Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking. Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a quotation record.
00:00:11but we were saying that here at
00:00:25they were the shopkeepers,
00:00:34companies
00:00:59Catalina, leader of
00:01:59Since the 19th century, the rulers of Mexico made ours a developed
00:02:03capitalist country, but the conditions did not allow it, neither
00:02:06geographical, nor economic, nor historical-social. Mexico then
00:02:10became a peripheral and dependent
00:02:14How did you get involved, Saúl, in the capitalist country. Despite this, the victorious revolution,
00:02:17symbolized in this monument, elevated the
00:02:20constitution, the most advanced labor laws in the
00:02:23world and of the time. From then on, Mexican workers organized
00:02:27to fight for these consecrated rights, the
00:02:31support. a movement that is the constitution, typical of a developed capitalist country.
00:02:34They also encountered their great obstacle, the union
00:02:38charrismo symbolized in that building back
00:02:41there.
00:02:44This organization of workers for their rights had some peaks in the
00:02:4720s and 30s of the 20th century, but from
00:02:51democratic tendency would be part of 1946, with the birth of the PRI, unions
00:02:54were domesticated and subjected to the government, even unions like
00:02:57railroad workers and electricians and oil workers were subdued by the
00:03:01army, it seemed that the working class was domesticated,
00:03:05although still in 58-59 it rebelled again, always peacefully,
00:03:09and in the 70s of the 20th century,
00:03:14a 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
00:03:20to express what to tell. During 7 years from
00:03:231969 to 1975
00:03:27there were hundreds of factory movements that fought to
00:03:31improve their working conditions and democratize their
00:03:34unions. Official numbers, which omit
00:03:37many strikes, show a sustained increase from
00:03:411970 to
00:03:43for better or for 1976, a year in which 547
00:03:47strikes and 23,684
00:03:49strikers
00:03:53were registered. Most of the
00:03:56movements were in small factories, but there was a different one.
00:04:00that of the democratic tendency of the
00:04:04electricians, a struggle that began in
00:04:071971.
00:04:09Its leader, Rafael Galván, defined the
00:04:14face the problems of the difference between charrismo and democratic
00:04:16unionism as follows: The workers themselves, and for
00:04:20a very long time, would have overthrown the charro
00:04:23apparatus throughout the country, if that
00:04:26apparatus were not supported by powerful non-worker
00:04:30interests housed both in the governmental
00:04:33sphere and in the
00:04:35you were one more among business community. It has always been very clear to us, but
00:04:38it is beginning to be clear to everyone why the
00:04:42participation in employers cynically proclaim that
00:04:46charrismo is a kind of bourgeois ministry for
00:04:49the subjugation of workers. This is the
00:04:53look for a doctor at 10 at reason why authentic workers' struggles, even when they are
00:04:56for minimal demands and no matter how they are maintained.
00:05:00Conscious and rigorously within legal channels, upon
00:05:04immediately encountering the charros, faithful servants of the
00:05:07bourgeoisie, they take on from their first phases a
00:05:11strong tint by...
00:05:13Despite the offensive of the charros against independent unionism and
00:05:17in particular against the democratic tendency of the
00:05:20electricians, they understood the true
00:05:24character of unionism. Galván
00:05:27continued. Unions in Mexico, in addition to
00:05:30concentrating the upper strata of the working class and
00:05:34being resistance organizations, must
00:05:37be, and potentially are, despite the painstaking
00:05:40work of denaturalization
00:05:42that has been done with them, centers of grouping and
00:05:45alliance of all the poor people, schools of
00:05:49democracy, revolutionary organizations. What
00:05:52revolution are the workers talking about? The Mexican
00:05:55revolution, but not the one falsified by the
00:05:58regime. It is the revolution that in its first ascending
00:06:02stage, announced before anyone else the era of new
00:06:05agrarian struggles in poor countries and in the
00:06:08second, also before anyone else the historical era. The
00:06:12nationalizations for liberation, the era of
00:06:16nationalist revolutions that would later sprout
00:06:19here and there. It is the
00:06:22revolution that showed the immense perspective for the alliance of
00:06:26workers and peasants in the heroism, in the struggle
00:06:29and in the work of the commoners of Morelos
00:06:33led by
00:06:34Zapata.
00:06:41The workers' insurrection of the 70s was characterized by having a
00:06:44lot of small movements in many small factories, but there is a
00:06:47central movement that in some way unifies them, that of the democratic
00:06:51tendency of the electricians led by Rafael Galván. Saúl
00:06:55Escobar, a researcher from Lina, will explain that
00:07:10yes, this is Zacatecas. '94, this was
00:07:14the headquarters first of the STUNAM, the union of
00:07:17electrical workers of the Mexican Republic and
00:07:21then of the democratic tendency of the SUTERM.
