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.
00:00:00they put them in, so there's an
00:00:03emotional dependence,
00:00:06Spicer plant that ended with a eh, a gratitude to the countryman who gave you the job, a bit
00:00:09paternalistic, but when we achieved that unity
00:00:12outside to organize, it's very
00:00:15simple because you gather a group of eight or
00:00:19nine, but at the same time they guarantee eh
00:00:2260, 70 in the company, so that's
00:00:26how we work, a small group underwater
00:00:29because otherwise I'll fire everyone and they form their own
00:00:33groups, this place was symbolic
00:00:36because all the marches that we organized generally
00:00:39started from there and went towards some factory, towards any factory that
00:00:43was on strike, in particular,
00:00:46there's a great memory because across the Morelos highway
00:00:50in front was General
00:00:52Electric, which was on strike, in fact, we called it a wildcat
00:00:56strike or a strike because those from
00:01:00who had already merged
00:01:04signed a collective contract that was disadvantageous and without consultation, so
00:01:08500 workers went on strike, so
00:01:11then eh well, we approached like
00:01:16called they went to the lawyer Castillejos and we worked in the groups that
00:01:20he then we started to organize the
00:01:24union process and across the street was Kelvineitor, which is the factory
00:01:27from which part of the movement originated. This
00:01:31one was more wary
00:01:33it appeared when it was on strike but with a factory
00:01:37takeover, which was the novelty, they remained
00:01:40locked inside the factory, something similar was done by those from Spicer,
00:01:44they closed chains, it's on that side of the
00:01:46hill, it was so important that on a May 1st,
00:01:50when the charros still had them surrounded, the
00:01:54independent unions here we organized the
00:01:56march in one and we walked through the working-class
00:02:00neighborhood through the houses, not through the factories and
00:02:03we ended up on the side of the dam
00:02:06where on the same Spicer hill in
00:02:09a strike of industrial castings, we held the
00:02:12rally and another legendary factory is Omega
00:02:16which is also around here, no, it was Creimerman, ah, Creimerman
00:02:19becomes Omega, but the important thing is to recognize that it was and
00:02:23from there we go, let's go there
00:02:27let's go This is one of the important factories in the
00:02:32City and the
00:02:43area, there were two more that are worth
00:02:47mentioning, industrial castings that
00:02:50made cast iron, it had international awards, it's the best
00:02:54organized factory I've
00:02:57reflux in the known, it ended up in a cooperative. and another is Borden Chemical
00:03:01which is just ahead,
00:03:03exists are true where there were two plants, they went on
00:03:05strike, they crossed from one plant to another and
00:03:09managed to get all their demands by cornering the
00:03:12boss who was a
00:03:15German in his
00:03:17office until he signed the agreements and this
00:03:21one, which is beds and tubes,
00:03:2314 presents is very important eh here fundamentally
00:03:27there were people from Aguascalientes.
00:03:32violence, crime on and we managed to form a very close group of 18
00:03:35among them and each group of 18 had like 20 or 30
00:03:38in its turn
00:03:41eh just like industrial castings and Borden Chemical was a great
00:03:44triumph, here it was rather
00:03:47a great experience, the assembly came, we had
00:03:51absolutely eh all the people on our
00:03:55side and the idea was to change the
00:03:58legal advisor so that later
00:04:00free elections could be held for the union and
00:04:04we could e eh expel the
00:04:07charros, there came a
00:04:09this from moment when in the assembly people started to shout the lawyer's name,
00:04:12Castillejos, Castillejos, the whole assembly, and the
00:04:16charros said: well, you want to change lawyers and
00:04:20defeated, no, like the he presented another one, he said give this one a chance, what did we
00:04:23learn there, that we cannot win the
00:04:27railroad union battle on enemy territory, exactly because no matter how well
00:04:30but at the same time in organized you are, as long as you are on their territory, they
00:04:34are capable of reorganizing at
00:04:36war, all the defeats of any moment, they didn't expect it, but since they had
00:04:39the table and they won that game against us, unlike
00:04:43intensification of Borden Chemical, unlike industrial castings, we are in a way in the heart of the neighborhood
00:04:47where you lived and militated, yes, Jorge,
00:04:50what did it mean to militate, what did it mean to be involved in
00:04:54that movement, what did they want?
