Fidel Velázquez Sánchez
Encyclopedia
Fidel Velázquez Sánchez was the preeminent Mexican
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

 union leader of the 20th century. In 1936 he was one of the original founders, along with Vicente Lombardo Toledano
Vicente Lombardo Toledano
Vicente Lombardo Toledano was one of the foremost Mexican labor leaders of the 20th century. He founded the Confederation of Mexican Workers , the national labor federation most closely associated with the ruling party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party , for most of the last sixty-five years...

, of the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), the national labor federation most closely associated with the ruling party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party
Institutional Revolutionary Party
The Institutional Revolutionary Party is a Mexican political party that held power in the country—under a succession of names—for more than 70 years. The PRI is a member of the Socialist International, as is the rival Party of the Democratic Revolution , making Mexico one of the few...

 (PRI). He replaced Lombardo as the leader of the CTM in 1941, then expelled him from it in 1948. He led the CTM, which grew increasingly corrupt and conservative, until his death in 1997.

Early years

Velázquez was born in San Pedro Azcapotzaltongo (now Villa Nicolás Romero), State of México. His father was the mayor of the town. The family moved to Puebla, Puebla
Puebla, Puebla
The city and municipality of Puebla is the capital of the state of Puebla, and one of the five most important colonial cities in Mexico. Being a planned city, it is located to the east of Mexico City and west of Mexico's main port, Veracruz, on the main route between the two.The city was founded...

, during the Mexican Revolution
Mexican Revolution
The Mexican Revolution was a major armed struggle that started in 1910, with an uprising led by Francisco I. Madero against longtime autocrat Porfirio Díaz. The Revolution was characterized by several socialist, liberal, anarchist, populist, and agrarianist movements. Over time the Revolution...

.

After his father's death in 1920 Velázquez moved to the Azcapotzalco
Azcapotzalco
Azcapotzalco is one of the 16 delegaciones into which Mexico's Federal District is divided. Azcapotzalco is in the northwestern part of Mexico City...

 area of Mexico City
Mexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...

, where he worked, among other things, delivering milk. In 1923 he organized a union of milk industry workers, which he affiliated with the Confederación Regional Obrera Mexicana
Regional Confederation of Mexican Workers
The Confederación Regional Obrera Mexicana is a federation of labor unions in Mexico....

, (CROM), the largest and most powerful union confederation of the day and a key supporter of the regimes of Plutarco Elías Calles
Plutarco Elías Calles
Plutarco Elías Calles was a Mexican general and politician. He was president of Mexico from 1924 to 1928, but he continued to be the de facto ruler from 1928–1935, a period known as the maximato...

 and Álvaro Obregón
Álvaro Obregón
General Álvaro Obregón Salido was the President of Mexico from 1920 to 1924. He was assassinated in 1928, shortly after winning election to another presidential term....

.

In 1928 former President Obregón was assassinated by a right-wing Roman Catholic associated with the Cristero movement
Cristero War
The Cristero War of 1926 to 1929 was an uprising and counter-revolution against the Mexican government in power at that time. The rebellion was set off by the strict enforcement of the anti-clerical provisions of the Mexican Constitution of 1917 and the expansion of further anti-clerical laws...

. While neither CROM nor its leader, Luis Morones
Luis Napoleón Morones
Luis Napoleón Morones was a Mexican union boss who served as secretary general of the Regional Confederation of Mexican Workers and as secretary of economy under President Plutarco Elías Calles....

, had any connection to the crime, Calles (who was about to finish his term of office and to begin his run as éminence grise behind the presidency in the period known as El Maximato) considered Morones the intellectual author of the assassination because he had denounced Obregón's plans to amend the constitution to allow himself to serve another term as President of Mexico. Obregón's successor, Emilio Portes Gil
Emilio Portes Gil
Emilio Cándido Portes Gil was President of Mexico from 1928 to 1930.-Biography:Portes Gil was born in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of the state of Tamaulipas in northeast Mexico....

