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	Workers Vanguard No. 907	1 February 2008

Defend Mexican Miners Union!

Cops Attack Cananea Strike

We print below a translation of a January 20 leaflet issued by the Grupo Espartaquista de México, section of the International Communist League.

Striking workers at the copper mine at Cananea, Sonora, were brutally attacked with tear gas and rubber bullets on January 11 by some 800 state and federal police on the orders of the PAN [National Action Party] federal and local governments and the PRI [Institutional Revolutionary Party] state government. Some reports indicate military forces participated as well. Hundreds of workers from Local 65 of the miners and steel workers union (SNTMMSRM), on strike since last July, courageously defended themselves, but were unable to withstand the attack. Forty workers were wounded and five people were reported missing (including a worker’s wife). The union responded with an eight-hour nationwide strike on January 16 involving 25,000 workers from 85 metallurgical plants and copper mines. The Grupo Espartaquista de México, section of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist), protests the brutal police attack and demands: Company, government, hands off the miners union!

On the morning of January 11, the Federal Council of Conciliation and Arbitration (JFCA) had declared the Cananea strike “nonexistent” because it supposedly started late! The next day a judge granted a temporary suspension of the ruling, and the union has vowed to maintain the strike. But the company has mobilized scabs and hundreds of federal police remain guarding the area—the future of the struggle is uncertain. In the context of generalized discontent with the ruling PAN because of massive repression, dramatic increases in the prices of basic necessities, threats of privatization of PEMEX [Mexico’s state oil company] and opposition to the augmented “free trade” rape of Mexico through NAFTA, this attack is also a threat against those who dare to fight back.

The strike at Cananea, which has cost the mine owners an estimated 500 million dollars, began last July along with strikes at Sombrerete, Zacatecas, and Taxco, Guerrero, demanding wage increases and safer working conditions for the labor force. Particularly during at least the last three years, the miners union has engaged in hard-fought class battles across the country, fighting deadly working conditions, meager wages and continuous attacks by the government and the bosses.

In February 2006 the bosses’ thirst for profit led to the death of 65 miners in an explosion at Pasta de Conchos, Coahuila. This industrial murder and the ensuing government attack on the union—including the removal of its national leader, Napoleón Gómez Urrutia, and the pressing of charges against him—set the stage for powerful strikes, including at Cananea and at Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán, demanding the reinstatement of the union leader (see “Miners, Steel Workers Strikes Shake Mexico,” WV No. 872, 9 June 2006). On 20 April 2006, the three main bourgeois parties—PAN, PRI and PRD [Party of the Democratic Revolution]—joined in a murderous attack to break the strike at Lázaro Cárdenas, but workers were able to beat back the attack at the cost of two workers killed. Indeed, illusions in the PRD are suicidal. Despite its cynical campaigning under the slogan “For the good of all, the poor first,” the PRD is a bourgeois-nationalist, populist party that administers the bourgeois state and will not hesitate to unleash murderous repression against workers and poor people when their struggles threaten to go beyond its control.

In going after the Cananea miners now, the bosses and their government surely recall the 2006 strikes and in particular want revenge because the Lázaro Cárdenas strike achieved a dramatic victory with the company agreeing to all their demands, including recognition of Gómez Urrutia. Although the union has won important legal victories since then, there are still charges against Gómez Urrutia and other union officials. We demand: Defend the miners and metal workers union! Drop all charges against Gómez Urrutia and all persecuted union members! Victory to the miners strikes!

In the spring of 2006, we traveled to Lázaro Cárdenas, participated in demonstrations in Mexico City in defense of the union, protested at UNAM [National Autonomous University of Mexico] and held a forum at the Leon Trotsky museum in defense of the miners union. We fought against the anti-union prejudices of those
—like the fake “Trotskyist” Internationalist Group—who claim to stand on the side of the working class yet refuse to defend PRI-affiliated unions such as the SNTMMSRM against state attack. Instilling such elementary class solidarity is part of our struggle to win youth over to the side of the proletariat in the fight for a communist future.

The miners union remains in the cross hairs of the vengeful ruling class. For two years the bosses and the state have tried to destroy the powerful organization of the miners and steel workers. But the union has fought to defend itself. Due to its key role in production, setting in motion the levers of production, the working class has the power to paralyze the entire economy. In a show of the social power of the industrial proletariat, the Mexican mining bosses have lost close to 2.4 billion dollars due to the miners’ struggles that have taken place over the last two years. Owning nothing but its own labor power, the working class has no objective interest in maintaining the rule of private property; its historic interest is to abolish it, collectivizing the economy through socialist revolution.

The struggle for internal democracy in the unions and for their independence from the state cannot be separated from the struggle for revolutionary leadership. As Trotsky himself explained: “In the epoch of imperialist decay the trade unions can be really independent only to the extent that they are conscious of being, in action, the organs of proletarian revolution.” Forging such leadership means breaking with any illusions in the bosses’ parties—the PRI, the PRD and the PAN. Bourgeois nationalism, prominently pushed by the PRD, attempts to mask the fundamental class division of society in order to tie the workers to their exploiters, preventing the former from fighting for their own interests. The allies of the Mexican workers are not their “own” national exploiters, but the multiracial American and international proletariat! It is necessary to build a revolutionary workers party to smash the murderous capitalist system, which is based on the thirst for profit, and replace it with workers rule through international socialist revolution.

The heroic 1906 Cananea miners strike—organized through joint efforts of Mexican and American trade unionists, and drowned in blood by the combined forces of the Mexican and American capitalists—became a symbol of the struggle against the Porfirio Díaz dictatorship and of international working-class solidarity. 102 years later, the capitalists are again bent on smashing their struggle. This attack must not pass unchallenged! The entire international labor movement must protest this new attack on the miners! Victory to the miners strikes!