CANALCATORCE — broadcast
20261011 123000 UTC
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[00:00:11] but we were saying that here at
[00:00:25] they were the shopkeepers,
[00:00:34] companies
[00:00:59] Catalina, leader of
[00:01:59] Since the 19th century, the rulers of Mexico made ours a developed
[00:02:03] capitalist country, but the conditions did not allow it, neither
[00:02:06] geographical, nor economic, nor historical-social. Mexico then
[00:02:10] became a peripheral and dependent
[00:02:14] How did you get involved, Saúl, in the capitalist country. Despite this, the victorious revolution,
[00:02:17] symbolized in this monument, elevated the
[00:02:20] constitution, the most advanced labor laws in the
[00:02:23] world and of the time. From then on, Mexican workers organized
[00:02:27] to fight for these consecrated rights, the
[00:02:31] support. a movement that is the constitution, typical of a developed capitalist country.
[00:02:34] They also encountered their great obstacle, the union
[00:02:38] charrismo symbolized in that building back
[00:02:41] there.
[00:02:44] This organization of workers for their rights had some peaks in the
[00:02:47] 20s and 30s of the 20th century, but from
[00:02:51] democratic tendency would be part of 1946, with the birth of the PRI, unions
[00:02:54] were domesticated and subjected to the government, even unions like
[00:02:57] railroad workers and electricians and oil workers were subdued by the
[00:03:01] army, it seemed that the working class was domesticated,
[00:03:05] although still in 58-59 it rebelled again, always peacefully,
[00:03:09] and in the 70s of the 20th century,
[00:03:14] a dynamo and as you already told us here in once again it went to fight for its rights in the streets and squares, that's the story we want
[00:03:20] to express what to tell. During 7 years from
[00:03:23] 1969 to 1975
[00:03:27] there were hundreds of factory movements that fought to
[00:03:31] improve their working conditions and democratize their
[00:03:34] unions. Official numbers, which omit
[00:03:37] many strikes, show a sustained increase from
[00:03:41] 1970 to
[00:03:43] for better or for 1976, a year in which 547
[00:03:47] strikes and 23,684
[00:03:49] strikers
[00:03:53] were registered. Most of the
[00:03:56] movements were in small factories, but there was a different one.
[00:04:00] that of the democratic tendency of the
[00:04:04] electricians, a struggle that began in
[00:04:07] 1971.
[00:04:09] Its leader, Rafael Galván, defined the
[00:04:14] face the problems of the difference between charrismo and democratic
[00:04:16] unionism as follows: The workers themselves, and for
[00:04:20] a very long time, would have overthrown the charro
[00:04:23] apparatus throughout the country, if that
[00:04:26] apparatus were not supported by powerful non-worker
[00:04:30] interests housed both in the governmental
[00:04:33] sphere and in the
[00:04:35] you were one more among business community. It has always been very clear to us, but
[00:04:38] it is beginning to be clear to everyone why the
[00:04:42] participation in employers cynically proclaim that
[00:04:46] charrismo is a kind of bourgeois ministry for
[00:04:49] the subjugation of workers. This is the
[00:04:53] look for a doctor at 10 at reason why authentic workers' struggles, even when they are
[00:04:56] for minimal demands and no matter how they are maintained.
[00:05:00] Conscious and rigorously within legal channels, upon
[00:05:04] immediately encountering the charros, faithful servants of the
[00:05:07] bourgeoisie, they take on from their first phases a
[00:05:11] strong tint by...
[00:05:13] Despite the offensive of the charros against independent unionism and
[00:05:17] in particular against the democratic tendency of the
[00:05:20] electricians, they understood the true
[00:05:24] character of unionism. Galván
[00:05:27] continued. Unions in Mexico, in addition to
[00:05:30] concentrating the upper strata of the working class and
[00:05:34] being resistance organizations, must
[00:05:37] be, and potentially are, despite the painstaking
[00:05:40] work of denaturalization
[00:05:42] that has been done with them, centers of grouping and
[00:05:45] alliance of all the poor people, schools of
[00:05:49] democracy, revolutionary organizations. What
[00:05:52] revolution are the workers talking about? The Mexican
[00:05:55] revolution, but not the one falsified by the
[00:05:58] regime. It is the revolution that in its first ascending
[00:06:02] stage, announced before anyone else the era of new
[00:06:05] agrarian struggles in poor countries and in the
[00:06:08] second, also before anyone else the historical era. The
[00:06:12] nationalizations for liberation, the era of
[00:06:16] nationalist revolutions that would later sprout
[00:06:19] here and there. It is the
[00:06:22] revolution that showed the immense perspective for the alliance of
[00:06:26] workers and peasants in the heroism, in the struggle
[00:06:29] and in the work of the commoners of Morelos
[00:06:33] led by
[00:06:34] Zapata.