 – a forced ally of Calles due to the upheaval created by Obregón's assassination – fired CROM officials from their government posts and threw the government's support to rival union groups, such as the Confederación General de Trabajadores
General Confederation of Workers (Mexico)
The Confederación General de Trabajadores is a federation of labor unions in Mexico. It was founded in February 1921 by anarchists, syndicalists and others on the far left who opposed the more moderate, pro-government Confederación Regional Obrera Mexicana...

, (CGT), a nominally anarchist group, and the Confederación Sindical Unitaria de México, a group associated with the Mexican Communist Party (PCM). The CROM began to disintegrate once it lost state support.

Velázquez and Jesús Yuren, head of the Union of Cleaning and Transport Workers, withdrew their unions from the CROM and, on February 25, 1929, organized the Confederación Sindical de Trabajadores del Distrito Federal (CSTDF), a federation of unions within the Federal District. The CSTDF was a hodgepodge, much like the Knights of Labor
Knights of Labor
The Knights of Labor was the largest and one of the most important American labor organizations of the 1880s. Its most important leader was Terence Powderly...

 in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 in the nineteenth century: it included the two unions led by Velázquez and Yuren, street vendors and merchants organizations, the "unión blanca" or company union
Company union
A company union is a trade union which is located within and run by a company or by the national government, and is not affiliated with an independent trade union. Company unions were outlawed in the United States by the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, due to their use as agents for interference...

 of streetcar workers composed largely of strikebreakers, a union of homeopathic
Homeopathy
Homeopathy is a form of alternative medicine in which practitioners claim to treat patients using highly diluted preparations that are believed to cause healthy people to exhibit symptoms that are similar to those exhibited by the patient...

 doctors, grave diggers and bottling plant workers.

Three other union leaders, Fernando Amilpa, Alfonso Sanchez Madriaga and Luis Quintero, took their unions out of CROM to affiliate with the CSTDF shortly thereafter. When Morones stated that he was glad to be rid of these "worms," a CGT union leader reportedly said, "They are not worms, but wolves and will soon eat up the chickens in the hutch." The five were thereafter known as los cinco lobitos, or "the five little wolves".

Velázquez played an active role in trade union affairs in the early 1930s: he was a member of the commission that edited the new Federal Labor Law in 1931, took part in proceedings before the Federal Labor Board, which had the power to register unions or declare a strike legal or illegal, and established ties with both the governmental representatives on the Board and with the employers. As a wave of labor militancy came to México in the wake of the worldwide depression of the 1930s, Velázquez, leaders of the CGT, and Lombardo Toledano, who had also left CROM, founded the Confederación General de Obreros y Campesinos de México (CGOCM) or General Confederation of Workers and Peasants of Mexico, on June 28, 1933.

Founding the CTM

The CGOCM became the most important union body in Mexico, leading a number of strikes in 1934. When President Lázaro Cárdenas del Río called on unions for support in resisting a threatened coup by Calles and opposing an employers' strike in Monterrey
Monterrey
Monterrey , is the capital city of the northeastern state of Nuevo León in the country of Mexico. The city is anchor to the third-largest metropolitan area in Mexico and is ranked as the ninth-largest city in the nation. Monterrey serves as a commercial center in the north of the country and is the...

, the CGOCM and the PCM rallied to his defense.

Cárdenas also called on these unions to form a single unified body. The CGOCM transformed itself into the Confederación de Trabajadores de México, or CTM, in response.

The CTM almost disintegrated at the moment of its formation. While Lombardo Toledano was a convinced Stalinist
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...

 and the most important representative of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 in Mexico and Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages  – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...

 for the decade after his visit to the Soviet Union in 1935, he was never a member of the PCM. At the founding convention of the CTM, the PCM and the industrial unions it had organized had been promised the position of organizational secretary, the second most powerful position within the CTM. When Lombardo Toledano gave that position to Velázquez, the left unions walked out of the convention. Under pressure to preserve unity, however, they returned and grudgingly assented to Velázquez's election.

