at the Autonomous University of Mexico, says that the state's claim that Faustino, and not the two women, was the real target of the killers is "absurd," though she says that women have not been targeted in regional violence before.
París, who has worked with Triquis in Oaxaca and Triqui migrants in California for seven years, says the state government goes into the region to foment violence and then "washes its hands of it with theories that the violence comes from the nature of the Triquis themselves."
"I feel certain that the young women were assassinated for their work with the radio station." Then adds: "The intention has always been to strip the Triquis of their land."Faustino Vásquez and his family have now been thrust into the heart of this violence."I am scared," Faustino says. "I will have to be careful now, no more living life like somebody who can just go wherever he likes. If they see me out there, certainly they'll execute me."
Asked if he has any hope for justice, Faustino responds: "With the help of human rights organizations, with the help of journalists, radio, television, with all that putting pressure on the state and federal governments, maybe there will be justice."
John Gibler is a Global Exchange Media fellow who writes from Mexico. He is the author of Mexico Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and Revolt, forthcoming from City Lights.
MEXICAN GUERRILLA GROUPS PROTEST GOVERNMENT HARASSMENT
Three of Mexico’s armed guerrilla organizations complained in June of harassment of their organizations and of local populations by the Mexican government.
The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in Chiapas, which though it has not been in armed conflict since 1994 remains an armed organization, complained that Mexican Army troops, Federal and state police had made incursion into the EZLN’s autonomous communities supposedly in search of marijuana. The EZLN communities do not permit the growing, sale of consumption of drugs. The EZLN and local human rights organizations say that this incursion forms part of a recent increase in government military, police, and vigilante harassment of EZLN communities.
The Peoples Revolutionary Army (EPR) continued to negotiate with the Mexican government through intermediaries to win the release of several of its members who disappeared more than a year ago. The EPR believes that Mexican authorities kidnapped the EPR members rather than arresting and charging them.The Revolutionary Army of the Insurgent People (EPRI) issued a statement saying that the Party of the Democratic Revolution governments in the area of the Costa Chica of Guerrero had been “the most ferocious enemies” of the struggle of the indigenous people of the town of Ayutla de los Libres. The statement was released on the tenth anniversary of the El Charco Massacre.
The EPRI claims that on June 7, 1998, 11 people were killed by Mexican Army troops while sleeping in the local school after having participated in a meeting on community projects. Four of them were EPRI militants. “Ten years later, the Mixtec and Tlapanec zone of Ayutla continues to be an area of poverty, marginalization, repression, assassination, exclusion from development, and lack of basic services,” said the statement.
LABOR SHORTS
Mexico Given Seat on ILO Union Rights BoardThe International Labor Organization (ILO) elected Mexico to occupy a seat on that organization’s labor rights board. The committee exists to protect workers’ rights around the world. The ILO is a tripartite organization made up of governments, employers, and labor unions which pressures states around the world to sign its labor rights conventions as its standards are called. The ILO has no power to enforce its conventions.
Mexico’s independent and democratic union the Authentic Labor Front expressed its shock at the choice, given that Mexico constantly, often violently and quite notoriously violates workers most basic rights. La Joranda, the Mexico City left-of-center daily, called the decision “incomprehensible.”
Telephone Workers Choose New Chief
The Mexican Telephone Workers (STRM) elected as their new general secretary Jorge Castillo Maga a, a close associate of outgoing leader Francisco Hernández Juárez who has led the union for almost 30 years. The National Telephone Workers Network (RNT) said they expected little from the new chief who they expect to be in the same mould as his predecessor.
Mexican Auto Unions Accept Two Tier
In an attempt to hold and attract foreign plants in Mexico, auto unions there have been willing to accept two-tier contracts much like those the UAW negotiated with auto companies in the U.S. Under such contracts existing workers receive one set of wages, benefits, and conditions and new hires an inferior set.
At the Ford Cuautitlán Plant in the State of Mexico where existing workers make US$4.50 per hour, new hires will make about half of that. Juan José Arreola who heads the union at that plant said, “We want to be more competitive.” Such low wages allow Mexico to stay in competition with China.
Mexican auto workers do not have one union; various unions represent different companies and plants.
GM to Close Plants in MexicoGeneral Motors announced in early June that it will gradually cut work at four plants in Canada, Mexico and the United States. GM’s sports utility vehicles or SUVs have suddenly become unsalable because of the rise of gas to US$4.00 throughout the United States. GM’s Toluca plant in the State of Mexico will end operations at the end of 2008.Mauricio Kuri, GM Mexico representative, denied that the Toluca plant would close, saying it would just produce another model with 10 percent fewer workers.
Mexican Secretary of Labor Supports Mexicana Flight Attendants
The Mexican Secretary of Labor supported the legal action of 145 Mexicana Flight attendants who argued that their employer could not change their working conditions in a way that would have reduced their incomes by as much as 50 percent. The Secretary of Labor’s decision was based upon a previous Mexican Supreme Court decision that denied the company the right to harm union members’ established contracts and conditions. The Secretary of Labor said it would mediate a negotiation between the parties.