00:04:57Look, there are two things,
00:05:00eh, the first is
00:05:04to improve the world, to change the world, call it whatever you
00:05:07want, it was to change it,
00:05:10and it became an ethical commitment. in my
00:05:13logic
00:05:17eh eh as a human being, it was
00:05:20to have a better world and we thought at that time that it was
00:05:23a matter of 20 years, it seemed eternal to us, we were 22, 40 have passed
00:05:27and we are starting,
00:05:30no, I think we have transformed a lot because the
00:05:33dimension has changed, the dimension is not making the great revolution,
00:05:37the dimension is in daily life you change social
00:05:40relations and that transforms the world until
00:05:44you achieve a total change of the, but if there is no new man to
00:05:47transform it, there is no general change, the idea
00:05:51that a change of society generates a new
00:05:54man, with all due respect to Che, I don't think it's
00:05:57correct, the new man is the one who
00:06:00generates the changes, if
00:06:04that were true, there wouldn't be so much exile of young people born in Cuba, who
00:06:07would be the new man, rather we have to transform and you transform that in your
00:06:11daily life. in your most intimate relationship
00:06:15up to the relationship with those who fought for years and somehow changed
00:06:18the world because they changed the small lives of some people
00:06:22who also transformed themselves, Jorge, I want to keep that idea,
00:06:25it's always a pleasure to be here in the heart of the Hallo stop beds and tubes
00:06:29catuza neighborhood.
00:06:43and we just came to Tabasco to find this, I'm
00:06:47referring to cocoa, who among
00:06:50you doesn't like chocolate, legend has it
00:06:53that it was Quetzalcoatl, the god who gave the cocoa tree to human
00:06:56beings, if you like chocolate, of course, I love it, also
00:07:00here in this community a cream with
00:07:03mezcal is made, ah delicious, the
00:07:06conquest of flavor, Sunday 1:45
00:07:10p.m. I am Ana Luisa Guerrero and I want to invite
00:07:14you to our next appointment in direct consultation where we will talk
00:07:17about muscle
00:07:18disorders.
00:07:27Send us all your questions through our social networks at @
00:07:30canal14mx to our direct WhatsApp line
00:07:345513 56625.
00:07:37I'll wait for you next Monday at 11:30 in the morning on
00:07:40channel 14. Growing up is not easy, if you care for
00:07:44adolescents or young people, accompany them and be part of their
00:07:48lives on social networks, talk about risks,
00:07:51rules and limits for their well-being, give them confidence and
00:07:54support to solve any situation without judging or
00:07:58scolding and remind them that life is not only virtual,
00:08:01learn more at
00:08:03abcdelasemociones.c.gov.mx
00:08:06or contact the life line 800 911
00:08:102000. Government of Mexico. This young
00:08:13woman visits the foothills of Popocatépetl to enter
00:08:16a world that will open her mind. Sir, would there be a way to
00:08:20go up? No, sir, there is a lot of
00:08:22danger. Let's go through the
00:08:25forest. They say that the cyclical hell must
00:08:29be so, because that's how we are.
00:08:50The Spicer strike reflects, condenses
00:08:53the dynamic of those movements.
00:08:56Spicer was an industry in the Charros neighborhood, where vehicle
00:09:00axles were manufactured. Paco
00:09:03Ignacio Taibo II wrote. The Spicer
00:09:06strike was a nightmare in those days. It had
00:09:09been a continuous confrontation.
00:09:12from its beginnings, punches here and there, all
00:09:16hours, we had more enemies than anyone, it seemed
00:09:20we had gathered them all, there were the owners
00:09:23of Spicer, there were the bankers behind the owners of
00:09:26Spicer, there was the employers' association of the area that
00:09:30had offered money to the owners of Spicer if they defeated the
00:09:33movement, there was the Ministry of Labor that wanted
00:09:36to get rid of us at all costs,
00:09:40there was the mounted police of the state of Mexico that had
00:09:43charged twice against the strikers,
00:09:47there were the riot police of the DF, who had broken up a
00:09:50rally by throwing motorcycles at the people, there were the
00:09:54charros of the FAO, there was Napoleón Gómez Urrutia and
00:09:58the charros of the mining metalworkers who had sworn revenge on us,
00:10:01there was TV and some newspapers, and there was
00:10:04our exhaustion, it was more than 100 days
00:10:07of continuous struggle, full of tension.