The PCM and its unions almost walked out of the CTM a second time the following year. Earl Browder
Earl Browder
Earl Russell Browder was an American communist and General Secretary of the Communist Party USA from 1934 to 1945. He was expelled from the party in 1946.- Early years :...

, then head of the Communist Party USA
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....

, urged them to accept "unity at all costs", and they returned. The CTM (along with the CGT, CROM and the electrical workers union) formally aligned with the Partido Revolucionario Mexicano, the precursor of the PRI. as its "labor sector" in 1938.

As part of the party, and therefore effectively part of the state, the CTM received a number of tangible benefits. The Federal Labor Boards, which had the power to determine which unions could represent workers and which strikes were legal, consistently favored the CTM against its rivals. Over time, the CTM became dependent on the PRI and the state for financial support as well: the PRI provided CTM with subsidies, while the CTM in return required all workers to join the union recognized at their workplace and, by extension, the PRI. The PRI also provided CTM leaders with positions at all levels of government and reserved at least one Senatorial position for a CTM leader.

On the other hand, Cárdenas took steps to ensure that CTM did not acquire so much power that it could be independent of the party. He prohibited the CTM from representing government employees, creating a separate union federation for these workers, and barred the CTM from admitting farm workers to membership.

Taking over the CTM

As organizational secretary, Velázquez involved himself in the day-to-day decisions of the organization, building up a power base of patronage. When Lombardo Toledano stepped down as general secretary of the CTM at the end of his term, Velázquez took his place on February 28, 1941. In 1946, the CTM joined in forming the new PRI, becoming one of its constituent parts. As the formal division between the PRI and the state was blurred, the distinctions between the CTM and the party and the state likewise became harder to discern.

Lombardo Toledano had remained active in the CTM after Velázquez replaced him. That changed, however, after Lombardo Toledano broke with the PRI in 1947, forming the Partido Popular. The CTM not only refused to endorse the new party, but expelled Lombardo Toledano, his supporters on the CTM's executive board, and other leftwing unionists and withdrew from both the Confederación de Trabajadores de América Latina, a regional confederation founded by Lombardo Toledano, and the pro-Soviet World Federation of Trade Unions
World Federation of Trade Unions
The World Federation of Trade Unions was established in 1945 to replace the International Federation of Trade Unions. Its mission was to bring together trade unions across the world in a single international organization, much like the United Nations...

. The CTM subsequently affiliated with the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions
International Confederation of Free Trade Unions
The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions was an international trade union. It came into being on 7 December 1949 following a split within the World Federation of Trade Unions , and was dissolved on 31 October 2006 when it merged with the World Confederation of Labour to form the...

.

Remaking Mexican labor

Velázquez and the CTM then proceeded, with the help of the state, to eliminate independent union leaders in industrial unions such as the miners', petroleum workers' and railroad workers' unions. The state exercised its authority to oust uncooperative union leaders, either by removing them directly or manipulating internal union elections.

The new leaders were referred to as charros, or "cowboys", after Jesús Díaz de Leon, the leader imposed on the railroad workers union in 1948, who was known for his fondness for the finery associated with Mexican cowboys
Charro
Charro is a term referring to a traditional horseman from Mexico, originating in the central-western regions primarily in the state of Jalisco including: Zacatecas, Durango, Guanajuato, Morelos, Puebla...

. The government likewise coerced the STPRM, the union that represented the workers at PEMEX
Pemex
Petróleos Mexicanos or Pemex is a Mexican state-owned petroleum company. As of 2010, with a total asset worth of $415.75 billion, it is the second non-publicly listed largest company in the world by total market value, and Latin America's second largest enterprise by annual revenue as of 2009...

, the state-run petroleum enterprise, to accept Gustavo Roldán Vargas as its new leader in 1949 and imposed Jesús Carrasco on the Miners and Metal Workers Union (the SNTMMSRM) in 1950.

