Mexican unions under fire respond in Zapatista fashion

BY STAN GOTLIEB

(As of this writing [April 28], there are two major standoffs going on south of our border. Both involve the same mining union.)

Since Jan. 1, Subcomandante Marcos has been touring Mexico to promote a “new stage” of Zapatismo: organizing the country’s peasants, workers, students, etc., to operate together but separately. Formal coalitions, like formal political parties, do not work to advance the interests of those “down below,” he says. The more pyramidal the structure, the more cumbersome and dictatorial it becomes. Instead, what is needed is a complete transformation of society; a standing of the traditional pyramid on its head, where the leadership is “from below and to the left” and the leaders lead by following. It appears that many of Mexico’s labor unions are getting the message.

Today, most of the progressive labor unions, campesino formations, students’ unions, educators associations, and the health workers, among others, will stage brief (from one to five hours) walkouts in support of a union of miners, millers and smelters known as the Miners’ Union, which has been fired upon by federal, state and other security officials in an attempt to break their strike, first at a mine in northern Mexico, and then at a steel plant in the coastal city of Lázaro Cárdenas in the state of Michoacan. A few strikers were killed, and many injured. Some security officials were fired as a gesture of appeasement, but the Secretary of Labor has vowed to break the strike by whatever means necessary. As a result, today’s marches and demonstrations are demanding—among other things—that he be replaced. The daily newspaper “La Jornada” estimates that some 4 million people will participate in Mexico City alone. Whether or not this attempt is successful, it marks an important new departure in how protests are done.

Instead of wasting a lot of time arguing about who will lead, which formations will be excluded etc., each of the main groups has simply declared that they will march independently. Other groups have decided that they want to march too. But they have not applied to a central group of “organizers.” They are simply going to act. Each will bring their own grievances to their action, as well as those of the miners’ union. Each will decide independently where, how and for what to demonstrate.

If this trend sweeps the country, as the Zapatistas hope it will, the U.S. press will cry “anarchy,” an epithet that will be both right and wrong. Anarchy as a classic concept implies responsible and egalitarian use of personal power for the general good, but the press will of course emphasize the “bomb throwing terrorist” image of anarchism (no bombs will be thrown today), in order to discredit what could turn out to be a very powerful force for change.

On Monday, May Day, there will be a giant demonstration in Mexico City and elsewhere in the U.S. and Mexico. Labor’s ranks will be swelled by millions of intellectuals, campesinos, and past, present and future migrants from Mexico to the U.S. The so-called Sensenbrenner Bill, criminalizing not only illegal immigrants but all those who render them any aid whatsoever has stirred up a hornet’s nest in the U.S. and has so galvanized the average Juan that all issues of repression and unfairness have landed on the table. It has changed the basic relation between organized labor and migrant advocates in the U.S., and it has tied the repression of unions at home with the exploitation of migrants who have at great risk and expense crossed over in search of honest labor.

Yesterday, in the city of Visalia, Calif., I saw a guy wearing a T-shirt that said, “I am Mexican. I am not Latino. I am not Chicano. I am not Hispanic.” I asked him if that meant he wouldn’t support a self-identified Chicano group. “It would depend on the issue,” he said. “I used to pay a lot of attention to the differences between us and them. Now I understand that those differences are unimportant until we stop the racists and the exploiters from messing with all the dark peoples.”

So what, I asked, did he think about the Zapatistas? “Those funny guys down in Chiapas? I guess they’re OK, but I don’t know much about them.” What brought him to change his mind about allying with the other people of color? “They’re building a goddam wall, man. They want to throw out my uncle and my cousin. I could go to jail just for inviting them over for dinner. We gotta stop that. We need help, and nobody helps nobody without expecting something back. I ain’t an idealist. Right now, anybody who is being pushed around, I don’t care if he against the War, is he on strike, is he gay. If he’s against this Sensenbrenner guy, he’s my brother.”

On May Day, Subcomandante Marcos will be among those speaking at a rally in front of the U.S. embassy on the ritzy Paseo Reforma in Mexico City. The fact that he is still free to walk the streets—let alone address the multitude—is strong testament to the success of his politics of inclusion. When he speaks, he will be speaking for everyone. It will not be a speech that the powers-that-be will want to hear.