LABOR: Who Will Control Labor's Power?
Of the tasks that faced the new President of Mexico in 1970, one of the most important and at the same time most potentially explosive was the reorganization of the state-owned electric power...
...8. Enrique Condes Lara, "Ensenanzas de la lucha electricista," Socialismo #5, First Trimester 1976, p. 87...
...They called for a national electrical workers strike for June 30, 1976 only days before the national presidential elections - in demand for the reinstatement of their leadership...
...The strike threat was aimed at pressuring President Echeverria into intervening on the side of the Democratic leaders, based on their evaluation of the progressive, nationalistic nature of his regime and the relative weakness of the labor bureaucracy...
...2 It also buoyed their hopes that Echeverria was in fact a "good bourgeois" - an honest representative of Mexican capitalists who, like Cardenas, would usher in another era of nationalism...
...This is the structural connection and the material base which unites foreign capital, the Mexican financial oligarchy, the political bureaucracy and their collaborationist allies in the trade unions...
...In a final blow to the Tendency, the militant nuclear workers were expelled from the SUTERM by the government, and forced to affiliate with a bureaucratized union of government employees who by law have no right to strike...
...The bureaucrats were afraid that the internal democracy of the STERM might spread to other electrical unions and other sectors of the working class where the majority of the workers were fed up with union officials who did little more than collect dues and discipline radical elements...
...Yet the strike continued...
...This produced, as it had to, concern in many left circles...
...At the first mention of a national strike, the Attorney General, speaking for the state-owned electrical industry, announced "this work stop will be illegal and we will prosecute those responsible...
...3) What tactics and strategies are capable of uniting working people to win needed reforms and develop a revolutionary program to end imperialist control...
...At the 30 NACLA ReportSep./Ot.1773 other extreme was the SNE, a collaborationist union created under the wing of the CTM labor bureaucracy of Perez Rios, which worked with the Federal Electrical Commission (CFE) to keep its employees in line...
...Of the tasks that faced the new President of Mexico in 1970, one of the most important and at the same time most potentially explosive was the reorganization of the state-owned electric power industry...
...At first the still incredulous strikers believed that the army had come to protect them from attack by the goons of Perez Rios, but within a few minutes gangs of hired gunmen and scabs occupied the installations while the army stood guard...
...Inflation had drastically cut real wages and unemployment was seriously affecting even the unionized sectors of the workforce for the first time in years...
...At the same time, the iron rule of government-controlled labor bosses in sectors of its three unions was fomenting a serious revolt among the rank-and-file electrical workers that threatened the "labor peace" upon which the state enterprise depended...
...They were aware that when the semi-independent SME members joined, it would shift the balance of forces in favor of Galvan, and that a political defeat in the SUTERM would strengthen the rebellions going on within dozens of other unions (railroad workers, PEMEX oil workers, Datsun, Volkswagen, Kelvinator, etc...
...Divided into two separate companies, inefficient and debt-ridden, this crucial energy utility was holding back industrial development as a whole...
...And we also know what kind of solidarity and support we can count on from around us...
...1975) and #38 (Oct...
...1977 33NACLA Report 0 C) 2 Q. Led by the democratic electrical workers, hundreds of thousands have repeatedly demonstrated against the state's labor hierarchy and imperialist domination...
...consequently labor militancy within the trade unions was edging out of control...
...it had a militant history like the STERM and had separated long ago from the CTM, but its leaders had grown complacent in recent decades...
...In addition to the passive support from the presidential palace at Los Pinos, the democratic forces within the SUTERM were strengthened in this period by the incorporation of a small but well organized and militant union of employees of the National Institute of Nuclear Energy...
...Almost immediately the head of the SUTERM, Rodriguez Alcaine, declared all the strikers fired, unless they signed an oath disavowing the Democratic Tendency and pledging loyalty to his ruling faction...
...Instead the statements against the democratic electrical workers multiplied and grew more aggressive . .. the best way to repress the workers was openly discussed...
...Next came the political parties of the Left: the Mexican Workers Party (PMT), the Trotskyite Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT), the Mexican Communist Party (PCM), and finally the Independent Peasant Confederation (CCI) and an impressive number of independent peasant organizations from over a dozen states, squatter communities (colonos), and thousands of unaffiliated supporters who joined the march as it followed the broad avenues of the Capital crying, "Death to Fidel Velasquez," "Expropriate the Yankees" and "Electrical Workers for Socialism...
...9. Enrique Condes Lara...
...1977 35 entire democratic leadership from the SUTERM in March of 1975...