These heavy-handed efforts did not always go unopposed: when the government installed Carrasco as the head of the SNTMMSRM, a number of locals bolted from the union to form the National Miners Union. When a strike broke out at the Nueva Rosita mine in 1950, the employer prevailed on local businesses to refuse to sell food to the strikers while the government declared martial law in the area, arresting the leaders of the strike, seizing the union's treasury and barring all meetings. The government used similar tactics in 1959, nationalizing the rail industry, firing thousands of strikers and sentencing union leaders to more than ten years in prison for leading a strike. The CTM approved these and other measures to isolate or eliminate independent unions or insurgent movements. By the end of the 1950s most opposition to Velázquez within the CTM had been eliminated.

The CTM did not hold a monopoly on labor organizing or even the exclusive relationship with the PRI: the CROM and other organizations also had a formal relationship with the PRI through its Congreso de Trabajo (CT). The CMT had, however, the advantage of state sponsorship, which it used to oppose any independent unions and to hold down the demands of its constituent unions at the behest of PRI leadership. The CTM adopted a practice of entering into "protection contracts", which would be called "sweetheart contracts" in the United States, which workers not only had no role in negotiating, but in some cases were not even aware existed. Many of these unrepresentative unions degenerated into organizations that "sold" contracts with a CTM affiliate as a guarantee against representation by independent unions, but which did not function as a union in any meaningful sense.

The age of dinosaurs

Those PRI leaders who remained in power acquired the derisive name of "dinosaurs". Velázquez was the longest-lived of them all. He became one of the most conservative as well.

Velázquez and the CTM were opposed to every movement that opposed the status quo: in 1968 he verbally attacked the student demonstrators who supported Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

 and called for democracy in México as radicals inspired by foreign doctrines. The government went further, killing several students in the Tlatelolco massacre
Tlatelolco massacre
The Tlatelolco massacre, also known as The Night of Tlatelolco , was a government massacre of student and civilian protesters and bystanders that took place during the afternoon and night of October 2, 1968, in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in the Tlatelolco section of Mexico City...

 that October. Velázquez supported the suppression of the movement.

In 1972 the CT expelled STERM, a union of electrical workers that had demanded union democracy and taken a more militant stance toward employers. When the union did not collapse, the government merged it with another union to form a new organization, the SUTERM. Velázquez intervened in SUTERM's internal affairs to drive out the former leaders of STERM, after which employers blacklisted them and their supporters.

Even then, however, those workers persisted, organizing rallies of more than 100,000 electrical workers and their supporters, and calling a strike at the Federal Electrical Commission (CFE) on July 16, 1976. That strike was ended by army units and thugs who occupied the CFE plants; the army interned hundreds of strikers in San Luis Potosí
San Luis Potosí, San Luis Potosí
San Luis Potosí, commonly called SLP or simply San Luis, is the capital of, and most populous city in the Mexican state of the same name. The city lies at an elevation of 1,850 meters...

, while thugs beat workers and forced them to sign letters supporting the charro leadership of the SUTERM.

Velázquez was the first to demand that Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas
Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas
Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano is a prominent Mexican politician. He was a former Head of Government of the Federal District and a founder of the Party of the Democratic Revolution .-Biography:...

, who organized the Democratic Current within the PRI in 1987 and went on to found the Partido de la Revolución Democrática
Party of the Democratic Revolution
The Party of the Democratic Revolution is a democratic socialist party in Mexico and one of 2 Mexican affiliates of the Socialist International...

 (PRD), be expelled from the PRI for arguing for democratization and challenging the entrenched leadership. Velázquez called Cárdenas a violent radical and suggested that he was a Communist. Velázquez was also one of the first to attack the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional
Zapatista Army of National Liberation
The Zapatista Army of National Liberation is a revolutionary leftist group based in Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico....