00:10:11First the actual strike, then the
00:10:14confrontations against the scabs of the mining union who
00:10:18attacked the guards, then the mounted police and the
00:10:21evictions from the company. Then the first agreement and the
00:10:25return to work, then a week of war inside the
00:10:31a mass dismissal, then the
00:10:33camp in Zacatenco, the
00:10:36demonstrations, the marches, then the hunger
00:10:39strike of 23 comrades in a camp in front
00:10:43of the Federal Attorney General's Office of Labor,
00:10:47continuous car rallies, massive guards in front of the
00:10:50company, rallies here and there. clashes against the
00:10:54professional scabs of the mining union, almost
00:10:574 months without pay, confrontation with the
00:11:01riot police, and there was no way out, it seemed that
00:11:04the company was willing to go bankrupt rather than accept something very
00:11:08simple, the only demand for which they had
00:11:12been struggling, an independent
00:11:15union, and the strike was lost, it was one more
00:11:19defeat of that insurgency that added...
00:11:23defeat after defeat, where
00:11:26did the militants get the strength to
00:11:29return, what do we have left, what do we inherit
00:11:32from those struggles?
00:11:35Francisco Pérez Arce is one of the
00:11:39best and least known Mexican novelists, his
00:11:42work is diverse,
00:11:45extensive, complex
00:11:49and unfortunately little known, but he
00:11:51is also a great historian, a great economist. and a grassroots
00:11:55activist, he has written about his own
00:11:57experiences as an activist and about what he experienced a lot of things
00:12:01eh, and speaking of the workers'
00:12:04insurgency, he says, for example,
00:12:08the strength of charrismo seemed
00:12:11unmovable, but in 1969 and
00:12:1470, and especially in the five years that followed, that apparatus
00:12:17suffered a strong shake-up, strikes and
00:12:20independent demonstrations broke out in official centers in several
00:12:24states of the country and in all types of companies, this boom in the
00:12:27union movement was known as the workers' insurgency. let's
00:12:31start, yes, what would I like to ask
00:12:35you, Paco,
00:12:37eh, you, besides being a historian of that
00:12:41process, are a participant and
00:12:45militant, what is for you what drives, what
00:12:49leads people like you, to
00:12:52join, but also why do the... but the workers of Mexico
00:12:57conurbated
00:12:59area join this movement, this
00:13:02insurgency? Well, to begin with, we must say that
00:13:05it's not just the conurbated area of Mexico City, no, it's the whole
00:13:09country, but let's say in particular,
00:13:12well this, I would say
00:13:16that after '58 '59
00:13:19there is an apparent
00:13:22independent democratic union
00:13:25movement, it practically does not exist and what
00:13:28isolated cases
00:13:32eh in Mexico City and other places eh but
00:13:35eh it starts to change for many
00:13:38reasons eh after
00:13:41'69, we have to remember
00:13:45that one of the demands of the student movement of '68 is the
00:13:49freedom of Vallejo and the political railroad workers
00:13:53is a central demand of the
00:13:55students that, by the way, is a demand that ended up being
00:13:58fulfilled a year later when article 145 was repealed and
00:14:02articles 145 and 145
00:14:05bis of the federal penal code were repealed and
00:14:08Demetrio Vallejo and Valentín Campa, among
00:14:11others, were released from prison, one thing that Demetrio Vallejo
00:14:15did immediately was to tour the system, of course, to
00:14:19rebuild the railroad movement and
00:14:22he built what was called the railroad
00:14:25union MCF which had a lot of resonance in
00:14:27some regions, of course in the southeast where he came
00:14:31from
