Chile Rescue Stirs Up Bitter Memories of Mexican Mining Disaster

by Kristin Bricker, Upside Down World

The rescue of 33 miners who spent 68 days underground following a cave-in a Chilean copper mine has struck a nerve in Mexico, where the widows of 63 miners killed in the Pasta de Conchos disaster are still fighting for justice and the right to give their husbands a decent burial.

On February 19, 2006, an explosion in the Pasta de Conchos coalmine, located in the state of Coahuila, buried sixty-five miners. Only two bodies were ever recovered. Grupo México, the Mexican company that owns the mine, left the other sixty-three bodies in the ground.

As the the Chilean miners were raised to the surface on October 13, widows and other family members gathered at the Pasta de Conchos mine to ask themselves what would have happened if the Mexican government had responded as the Chilean government did. "In Chile they declared that they were alive," said the families in a statement. "They didn't condemn them to death, they weren't discouraged by the 700 meters that separated them, nor by the fact that a rescue beyond a depth of 300 meters had never been attempted before." The Pasta de Conchos miners' location is estimated to be only 150 meters below the surface.

The mining union that represented some of the miners killed in the Pasta de Conchos argues that, in contrast with the Chilean response, "Grupo México, with the [Mexican government's] full complicity, decided to close the mine only five days after the incident, when there was still hope that the trapped miners were alive. It condemned them to death and, above all, covered up the real causes of the tragedy."
Raúl Vera López, the bishop of Saltillo, Coahuila, said that he suspects that Grupo México doesn't want to recover the remaining 63 bodies for fear of proving that at least some of the miners survived the explosion and died awaiting rescue. "If they find the bodies all together, with clothing, bones, helmets," argues Bishop Vera, "it means that they were waiting to be rescued."

Grupo México justified calling off the rescue after only five days by arguing that it was impossible that any miner survived the explosion, which Coahuila Gov. Humberto Moreira said had reached temperatures of 600˚C. The company also presented a report that claimed that the air inside the mine could not sustain life. The report was based on air samples taken from air ducts. However, samples were taken from a part of the mine where only 15-26 workers were believed to be working when the explosion occurred.

Carlos Rodriguez of the Center for Labor Reflection and Action (CEREAL) questions Grupo México’s decision to call off the search so soon. “Why wasn’t seismic monitoring used [during the rescue attempt] to locate where people were concentrated?” he asks. “Digital plans weren’t given to the rescuers so that they would know where the miners were working. If [the company] really knew where the workers were, why didn’t it drill? If they would have drilled they could have gotten the methane gas out of there, and they would have found signs of life. Chile searched [for survivors] for 19 days. Grupo México searched for 48 hours, and it declared them all dead after five days.”

Rodriguez believes that despite the companies’ claims, some miners could have survived the blast. “The two bodies that were recovered were not burnt,” he argues. If all of the miners died from the heat of the explosion, “why is it that the only two bodies that have been recovered weren’t burnt?”
Elvira Martínez, the widow of one of the trapped miners, believes that Grupo México has consistently opposed rescue and recovery efforts because it wants to leave incriminating evidence in the ground. “They’re afraid of what could be found. They don’t want the evidence to come out: the safety conditions and, above all, how our family members died in there.”

Rodriguez believes Grupo México’s blatant disregard for safety regulations caused the explosion. “They used machinery that was prohibited because it is dangerous. The gas levels were very high. Methane gas, between 11 and 12 percent is explosive. The first measurements that were done following the explosion were at 54%. The ventilation system was extremely deficient.”

The Mexican Geological Service contracted mining specialist Raúl Meza Zúñiga to investigate the possible causes of the fatal explosion. Meza argues that the mine was being overexploited, with workers extracting over 250 tons of coal per hour. Meza believes that the dangerously high extraction rate released the methane gas that is naturally found in coal deposits, raising the level of methane gas in the mine to an explosive level. The use of soldering and welding equipment in a mine where gas levels were not properly tested could have caused the explosion.

A government-commissioned report on safety conditions in the Pasta de Conchos mine found that the supports that reinforced the mineshaft were not designed to withstand horizontal pressure, such as the pressure produced by an explosion. The explosion caused multiple cave-ins in the mine. The report concluded, “The failures that are described throughout the Pasta de Conchos report are, in almost all cases, systemic failures: of safety, of maintenance, administrative controls, of emergency preparedness, and of emergency response.”

Government Complicity

The Pasta de Conchos mine had many known safety problems for years before the 2006 explosion. Rodriguez accuses the government of not enforcing Mexican mine safety regulations that could have prevented the explosion. “We have safety inspection reports for Pasta de Conchos that go back as far as the year 2000. [The explosion] in 2006 was in danger of happening since 2000,” he argues. “The mines weren’t properly inspected. And if they were inspected, the proper precautionary measures were not required. And if they were required, the company didn’t enact them, because it was cheaper for them to pay the fine than to implement measures to guarantee the workers’ safety.”

The International Labor Organization, which is currently reviewing the Pasta de Conchos disaster, concluded that “the Government of Mexico did not do all that was reasonable expected of it to avoid or to minimize the effects of the Accident which had such devastating effects with the loss of life of as many as 65 miners.”

Bishop Vera argues, “The federal government is essentially covering up a murder that was committed by Grupo Mexico because they've systematically refused to recover the bodies.”

Certain government officials’ financial conflict of interest could have played a role in the Mexican government’s indifference in the face of glaring safety issues at the mine and the subsequent explosion. “The reason why there wasn’t a rescue at Pasta de Conchos,” argues Rodriguez, “is the relationship between economic power and political power.”

Grupo México became Mexico’s largest mining company—and its owner, the third richest man in Mexico—thanks in large part to a World Bank-mandated restructuring of Mexico’s mining sector. This restructuring opened up Mexico’s mining sector to privatization, and allowed former president Carlos Salinas to sell off the nation’s state-owned companies to his friends at bargain basement prices. Grupo México snatched up state-owned companies for a fraction of their real values.

In addition to its economic power, Grupo México has significant political power, thanks to the politicians who have worked for the company. At the time of the Pasta de Conchos disaster, two members of Grupo México’s Board of Directors also sat on the Board of Directors of the Vamos México Foundation, which is run by then-president Vicente Fox’s wife.