00:07:26workers' movement? How did you get there? Well, I got there
00:07:30through Paco, the marginal film cooperative, through the two Pacos, through Paco
00:07:34Ignacio and through Paco Pérezarz and through Paco. So
00:07:37I got there through them. And
00:07:40immediately they tell me, we have to
00:07:43movement of Mexicana de Envases in Azcapotzalco and I
00:07:47joined there almost immediately and you stayed
00:07:50there, I stayed there almost 10 years as an activist
00:07:54supporting unionism, the independent democratic
00:07:56union that was being formed at that time
00:08:00and while
00:08:02all those hundreds of small movements were happening, the
00:08:06democratic tendency of the electricians continued its struggle, no, yes, the struggle of the
00:08:09democratic tendency began in 1971, 1970
00:08:1371, but Galván's and the electricians' struggle is older,
00:08:17yes, because Galván is a rare
00:08:20avis, a very strange exception, because
00:08:23he was a union leader
00:08:26very attached to the PRI, he was even very close to
00:08:30Díaz Ordaz, thanks to Díaz Ordaz Galván became
00:08:34a senator of the republic, yes, of course, we
00:08:37even have the historical data that the one who uncovers Díaz Ordaz as a candidate
00:08:41for the presidency. the republic is Rafael Galván, that's right, before the
00:08:45PRI leadership did it and before the Labor Congress and the CTM did it, so he was a very
00:08:49close person to Díaz Ordaz,
00:08:53but at the same time he was a very democratic
00:08:56person to lead his union,
00:08:59although there were attempts at merger and unity there was a lot of
00:09:03communication between the STUNAM and the SME, a
00:09:07unity between the two organizations could never
00:09:10materialize because the state always... prevented it, so
00:09:14the STUNAM remained between 1960 and
00:09:171970 as an industry union,
00:09:20eh, the Federal Electricity Commission had two different
00:09:24collective agreements with different unions, with the democratic
00:09:28STUNAM and with the national anti-democratic union,
00:09:32this ambiguity, this equally unusual
00:09:35relationship is solved
00:09:38until the 70s when the two unions
00:09:42merge and the
00:09:46STUNAM and the national union create the
00:09:49SUTERM, the sole union of workers,
00:09:53then the two contracts also merge into a single one and now
00:09:56the Federal Electricity Commission has a single contract and then the
00:10:00repression against the democrats would come, no, for several years and in
00:10:031971 the unity that is created
00:10:06is a very rough unity because
00:10:09there had already been many previous
00:10:13confrontations between the two unions,
00:10:16even Galván and the STUNAM were expelled from the Labor Congress in
00:10:201970, before the merger
00:10:23because they were considered
00:10:25incompatible
00:10:28with the ideology of
00:10:31the CTM and the charros, but
00:10:36the house it was where it became the axis
00:10:39or the headquarters, not only because the
00:10:42democratic tendency and the STUNAM had sections throughout the country
00:10:46and traveled a lot from those
00:10:49sections in the provinces from Mexicali or from
00:10:52Guadalajara or from other parts of the republic from
00:10:56Chiapas here, to
00:10:58meet with the leaders, to talk, to receive
00:11:02information, so, in
00:11:051971 the merger process begins, the
00:11:09SUTERM is created in 1972,
00:11:12and only 3 years pass before the
00:11:15charros, supported by the Federal Electricity Commission and by the
00:11:19government, decide to liquidate Galván,
00:11:22so they begin a... first in the
00:11:26sections in the provinces of expulsion of the democratic
00:11:29leaders and democratic workers and
00:11:33then of Galván himself and his entire executive committee, they
00:11:37expel them, so Galván is in a very
00:11:40tight situation because the government
00:11:43leaves him no legal loopholes to act
00:11:47he has practically been expelled from the union, expelled from the company, he has
00:11:50been an expelled leader despite
00:11:55all the legal efforts he makes to
00:11:57fight, they don't give him any loophole
00:12:01so he decides to organize the tendency as a kind of
00:12:04parallel union to try to prevent
00:12:08the union, the SUTERM, from falling into the hands
00:12:11exclusively of the charros. Would you
00:12:14say that Rafael Galván can be a
00:12:18representation of the nationalist left within the
00:12:21PRI and that he does not seek, like some others,
00:12:25communism, but only that what the law marks be satisfied, no,
00:12:29well, as part of revolutionary nationalism, he embraces
00:12:32all the ideology of Cardenismo, he was
00:12:36even personally very close to Don Lázaro Cárdenas
00:12:38and since he was from Michoacán, he
00:12:42also followed him and had a more or less close relationship with him
00:12:45permanently, and he believed in the idea
00:12:49that the Mexican revolution should lead to social
00:12:52justice for all.