[00:06:41] The workers' insurrection of the 70s was characterized by having a
[00:06:44] lot of small movements in many small factories, but there is a
[00:06:47] central movement that in some way unifies them, that of the democratic
[00:06:51] tendency of the electricians led by Rafael Galván. Saúl
[00:06:55] Escobar, a researcher from Lina, will explain that
[00:07:10] yes, this is Zacatecas. '94, this was
[00:07:14] the headquarters first of the STUNAM, the union of
[00:07:17] electrical workers of the Mexican Republic and
[00:07:21] then of the democratic tendency of the SUTERM.
[00:07:26] workers' movement? How did you get there? Well, I got there
[00:07:30] through Paco, the marginal film cooperative, through the two Pacos, through Paco
[00:07:34] Ignacio and through Paco Pérezarz and through Paco. So
[00:07:37] I got there through them. And
[00:07:40] immediately they tell me, we have to
[00:07:43] movement of Mexicana de Envases in Azcapotzalco and I
[00:07:47] joined there almost immediately and you stayed
[00:07:50] there, I stayed there almost 10 years as an activist
[00:07:54] supporting unionism, the independent democratic
[00:07:56] union that was being formed at that time
[00:08:00] and while
[00:08:02] all those hundreds of small movements were happening, the
[00:08:06] democratic tendency of the electricians continued its struggle, no, yes, the struggle of the
[00:08:09] democratic tendency began in 1971, 1970
[00:08:13] 71, but Galván's and the electricians' struggle is older,
[00:08:17] yes, because Galván is a rare
[00:08:20] avis, a very strange exception, because
[00:08:23] he was a union leader
[00:08:26] very attached to the PRI, he was even very close to
[00:08:30] Díaz Ordaz, thanks to Díaz Ordaz Galván became
[00:08:34] a senator of the republic, yes, of course, we
[00:08:37] even have the historical data that the one who uncovers Díaz Ordaz as a candidate
[00:08:41] for the presidency. the republic is Rafael Galván, that's right, before the
[00:08:45] PRI leadership did it and before the Labor Congress and the CTM did it, so he was a very
[00:08:49] close person to Díaz Ordaz,
[00:08:53] but at the same time he was a very democratic
[00:08:56] person to lead his union,
[00:08:59] although there were attempts at merger and unity there was a lot of
[00:09:03] communication between the STUNAM and the SME, a
[00:09:07] unity between the two organizations could never
[00:09:10] materialize because the state always... prevented it, so
[00:09:14] the STUNAM remained between 1960 and
[00:09:17] 1970 as an industry union,
[00:09:20] eh, the Federal Electricity Commission had two different
[00:09:24] collective agreements with different unions, with the democratic
[00:09:28] STUNAM and with the national anti-democratic union,
[00:09:32] this ambiguity, this equally unusual
[00:09:35] relationship is solved
[00:09:38] until the 70s when the two unions
[00:09:42] merge and the
[00:09:46] STUNAM and the national union create the
[00:09:49] SUTERM, the sole union of workers,
[00:09:53] then the two contracts also merge into a single one and now
[00:09:56] the Federal Electricity Commission has a single contract and then the
[00:10:00] repression against the democrats would come, no, for several years and in
[00:10:03] 1971 the unity that is created
[00:10:06] is a very rough unity because
[00:10:09] there had already been many previous
[00:10:13] confrontations between the two unions,
[00:10:16] even Galván and the STUNAM were expelled from the Labor Congress in
[00:10:20] 1970, before the merger
[00:10:23] because they were considered
[00:10:25] incompatible
[00:10:28] with the ideology of
[00:10:31] the CTM and the charros, but
[00:10:36] the house it was where it became the axis
[00:10:39] or the headquarters, not only because the
[00:10:42] democratic tendency and the STUNAM had sections throughout the country
[00:10:46] and traveled a lot from those
[00:10:49] sections in the provinces from Mexicali or from
[00:10:52] Guadalajara or from other parts of the republic from
[00:10:56] Chiapas here, to
[00:10:58] meet with the leaders, to talk, to receive