 (EZLN) when it led an armed rebellion in Chiapas
Chiapas
Chiapas officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Chiapas is one of the 31 states that, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 118 municipalities and its capital city is Tuxtla Gutierrez. Other important cites in Chiapas include San Cristóbal de las...

.

Velázquez was also a faithful supporter of the "technocrats" within the PRI who sought to dismantle the nationalist economic policies of the Mexican Revolution in order to open Mexico further to foreign investment, including Miguel de la Madrid
Miguel de la Madrid
Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado is a Mexican politician affiliated to the Institutional Revolutionary Party who served as President of Mexico from 1982 to 1988.-Biography:...

, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, and Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León. Velázquez continued to support them even as they privatized state-owned industries, a bastion of power for the CTM, as part of the structural adjustment plans imposed by the International Monetary Fund
International Monetary Fund
The International Monetary Fund is an organization of 187 countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world...

, while signing national pacts that shifted most of the burden to workers while their minimum wage in real terms fell by nearly 70 percent in these years. Velázquez also supported passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement
North American Free Trade Agreement
The North American Free Trade Agreement or NAFTA is an agreement signed by the governments of Canada, Mexico, and the United States, creating a trilateral trade bloc in North America. The agreement came into force on January 1, 1994. It superseded the Canada – United States Free Trade Agreement...

 in 1993 after initially denouncing it as a disaster for workers of all three countries.

Even so, Velázquez's power within the PRI slipped in the 1990s as his own health declined. While in the past every President of Mexico conferred with Velázquez before picking a successor, Velázquez was not consulted in the selection of Luis Donaldo Colosio
Luis Donaldo Colosio
Luis Donaldo Colosio Murrieta was a Mexican politician, and PRI presidential candidate, who was assassinated at a campaign rally in Tijuana during the Mexican Presidential campaign of 1994.-Political history:...

 as the PRI's candidate for President in 1994 and was given only a few minutes' notice of the selection of Zedillo to replace Colosio after his assassination.

Velázquez called off the traditional May Day
May Day
May Day on May 1 is an ancient northern hemisphere spring festival and usually a public holiday; it is also a traditional spring holiday in many cultures....

 rallies of workers in 1995, threatening those who disobeyed with fines or expulsion, to avoid the possibility of embarrassing displays of opposition to the CTM or the PRI. In lieu of a May Day march in 1996, a group put on a mock funeral for Velázquez.

The real funeral, attended by all of México's political elite, came a year later. Zedillo offered his eulogy for Velázquez: "Don Fidel knew how to reconcile the special interests of workers with the greater interest of the nation".

Velázquez's interim successor, Blas Chumacero
Blas Chumacero
Blas Chumacero Sánchez was a Mexican trade union leader and interim secretary general of the Confederation of Mexican Workers after Fidel Velásquez' death....

, died three weeks after Velázquez at the age of 92. He was succeeded in turn by Leonardo Rodríguez Alcaine
Leonardo Rodríguez Alcaine
Leonardo Rodríguez Alcaine was a Mexican trade union leader and a long-serving legislator of the Institutional Revolutionary Party...

, aged 76. A rival federation, the National Union of Workers (UNT), was formed in November 1997 to challenge Velázquez's legacy.

External references


Further reading

  • La Botz, Dan
    Dan La Botz
    Daniel H. La Botz is a prominent American labor union activist, academic, journalist, and author. He was a co-founder of Teamsters for a Democratic Union and has written extensively on worker rights in the United States and Mexico...

    , The Crisis in Mexican Labor, New York : Praeger, 1988. ISBN 0275926001
  • La Botz, Dan
    Dan La Botz
    Daniel H. La Botz is a prominent American labor union activist, academic, journalist, and author. He was a co-founder of Teamsters for a Democratic Union and has written extensively on worker rights in the United States and Mexico...

    , Mask of Democracy, Labor Suppression in Mexico Today, Boston : South End Press, 1992. ISBN 089608437X
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