...Sept./Oct...
...rank-and-file movements within the CFE and dozens of factories carried out similar solidarity actions in the following months as the fight against the hated General Electric acquired a symbolic as well as strategic importance...
...We didn't win, but we were not defeated nor destroyed either...
...1976...
...11, 1974...
...And if we don't earn less it is because the law doesn't permit it, and we don't even have job security...
...The repressive power of the state was prepared to defend its vital interests...
...NACLA Report 38Bc 1939 Following the July 1976 electrical strike and the similar crushing of the STUNAM strike at the National University a year later, 1 6 there has been renewed effort by Mexico's emerging left parties to forge unity and strengthen their influence within the trade union movement in order to challenge the hegemony of the ruling PRI party...
...The STERM called mass demonstrations in Guadalajara, Monterrey, Oaxaca, Puebla and all the other major provincial cities of the Republic, except in Mexico City where the other unions dominated...
...is it a potential ally of the working class...
...Weeks later, in a second but related incident, gunmen in a car painted to look like the one driven by the leaders of the nuclear workers shot and killed a union leader at the gates of GE - leaving behind leaflets of an "ultra-left" terrorist group, the 23 of September Communist League (frequently used as provocateurs in recent years and widely suspected by the Mexican left of being infiltrated by the police...
...XI, No...
...And the business sector, in light of a national power shortage that could last weeks and in solidarity with the CTM offensive, angrily made their interests known...
...LIMITS OF REVOLUTIONARY NATIONALISM The main criticism from the left focused on "revolutionary nationalism" - the ideology that guided the practice of the Democratic Tendency - which, as we have seen, led the electrical workers to hope for a tactical alliance with the nationalistic-sounding Echeverria...
...Then in 1971 the CFE and the SNE union conspired to wipe out the dangerous STERM by offering the contract exclusively to the SNE...
...Whose side would the government take...
...1975...
...In the first place, it would bring together three powerful unions that, fused into one, would count some 60,000 members and present a clear threat unless it were firmly under the control of the government...
...Thus Echeverria forced the compromise of forming SUTERM on Perez Rios and the CTM in 1972...
...It is very probable," asserted Solidaridad in June of '77, "that the move toward the construction of a political nucleus of the proletariat will happen precisely through the consolidation of the MSR...
...The nuclear workers were led by Antonio Gershenson, Arturo Whaley and other marxists who had been student activists in the 1968 Movement...
...The betrayal of the two locals demoralized the rank and file, and with a July 31 government promise that all but the leaders could return to their jobs, most of the strikers trickled back...
...6,July-Aug...
...We know what kind of allies the corporations have in the struggle between workers and bosses...
...It came because it was unavoidable...
...The answer came early in the rainy morning of July 16 as army troops occupied the major electrical installations of the state-owned industry in Mexico City and 25 other provincial cities...
...So the union leadership led by Galvan set out to mobilize its ranks to put pressure on the government which, after all, was its boss...
...Ricardez, op...
...The local conflict at General Electric quickly assumed strategic importance for the internal struggle within the SUTERM...
...t ly common and, in spite of the December '76 peso devaluation and the subsequent runaway prices, the CTM has agreed to keep wage demands to a minimum of a 10 percent increase...
...Thus the state has not only become structurally tied to capitalist development, but today, as we have seen in this Report, plays the central role in its maintenance...
...34Sept./Oct...
...1975...
...Perez Rios became the Secretary General of the SUTERM and Galvan the head of grievances, and the struggle between the two factions intensified as the time grew close for the planned integration of the third electrical union (SME...
...It is a conclusion based on seven years of leading a mass struggle that seriously challenged U.S...
...The struggle put to test several questions that are before the workers of Mexico: (1) what are the possibilities of democratizing the trade unions...
...68 days we have suffered repression, harassment and disrespect, but we have also felt the great great signs of solidarity from our brother and sister workers...
...It would not be convenient to call out the army before the election - the memory of the 1968 massacre was still too near...
...6 The results of the government/union/ company collusion were far greater than the crushing of the GE strike, however...
...3 This high level of exploitation required a cooperative union leadership to enforce it, thus the demands of the GE strikers were just as vociferous against the SUTERM bureaucrats allied with Perez Rios as they were for a new contract...
...The following pages review the power struggle that broke out between the two most antagonistic unions (the democratic STERM and the collaborationist SNE) from 1971 to the present, with special attention to the role played by the Mexican state...