00:14:34the famous southeast plan which is what gave
00:14:38rise to the movement of '58
00:14:42so there is a reactivation, I'm telling
00:14:45you eh '69 '70
00:14:49'70, right? Which is when the
00:14:52movement is attempted to be rebuilt,
00:14:55the other, in industry in general, there is a small
00:14:59drop, a small drop in real wages that is not a
00:15:02decisive factor but it's there, but there is also
00:15:05a this eh
00:15:08exploitation through the work process
00:15:12in a very noticeable way in some industries, in some that
00:15:16depend a lot on the intensity of work such as the garment
00:15:19industry, the seamstresses who work in
00:15:23very unfavorable conditions and there is also
00:15:26a, let's say, a pressure to increase productivity, which
00:15:30means with rather outdated
00:15:34technology in the branch, it means greater
00:15:37exploitation of labor, more hours of work for the same
00:15:40salary, that is very evident in the case of garment manufacturing, but in
00:15:44other branches there is the same, it is the time of the dominance
00:15:47of the control of
00:15:50time in production, no, and the
00:15:53foremen, who are not called that, but are
00:15:56foremen, what they do all the time is measure times and
00:15:59movements, this phrase of times and movements is
00:16:03hurry up, work faster, although that means increasing the
00:16:06risk. work, insecurity increases, of course,
00:16:10accidents increase, but very evidently there is a
00:16:14continuous pressure from the production manager, let's call him a
00:16:18foreman or whatever you want, this on the workers, there is
00:16:22a permanent pressure, and then
00:16:24well, this fact that I mentioned about
00:16:28there being a small drop in real wages in those years for
00:16:32the first time, because keep in mind that the real salary, one of the reasons why
00:16:36all those years there was no important movement,
00:16:40was because it increased little by little, there is a
00:16:43growth, there is a continuous growth of
00:16:46real wages for 20 years, even from before '58
00:16:49'59, but very clearly in the period
00:16:54the Mexican miracle, there
00:16:57is a growth not only of real wages, there is
00:17:01also a growth of the working class, of the number of workers, so
00:17:05the wage mass is growing
00:17:08continuously, that explains in part, not completely, but it explains
00:17:12in part the issue of why there is this
00:17:15apparent, this apparent or real reflux of the labor
00:17:18movement, and there is another element,
00:17:22apart from that, of the greater intensity, is the increasingly ineffective, eh,
00:17:26more insufficient, unsatisfactory
00:17:30function of the charro unions, the charro
00:17:33unions have fulfilled, of course, they have fulfilled
00:17:36a function during all those years
00:17:39achieving eh small triumphs,
00:17:42small eh eh conquests in
00:17:46contracts, in collective labor contracts or even more
00:17:49generally eh and the other element that must be added
00:17:52is that in 1970 the federal
00:17:55labor law was approved, the new federal
00:17:58labor law, after 50 years of the previous one,
00:18:0241 years, 41 years of the previous one, curiously it's from
00:18:06Díaz Ordaz, that authoritarian
00:18:08president who publishes and and this and and
00:18:12the new federal labor law emerges that
00:18:15has many advantages, of course if they are fulfilled, right, and that's
00:18:19the problem, the problem is that they are not fulfilled, of course
00:18:22because except for minorities, neither the workers nor the militants are talking about the
00:18:26communist revolution, they are talking about complying with the law, about the
00:18:30law being complied with, yes, in some cases
00:18:34complying with the collective labor contract, in some cases.