Several former Cabinet members have served on Grupo México’s Board. Since 2001, Juan Rebolledo Gout has served as the Grupo México’s International Vice-President. Gout served in the Salinas and Zedillo administrations, as spokesman for the President and Deputy Secretary of Foreign Affairs, respectively. Luis Téllez Kuenzler served as President Zedillo’s Chief of Staff and Secretary of Energy. He was Grupo México’s Chairman of the Board during the Pasta de Conchos disaster, and he served as current President Calderón’s Secretary of Communications and Transportation. Carlos Ruiz Sacristan was Secretary of Communications and Transportation from 1995-2000; he joined the Board of Directors of Southern Copper Corp. (owned by Grupo México) in 2004. Armando Ortega Gómez has served on Southern Copper’s Board since 2002. He was Grupo México’s General Counsel during the Pasta de Conchos disaster. Just prior to joining Grupo México, Ortega served as the Mexican government’s Deputy Vice Minister of Economy.

“It is this Board of Directors who could have said, ‘We will rescue the miners, no matter what it costs,’” argues Rodriguez. “The people who made the decision to not rescue the miners are the economic powerhouses of this country.”

It is not surprising then, that Manuel Fuentes, a lawyer representing the victims’ families, reports that Minera México, the Grupo México subsidiary that ran the Pasta de Conchos mine, “has not paid a single cent of its fines. Not a single Minera México employee has set foot in jail, and currently there is not a single judicial procedure open” against the company.

On the contrary, Grupo México has only strengthened its position since the disaster. The Mexican government awarded the company a mining concession in Zacatecas only two days after the Pasta de Conchos explosion.

Despite a government order to permanently close Pasta de Conchos following the explosion, former governor of Coahuila Rogelio Montenayor Seguy managed to re-open the site’s coal washing facility by setting up a straw company that he claims purchased the plant from Grupo México. In 2007, the same year that the government ordered Pasta de Conchos closed, it awarded Grupo México thirty new concessions, including some in Coahuila. In 2008, Grupo México received another 33 mining concessions.

Faced with such cynicism, the Pasta de Conchos families have brought their case before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). They argue that they have exhausted all of their legal options, but justice hasn’t been served. The IACHR process will take time, but it is their last hope to hold the Mexican government and Grupo México responsible for a crime the Mexican miners union has termed “an industrial homicide.”

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Working Class Under the Gun: Mexico’s Other War

A shorter version of this article appears in the current issue of Left Turn magazine, which is on newsstands now, or can be purchased online.

by Kristin Bricker 

Anyone who saw the police strapping on protective gear on October 10, 2009, probably thought they were preparing to battle organized crime.  That night, six thousand militarized federal police deployed to Mexico City and four surrounding states. But they weren’t there to take down a drug cartel. Their orders were to bust the Mexican Electrical Workers Union, the SME.

Without warning, the police stormed government-owned power plants and substations and ordered all of the workers out at gunpoint.  No pink slip, just the barrel of a gun—and instantly 44,000 workers found themselves jobless.  Another 16,000 retirees saw their pensions disappear overnight.  In one hour, President Felipe Calderon fired every member of the SME, one of the nation’s oldest and most powerful unions.

The move sent chills down the spine of every union worker in the country. Guadalupe Cervantes from the San Luis Potosi Independent Union of State Government Workers asked, “If the government can do something like this to the SME, what will it do to the rest of the unions?”

Calderon told the press that the government would provide the electrical workers with “assistance and training to find other jobs.”  The President conveniently forgot that Mexico is currently experiencing what is arguably the worst employment crisis in the nation’s history.  Laid-off electricians will have to get in line behind the millions of people who are already unemployed or severely underemployed.

Rising Prices

As if the lack of gainful employment weren’t enough, prices of basic necessities have skyrocketed during Calderon’s term.  Since Calderon took office on December 1, 2006, the price of the canasta básica (the government’s official measure of the cost of feeding a family of five for one day) has risen 93%.

Experts blame food prices’ sharp increase on two factors: food scarcity and rising gasoline prices.

The federal government owns Mexico’s petroleum industry, as decreed by the constitution.  Calderon has repeatedly increased the price of gas throughout his term in order to make up for budget shortfalls caused by the global economic crisis and the drug war.  Higher gas prices mean that the cost of transportation and petroleum-based chemical fertilizers also increase, which translate into higher food prices.

Food prices are also rising because successive Mexican presidents have led Mexico down a path of neo-liberal globalization.  Government policies are intentionally converting Mexico’s traditional peasant agriculture, which produces food for auto-consumption and domestic consumption, into industrial agriculture that produces for the global market.  Monoculture is replacing the milpas, a peasant farming method in which several crops are mixed together in a single field. Following Hurricanes Stan and Wilma, for example, the Chiapas government offered economic incentives to peasants who converted their destroyed milpas into African palm plantations. 

Some peasants have stopped working in agriculture altogether.  Former President Carlos Salinas’ reform of the Mexican Constitution’s Article 27 made it legal to sell ejidos (communal peasant land) and use them as collateral for loans.  Prior to the reform, ejidos belonged to the community and could only be inherited.  The reform of Article 27 was a prerequisite for Mexico’s entry into the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). 

NAFTA dealt a double blow to Mexico’s peasant farmers.  It flooded Mexico with subsidized corn and other agricultural products from the United States, which destroyed the domestic market.  Farmers, faced with cheap, imported, genetically modified competition, struggled to make ends meet.  When they could no longer compete, they lost their land through sales and foreclosures, both made possible by the reform of Article 27. 

The result is that Mexican farmland is no longer producing enough food for domestic consumption.  It produces eucalyptus for wood pulp, African palm and soy for biofuels, and grain for livestock—all destined for the international market.  In turn, Mexico is now dependent on imported food, regardless of what it might cost.

Thanks in large part to NAFTA, Mexico now sends approximately 80% of its exports to the United States.  Exports constitute approximately 30% of Mexico’s gross domestic product (GDP).  When the US economy crashed and its effects rippled across the globe, demand for Mexico’s exports dropped, causing its GDP to plunge 6.5% in 2009. 