...Yet in spite of slander and hate-mongering from the press, CTM officials and business community, the strikers stood firm, as this leaflet reveals: 68 days have taught us what reality is, and has convinced us that while we have demonstrated the justice of our struggle, to the present not one single authority has been fair with us...
...The movement gained support from diverse sectors interested in democracy for their own reasons, including the liberal press, in particular the prestigious Excelsior, which indicted Fidel Velasquez and his henchmen for the underhanded methods used against the Democratic Tendency...
...call, and close to 30,000 rallied in Guadalajara in April of 1975, to approve what became known as the Plan de Guadalajara...
...THE FIGHT FOR SURVIVAL Up until 1971 both the conservative SNE and the democratic STERM had contracts with the state-owned Federal Electrical Commission...
...First, it ignored the over $5 billion penetration of foreign capital into nearly every dynamic sector of the Mexican economy since the war, often on the basis ofloint ventures with Mexican private and state enterprises...
...PROVOCATION AT GENERAL ELECTRIC The provocation took place during a strike of SUTERM members against a bastion of antidemocratic unionism in the electrical manufacturing industry: General Electric...
...The Tendency later declared that 20,000 workers were expelled by force from their work centers in the country's electric and nuclear industry and that scabs and gunmen were installed to run the electrical installations...
...The STERM accepted the presidential offer, according to Galvan, because they believed they could organize the discontented rank-and-file of the SNE and over a period of time simply vote out Perez Rios and his henchmen...
...the masses taunted the grey fortress that houses the Chase Manhattan Bank, and in front of the Westernowned Alameda Hotel the marchers shouted, "This hotel will be a hospital...
...To many people it was clear, as Galvan later said, "General Electric utilized Perez Rios and Fidel Velasquez as if they were its personal employees...
...The plan did not place any blame for their ouster on the Government, but singled out only the labor bureaucrats...
...Both sides moved into action: while Perez Rios and his faction moved behind the scenes to try to manipulate the X W The company, government and union bureaucrats conspired to break an important strike at G.E in 1974...
...In this important chapter the government of Echeverria ivas ally, accomplice and constant godfather of the labor bureaucracy...
...Sept./Oct...
...And in the middle was the SME, formed in 1914 in the old British-owned Mexlight Co...
...1977...
...Finally, the critics maintained, the ideology of revolutionary nationalism ignores the fundamental lesson of the 1930's - that the national revolutionary strategy of Lombardo Toledano and the progressive labor movement of that day resulted in its subordination to the state and a setback for revolutionary forces...
...3 These criticisms from diverse sectors of the Mexican left, along with the experience of rebuilding its shattered organization, have recently led the leaders of the democratic electrical workers movement to make some cautious but significant self-criticisms and reevaluation of the past 6 years...
...Even the leadership of the semi-independent Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) decided to stay out of the fracas, leaving the Democratic Tendency without its principal ally within the industry...
...But it also requires clarity around the essential questions of debate...
...For the GE strikers, the prime cause of the conflict was the imperialist corporation that was turning them into "automatons" in its search for profits...
...In this way the STERM unified and gave an important political direction and national character to the diverse forces that rallied under its banner...
...The strategy paid off in 1972, after months of countless rallies and marches...
...On July 1, 1974, eight hundred armed goons, led by agents ofPerez Rios and the Vice President of General Electric, Alfonso Zorrivas, and backed up by riot police and tanks from the government of Mexico, brutally attacked the strikers who were guarding the factory gates, quickly ushering a large group of scabs into the factory...
...7 THE BATTLE FOR REINSTATEMENT After their expulsion from SUTERM in March 1975, Galvan and the over one hundred other democratic leaders of the provincial locals returned to their still-loyal bases...
...cit., p. 64...
...Enrique Condes Lara, op...
...The criticisms first came from outside the Tendency, from left party militants and intellectuals who had long been skeptical of the benign characterization of the state, and from ex-political prisoners and trade unionists like Vallejo who had suffered state repression previously.12 And later the voices of criticism and evaluation began to be heard from within the Democratic Tendency itself, as it reevaluated its errors and advances in order to chart a strategy for the long road ahead...
...32 NACLA Report-1.1 conflict to their interest, the democratic forces, led by the nuclear workers, mobilized their thousands of supporters behind the GE strikers...
...Instead they continued to call for the intervention of the government to resolve the conflict and negotiate a solution with Perez Rios...
...Such an alliance between the oppressed working class and progressive sectors of the Mexican bourgeoisie may have been possible during the Mexican Revolution, or during the populist reforms of the '30's, critics said, but it is not a possibility today...