[00:11:02] information, so, in
[00:11:05] 1971 the merger process begins, the
[00:11:09] SUTERM is created in 1972,
[00:11:12] and only 3 years pass before the
[00:11:15] charros, supported by the Federal Electricity Commission and by the
[00:11:19] government, decide to liquidate Galván,
[00:11:22] so they begin a... first in the
[00:11:26] sections in the provinces of expulsion of the democratic
[00:11:29] leaders and democratic workers and
[00:11:33] then of Galván himself and his entire executive committee, they
[00:11:37] expel them, so Galván is in a very
[00:11:40] tight situation because the government
[00:11:43] leaves him no legal loopholes to act
[00:11:47] he has practically been expelled from the union, expelled from the company, he has
[00:11:50] been an expelled leader despite
[00:11:55] all the legal efforts he makes to
[00:11:57] fight, they don't give him any loophole
[00:12:01] so he decides to organize the tendency as a kind of
[00:12:04] parallel union to try to prevent
[00:12:08] the union, the SUTERM, from falling into the hands
[00:12:11] exclusively of the charros. Would you
[00:12:14] say that Rafael Galván can be a
[00:12:18] representation of the nationalist left within the
[00:12:21] PRI and that he does not seek, like some others,
[00:12:25] communism, but only that what the law marks be satisfied, no,
[00:12:29] well, as part of revolutionary nationalism, he embraces
[00:12:32] all the ideology of Cardenismo, he was
[00:12:36] even personally very close to Don Lázaro Cárdenas
[00:12:38] and since he was from Michoacán, he
[00:12:42] also followed him and had a more or less close relationship with him
[00:12:45] permanently, and he believed in the idea
[00:12:49] that the Mexican revolution should lead to social
[00:12:52] justice for all.
[00:12:55] So in that idea he believed until his death in the need
[00:12:59] for the Mexican revolution to continue advancing towards something very
[00:13:02] close to what we would call today a democratic socialism, a
[00:13:06] social democracy. Well, one thing that also stands out is
[00:13:10] how they joined the
[00:13:12] political left, how the
[00:13:16] the creation of the United Socialist Party of Mexico, no, so now
[00:13:20] clearly politicized.
[00:13:22] Yes, but he doesn't get too involved in that because he.
[00:13:26] I mean, it's not his turn anymore, but what's left of the democratic tendency joins, yes, yes, yes, yes,
[00:13:30] and finally, a fundamental part that we have seen in the
[00:13:33] books, the democratic tendency is like
[00:13:39] Rafael Galván's house, many other movements accompany many other
[00:13:42] movements like the one we are going to look for in Azcapotzalco, no,
[00:13:46] let's go Saúl, you who lived
[00:13:49] with the comrades, what
[00:13:53] did they want, what was it that motivated them or what led them to be
[00:13:57] in the movement, even risking their physical integrity as happened more than
[00:14:01] once, no, what bothered them a lot
[00:14:03] was that there was a union leadership
[00:14:07] that didn't pay attention to them, that didn't listen to them, that didn't
[00:14:11] go to the factory for a long time, it took
[00:14:14] weeks, months to take a
[00:14:16] walk, that when they talked to
[00:14:20] him, they didn't feel that he was responding to their
[00:14:24] problems, that they were charged union dues
[00:14:27] without getting anything in return, that when
[00:14:30] they had a conflict with the company, there was no one to mediate, no one
[00:14:34] to help them, no one to support them, that they had to
[00:14:39] factory alone, the normal problems in a
[00:14:42] labor-management relationship, that when there was a salary
[00:14:45] review or contract review, they never participated,
[00:14:49] they were never informed of what had happened, they were only
[00:14:53] informed that such a thing was achieved and that's it, they never
[00:14:56] participated in the negotiations
[00:14:59] and union democracy, no, in a phrase,
[00:15:03] yes, union democracy and
[00:15:07] the defense of their interests.