00:12:55So in that idea he believed until his death in the need
00:12:59for the Mexican revolution to continue advancing towards something very
00:13:02close to what we would call today a democratic socialism, a
00:13:06social democracy. Well, one thing that also stands out is
00:13:10how they joined the
00:13:12political left, how the
00:13:16the creation of the United Socialist Party of Mexico, no, so now
00:13:20clearly politicized.
00:13:22Yes, but he doesn't get too involved in that because he.
00:13:26I mean, it's not his turn anymore, but what's left of the democratic tendency joins, yes, yes, yes, yes,
00:13:30and finally, a fundamental part that we have seen in the
00:13:33books, the democratic tendency is like
00:13:39Rafael Galván's house, many other movements accompany many other
00:13:42movements like the one we are going to look for in Azcapotzalco, no,
00:13:46let's go Saúl, you who lived
00:13:49with the comrades, what
00:13:53did they want, what was it that motivated them or what led them to be
00:13:57in the movement, even risking their physical integrity as happened more than
00:14:01once, no, what bothered them a lot
00:14:03was that there was a union leadership
00:14:07that didn't pay attention to them, that didn't listen to them, that didn't
00:14:11go to the factory for a long time, it took
00:14:14weeks, months to take a
00:14:16walk, that when they talked to
00:14:20him, they didn't feel that he was responding to their
00:14:24problems, that they were charged union dues
00:14:27without getting anything in return, that when
00:14:30they had a conflict with the company, there was no one to mediate, no one
00:14:34to help them, no one to support them, that they had to
00:14:39factory alone, the normal problems in a
00:14:42labor-management relationship, that when there was a salary
00:14:45review or contract review, they never participated,
00:14:49they were never informed of what had happened, they were only
00:14:53informed that such a thing was achieved and that's it, they never
00:14:56participated in the negotiations
00:14:59and union democracy, no, in a phrase,
00:15:03yes, union democracy and
00:15:07the defense of their interests.
00:15:10This is the old industrial neighborhood of Azcapotzalco, no, which was triggered by the
00:15:14construction of the refinery Licencio de Marza, well, it was
00:15:17an industrial zone I think it was
00:15:19created eh, let's say
00:15:23based on
00:15:25the industrial vocation that the
00:15:29city had between the 50s, 40s,
00:15:3250s, until the 70s, 80s, from the
00:15:3680s the city. changes and loses its
00:15:39industrial vocation and becomes a service city and industries
00:15:43leave due to the crisis of the 80s, but also due to lack of
00:15:47water and pollution problems, both water and
00:15:50pollution control become more restrictive and companies
00:15:54start to leave and the city that was a city with a manufacturing
00:15:58vocation starts
00:16:01to become a city almost solely of
00:16:03services Mexican packaging, it was here, yes.
00:16:07Exactly here, the other
00:16:12of the
00:16:14same eh and it continued after
00:16:18of them from the consortium. Tell me about the strike, the strike. Well, the strike
00:16:22broke out due to a contract review and it was a
00:16:25strike that lasted almost two months.
00:16:29It was a very well organized strike that had a very
00:16:33strong resistance fund and it was
00:16:35part, let's say, of the excitement that existed at that moment in the union
00:16:39movement, there were many movements
00:16:42eh, and the workers wanted to be
00:16:45part of that journey of several years of union
00:16:48insurgency and in front was the Isabel, you told me, yes, there was
00:16:52a factory that also had a
00:16:56strike but much later, almost 8 years
00:17:00later, seven years later, so let's say
00:17:03that Azcapotzalco is another of the centers of that great workers'
00:17:06insurrection of the 70s, no, yes, it is,
00:17:10it was a zone, you yourself lived
00:17:14around here, no, I myself lived near here
00:17:17in Campo Angostura, and what let's say, the Guamas
00:17:21over there, the Reynosa sports center,
00:17:25eh, the Rosario over there, the Rosario housing unit and
00:17:28refinery over here, we are in the heart of the neighborhood, no,
00:17:32yes, hey, to finish, tell me about the
00:17:35nostalgia of having been in that?
