▲ The non-conformists expressed their weariness for the 15 years without response to their requests.Photo Cristina Gomez
Jared Laureles and Cristina Gomez Lima
Correspondent
Newspaper La Jornada
Sunday, August 21, 2022, p. 8
Workers from section 65 of the National Union of Mining, Metallurgical and Similar Workers of the Mexican Republic staged an eight-hour blockade yesterday on the Mexico 2 federal highway in the Ímuris-Cananea section, in Sonora, to demand that the federal government resolve the strike who has already spent 15 years at the Buenavista del Cobre mine, which is operated by the Grupo México consortium.
The decision was made unanimously in an assembly by the workers’ base after the Secretary of the Interior, Adán Augusto López Hernández, twice failed to fulfill its commitment
to go personally to Cananea –on August 6 and 13 last–, in order to present the miners with concrete advances in their petition.
From 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., with the purpose of putting pressure on President López Obrador’s visit to the state of Sonora, some 400 miners accompanied by their families blocked the road from the Cananea-Ímuris junction, which left hundreds stranded. of cargo trailers, passenger trucks and private cars. Despite the heavy rain, the protesters marched and shouted slogans.
This is the second time this year that the miners have paralyzed this highway, which is used daily by trucks and trailers transporting goods to be delivered across the border.
In the afternoon, after the Ministry of the Interior promised to resume negotiations, the miners and their families lifted the blockade. It was agreed to resume the talks at the agency’s headquarters on September 6, in Mexico City, where the main demands of the miners will be analyzed.
Antonio Navarrete, spokesman and member of the negotiating commission of section 65, in Cananea, explained that the possibility of advancing on social security issues, restructuring of debts with Infonavit, as well as dealing with the restitution of his collective contract and the reinstatement of the miners, who are nerve points
to solve the conflict that, he said, accumulates three decades due to the closure and arrogance
of Germán Larrea, owner of the company.
Yesterday’s protest coincided with the date called green sunday
which refers to when, in 1989, former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari sent soldiers to Cananea with the aim of quelling the miners’ protest against the fraudulent declaration of bankruptcy of the historic mine, which was later handed over to Germán Larrea.
Fifteen years after the labor conflict broke out at the Cananea mine, the 657 affected miners warned that they and their families are fed up with all the time that has passed without receiving a response to their petitions.
Heriberto Verdugo, delegate of Section 65 in Sonora, explained that one of the campaign commitments of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador was to resolve the labor conflict of the miners of section 65 of the national union, so they expect him to fulfill his promise before the end of his administration in the federal government.