00:18:37knowing the contract, knowing that
00:18:39it exists,
00:18:42listen, this, you have studied that as a historian and as
00:18:46an economist, but beyond getting into that part
00:18:50eh, by the way, the book from the beginning, your book from the beginning can be
00:18:53downloaded for free from the brigade's website to read freely, you can
00:18:57peek into this, you have
00:18:59written a good number of
00:19:01novels eh, in which the workers'
00:19:05militancy, the militants, the activists, the
00:19:08workers of this wave always appear in one way or another, sometimes in a central way,
00:19:11that is, there is a very personal, very
00:19:15subjective approach of yours in the good sense of the term
00:19:18subjective, eh, that are here in the books I have,
00:19:22jalostock, eh, la blanca, eh, and
00:19:25particularly the one we have been reviewing, the
00:19:28last one, if not, if I'm not mistaken, hallo stock engines,
00:19:32in which you make a
00:19:35story of many stories but which has a clear referent which is the Spicer
00:19:39strike, because speaking
00:19:42of the intimate, the personal, the subjective,
00:19:45Paco, why you and why Spicer? Well,
00:19:49this Spicer is in
00:19:531975, it is the moment, let's say,
00:19:55the last year, eh heroic, to put it somehow,
00:19:59epic of the union insurgency and the emblematic
00:20:03strike is the Spicer strike. which
00:20:06has many elements that, of course, other movements also
00:20:09had, but it gathers them all in a
00:20:12story that is eh truly
00:20:15intense for many months and that gathers many things,
00:20:19first of all, and it is something that I highlight a lot in that last
00:20:23book which is called the strike we lived eh is the
00:20:26relationship with students, of course the students who
00:20:30were activists of the 1968 movement, many of them
00:20:33were activists of the union movement. As advisors, as supporters,
00:20:38as union members, as militants who were not
00:20:42within the union, who were not within production, although
00:20:45some were, some were, but... the majority were not and
00:20:49they were there accompanying, showing solidarity
00:20:52and particularly in the
00:20:56movement there is a relationship with those who are the
00:20:58students of the moment, not only with the students
00:21:02who are communists, but with those who in 1975 are at
00:21:06the university, are at the polytechnic, are at the SHs and there is a
00:21:10direct relationship of a workers' strike with the students
00:21:13of that moment, also with the students who are no longer
00:21:16students. who are now union
00:21:20activists, these two things come together, so
00:21:24all that, all that is a general atmosphere in Mexican
00:21:28industry,
00:21:30all that appears in this particular factory which is
00:21:34Spicer, yes, well, it appears, well, because I was telling you then
00:21:37what does this situation lead to,
00:21:40it leads to what is called independent unionism,
00:21:43that is, if the official, charro, or whatever you want
00:21:46to call it, unionism, does not respond
00:21:50to what I need as a worker, that they respond to me, that they
00:21:54represent me, that they give me justice, well then the
00:21:57union doesn't work, and if there is a discourse from these small
00:22:01groups that are promoting that we are going to form an independent
00:22:04union and also the federal labor law says it's very
00:22:07easy, it says it's very easy, it doesn't mean it is, but it says
00:22:11it's very easy, gather 20 workers, go to the federal
00:22:15board, register your union, and you have the union and you can
00:22:18call a strike. No, well, it's not that easy, because
00:22:22for that you have to confront the charro union that opposes it, the boss
00:22:25who is with the charro union, the bureaucrats of the local
00:22:29board who are also against it, so it's not that easy, but the
00:22:33law says it is easy, right, so
00:22:36and in this new atmosphere, with this apparent opening, well, there are
00:22:40conditions to try to register an independent
00:22:43union and fight for the ownership of the contract against
00:22:47that other union that does not represent it and... that happened in
00:22:50Spicer, in Spicer what the workers
00:22:53did was they didn't have to create a new union, they created
00:22:57a section of an existing union, the national ironworkers'
00:23:00union that advised the labor front
00:23:04so what they did is much easier even
00:23:08procedurally because you create a
00:23:11section of an existing union, no, you don't need a new
00:23:15registration and that's what they did, they created a
00:23:17section within the national union of... and with that
00:23:21registration they already have then they could
00:23:23fight the union, what were they fighting for, they were fighting for the
00:23:27ownership of the contract, they said we
00:23:31represent the majority of the workers of this new union,
00:23:34therefore we have to be the holders of that
00:23:38collective contract that exists, they are not fighting for anything else, and the
00:23:42procedural solution to that
00:23:45demand is very simple, the board must do a