With the economy shrinking and the country in the middle of an expensive war, Calderon had to come up with money for the federal budget somehow.  In 2009, while many federal social and development experienced budget cuts, drug war spending increased.  In 2010, with the country experiencing a full-blown economic crisis, Calderon increased drug war funding yet again.  This year he expects to add 12,347 drug warriors to the military, Federal Police, and intelligence agencies.  He funded these new positions by laying off 10,000 civilian government workers.

In addition to massive layoffs, Calderon funded his 2010 budget by raising taxes.  The new higher tax covers a range of goods and services, including all imported goods.  The higher rate taxes prices that were already inflated due to years of neo-liberal economic restructuring.

Government Neglect

Valle de Chalco is a working class town located along a major highway just outside of Mexico City.  Many residents either commute to work in Mexico City or make a living in the informal economy, working in the local flea market or in workshops located in their homes.

The town was already feeling the effects of the economic crisis: the rising cost of living, stagnant wages, and layoffs mean that customers have less money to spend.  But then things got much worse.

This past February, the Mexico City metropolitan area experienced unseasonable rains during what is generally the dry season.  It rained for a week, swelling local streams.

Valle de Chalco is located next to the La Compania canal, which used to be a river.  As the government authorized and funded new housing projects upstream, the amount of runoff, raw sewage, and industrial waste that was dumped into the river steadily increased.  About twenty years ago, in order to accommodate rising water levels, the government began to pile sandbags and dirt along the riverbanks, turning the polluted river into a makeshift black water canal. 

“Any time you drive down that highway [next to the canal] you see a bulldozer putting more and more dirt around the canal,” says Chalco resident Aurura Garcia Ruiz.

The canal, despite its haphazard construction, is equipped with floodgates and sump pumps—both of which require electricity in order to function.

Blackouts

The SME had a team of electricians that worked around the clock to repair potentially dangerous electrical outages, such as those that effect sump pumps and floodgates.  When Calderon shut down the government-owned company where they worked, Luz y Fuerza del Centro (LyFC), he promised the public that 8,000 people could do the work that 44,000 SME members used to do.

Calderon turned LyFC’s grid and infrastructure over to the other government-owned electric company, the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE).  The union that represents CFE workers is a charro union—political parties control its leaders, and the union is pro-government and docile.

When the CFE took control of LyFC’s infrastructure, it subcontracted 200 workers to maintain the grid. The majority of those workers sleep in cots in a 10-meter by 20-meter tent that is reminiscent of an emergency storm shelter.  The 200 workers share six cold-water showers and twelve latrines.  



The SME's Secretary of the Interior, Humberto Montes de Oca, says the subcontractors are untrained and working under dangerous conditions.  He says that many of them have been injured or killed on the job: he cited one man who was reportedly electrocuted and another who fell from a tower. "This is how the government wants to see all of us workers,” he said. “With miserable paychecks, in a tragic situation, without benefits, without a collective contract, and without a union."

Even with the help of 200 cheap, expendable subcontractors, it appears as though—contrary to what Calderon claims—8,000 CFE workers can’t maintain the grid that 44,000 SME members had maintained for over 100 years.  Frequent and prolonged power outages have plagued the former LyFC grid ever since Calderon’s middle-of-the-night shotgun layoffs last October.

Unnatural Disaster

On February 3 and 4 during heavy unseasonable rains, the SME documented service interruptions that amounted to a “perfect storm” over the southern Mexico City metropolitan area.  Four electrical substations that serve that area experienced “disturbances,” knocking out the power to southern Mexico City’s drain system, flood gates, and two sump pumps, one of which served the La Compania canal in Valle de Chalco. 

The floodwaters began to rise in southern Mexico City as the rain filled the streets and rivers.  With the sump pumps and floodgates inoperable, the water filled La Compania canal, pushing against its makeshift walls until they burst on February 5.

When the canal wall burst in front of Valle de Chalco, raw sewage and industrial runoff flooded the highway, killing five motorists. 

“We blocked the street with sandbags,” recounts Luisa Lopez Santos. “We saw that the water reached a certain point and stopped rising, so we figured, 'Well, that's as high as it'll get, just like ten years ago.'” 

However, when Valle de Chalco flooded ten years ago, the drainage system and sump pumps were operational. 

“To our surprise,” says Lopez Santos, “the water started coming up out of the drains, the foundations of the houses, in the gardens...water started gushing out from everywhere.”

The SME documented electrical failures in the area throughout the week, which caused the floodwaters to retreat much slower than normal.  Valle de Chalco was under raw sewage for thirteen days.  In some areas, the dirty water filled houses’ entire first floors.

Chalco residents went at least 15 days without work.  Many of those who commuted to Mexico City for work lost their jobs for failure to show. “People couldn't get to work,” says Garcia Ruiz.  “The street was full of water and cars and buses."

Those who work in Chalco saw their livelihoods washed away along with their homes.  Everyone is finding it difficult to pick up the pieces. 

“We sell in the flea market, and our sales have dropped a lot,” says Lopez Santos.  “People who before bought a half kilo of peppers are now buying a quarter kilo because they don't have work.”

Flood survivors criticize the government’s response to the flood.  The government gave MX$20,000 ($1,640 USD) to each family affected by the flood, regardless of the damage sustained to their homes or how many people are in each family.  Residents who lost their home-based businesses received no extra aid.  Rather than disinfecting homes and helping families remove their belongings that had been soaking in raw sewage for over two weeks, teams of government workers merely pushed the “mud” out of houses with brooms and gave every family a bucket of paint and a bottle of bleach. 

A government aid worker who spoke to Left Turn on condition of anonymity says that many families aren’t receiving the little aid they are entitled to: “A lot of property owners are taking advantage to collect the aid that is owed to their renters.”

Furthermore, the aid worker says, “We have to determine the number of families in a building by the number of kitchens.”  Many poor Mexican families rent one room for their entire family and share a kitchen with other renters.  This means that five poor families who rent rooms in a building with a shared kitchen split $20,000 in aid. 

The $20,000 the government gave flood victims came in the form of vouchers that they could only use in select chain stores, making it impossible to shop around for the best price or buy used.  This means that flood victims can’t stretch the $20,000 vouchers as far as they could stretch cash. “There's a lot of people who, when they got their vouchers and figured out that they could only use them to buy a few things, decided to wash their beds,” says Garcia Ruiz.