[00:15:10] This is the old industrial neighborhood of Azcapotzalco, no, which was triggered by the
[00:15:14] construction of the refinery Licencio de Marza, well, it was
[00:15:17] an industrial zone I think it was
[00:15:19] created eh, let's say
[00:15:23] based on
[00:15:25] the industrial vocation that the
[00:15:29] city had between the 50s, 40s,
[00:15:32] 50s, until the 70s, 80s, from the
[00:15:36] 80s the city. changes and loses its
[00:15:39] industrial vocation and becomes a service city and industries
[00:15:43] leave due to the crisis of the 80s, but also due to lack of
[00:15:47] water and pollution problems, both water and
[00:15:50] pollution control become more restrictive and companies
[00:15:54] start to leave and the city that was a city with a manufacturing
[00:15:58] vocation starts
[00:16:01] to become a city almost solely of
[00:16:03] services Mexican packaging, it was here, yes.
[00:16:07] Exactly here, the other
[00:16:12] of the
[00:16:14] same eh and it continued after
[00:16:18] of them from the consortium. Tell me about the strike, the strike. Well, the strike
[00:16:22] broke out due to a contract review and it was a
[00:16:25] strike that lasted almost two months.
[00:16:29] It was a very well organized strike that had a very
[00:16:33] strong resistance fund and it was
[00:16:35] part, let's say, of the excitement that existed at that moment in the union
[00:16:39] movement, there were many movements
[00:16:42] eh, and the workers wanted to be
[00:16:45] part of that journey of several years of union
[00:16:48] insurgency and in front was the Isabel, you told me, yes, there was
[00:16:52] a factory that also had a
[00:16:56] strike but much later, almost 8 years
[00:17:00] later, seven years later, so let's say
[00:17:03] that Azcapotzalco is another of the centers of that great workers'
[00:17:06] insurrection of the 70s, no, yes, it is,
[00:17:10] it was a zone, you yourself lived
[00:17:14] around here, no, I myself lived near here
[00:17:17] in Campo Angostura, and what let's say, the Guamas
[00:17:21] over there, the Reynosa sports center,
[00:17:25] eh, the Rosario over there, the Rosario housing unit and
[00:17:28] refinery over here, we are in the heart of the neighborhood, no,
[00:17:32] yes, hey, to finish, tell me about the
[00:17:35] nostalgia of having been in that?
[00:17:37] The memory, what is it, personally the feeling, what is it, well, it's a memory of a
[00:17:41] very intense experience because
[00:17:42] eh
[00:17:46] the contact with people was very important, the
[00:17:48] workers eh were living a
[00:17:52] very new experience, for some very recent, very
[00:17:55] novel and others were living an
[00:17:58] experience that perhaps they had imagined before, but
[00:18:01] they had not lived it in person,
[00:18:04] so this was an experience in which people
[00:18:07] were very participative,
[00:18:11] for better or for worse, that is, they were very demanding, sometimes very
[00:18:14] complaining, sometimes very eh
[00:18:17] reticent to certain things, but in others they were very participative,
[00:18:21] very supportive, and we all felt that we were
[00:18:24] doing something new, that, you felt that you were changing the
[00:18:28] world, changing the microworld that was the
[00:18:31] company, because a factory is a small hell
[00:18:35] always, changing that small. hell into something a
[00:18:39] little different, gives you hope for life, gives you a
[00:18:42] different expectation, not
[00:18:46] that despite having to
[00:18:48] suffer
[00:18:51] the work and the exploitation of work, you have a certain
[00:18:54] reward that is
[00:18:58] you feel, to express what you live,
[00:20:47] that different from industries like tobacco, gambling.
[00:20:51] fast food, it's not you who decides to spend hours watching videos, it's the
[00:20:55] algorithm that won't let you go. In its early years, the promoters of the
[00:20:58] cryptocurrency industry and blockchain technology
[00:21:02] promised to revolutionize finance. The recent history of
[00:21:05] scams, frauds and false digital utopias is a
[00:21:09] warning. The age of deception. Monday, 8:30 p.m.