HUMAN RIGHTS SHORTS
Community Radio shut down in Nuevo Leon
Federal Police shut down the Tierra y Libertad (Land and Freedom) community radio station in Nuevo Leon, Monterrey on June 6. The Federal Attorney General said that the radio station was operating illegally and without a license.
Indigenous Activist Disappears in Puebla
Bonifacio Gaona Barrientos, a member of the Independent Totonac Organization, an indigenous group, disappeared on May 17. His comrades believe that the state government is responsible for his disappearance. The State Attorney General’s office has provided the organization with no information.
New National Human Rights Front Formed
Aleyda Alavez, a deputy for the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), announced on June 10 the creation of a new National Front for Human Rights. The new front is made up of members of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO), the Front in Defense of the Land (FPDT) of San Salvador Atenco, the Mexican League for the Defense of Human Rights, the National Union of Autonomous Regional Peasant Organizations (UNORCA), and the opposition movement fighting the the San Xavier Mine in San Luis Potosi, among others.
Impunity and Human Rights Violations Growing
The International Civil Commission Observing Human Rights (CCIODH) expressed its concern with growing human rights violation and impunity in Mexico to which the government was not responding. It mentioned for example, the assassination of the community radio broadcasters in Oaxaca. (See article above.)
SOCIAL STATISTICS
Latin America: Lowest Growth Rate in Six Years
The Economic Commission for Latin America reports that the economics of the Latin American nations will not grow more than four percent and will have their lowest growth rate in six years.
Mexico Will Grow at 2.8% This Year
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), of which Mexico is a member, predicts that Mexico’s growth rate will be only 2.8% this year, largely because of the economic stagnation in the United States.
Mexican Inflation Rate Highest in 3 Years
Mexico had its highest inflation rate in 3 years, according to the Bank of Mexico. Inflation reached 4.95 percent.
Mexico’s Food Trade Deficit to Grow this Year
The World Bank predicts that this year Mexico will have an even greater imbalance in its food budget than last year, a difference between imports and exports that amounts to a deficit of US$4.9 billion.
Mexican Workers’ Pension Funds Lose
Mexican workers’ pension funds lost 14.6 billion pesos in April alone as a result of the fall in the value of the stocks in which the funds invest, a system known as AFORES, this according to the National Commission of Savings System (CONSAR).
Tortillas at 8.27 per Kilo
Tortilla prices are on the rise as are all products made out of corn. The current average price is 8.27 pesos per kilo but in some areas the price has reached 11.50. Food costs have risen 47 percent between 2006 and 2008. This according to Banamex.
University Administrative Workers’ Salaries Lose Buying Power
University administrative workers have seen their salaries lose 45 percent of their buying power in the last 10 years according to the National Confederation of University Workers (CONTU). University workers salaries average 3,000 pesos or about US$300 per month.
Two out of Every 100 Mexican Children between 5 and 9 Work
Two percent of Mexican children between 5 and 9 work, according to a recent report by Thais Social Development. It also reports that 7.4 percent of minors between 12 and 17 also work in violation of national and international labor standards.
Child Labor in Latin America and the Caribbean
Save the Children and World Vision estimate that between 17 and 20 million children and adolescents aged 17 work throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. The International Labor Organization estimate that 5 percent of all children between 5 and 14 work in the region.
400,000 Children Die of Hunger Each Year in Latin America
The Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) reports that 400,000 children die of hunger every year in Latin America. The countries with the highest levels of child death from malnutrition are: Haiti, Guatemala and Trinidad and Tobago.
20 Percent of Mexican Children and Pregnant Women Anemic
Some 20 percent of all children and pregrant women in the country suffer from mineral deficiencies according to the Federal Commission for the Protection against Health Risks (COFEPRIS). 23.7 percent of children and 20.6 percent of pregnant women are anemic
RESOURCES
The Economist Country Briefings – Mexico http://www.economist.com/countries/Mexico/
La Jornada Laboral – May 1 Supplement – Variety of Articles on Labor http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2008/04/30/laboral.html
La Jornada del Campo – Special Supplement on Coffee http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2008/06/12/delcampo.htmlNarco News – Oaxaca Two Years Later Series by Nancy Davies
Part 1 http://www.narconews.com/Issue53/article3113.html
Part 2 http://www.narconews.com/Issue54/article3123.html
Part 3 http://www.narconews.com/Issue54/article3133.html
New book on Oaxaca uprising publishedOaxaca, la lucha política independiente del pueblo, heraldo de una nueva revolución published by the Institudo de Artes Gráficas de Oaxaca, IAGO.(MLNA has not yet seen the book.)
Consulta Nacional por el Petróleo 
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