Chalco residents are feeling the consequences of sleeping on dirty beds in dirty houses.  They have skin infections, respiratory infections, eye infections, sore throats, allergies, infected lesions: all the result of living in and breathing the filth and dust that the raw sewage left in their homes and neighborhoods. But the government’s medical teams came and left immediately following the flood, and they don’t plan to return.  The government also never sent psychologists to help residents through shock and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The Coordinadora Valle de Chalco, a local coalition that is part of the Zapatistas’ Other Campaign, has stepped up to fill the gap left by the government’s criminal neglect. Through community work, they are proving that organized people can meet their own needs better than the government can. 

On February 5, when the floodwaters first began to rise, the Coordinadora mobilized to help residents move their belongings to the second floor of their homes.   They helped neighbors pile sandbags in the streets in an attempt to stop the floodwaters’ advance. 

“We initially provided human labor for the most part,” explains Coordinadora member Rafael Garfias. “Later, donations of food and money began to arrive from the Other Campaign in Mexico City and Mexico State, so we started to distribute that as well. We started to videotape and take photos so that people on the outside would know what was happening here.  Two days after the flooding, the government began to say that everything was under control, that people were fine, that no one should worry.  So we began to issue communiqués about the military and police presence.  There were no aid workers.  They sent the military.  The Navy.  The police… this was their first response.”

When the floodwaters retreated, the Coordinadora organized an autonomous needs assessment to determine its response to the disaster.  This set them apart from the political parties and factions who wanted to capitalize on the disaster.  “Right now we’re not interesting in shutting down highways or occupying the town hall,” argues Garfias.  “The Other Campaign’s slogan, ‘From below and to the left,’ is not empty rhetoric.  It means that if the government doesn’t care about us, we have an urgent task at hand.  We need to help our people get through the shock, be there with them.  If they decide to shut down a road, we’ll be there with them.  But we asked, ‘What do you want?  What do you need? How can we help?’ And they told us, ‘We need medical attention.  We need for the kids to get past their trauma.’”

So, instead of a protest, the Coordinadora organized a fair in the church.  Church ladies distributed donated food and clothing while doctors from the Other Campaign provided free exams and medicine.  A hairdresser donated her labor and cut kids’ hair while musicians sang.  Psychologists from the Other Campaign will visit the community soon. 

“The path is clear: from below and to the left,” says Garfias.  “What’s important now is the community work that will give us the strength to begin bigger projects and keep organizing."

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Federal Police Intimidate Electrician Union Members in Iztapalapa, Mexico

Laid-Off Workers Vow to Relocate Their Table to Continue Assisting Striking Customers

On Monday, March 1, at about 9am, approximately ten heavily armed Federal Police arrived at the former Luz y Fuerza del Centro's Santa Cruz Meyehualco office in Iztatapalapa, Mexico, and forced union electricians to remove a table they had set up outside their former workplace. The electricians, all members of the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), have continuously staffed the table since December 17, 2009.

The table in Iztapalapa is one of about 250 "information modules" that the SME set up all over the area that Luz y Fuerza del Centro (LyFC) served before President Felipe Calderon's October 11 executive order that summarily shut down the power companyand threw its 44,000 workers out on the street.

While the SME refers to the tables as "information modules," in reality they act as guerrilla customer service centers--and all of the services they offer are free to the public. Electric customers can go to the tables to file legal complaints with the government regarding service problems they have experienced since Calderon shut down LyFC and put its grid under the control of the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE). Customers who file complaints can also join the consumer strike and refuse to pay their bills. Electric customers who experience service interruptions either due to CFE incompetence or strike-related shut-offs can request that a team of SME electricians come out to restore their power.

"Theft Disguised As Inventory"

The Iztapalapa information module began to experience problems on February 22 whenagents from the Ministry of Administration and Asset Transfer (SAE) arrived at LyFC's Santa Cruz Meyehualco office with a public notary and several local police under the auspices of carrying out an inventory. They were met by 16 SME members who were staffing the information module.

The SME members told the police and SAE officials, "You can't go in. If you want to go in, then we go in, too, because we have personal belongings inside." When the police insisted that the SME let the SAE officials enter, an SME member responded, "There's negotiations going on with the federal government, directly with [Secretary of the Interior Fernando Francisco] Gómez Mont. The union is negotiating so that we can go in and get our personal belongings out, accompanied by a public notary. But we [in the meantime] we can't let strangers inside."

Joaquin Gomez, one of the SME members that has staffed the information module outside the Santa Cruz Meyehualco office, told Narco News, "Ever since [Calderon sent Federal Police to take over LyFC without warning on] October 11, we haven't been able to enter. We think these people are trying to steal our belongings. We have a lot of personal belongings inside, including money. We left a lot of personal belongings in our desks and lockers."

In addition to personal belongings, Gomez and his former co-workers also fear that the SAE will steal LyFC's customer databases. "They came with laptops, so we think that what they want is the database with all of our customer information. We served about 100,000 customers [at the Santa Cruz Meyehualco location]. So we think they want the files to be able to locate the customers.

As soon as the SAE and the local police tried to enter the LyFC office, the workers called their fellow union members for backup. They also called the Francisco Villa Popular Front - Independent (FPFV-I), who are members of the Zapatista's Other Campaign in Mexico City. The FPFV-I immediately sent dozens of members to the office in Santa Cruz Meyehualco office to guard the doors and rally in support of the SME.

Faced with such a show of solidarity, the SAE officials and the police retreated, warning that they would be back another day.

The SAE officials and local cops didn't come back. However, heavily armed Federal Police came to Santa Cruz Meyehualco on March 1 and forced the SME to take down its information module in front of the office.

According to Gomez and the other SME members gathered near the office, the police rotate their positions: approximately four police are inside the offices at any given time while another six stand guard outside. Gomez told Narco News, "We don't know what they [the Federal Police] are doing inside. We suspect that they want to remove vehicles and equipment and files, as they've done in other [LyFC] buildings."

The workers report that thus far they have no visual confirmation that the police have removed items from the Santa Cruz Meyehualco office. However, their suspicions aren't unfounded: the SME has video documenting police stealing computers, tools, and even huge suitcases full of copper wiring from LyFC buildings.