...9 With the delicate presidential elections around the corner, Echeverria called for a conciliation of the opposing factions of the SUTERM...
...Finally, it is based on the understanding that the only force capable of dislodging an entrenched U.S.-aligned bourgeoisie, now headed by President Lopez Portillo, is through the independent political organization of working people in both the cities and the countryside...
...Most of the militant strikers did not sign, but in the weeks that followed, two of the most combative locals of the Democratic Tendency, Puebla and Jalisco, capitulated and returned to work, apparently sold out by their leaders...
...The nuclear workers' leaders, Gershenson and Whaley, were immediately arrested and the front pages of the national newspapers were covered with headlines declaring them terrorists, and labeling Galvan the "intellectual author of the assassination...
...About revolutionary nationalism, the official organ of the Tendency, Solidaridad, wrote in June 1977: . the magazine ended up giving an outward impression - and at times inward - that the ambiguous petty bourgeois ideology of revolutionary nationalism was our own...
...More importantly, Galvan believed that Echeverria would continue supporting democratic unionism "in the national interest...
...Internally the electrical workers have been weakened, but in the long run we'll return strengthened...
...4 About Echeverria, whom they had once lauded as an ally of their struggle: [Echeverrial went from right to left only to run back to the right, but there was one exception: labor policy...
...There they began to organize massive mobilizations to demand their reinstatement into the union, as well as for the traditional demands for unification of the industry, union democracy and nationalization of the TNCs...
...It is not predictable whether the MSR will prove to be the force capable of assuming the immense political tasks ahead, but it is clear that the majority of radical trade unionists, the still-disunited left and other progressive forces are realizing that the only alternative to the misery of today is a truly revolutionary and united strategy which can win both reforms and political power...
...The 'progressive' currents within the government never showed themselves...
...The lengthy, tediously plotted plan of the Echeverria government had finally attained its desired results: the unification of the two electrical unions without the democratic leadership.* For many sectors of the left who had supported this struggle at GE the violence was a clear indication of a new period of open repression of labor insurgency, one that required a critical re-examination of the ideology and strategy of the democratic tendency of the electrical workers and the formulation of a clear political strategy that went beyond trade union strategy...
...A strategy based on this same ideology today runs the same risk of "a new but subordinate pact with the ruling class...
...Simultaneously it has set out to rebuild its base among electrical workers and to revive the Revolutionary Union Movement (MSR) - an umbrella organization that they expect will include dozens of independent unions from around the country and literally hundreds of radical rank-and-file caucuses within collaborationist unions...
...But the general unification and reform project of the 1970's was especially hazardous in the electrical power industry...
...How the local and federal government officials will act towards labor...
...3. Excelsior, July 9, 1974...
...Thus carefully, meticuously and with a finesse characteristic of the Mexican political process, the labor bureaucrats planned a provocation that was aimed at discrediting Galvan and Gershenson, and politically liquidating the democratic workers movement...
...s But the two incidents were a heavy blow for the weary strikers, who began to return to their jobs or look elsewhere for work...
...1 The unexpected (by some) use of troops by the Echeverria regime to crush the movement in 1976 also prompted a serious reevaluation of the ideology and strategy of the democratic forces...
...1977...
...Furthermore, the unions involved were largely antagonistic to each other, and bringing them together was like joining live wires...
...How the national leaders of the SUTERM, the union which we belong to, will act against us...
...The strike was declared by the rank-and-file in May 1974 after the local leaders (allies of Perez Rios) accepted a paltry wage increase from GE instead of the 50 percent anti-inflationary raise they demanded...
...This 16th of July I breaking of the strike I synthesizes the fascistic actions of the government against the dignity of trade unionism and our labor legislation's And about the limits of trade union strategy in developing revolutionary leadership, democratic leader Antonio Gershenson responded in an August interview with NACLA: Because there is no workers party, the Democratic Tendency t-was forced to assume political tasks that should be the tasks of a political party and not of a trade union - which explains why the Tendency brought together so many different forces...
...The Democratic Tendency of the electrical workers has been an active participant in the task of building a political center to challenge the ruling clique...
...For more on the STUNAM strike see "Mexico's Assault on Labor,"NA CLA 's Latin A merican & Empire Report, Vol...
...Today the Democratic Tendency is not just a union, but a political tendency...
...Leaders of the nuclear workers raised a banner often used in past struggles of the electrical unions: "nationalize the foreign monopolies and put them at the service of the people...