[00:21:13] .
[00:21:25] Even when the demands were merely economic, the charros refused
[00:21:29] to lead the movements to which they were opposed by
[00:21:32] system. A good part of the spirit of that
[00:21:36] movement and of the confluence between workers
[00:21:39] and activists, is reflected in the stories of Paco
[00:21:42] Ignacio Taibo 2, a dialogue between Paco himself
[00:21:46] and Doña
[00:21:49] the strike. a small clothing factory near the Tlatelolco
[00:21:53] metro station.
[00:21:55] Catalina took me by the arm and gently pulled me out of the store. She was
[00:21:59] a woman with a hard gaze, wearing a black sweater and a lilac
[00:22:03] blouse that had seen better times. She carried
[00:22:06] her 60 years with strength and only showed
[00:22:10] them in her hurried and faltering walk.
[00:22:13] Tell me Paco, are you a communist. And
[00:22:16] then, how to explain that I was
[00:22:20] trying to convert Marxism into just one
[00:22:23] more part of the 150 years
[00:22:26] of class struggle experience,
[00:22:29] how to tell the war against the new religion I was
[00:22:33] involved in, communist,
[00:22:36] communist, I don't think so,
[00:22:40] but don't be fooled, Doña Cata, I am against the
[00:22:43] government, I am in favor of taking away all their
[00:22:47] properties from the rich and distributing them and besides, I am not
[00:22:50] religious.
[00:22:52] The woman smiled, now you give me confidence.
[00:22:56] I am Catalina Osorio, Vallejo's
[00:23:00] widow, and I won't tell you
[00:23:02] anything else, see you, asshole, you're crying,
[00:23:06] because after all the new
[00:23:09] activists, yes, we had an alien memory to
[00:23:12] connect with, a social space to
[00:23:15] share, Vallejo's widow, the railway
[00:23:19] movement. Peaceful, democratic,
[00:23:22] legal and not Marxist, by the way, which cost
[00:23:25] Demetrio Vallejo 11 years in prison,
[00:23:29] was alive, present.
[00:23:50] I am going to tell you, gentlemen, something of what happened
[00:23:53] in the year 75 that has now ended,
[00:23:57] there have been events for
[00:24:01] all tastes, but generally
[00:24:04] we don't win for dislikes,
[00:24:07] they say to have
[00:24:10] peace, it is true that Cabañas was killed,
[00:24:13] then Carme lo Cortés.
[00:24:17] Electrical
[00:24:20] conflicts are very strong
[00:24:23] those that Fidel has continued fighting
[00:24:27] against Galván.
[00:24:30] We say nothing
[00:24:33] worse, we read everything in the national
[00:24:37] press.
[00:24:40] The workers' insurgency of the 70s took place in the east of the city,
[00:24:44] Iztacalco, Iztapalapa, and in the north, Azcapotzalco,
[00:24:48] Tlatelolco, Santa María. That north grew a second north outside
[00:24:52] the limits of the federal district here in Ecatepec, perhaps
[00:24:55] this is the most emblematic neighborhood of that workers' insurgency, I arrive
[00:24:59] and come to meet a militant from those
[00:25:01] times who is still in unionism, my friend Jorge
[00:25:04] Robles,
[00:25:10] how are you, very good, hey, you lived here no in this same
[00:25:14] building, 46
[00:25:17] years ago.
[00:25:20] here to go unnoticed, so that
[00:25:25] the comrades, yes, yes, it was to go unnoticed,
[00:25:29] live in the heart of the neighborhood, work in the factories, the thing
[00:25:33] is that this whole neighborhood which also was not
[00:25:36] paved, was mud, mud and in
[00:25:39] rainy season going out to
[00:25:43] night was to get muddy,
[00:25:46] but why did he do it? There was a lot of union
[00:25:50] effervescence, there were small factories,
[00:25:53] big factories where there was a lot of interest in organizing,
[00:25:56] from my point of view, spontaneous movements
[00:25:59] do not exist, they are anonymous.