Consumer Strike

Gomez reports that the Federal Police's presence intimidates people. "People are scared to come here because they see the federales outside the agency," he says. "In this zone we were turning in 40-50 complaints daily" before the Federal Police showed up. Now with armed police standing guard, hardly anyone stops by the table, the workers report.

Much to the police's chagrin ("Who gave you permission to take photos?" snarled one officer at our photographer), this friendly news team interviewed former LyFC worker Carlos Romero outside the Santa Cruz Meyehualco office. He explained the free services the SME offers at the information modules, and how customers can join the strike.

Narco News: What services do the information modules provide?

Romero: We explain the reasons for why people shouldn't pay their bills. First, it's because they never signed a contract with the CFE, and therefore they never hired that company to provide any services.

Narco News: So, for example, if I were a Luz y Fuerza customer and I didn't want to pay the CFE, what would I have to do?

Romero: You just need your voter identification, an old bill from Luz y Fuerza, and your bill that you received from CFE. If the CFE bill hasn't arrived--because in many neighborhoods people haven't received CFE bills yet--then you just need your voter identification and and old Luz y Fuerza bill. This is to demonstrate that you had contracted electric service with Luz y Fuerza and to demonstrate to Profeco (the Federal Prosecutor's Office for Consumer Affairs) that you are being affected. You need to bring three copies of every document to the information module.

Narco News: If I stop paying my electric bill and the CFE comes to turn off my power, what happens?

Romero: The CFE doesn't have the legal right to shut off your electricity. In fact, they don't even know who has paid and who hasn't paid because they don't have an accurate database. And they don't have a database or a list where they keep track of who has paid and who hasn't paid. In fact, some people are getting CFE bills that tell them that after they paid their bills they should call a number to inform the CFE that they've paid. That's rediculous. They should know who paid and who hasn't.

If it happens that they do shut off your power for nonpayment--which would be a very unlikely case--compañeros here from the union would go and reconnect your power for free. This is a service that we're providing to the public so that they have the security of knowing that absolutely nothing will happen to them. It's a benefit we're offering our customers.

Since Mexico City is very big, there are modules in neighborhoods and boroughs all over the city. You can find a list of all of the modules online at sme1914.org and radiosme.org.mx. If you go to the module in your neighborhood or borough, they'll give you phone numbers for the teams that are closest to you so that they can come out to your house and help you out.

"We Can't Back Down"

Gomez says that the police presence outside of the Santa Cruz Meyehualco office won't deter the SME. "We'll put the table next to the office instead of in front of it so that we can continue to serve the public. We can't back down." To former Luz y Fuerza customers, he says, "Don't stop filing complaints. Don't pay your electric bills. File legal complaints with the government. Don't be afraid of the police. We're not afraid of them. We respect them because they have guns. But keep supporting us, and come out with us on March 16 during the national strike."

Photos and additional reporting by Santiago Navarro.

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SME: "Don't Pay Your Electric Bill!"

Supporters Argue that the Closure of Luz y Fuerza is an Affront to Taxpayers, Electricity Customers, Workers, and Subcontractors

The Mexican Electric Workers Union (SME) is keeping the pressure on the federal government leading up to negotiations between the union and the government over the fate of 18,000 SME members who have still not accepted their severance packages.

The SME is still fighting for a reversal of Calderon's October 10 executive order that shut down the government-owned electric company Luz y Fuerza del Centro, which supplied Mexico City and several central states. The fight to reverse the executive order continues to play out in the courts. This past December, the Mexico City metropolitan region’s First District Court ruled against the SME's petition to reverse the executive order that put 44,000 union members out of a job literally overnight. The SME has appealed the court's decision.

SME’s Secretary of External Relations, Humberto Montes de Oca, informed Narco News that the SME will enter negotiations with the government with an alternative option: that the 18,000 SME members who have still refused their severance packages return to work, that this return to work be under the terms of the collective contract that the SME negotiated with Luz y Fuerza, and that the SME represent those 18,000 former Luz y Fuerza workers when they go back to work. Regarding its demand that its members return to work, the SME continues to fight for the re-opening of Luz y Fuerza. However, union officials have also mentioned to the press that they would accept rehiring with the CFE as long as the CFE complies with the other two demands regarding representation and the SME’s contract.

The federal government put the CFE in charge of Luz y Fuerza's infrastructure and territory, essentially absorbing Luz y Fuerza into the CFE.

The federal government originally estimated that the CFE would rehire about 10,000 laid off Luz y Fuerza workers. It used that empty promise to encourage Luz y Fuerza workers to accept their severance packages: if workers accept their severance package by a certain deadline (a deadline which has been repeatedly pushed back) then the government will do its best to find them new jobs in the CFE, or so the official story goes. In reality, few—if any—Luz y Fuerza workers have been rehired. Given this reality, 18,000 SME workers are holding out for a better deal.

SME workers have also been reluctant to accept (albeit false) promises of rehire with the CFE because CFE workers are represented by the Union of Electrical Workers of the Mexican Republic (SUTERM). The SUTERM´s leadership is notoriously pro-government—a dangerous bias when ¨the boss¨ is the government, as is the case with the CFE workers it represents. The SUTERM has been ruled by the same family for the past 29 years, further calling its degree of democracy and independence into question. The SUTERM´s collective contract with the CFE provides its members with significantly fewer benefits than the SME’s contract with Luz y Fuerza.

Mexican independent labor considers Calderon's decision to shut down Luz y Fuerza to be a direct attack on the SME and independent (not government-controlled) unionism as a whole.

The SME's proposed alternative to the re-opening of Luz y Fuerza would leave the SME—one of Mexico’s few independent (not government-controlled) unions—and its collective contract intact.

The SME's strategy going into negotiations is to focus on grassroots political pressure, namely through mobilizatio ns. “We are combining mobilization with negotiation,” Montes de Oca told Narco News. “Mobilizations strengthen the union’s position at the negotiating table.” The union has also initiated a consumer strike by encouraging electric customers to refuse to pay their bills.

Consumer Strike

At a recent assembly that officially kicked off the consumer strike, La Jornada columnist Pedro Miguel argued that Calderon’s decision to shut down Luz y Fuerza, a government-owned company, is an affront to taxpayers.