...The confrontation with the labor bureaucrats, every day greater but still dispersed, must transform itself into a political process, growing sharp and violent, to carry forward the true class struggle...
...Ibid., emphasisadded...
...1977 3736 NACLA Report They pointed to two major changes that have occurred in Mexico since World War II that the program of revolutionary nationalism ignored...
...The national interest of Echeverria, however, was the class interests of the bourgeoisie, which required at this time the unification of the electric power industry and the strengthening of the social base of the ruling party...
...cit.;Punto Critico magazine, especially #37 (Sept...
...They are opposed by the PRI machine which has used its cunning and power to offer reforms to the parties with one hand, while it crushes strike after strike with the other hand...
...Both acts of violence, along with the numerous other incidents of intimidation, distortion and misinformation were used to force the explusion of the Sept./Oct...
...It was the high point for the Democratic Tendency, a time of euphoria and an important demonstration of working class solidarity and unity within the entire left...
...In a letter from the strikers published in the major dailies of the Capital, they declared: Of the 3,000 [employed at General Electric's Cerro Gordo plant], two thousand of us are part time workers and we earn only the minimum wage [$4 per day...
...1977 3536 NACLA Report THE NATIONAL STRIKE With the success of the mass demonstration behind them, the Democratic Tendency forced a show-down with the labor bureaucrats of the SUTERM...
...8 The CTM bureaucracy swiftly mobilized its forces with sizeable demonstrations, propaganda and intimidations, determined to avoid a conflict that would surely garner much popular support from the FNAP...
...Chief labor boss Fidel Velasquez and SUTERM head Rodriguez Alcaine joyfully pronounced the eradication of the "subversive elements" and have attempted to extend their web of control over the labor movement in the year since the strike...
...The leaders of the democratic movement, swayed by their faith in the nationalistic rhetoric of Echeverria and their erroneous view of the forces within the government, did not see the writing on the wall...
...4. Excelsior, July 9, 1974...
...Since the STERM represented a minority of the CFE workers, a mere voting process offered little hope of legal victory for the STERM...
...Second, it ignored the role of the Mexican State in facilitating the growth of monopoly capitalism since the time of Cardenas, by creating infrastructure for private industry, granting loans and tax breaks, providing cheap energy from state enterprises and controlling the labor movement...
...Among the working masses, in whom the nationalist sentiment is deeply rooted, the flag of nationalism raised by Solidaridad did not produce surprise, but neither did it ad- vance their class analysis...
...To regain that control the President was now openly seeking a rapproachment with the traditional labor bureaucrats, and made it clear that his administration would back up their moves to retain their stranglehold over the labor force...
...Consequently, critics concluded, there can be no expectation of basing a working class strategy on an alliance with sectors of the Mexican bourgeoisie against imperialism: increasingly the bourgeoisie is part of the same integrated imperialist structure...
...Militant elements from many unions have been removed, speedups have become increasing36 NACLA ReportSet.Ot.1773 e I...
...Their political sophistication, along with the strategic location of their local in Mexico City and within the industry, gave them a prominent role among the democratic forces of the SUTERM...
...TRADE UNIONS 2. NACLA interview with Rafael Galvan, Dec...
...Once in the factory, General Electric surrounded the scabs with a curtain of fear by hiring dozens of armed guards...
...Finally, they drafted a program, aimed at toppling the labor bureaucracy of the CTM, and "redirecting the course of the Revolution...
...The red banners with their upraised fists (symbol of the Democratic Tendency) and revolutionary slogans stretched for over a mile around the old Parque Alameda of downtown Mexico City...
...A later evaluation of this part of the strike from a Mexican Communist Party journal wrote: The hoped- for deepening of the supposed divisions in the government never came...
...As the conflict of GE threatened to spill over and mobilize the entire labor movement, the Perez Rios faction, the heads of General Electric and the repressive apparatus of the state made their move...
...4 Up to this point in the struggle, as we have seen, Echeverria had given indications that he supported the democratic movement...
...The Democratic Tendency agreed to postpone the strike until July 16th, and negotiate, but these talks quickly stagnated...
...Electrical workers were the back-bone of these mobilizations, but the democratic, anti-imperialist and anti-CTM demands attracted wide support from "democratic tendencies" in hundreds of factories and work sites, among peasants, slum dwellers and students...
...For a more detailed critique of the Democratic Tendency and revolutionary nationalism see: Ruben Jimenez Ricardez, "Nacionalismo revolucionario y movimiento obrero," Cuadernos Politicos #5, JulySept...