00:17:37The memory, what is it, personally the feeling, what is it, well, it's a memory of a
00:17:41very intense experience because
00:17:42eh
00:17:46the contact with people was very important, the
00:17:48workers eh were living a
00:17:52very new experience, for some very recent, very
00:17:55novel and others were living an
00:17:58experience that perhaps they had imagined before, but
00:18:01they had not lived it in person,
00:18:04so this was an experience in which people
00:18:07were very participative,
00:18:11for better or for worse, that is, they were very demanding, sometimes very
00:18:14complaining, sometimes very eh
00:18:17reticent to certain things, but in others they were very participative,
00:18:21very supportive, and we all felt that we were
00:18:24doing something new, that, you felt that you were changing the
00:18:28world, changing the microworld that was the
00:18:31company, because a factory is a small hell
00:18:35always, changing that small. hell into something a
00:18:39little different, gives you hope for life, gives you a
00:18:42different expectation, not
00:18:46that despite having to
00:18:48suffer
00:18:51the work and the exploitation of work, you have a certain
00:18:54reward that is
00:18:58you feel, to express what you live,
00:20:47that different from industries like tobacco, gambling.
00:20:51fast food, it's not you who decides to spend hours watching videos, it's the
00:20:55algorithm that won't let you go. In its early years, the promoters of the
00:20:58cryptocurrency industry and blockchain technology
00:21:02promised to revolutionize finance. The recent history of
00:21:05scams, frauds and false digital utopias is a
00:21:09warning. The age of deception. Monday, 8:30 p.m.
00:21:13.
00:21:25Even when the demands were merely economic, the charros refused
00:21:29to lead the movements to which they were opposed by
00:21:32system. A good part of the spirit of that
00:21:36movement and of the confluence between workers
00:21:39and activists, is reflected in the stories of Paco
00:21:42Ignacio Taibo 2, a dialogue between Paco himself
00:21:46and Doña
00:21:49the strike. a small clothing factory near the Tlatelolco
00:21:53metro station.
00:21:55Catalina took me by the arm and gently pulled me out of the store. She was
00:21:59a woman with a hard gaze, wearing a black sweater and a lilac
00:22:03blouse that had seen better times. She carried
00:22:06her 60 years with strength and only showed
00:22:10them in her hurried and faltering walk.
00:22:13Tell me Paco, are you a communist. And
00:22:16then, how to explain that I was
00:22:20trying to convert Marxism into just one
00:22:23more part of the 150 years
00:22:26of class struggle experience,
00:22:29how to tell the war against the new religion I was
00:22:33involved in, communist,
00:22:36communist, I don't think so,
00:22:40but don't be fooled, Doña Cata, I am against the
00:22:43government, I am in favor of taking away all their
00:22:47properties from the rich and distributing them and besides, I am not
00:22:50religious.
00:22:52The woman smiled, now you give me confidence.
00:22:56I am Catalina Osorio, Vallejo's
00:23:00widow, and I won't tell you
00:23:02anything else, see you, asshole, you're crying,
00:23:06because after all the new
00:23:09activists, yes, we had an alien memory to
00:23:12connect with, a social space to
00:23:15share, Vallejo's widow, the railway
00:23:19movement. Peaceful, democratic,
00:23:22legal and not Marxist, by the way, which cost
00:23:25Demetrio Vallejo 11 years in prison,
00:23:29was alive, present.
00:23:50I am going to tell you, gentlemen, something of what happened
00:23:53in the year 75 that has now ended,
00:23:57there have been events for
00:24:01all tastes, but generally
00:24:04we don't win for dislikes,
00:24:07they say to have
00:24:10peace, it is true that Cabañas was killed,
00:24:13then Carme lo Cortés.
00:24:17Electrical
00:24:20conflicts are very strong
00:24:23those that Fidel has continued fighting
00:24:27against Galván.
00:24:30We say nothing
00:24:33worse, we read everything in the national
00:24:37press.
00:24:40The workers' insurgency of the 70s took place in the east of the city,
00:24:44Iztacalco, Iztapalapa, and in the north, Azcapotzalco,
00:24:48Tlatelolco, Santa María. That north grew a second north outside
00:24:52the limits of the federal district here in Ecatepec, perhaps
00:24:55this is the most emblematic neighborhood of that workers' insurgency, I arrive
00:24:59and come to meet a militant from those
00:25:01times who is still in unionism, my friend Jorge
00:25:04Robles,
00:25:10how are you, very good, hey, you lived here no in this same
00:25:14building, 46
00:25:17years ago.