At that same assembly, participants agreed to a proposal from Congressman José Antonio Almazán González, a retired electrician and tireless defender of what’s left of Mexico’s nationalized energy sector, that the consumer strike take up three demands that reflect the SME's demands at the bargaining table:

1. That SME members who haven’t accepted their severance packages go back to work
2. That their collective contract that they had with Luz y Fuerza be respected
3. That the executive order that shut down Luz y Fuerza be reversed

The "Electric Bill Strike Committee," which coordinates the consumer strike, argues that Luz y Fuerza customers should refuse to pay their electric bills (which are now issued by the CFE) for the following reasons:

• Consumers in Mexico City and surrounding states signed a service contract with Luz y Fuerza, not the CFE, and therefore the CFE has no legal right to charge Luz y Fuerza customers.
• Thus far, it appears as though the CFE does not have the capacity to read Luz y Fuerza customers' electric meters. Therefore, the CFE electric bills that Luz y Fuerza customers receive are, according to the SME, estimated and not based on actual meter readings. Given the fact that the CFE also lacks the capacity to keep Luz y Fuerza's grid in working order, blackouts constantly plague the region. This means that many Luz y Fuerza customers are consuming less electricity than normal, because the service is simply unavailable. For example, in the week prior to the declaration of a consumer strike, this reporter experienced at least three blackouts, each one lasting hours--one lasted at least eight hours. The SME reports that some areas have gone days without electricity. This reduced consumption is not reflected in the CFE's estimated bills; on the contrary:
• According to the SME, consumers report receiving CFE bills that are double or triple their normal Luz y Fuerza bills, and that higher rate is being charged monthly, not bi-monthly as was the case with Luz y Fuerza. In other words, consumers are paying twice the amount of money in half the amount of time.
• One reason the CFE's electric bills are higher is because when Calderon did away with Luz y Fuerza, he also did away with the subsidy it received from the federal government in order to make electricity more affordable.

The SME assures striking consumers that the CFE has no legal power to shut off their electricity if they do not pay their bills. In order to provide striking customers with legal protection, as well as to officially register consumer unrest with the government, the Lawyers Front in Defense of Consumers of Public Services is assisting customers in filing legal complaints against the CFE and the federal government for unlawful charges. The Electric Bill Strike Committee has set up tables in public plazas and shopping malls to help customers file their legal complaints.

SME's Counter Offensive

The SME has launched a counteroffensive against the Calderon regime. The counteroffensive consists of defending the union from the federal government's smear campaign, vocalizing and publicizing popular discontent with the Calderon administration, and mobilizing workers and allies in support of the laid off Luz y Fuerza employees.

The Calderon administration's official reason for closing Luz y Fuerza was because it was "inefficient"--it operated year after year with a deficit that the government made up for with public funds. The Calderon administration has justified the middle-of-the-night federal police operation that threw 44,000 unionized electrical workers out onto the street (in some cases, literally) by blaming Luz y Fuerza's insolvency on the SME.

The Mexican filmmaking team Canal Seis de Julio refutes these claims in a damning new documentary entitled "Let There Be Light" ("Que Se Haga la Luz"). SME members now can be found on the streets and at public events distributing burned copies of the DVD in exchange for spare change--they ask for enough money to keep burning more copies.

"Let There Be Light" points out that a union, by definition, works to improve its members' wages, benefits, and working conditions. A union does not run the company. In Luz y Fuerza's case, it was government-appointed administrators who ran Luz y Fuerza and made key policy decisions. Moreover, federal law--not the union--dictates how electricity is generated and sold.

"Let There Be Light" notes that the federal government and its appointed administrators set up Luz y Fuerza to lose money. Mexico's Constitution mandates that electric companies be government-owned. Undeterred, the federal government found an ingenious way to circumvent the Constitution: it provided almost no funding for the construction of government-owned generating plants and forced the government-owned electric companies to purchase the majority of their electricity from foreign companies at a rate of over 90 Mexican cents per kilowatt-hour, while government-owned plants can produce electricity at a cost of 60 Mexican cents per kilowatt-hour. Mexico's version of the Internal Revenue Service (known as the Hacienda), which sets electric rates, then mandated that Luz y Fuerza sell that same expensive, privately produced electricity to industrial consumers at a preferential rate--a rate that was lower than the price Luz y Fuerza originally paid for it. In other words, the government intentionally created Luz y Fuerza's deficit. Specifically, Calderon created Luz y Fuerza's deficit: "Let There Be Light" notes that it was Calderon that approved this backhanded and--as he calls it--"inefficient" scheme when he was the Secretary of Energy.

Not only did Calderon set up a system in which Luz y Fuerza operated at a loss, his administration turned its back a potentially lucrative proposal from Luz y Fuerza and the SME to exploit Luz y Fuerza's fiber optic network. As Narco News reported this past October, Luz y Fuerza and the SME solicited the government's permission to provide the triple play service (television, internet, and telephone) over its fiber optic network. The Calderon administration responded by shutting down Luz y Fuerza and busting the SME, which opened the door to a Spanish company and Calderon's fellow party members to exploit Luz y Fuerza's taxpayer-funded fiber optic network for private profits.

To throw salt in the wound, Luz y Fuerza's government-appointed administrators further exacerbated the electric company's publicly funded deficit with exorbitant golden parachutes for its retired executives and free electricity for major corporations and government agencies. Amongst the beneficiaries of free electricity are: BBVA (a bank), Herdez (food products), Soriana (department store), Comercial Mexicana (a grocery store), and Reforma (a newspaper); dozens of government agencies such as the Federal Attorney General's Office and the Supreme Court; the president's residence, Los Pinos; and the United States Embassy.

Making Noise

Calderon should have known that the SME, one of Mexico's oldest, most respected, and most militant unions, wouldn't go down without a fight. Perhaps Calderon figured he had the upper hand. The corporate media unquestioningly parrots whatever his government says. He controls the police and the military--which, thanks to US funding under the Merida Initiative, have new equipment and training at their disposal. But Calderon seems to have underestimated the determination of 44,000 suddenly unemployed union members who have nothing left to lose.