...2) What role can the Mexican Government be expected to play in this period...
...On the one side there was the militant STERM led by Rafael Galvan, born from the workers struggle against Ebasco with a long history of union democracy, anti-imperialism and independence from the CTM unions...
...Demonstrations in this same month gathered 15,000 electrical workers in Puebla and 50,000 in Mexico City - undeniable proof of the strength of the Tendencia and the deep desire of the working class for independent organization...
...The electric workers themselves were the largest contingent, followed by the important Revolutionary Railworkers Movement, Government Employees, Telephone trade unionists, the growing unions of university employees (STEUNAM) and teachers (SPAUNAM) and many other unions...
...4) What is the role of the organized left in this process and what can it be in the future...
...6. Executive Committee, GE Local #49, Excelsior, Sept...
...5. NACLA interview with Rafael Galvan, op...
...The rank and file electrical workers (still in the SUTERM) responded enthusiastically to the * Just prior to the expulsion, Perez Rios died, but he was quickly replaced by another CTM bureaucrat, Leonardo Rodriguez Alcaine...
...So great was the fear of union spies and internal sabotage that no workers could even go to the bathrooms without an armed escort...
...Close to 200,000 workers and supporters massed in the streets of Mexico City, the largest independent mobilization since the student marches of 1968, and the most important show of labor insurgency since the 1959 national railroad workers strike...
...cit., p. 17...
...The political work of the Tendency has greatly strengthened the labor movement in general: in the universities, among the mine workers, railroad workers, telephone workers, etc...
...They had lost the strike, but had won a new understanding, as they described in a letter to their supporters: Now we understand the reality which we live in...
...The Tendency rode the crest of social discontent and used it to build for a huge demonstration in Mexico City in November 1975...
...7. Punto Critico, #29, op...
...But the reaction of the Echeverria government was the opposite from what they expected...
...The Echeverria regime saw that the mobilizations could get out of hand and offered a compromise to the STERM - unification of the two competing unions and formation of a United Electrical Workers Union (SUTERM...
...But by late 1973 and early '74 the economic and political situation had changed...
...Workers at the Mexico City Kelvinator plant announced a work stop in support of the strike...
...To garner support they brought together the university unions and over 300 organizations to form the National Front of Labor, Peasant and Popular Insurgency (FNAP) in May...
...The repression of the strike was a severe blow for the democratic electrical workers and for the left and the labor movement in general...
...The center of the Democratic Tendency has not disintegrated, however, but in the year after the strike has attempted to rebuild its shattered base with a tenacity and determination which has allowed overcoming even open repression...
...President Echeverria's attempt to reform the industry was typical of his "democratic" and reformist approach to covering over the serious cracks that had appeared in Mexican society by 1968...
...It is the result of a serious reevaluation of the nature of the Mexican State, whose chief architect for 6 years, Luis Echeverria, tried to manipulate, coopt and then destroy the rankand-file rebellion...
...The demands of the 3,000 workers at the Cerro Gordo plant outside of Mexico City were for a new contract and the unconditional removal of the local SUTERM union leaders...
...Solidaridad, #175, June 1977, p. 6, emphasis added...
...Sept./Oct...
...To do so, they formally organized themselves into the Democratic Tendency of the SUTERM and called for the incorporation of other independent unions and radical caucuses to form the Revolutionary Trade Union Movement (MSR...
...there were bound to be sparks...
...imperialism and its ally, the Mexican Government...
...1977 3132 NACLA Report The CTM-backed forces behind Perez Rios were active as well...
...You have to judge the gains of the Democratic Tendency in terms of its impact on forces outside the electrical workers...
...In light of these developments, many supporters warned the Tendency to avoid a head-on collision with the government which could only lead to defeat for the entire movement, but strike plans went forward...
...The left magazine Punto Critico wrote: The developments of the new labor movement . . . require the critical support of all democratic and revolutionary forces...
...It also explains the limitations of the Tendency because not being more than a trade union, we couldn't carry out the tasks adequately...
...This last point - the need for a genuine working class party to unify and direct the dispersed and ideologically weak mass movement in Mexico -- is one of the most important and widely discussed conclusions drawn from the experience of the electrical workers movement...
...NACLA interview with Antonio Gershenson, Aug...
...We are here, we will survive, and we will win...
...Antonio Gershenson, still the head of the nuclear section of the Tendency, reviewed the current situation in an interview with NACLA in August: Our tactic was to avoid the confrontation for one and a half years, while we could gather our forces...
Vol. 11 • September 1977 • No. 7
