Cowboys' last Hurrah

...We are not thinking about adopting measures that could be considered absurd...

...For instance, PRI officials in Mexico City and state governors cynically manipulate the campesinos, who boast the PRI's largest membership on paper, but have few genuine leaders...

...By doing this, the next president may convert the Confederation from an eroding pillar of support to one of concrete, worthy of upholding a party that declaims its unswerving commitment to Mexico's working class...

...If Jimmy the Greek were Mexican, he would bet on Velazquez's keeping the lid on labor one more time...

...But even if Don Fidel succeeds, de la Madrid as chief executive should summon his enormous powers to retire labor's geriatric leadership, launch a promised no-holds-barred fight against union peculation, appoint a tough labor minister who is committed to union democracy, and open up the CTM by enforcing secret ballots in fair elections for leaders with limited terms of office...

...Fidel Velazquez and his fellow charros-ox "cowboys" as labor bosses are called here - muster crowds for campaign rallies, help roll up robust victory margins for approved candidates, and trumpet assent to government policies...

...Of course, the success of such an effort would be hampered by the greater dispersion of strategic industries here compared to Brazil...

...Attempts to reform the unions from within are met with cooptation, bribery, blackmail, and physical coercion - often aided and abetted by the government itself...

...The situation is difficult, but this is not to say that the working class wants to aggravate the crisis...

...In practice, its backing is more limited...

...In 1968, a leftist movement sprang to life in major universities with the goal of forging a coalition of students, peasants, and workers...

...Approximately one-third of the nation's senators and directly-elected congressmen emerge from organized labor, as do a number of state governors...

...To begin with, Fidel Velazquez and his cohorts are two generations older than their member whose economic distress they have difficulty comprehending...

...The most egregious example of job selling exists in PEMEX, the booming state oil monopoly, where petroleum engineers pay up to $40,000 for a lifetime position, while secretaries secure ninety-day assignments by bestowing sexual favors on the presidents of locals...

...For example, in November 1979 President Jose Lopez Portillo scuttled an increase in gasoline prices needed for revenue and conservation purposes when the octogenarian ex-dairy worker turned thumbs down on the move...

...Foreigners often compare the group to the Soviet Politburo or the Cook County Democratic Committee...

...Their lifestyles also separate and alienate the charros from their membership...

...yet members of this class are increasingly alienated by two devaluations since February and an inflation rate that will surpass 100 percent this year...

...In the face of this escalating threat to the system, Velazquez quickly threw his weight behind President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, thereby nipping in the bud any student-worker alliance...

...In theory, Mexico's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which has dominated every presidential, gubernatorial, and congressional election since its founding in 1929, enjoys a broad base of support...

...Two-thirds of Mexicans are under twenty-five years of age, while the most powerful CTM leaders are, at least, in their early seventies...

...The Confederation's executive committee is the best example of a gerontocracy - with the possible exception of Australian aborigines," observed one local journalist...

...This possibility was confirmed by the Latin American Weekly Report, a respected British publication, which noted earlier this year that: ' 'The emergence of a mass movement for independent unions in key sectors of industry would pose as serious a threat to the Mexican political model as did 'Lula' and the workers of the Sao Paulo suburbs in Brazil...

...This movement is centered in sectors where the workers and their spokesmen are comparatively young, well educated, and organizationally adept...

...In 1959, the government sentenced two key Communist union leaders, Valentin Campa Salazar and Demetrio Vallejo, to eleven-year prison terms...

...Besides undermining the legitimacy of the charros, the ubiquitous corruption has fertilized the growth of independent unions...

...This move undermined confidence in the government's anti-inflation campaign hastened capital flight...

...While Velazquez lives modestly compared to his colleagues, many CTM bigshots pursue sybaritic pleasures that include palatial homes, weekend jet trips to Paris, and bulging U.S...

...In contrast, the well-educated middle sector produces scores of leaders...

...Such fealty elicits rewards...

...bank accounts...

...This "is not a good time for a confrontation between management and labor,'' he said...

...It embraces peasants, students, small businessmen, professionals, government employees, and blue-collar workers...

...Although relatively unknown and powerless now, someone like Antonio Gershenson, head of the nuclear workers (SU-TIN), might prove an appealing leader should joblessness mushroom and inflation zoom out of control...

...Fidel Velazquez not only influences the selection of many ranking officials, who obsequiously solicit his approval before announcing for higher office, but his imprimatur is sought on policy decisions...

...Such extravagances are funded not by union salaries, but by corrupt practices that include: (1) payoffs to avoid strikes by firms that employ unions, (2) bribes by business to prevent unionization, (3) the creation of their own construction companies by labor bosses who then pocket the money saved by using inferior materials in completing contracts with the government and private firms, and (4) selling jobs in an economy where the closed shop assures labor leaders a monopoly on hiring...

...Earlier this year, the CTM chieftain helped vitiate the stimulative effects of a February 27 peso devaluation by demanding - and getting - salary increases of up to thirty percent on top of the thirty-four percent rise in the minimum wage granted at the beginning of the year...

...GEORGE W. GRAYSON (George W. Grayson, author of The Politics of Mexican Oil (University of Pittsburgh), is a consultant on Mexico who teaches government at the College of William and Mary...

...Yet a number of factors militate against his readily marshaling rank-and-file support for a stabilization scheme that will, by necessity, entail reduced government spending, curbs on wage hikes, and diminished subsidies in this ancient Aztec capital where bus fares are three cents and subway rides cost a penny - or five times the charge for a pay phone call...

...notably, the universities and the nuclear, telephone, and electrical industries...

...Nonetheless, since Mexico's economic crisis captured the spotlight last month, Velazquez, who prefers conciliation to threats, has proved a paragon of moderation...

...Although Communists have condemned the Confederation for "selling their souls" to the government and private enterprise, Mexico's political powers-that-be have prevented the left's posing a serious challenge to their ally...

...The upshot is that the 3.5 million-member CTM is the regime's sturdiest guarantor of stability...

...After all, the old man has an important stake in preserving a system that has made him second in power only to the president...

...Instead, that role may fall to Fidel Velazquez, a powerfully built, cigar-smoking curmudgeon who has headed the Mexican Workers Federation (CTM) for half of his eighty-two years...

...Mexico's economy COWBOYS' LAST HURRAH LABOR UNIONS & MEXICAN STABILITY Mexico City Neither MEXICO'S peripatetic finance minister Jesus Silva Herzog nor president-elect Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado, who assumes office on December 1, may play the leading part in determining the success of an austerity program essential to rescuing this country's ailing economy...

...Their high wages and attractive fringe benefits make members of CTM-affiliates a labor elite with rising middle-class aspirations in a nation where four out of ten people live as ragpickers at the base of an increasingly squat social pyramid...