The SME appears to be looking to expand its support base by opening its campaign to non-unionists. It hopes to achieve this goal by broadening its rhetoric and criticisms of the Calderon administration to include issues that affect unionists and non-unionists alike. Additionally, it is opening up a space within its campaign against Calderon's union busting for non-unionists' active participation.

Specifically, the SME has expanded its criticism of Calderon beyond his arguably illegal anti-worker behavior. Many SME members and supporters have publicly criticized Mexican lawmakers’ notoriously high paychecks and bonuses—a sticking point in a country where half the population survives off about $150 USD per month.

The SME's Secretary General Martin Esparza has publicly called upon Mexican social organizations to organize a recall of President Calderon. The SME is an active participant in the Campaign to Recall Calderon, which is largely driven by members of the center-left Democratic Revolution Party (PRD).

The SME is also pulling out more evidence to support its argument that Calderon's attack on the SME is an attack on organized labor. It points to a January 17 article in La Jornada that exposes the working conditions of the electricians who have been contracted to replace SME workers in three Mexico City delegations (similar to New York's boroughs). According to the article, the CFE (which readers will recall is now in charge of Luz y Fuerza's grid) has contracted eight private companies to subcontract 200 people who work under the worst imaginable conditions. The majority of the workers sleep in cots in a 10-meter by 20-meter tent. La Jornada published a picture of the tent: it is reminiscent of an emergency storm shelter. Despite a cold snap that caused Mexico City temperatures to plunge recently, the 200 workers share six showers that only produce cold water. They also share twelve portable latrines.

The private companies brought the subcontractors in from other parts of the country. The men rarely return home see their families, if ever. According to La Jornada, bus tickets home would cost the workers anywhere from a third to 70% of their weekly wages.

The SME's Secretary of External Relations, Humberto Montes de Oca, says the subcontractors are untrained and working under dangerous conditions. He says that many of them have been injured on the job: he cited one man who was reportedly electrocuted and another who fell from a tower. Montes de Oca says that there have been "multiple" deaths. "This is how the government wants to see all of us workers," he told a crowd at a recent assembly. "With miserable paychecks, in a tragic situation, without benefits, without a collective contract, and without a union."

The SME is looking to canalize the participation of non-unionists in its struggle. In addition to holding neighborhood assemblies regarding the crisis, the consumer strike is designed to get people who aren't already SME members involved in the campaign.

The SME is also benefiting from mutual aid. In recent years, the SME has supported other social movements and organizations—even those that aren’t directly related to labor. It mobilized to support the People’s Front in Defense of the Land (FPDT) in Atenco when the government laid siege to that peasant organization and put its leader, Ignacio del Valle, behind bars for life. The SME rushed to Oaxacan teachers´ aid in 2006 when the government brutally repressed their strike. The SME also supported National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) students during their 1999-2000 strike against tuition increases. Now students, teachers, and peasants are mobilizing to defend the SME.

The SME is also making its presence known outside of its own events. In addition to its participation in the campaign to recall Calderon, it will send a large contingent to the January 29 "mega-march" in Mexico City against the Calderon administration's proposed tax increases on basic goods. The National Peasant Confederation (CNC), which is affiliated with the Institutional Revolution Party (PRI), is organizing the march. The mega-march could have originally been a stunt designed by the PRI, which ruled Mexico under a 70-year one-party dictatorship, but the SME's participation might be a sign that the march is taking on a life of its own.

Last week, Montes de Oca was in California rallying support for the SME from US labor unions such as the AFL-CIO.

Photo by Santiago Navarro.

Originally published in Narco News on January 26, 2010.

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Frustrated With Government Lies, Mexican Electricians Declare Wildcat Actions

Two Workers Detained and Later Released Following Other Campaign Mobilizations

source: Narco News

Following President Felipe Calderon’s executive order that shut down state-owned Luz y Fuerza and put its 44,000 workers out of a job, Mexico’s other state-owned electricity company, the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), began to remove equipment from Luz y Fuerza facilities. When Calderon shut down Luz y Fuerza, he put its infrastructure and territory under the CFE’s control. However, former Luz y Fuerza workers, who consider their sudden firing to be illegal and immoral and continue to fight for work, were outraged that the CFE was “plundering” expensive equipment from their former workplace. Workers set up protest barricades in front of their former workplaces in order to block the CFE’s trucks from hauling out more equipment. Representatives from the Mexican Electricians Union (SME) visited the barricades, informed the workers that they were engaging in unsanctioned protest activity, and requested that the workers remove them. Workers at many barricades refused the union’s request, and the union refused to recognize and support the wildcat barricades.

One such barricade was the one located in Lechería. Former Luz y Fuerza workers established that barricade on December 7 when a caravan of CFE trucks tried to haul away a turbine from the power plant. The barricade cut off access to the power plant to prevent CFE workers and the contractors and police that accompanied them from removing more equipment. Anywhere between five and twenty workers staffed the barricade at any given time.

The workers at the Lechería barricade report frequent harassment from Federal Police. Heavily armed Federal Police first showed up at the barricade on December 15, reportedly to “intimidate” the workers in the barricades. On the night of January 7, approximately 30 Federal Police reportedly arrived to forcibly disassemble the barricade. The police removed materials that blocked the entrance and forced open the plant doors. According to the workers, they carried out a turbine, four jets, and a pick-up truck filled with tools and spare parts. The Federal Police then entered the workers’ plantón (protest encampment) located near the barricade and stole a laptop computer that belonged to the workers. Raul Navarrete, a former Luz y Fuerza worker who helped staff the barricade, told Narco News that the computer contained videos, photos, and texts that documented the workers’ protest activities since they were first laid off. At the time of publication, the police refuse to hand over the laptop.

It is worth pointing out that the Federal Police receive training and equipment from the United States through the Merida Initiative under the auspices of combating drug trafficking.

The situation at the Lechería barricade took a turn for the worse on January 8. On that day, a man in a truck showed up at the plantón and reportedly offered to help the workers re-install the barricade by dumping gravel in front of the plant. Before the driver was able to dump the gravel, Federal Police arrested him and workers Enrique Mejía García and Sergio David Rodríguez Martínez. Both workers are adherents to the Zapatistas’ Other Campaign and participated in the protest encampment.