00:25:20here to go unnoticed, so that
00:25:25the comrades, yes, yes, it was to go unnoticed,
00:25:29live in the heart of the neighborhood, work in the factories, the thing
00:25:33is that this whole neighborhood which also was not
00:25:36paved, was mud, mud and in
00:25:39rainy season going out to
00:25:43night was to get muddy,
00:25:46but why did he do it? There was a lot of union
00:25:50effervescence, there were small factories,
00:25:53big factories where there was a lot of interest in organizing,
00:25:56from my point of view, spontaneous movements
00:25:59do not exist, they are anonymous.
00:26:03not spontaneous, not spontaneous, there are always
00:26:06collective directions or personalized
00:26:08directions, but very anonymous and I wanted to be
00:26:12part of this process with the logic of serving the
00:26:15movements, not to recruit but to
00:26:18generate movement where things were
00:26:22hot, no, for that we had many allies in the area,
00:26:27the women who sold quesadillas on the corners
00:26:31where the workers ate, they were almost our
00:26:34main source of information. 40 years later it is still a factory neighborhood, why
00:26:37don't we advance a little towards the atmosphere of the
00:26:40neighborhood, of the working-class neighborhood, of the factory
00:26:44neighborhood, no the first neighborhoods, this was
00:26:48almost luxury, pure brick, the first
00:26:50neighborhoods were
00:26:54eh someone very poor would get a
00:26:57plot of land and build small rooms and rent them out,
00:27:01but they rented a round room with an outdoor bathroom for a family,
00:27:05and it was populated through contacts, mostly
00:27:08of Zacatecan
00:27:12origin, those from Aguascalientes and they would share
00:27:16tips on where there was work, so when
00:27:18you knew one of these comrades,
00:27:22automatically if you gained their trust and joined, the
00:27:25network would expand, let's start at the beginning, Jorge,
00:27:29why after 10 years of apparent... for
00:27:32union in which the workers seem to be subjected to the "charro" unionism
00:27:36and the state, suddenly in these
00:27:39factories that we are seeing around this side
00:27:42they start again to fight for their rights. What
00:27:46happened? There was a very important
00:27:50company which was Creimerman Rolling Mill. We are a little
00:27:53further on. That Creimerman Rolling Mill had an independent
00:27:56union. At that
00:27:59time, the most recognized
00:28:03democratic lawyers
00:28:07were Armando Castillejos
00:28:09and Fernández del Real, so
00:28:12when the company fired all the workers because they were in the
00:28:16independent union it changed its
00:28:19name
00:28:21which is a trick of changing the company name, those 600
00:28:25workers filed their collective lawsuit to recover their source of
00:28:29work, but they are 600 workers
00:28:32who go to live, or rather to work in other
00:28:36factories, but with experience of organization
00:28:40then suddenly it's like a first
00:28:43movement that suddenly by
00:28:46closing the factory and firing everyone, what they actually do is
00:28:50an expansion effect like a hand grenade in war, right?
00:28:54Yes, so those people who worked here in the neighborhood, that rolling mill, we
00:28:57looked for it and the factory no longer exists, but it changed its name to
00:29:01Omega. and yes, we found it
00:29:26uh, when we talk about small factories, I mean 100 workers, up to
00:29:30100, up to 100 could be.
00:29:34Uh, the first thing is the external environment of the factory,
00:29:37many of the people know each other, most are
00:29:40fellow countrymen, they come from the same town, in the same town and they pass contacts and they
00:29:44get the job, that mechanism makes the unit very
00:29:48strong, the "charros" and the bosses also use it, as a mechanism of
00:29:51control, because they bring their relatives, their countrymen
00:29:55and they put them in key positions and then the grassroots
00:29:58people also put them in, so there is an
00:30:03emotional dependence, a
00:30:06gratitude to the fellow countryman who gave you the job, a
00:30:09bit paternalistic, but when we achieve that unity
00:30:12outside to organize, it's very
00:30:15simple because you gather a group of 8
00:30:18or 9 but at the same time they guarantee
00:30:2260 or 70 in the company, so that's
00:30:25how we work a small group under the water
00:30:29because if not I fire everyone and they form their own
00:30:33groups, this place was symbolic
00:30:36because all the marches that we organized usually started
00:30:39from the "igriega", towards some factory, towards any factory that was
00:30:43in struggle, in particular, uh,
00:30:46there is a great memory because over there on Morelos avenue,
00:30:50in front was General
00:30:52Electric that had a strike, in fact we called it a wildcat
00:30:56strike, a strike because the Suter signed it.