[00:26:03] not spontaneous, not spontaneous, there are always
[00:26:06] collective directions or personalized
[00:26:08] directions, but very anonymous and I wanted to be
[00:26:12] part of this process with the logic of serving the
[00:26:15] movements, not to recruit but to
[00:26:18] generate movement where things were
[00:26:22] hot, no, for that we had many allies in the area,
[00:26:27] the women who sold quesadillas on the corners
[00:26:31] where the workers ate, they were almost our
[00:26:34] main source of information. 40 years later it is still a factory neighborhood, why
[00:26:37] don't we advance a little towards the atmosphere of the
[00:26:40] neighborhood, of the working-class neighborhood, of the factory
[00:26:44] neighborhood, no the first neighborhoods, this was
[00:26:48] almost luxury, pure brick, the first
[00:26:50] neighborhoods were
[00:26:54] eh someone very poor would get a
[00:26:57] plot of land and build small rooms and rent them out,
[00:27:01] but they rented a round room with an outdoor bathroom for a family,
[00:27:05] and it was populated through contacts, mostly
[00:27:08] of Zacatecan
[00:27:12] origin, those from Aguascalientes and they would share
[00:27:16] tips on where there was work, so when
[00:27:18] you knew one of these comrades,
[00:27:22] automatically if you gained their trust and joined, the
[00:27:25] network would expand, let's start at the beginning, Jorge,
[00:27:29] why after 10 years of apparent... for
[00:27:32] union in which the workers seem to be subjected to the "charro" unionism
[00:27:36] and the state, suddenly in these
[00:27:39] factories that we are seeing around this side
[00:27:42] they start again to fight for their rights. What
[00:27:46] happened? There was a very important
[00:27:50] company which was Creimerman Rolling Mill. We are a little
[00:27:53] further on. That Creimerman Rolling Mill had an independent
[00:27:56] union. At that
[00:27:59] time, the most recognized
[00:28:03] democratic lawyers
[00:28:07] were Armando Castillejos
[00:28:09] and Fernández del Real, so
[00:28:12] when the company fired all the workers because they were in the
[00:28:16] independent union it changed its
[00:28:19] name
[00:28:21] which is a trick of changing the company name, those 600
[00:28:25] workers filed their collective lawsuit to recover their source of
[00:28:29] work, but they are 600 workers
[00:28:32] who go to live, or rather to work in other
[00:28:36] factories, but with experience of organization
[00:28:40] then suddenly it's like a first
[00:28:43] movement that suddenly by
[00:28:46] closing the factory and firing everyone, what they actually do is
[00:28:50] an expansion effect like a hand grenade in war, right?
[00:28:54] Yes, so those people who worked here in the neighborhood, that rolling mill, we
[00:28:57] looked for it and the factory no longer exists, but it changed its name to
[00:29:01] Omega. and yes, we found it
[00:29:26] uh, when we talk about small factories, I mean 100 workers, up to
[00:29:30] 100, up to 100 could be.
[00:29:34] Uh, the first thing is the external environment of the factory,
[00:29:37] many of the people know each other, most are
[00:29:40] fellow countrymen, they come from the same town, in the same town and they pass contacts and they
[00:29:44] get the job, that mechanism makes the unit very
[00:29:48] strong, the "charros" and the bosses also use it, as a mechanism of
[00:29:51] control, because they bring their relatives, their countrymen
[00:29:55] and they put them in key positions and then the grassroots
[00:29:58] people also put them in, so there is an
[00:30:03] emotional dependence, a
[00:30:06] gratitude to the fellow countryman who gave you the job, a
[00:30:09] bit paternalistic, but when we achieve that unity
[00:30:12] outside to organize, it's very
[00:30:15] simple because you gather a group of 8
[00:30:18] or 9 but at the same time they guarantee
[00:30:22] 60 or 70 in the company, so that's
[00:30:25] how we work a small group under the water
[00:30:29] because if not I fire everyone and they form their own
[00:30:33] groups, this place was symbolic
[00:30:36] because all the marches that we organized usually started
[00:30:39] from the "igriega", towards some factory, towards any factory that was
[00:30:43] in struggle, in particular, uh,
[00:30:46] there is a great memory because over there on Morelos avenue,
[00:30:50] in front was General
[00:30:52] Electric that had a strike, in fact we called it a wildcat
[00:30:56] strike, a strike because the Suter signed it.