00:23:49recount. and that recount, whoever gets the majority
00:23:52is the holder of the collective contract, it's very
00:23:55simple, it's very easy, on paper, as
00:23:59you rightly said, on paper, in practice, that is the
00:24:02demand of the workers of many other workers, hey
00:24:06Paco, and beyond the fact that well, the movement was
00:24:09defeated and as we know the labor conquests of the
00:24:13revolution are now more forgotten than ever due to neoliberal
00:24:16reforms, but it taught us something in the democratic and libertarian
00:24:20spirit to the current Mexicans,
00:24:23no, I think it is, I think so,
00:24:25very much, and all the experience of the
00:24:29defeated union insurgency just like the experience of the defeated
00:24:32student movement, just like the experience of the
00:24:36teachers' movement, not totally defeated, but also defeated in many
00:24:40cases, no, just like this eh like
00:24:43other movements, the peasant movement of the 70s that was
00:24:47eh a... a number of thousands
00:24:50of land takeovers, all defeated or almost all,
00:24:54no, they were evicted from the land takeovers, in some cases
00:24:57they achieved some eh, some
00:25:00claims they were asking for, but in
00:25:04many cases no, they were defeated, like the popular
00:25:06urban movement, often
00:25:10guerrilla movement, crushed, not defeated,
00:25:13assassinated, the guerrillas and non-guerrillas
00:25:16who for some reason were related to... other
00:25:20urban guerrillas were crushed, defeated,
00:25:23disappeared through the dirty
00:25:26the 70s, the defeat of the
00:25:29radical decade, no, the defeats and
00:25:33finally they are becoming an accumulation not
00:25:37only of experience but also of anger, no, of course, and that
00:25:40people eventually make them pay for it, not only the experience,
00:25:44not the worker who was a worker in those years and who
00:25:47realized what it was like to be a union. pending what
00:25:51it was to strike, of the strength he had, well, he was never the same again,
00:25:54no, and the son of that worker, no, who
00:25:58will be a second or third generation, will no longer think
00:26:01the same as... as he thought when he first started working in a
00:26:05factory, that's right, so that's
00:26:08another characteristic of that Spiker
00:26:11strike, which is why it's an emblematic strike, not only
00:26:15for that reason, for everything I've said, it's an emblematic strike and the hunger strike,
00:26:19resorting to this method that turned it into a
00:26:22strike that had many echoes everywhere,
00:26:25not only in the country, but also in other countries, no,
00:26:29messages of solidarity were received. from many parts
00:26:33of the world, from many unions in the world, and the hunger strike,
00:26:36which is an unusual method, an
00:26:39unusual form of struggle in the labor movement, however,
00:26:43in this case it had a great impact, that's
00:26:47right, well Paco, thank you very much,
00:26:51you're welcome, thank you, I hope we continue telling, we will continue telling
00:26:55these stories, see you soon,
00:26:57Paco.
00:27:038-hour workday, seventh day of rest, equal pay
00:27:07for equal work, minimum wage, social security,
00:27:11job security, that's what the workers of the 70s fought for,
00:27:14perhaps they were defeated, but their demands are still alive and they continue
00:27:18organizing, see you
00:27:20soon,
00:27:26we do nothing but
00:27:27work.
00:27:32we never
00:27:33see them,
00:27:36our children are cannon fodder.
00:28:26We invite you to the next episode of Women Making History in which
00:28:29we will be talking about the caregiving tasks of women. American
00:28:33and Afro-descendant women, the upbringing as it was in these towns and as we also
00:28:37see it today, well, it's a collective upbringing, only
00:28:40great deeds don't matter, in the everyday, in these caregiving
00:28:44tasks an extremely important
00:28:47task is being carried out,
00:28:49Women Making History, Monday 10:15
00:28:53a.m.,
00:28:58meet the writer whose life was marked by
00:29:01the... and repression in great figures of Mexican
00:29:05art this Sunday at 2:45
00:29:08p.m. The love that exists between
00:29:12José, Silvestre and Fermín. Silvestre is
00:29:16even in some of José's stories, they were
00:29:18naturally communist fighters,
00:29:21anti-bourgeois. On channel 14. When they
00:29:25ask you what old politics is, show them this video.
00:29:28Corruption is synonymous with PRI in this country.
00:29:34the street, dishonesty,
00:29:37a product of 71 years of a party dictatorship,
00:29:41you are the crooked ones, the bad ones at
00:29:44governing and the corrupt will never change, there is no
00:29:48way our movement will go with the old
00:29:50politics, citizen
00:29:54movement, next,
00:29:57great figures of Mexican
00:29:59art.
00:30:05Classification A for all audiences.
00:30:38You form the body of those who at
00:30:41different times of the struggle, from
00:30:44July 26 of this violent year, bitter, but
00:30:48equally joyful and hopeful of
00:30:501968,
00:30:53constitute our first fallen,
00:30:56the word sounds harsh and naked,