The two workers were charged with attempted sabotage and attempted “crimes against the nation’s consumption and wealth.” The men’s lawyers argued that the government had no basis for the charges because the alleged crime was never carried out.

Crimes against the nation’s consumption and wealth is a serious crime and made the men inelegible for bail.

Because the two detainees are adherents to the Zapatista’s Other Campaign, fellow adherents mobilized in Mexico City and joined former Luz y Fuerza workers outside the jails where the two men were being held. The round-the-clock protest encampments outside the jails—in which around 50 people participated at any given time—were effective. The government dropped the charges against the men and released them on the night of January 13.

The men were reportedly released without any sort of conditions or negotiations. This is good news for their former co-workers, who are already meeting to discuss how to continue their wildcat actions.

Narco News spoke with former Luz y Fuerza worker Raul Navarrete about his experience in the wildcat barricade outside the Lechería power plant.

Narco News: What was your position in Luz y Fuerza?

Navarrete: I was a Class A operator in a power plant in Iztapalapa [in southern Mexico City].

Narco News: How did the wildcat barricade come about?

Navarrete: This barricade was organized by workers from Lechería. They decided to come and camp out in protest on December 7. They made the decision when the CFE and the Federal Police began to take valuable equipment from the jet repair workshop in the Lechería power plant. [The former workers] came out despite the fact that the SME offered absolutely no support. So the workers, who are SME members, got together and set up the protest encampment. More compañeros who also worked in that plant in Lechería started to come out. And that’s how they started to organize themselves.

Later, compañeros from the J. Luque [thermo-electric] plant set up an encampment in front of that plant, and compañeros from the union’s school also came out. In J. Luque there’s a warehouse that has cables and transformers. They also got worried and set up a protest encampment.

There's also protest encampments in Tacuba, Necaxa, Pachuca, Toluca, and Cuernavaca. Compañeros from our encampment visited the others to see how they were doing and share experiences.

Narco News: Why were the CFE and the Federal Police taking away the equipment?

Navarrete: We don’t know. More than anything else they were taking out the turbines, which are used to generate electricity. This worried us because if we went back to work, we wouldn’t have any equipment to work with. The workshop is for repairing jet turbines that are worth millions of dollars. If they take them away, we won’t have anything to work with.

Narco News: And the protest encampment didn’t receive support from the SME?

Navarrete: No. When they set up the encampment, [representatives] from the [SME] Local in Lechería came out and told them to go away. They told them they couldn’t be there. The workers didn’t pay any attention to them and they stayed so that they wouldn’t keep taking out equipment.

Narco News: What are the encampment’s demands?

Navarrete: An end to the plundering of the [Luz y Fuerza] buildings.

Narco News: How many workers in the Lechería protest encampment are adherents to the Zapatistas’ Other Campaign?

Navarrete: Two—Sergio and Enrique. They’re both in jail.

Narco News: It’s said that those in the protest encampments disagree with the SME.

Navarrete: Exactly. They’ve differentiated themselves from the SME. Of course, they also respect the SME’s ideas and politics, but their vision was to come and form a protest encampment. And not just be there, but inform people, hold political and cultural events so that the residents were informed about what’s been going on. And a lot of people were coming out. The workers in the encampment gave them information about the situation.

We didn’t agree with the SME—or rather, the SME leadership. They didn’t let us camp out in protest—it wasn’t permitted. They won’t support us, so we started looking for our own resources, and for support from the people.

Narco News: What do you think of the latest SME proposal that the 18,000 Luz y Fuerza workers who haven’t accepted their severance packages be rehired by the CFE and represented by the SME, presumably with a contract that starts at zero? Their original demand was a reversal of Calderon’s executive order and the re-opening of Luz y Fuerza.

Navarrete: We clearly understand that they won’t give back Luz y Fuerza. Maybe they’ll give us a source of work. Some source of income. But this is secondary. More than anything else, we’re against how all this was carried out—the real reasons for why Luz y Fuerza was shut down [Narco News note: There is evidence that the shutdown of Luz y Fuerza has facilitated the privatization of its fiber optic network, and SME members are acutely aware of this fact.] And above all, this blow to Luz y Fuerza workers was a blow to the working class, to unions. An injustice was committed against the 44,000 Luz y Fuerza workers—and not just them. Many more people have been affected. [Most Luz y Fuerza workers were breadwinners.]

In my point of view, from the beginning the process hasn’t been clear. The government says it’ll give us work, but that’s not going to happen. So above all, we’re doing this to defend our rights. Now it’s not so much about giving us back Luz y Fuerza . It’s about defending our rights as workers and as human beings.

We want the government to tell the truth. They’ve been demonizing us from the beginning—saying we’re drunks, drug addicts, crazies, thiefs, that we don’t work. Then they say that they’re going to hire us back [with the CFE]. Well, if we’re bad people and drunks and lazy bums, why would they rehire us?

Narco News: Do you think they will rehire you?

Navarrete: Look, I’ve got some friends who accepted their severance packages. Three months have passed, and the government hasn’t rehired them. [The government promised to do its best to rehire the workers who promptly accepted their severance packages.] A lot of people who accepted their severance packages did so for precisely that reason—so they’d be rehired. They were desperate. And now they realize that the government was manipulating them, that it wasn’t telling the truth.

I haven’t accepted my severance package because I don’t agree with how this went down. Moreover, my severance package doesn’t cover all that I’m entitled to. [This criticism is common amongst former Luz y Fuerza workers, that their severance packages were poorly calculated and are less than the amount to which they are legally entitled.] The government said it was going to give us two-and-a-half years of our salary. It sounded like a ton of money, but it’s not true.

I have a cousin that worked at Luz y Fuerza for thirteen years. They calculated his severance package using a much lower salary than what he was actually getting paid. He accepted his severance package out of necessity. He has a family; he has children.

The government told so many lies, and people believed them. People think the government is giving us a very good severance package, and that we’re just fighting for the sake of fighting because we can’t get a job like everyone else. In my case, I’m a computer engineer. I’m still young and I can look for another job. But there’s people who have spent there whole lives in Luz y Fuerza—they were educated there, as people and as workers. They’re 45, 50 years old. Where are they going to find work?

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