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or is there any doubt In terms of spreading ideas and taking advantage of the media, Andrés Manuel comes out to the right with two lengths ahead. The media fuss that the distorters of reality carry out does not matter. Three years away from the inauguration of his government, the facts refute the commentators turned electronic agitators, who see how their attacks instead of weakening him strengthen him and, without modesty, moan their desperation, like López Dóriga, exhibited on Monday past in the morning.
Another annotation is taken by the Tabascan, by allowing candidates to lead the Oil Union, present their profiles and their programmatic ideas on the morning stage. Those who attend the call are far from staging a real debate, and because of what happened on Monday, the participants do not have an adequate profile for the situation of the current union movement.
Probably in the following presentations we will see similar candidates, lost and without a compass to understand what trade unionism is, what its main aspects are and its connection with national life. That is to say, we are facing a great depoliticized mass of workers, expropriated of their abilities to express themselves and their transforming energy; Let’s not talk about workers who are not affiliated with any union or who, without knowing it, belong to the secret payroll of white unions.
Without professionals who teach, capable pictures that run from the perspective of class will not be produced. This situation is explained by the historical origins of trade unionism in Mexico, a vice of origin that was never overcome. It started as an appendix or, rather, as a pillar of the corporate regime established since the Mexican Revolution. It is not exclusive to tankers; all workers belonging to the unions are in the same situation. Fasting bases of political consciousness, without class perspective, expressing exclusively concrete demands without even thinking about transforming capitalism: wages that are enough to cope with life, even if it is with two or three jobs at the same time, health petitioners, or the exit to the informal economy when by rebellion they are removed from the companies.
But despite being organizations within the logic of power, during the more than 30 years of neoliberal rule, the unions were treated as enemies of the Mexican State. It was not an autonomous decision, but an imposition of international neoliberalism that suddenly took over the entire world stage.
In Mexico, there are three examples in which we can see neoliberal programmers dealing mortal blows to the most rejoicing trade unionism during the dark years. One was the SME, destroyed with a Calderonista stroke, leaving more than 40,000 workers of the Central Light and Power Company on the streets. Another example was the bankruptcy maneuver against the Mexicana de Aviación workers’ union, and the third was the concealment of security rights in mining facilities, the right to strike and to elect their representatives autonomously; This was the case of the miners from Cananea, Sonora, Sombrerete, in Zacatecas, and Taxco, in the state of Guerrero, all belonging to the National Union of Mining Workers.
Currently of the three, the case of Cananea is the one that appears most bitter, due to the divergence in the positions of the Grupo México consortium and Section 65 of the Canaan mineral. There is confusion among the public about what the consortium and the miners are after, and it is time to clear up the story.
Fourteen years of strike have taken almost half of the workers from Canaan, some because they got tired of waiting and gave up, and others because they died. Of the more than 1,200 workers who inaugurated the strike, a little more than half are currently holding it, by way of de facto. Through their movement they have made huge political mistakes, due to the persistence of their corporatist ideology.
I am perhaps the one who has criticized them publicly and head-on for these positions, even in these very pages. But there they are, believing in their stolen right to strike, feeling capable of defeating the powerful consortium, trusting in their strength and that justice must be won.
Because of that working-class obstinacy that gives them an unbeatable moral quality, I dare to propose that they are also worthy of having the President’s conference open a space for them. That the public debate also be opened where Grupo México exposes its position regarding this movement inaugurated in the last century, and that things be said face to face so that the Mexican people decide democratically to which side the balance of justice tilts.
* Research professor at El Colegio de Sonora
