[R-G] Fwd: Marcos Sees Natl Worker Uprising Coming

[Tom Childs]

Rad Green Subscribers,  You may have interest in Mexico's "Other
Campaign."
                Saludos,  Tom

>>> owner-chiapas95-english at eco.utexas.edu 3/10/2006 12:57 PM >>>

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From: "Dana" <dana.aldea at arcor.de>
To: <chiapas-i at eco.utexas.edu>
Subject:
?iso-8859-1?Q?NN,In_Quere'taro,_the_Other_Campaign_Picks_Up_the_Ham?	?iso-8859-1?Q?mer_of_the_Urban_Worker,Mar_08?Date:
Fri, 10 Mar 2006 06:35:36 +0100

In Quere'taro, the Zapatista "Other Campaign" Picks Up the Hammer of
the
Urban Worker
After Hearing Testimony in Eleven Mexican States, Subcomandante Marcos
Sees
"A National Uprising" to Come


By Al Giordano
The Other Journalism with the Other Campaign in Quere'taro
March 8, 2006
NarcoNews

For don Andre's Va'squez de Santiago, 96 and still fighting

QUERETARO, MEXICO; MARCH 2006: Ever since New Year's Day, when
Zapatista
Subcomandante Marcos - in his civilian role as "Delegate Zero" - began
his
fight-finding mission throughout Mexico, he has heard time and time
again
the story of "the grand destruction of the Mexican countryside" and
found
indigenous and farmers alike ready to revolt. But that is only half
the
story. After eleven weeks of the "Other Campaign" it is clear that the
rebellion doesn't stop at the city line. Here, in Quere'taro, the hand
that
holds the machete sword has found a friend in the hand that holds the
worker
's hammer, and Marcos exudes more confidence than ever that this
whirlwind
tour is setting the stage for "a national uprising."


Photo: D.R. 2006 Bertha Rodri'guez Santos
First, to provide context, a very brief trip down memory lane of the
past
ten weeks of a tour that, all in all, will last six months in its
first
stage. Listening to "the simple and humble people who fight," Marcos
has
heard from, and shone the spotlight upon indigenous and peasant farmers
in
Quintana Roo fighting to defend their lands from seizure by developers
of
airports and tourist Meccas. He has taken the testimony "from below"
of
those most threatened by big money's plan to turn the state of Yucata'n
into
a "gigantic hacienda." He has written down notes on how campesinos
have
organized in Campeche, Tabasco and Veracruz. He has drawn a line in the
sand
over the David-vs.-Goliath fight to defend Oaxaca's Isthmus of
Tehuantepec
from greedy energy mega-projects. The Mexican countryside is up against
the
wall and readying to defend itself from annihilation, as the Zapatista
Army
of National Liberation (EZLN, in its Spanish initials) has demonstrated
can
be done. Rural Mexico is already harvesting Zapatismo from bottom to
top.

As the masked rebel spokesman headed North, he also heard the true
stories
of teachers struggling to save public education and democratize their
union
against corrupt bosses, of telephone technicians and marginalized
sweatshop
factory workers in Puebla and their "story of pain," of the elderly
ex-braceros who assembled in Tlaxcala and will soon join Marcos along
the
U.S. Border in June. But it was here in Quere'taro, birthplace of the
Mexican
struggle for independence from Spain in 1810, where the hand that holds
the
machete sickle picked up the worker's hammer and Marcos said to the
urban
laborer: "We want to learn from you."

It is a 21st Century fight that goes way beyond 20th century hammers
and
sickles: The Zapatista "Other Campaign" has been joined by thousands
of
organizations, families and individuals; by youths who are tired of
being
criminalized for being young and rebellious; by housewives "who see
the
difference between the prices of basic products and the low salaries
available" noted Marcos today; by political prisoners and their
families; by
alternative media and authentic journalists; by gays, lesbians and
"other
loves;" by children; by elders; by everyone left out by the mercantile
and
political classes. a breadth of resistance that this country - perhaps
no
land - has ever seen weaving its many struggles into one big fight.

Perhaps the greatest challenge for a movement that began in the
mountains of
the Mexican Southeast with a surprise uprising of rural indigenous
farmers
is whether it can cross over into the factories, the mines and the
urban
workplaces and become truly national. "The Other Campaign will not be
a
class struggle," acknowledged Marcos on Tuesday, "without the workers
present."

The "Other Campaign" reaches out now to the hand that builds and the
hand
that builds is reaching back. We begin this report in the recaptured
Union
Hall of the tire factory workers that were fired and replaced when the
French multinational corporation Michelin bought the companies - B.F.
Goodrich and Uniroyal - where they once labored. and may yet toil
again.


"We Will Never Stop Fighting"

Years ago, the former syndicate bosses placed the headquarters of the
Union
of Uniroyal Workers in the affluent Quere'taro neighborhood of Los
Alamos:
those corrupt administrators of pain sold their rank-and-file members
down
the drain in 2000. That's when 638 trained workers were tossed out
like
trash and replaced by more desperate men and women now working
twelve-hour
days for 1,000 pesos (about 90 bucks) a week (one third of what the
replaced
workers once earned).


Arnulfo Gonza'lez Nieto
Photo: D.R. 2006 Bertha Rodri'guez Santos
"We were once 1,200 workers," said Arnulfo Gonza'lez Nieto, secretary
general
of the union that would not die, to the Other Journalism on Tuesday.
"In
1990, Michelin bought our two factories, one in Quere'taro and the
other in
the Tacuba section of Mexico City. It immediately began a wave of
repression
against us to over-exploit our labor. Work that once was done by two
workers
soon had to be done by just one. By 2000, our ranks were halved to 638.
The
company then changed the name on the gates - to Autopartes Nacionales
de
Quere'taro - and locked us out. President Vicente Fox came to cut the
ribbon
on the 'new' factory."

"We were sold out by corrupt union bosses, known as Charros," Gonza'lez
Nieto
explained. "Charros are part of the corporatism of the Mexican
government.
They work with the big labor organizations CTM (Federation of Mexican
Workers) and CROC (Revolutionary Federation of Workers and Farmers).
They're
bureaucrats who become individually wealthy in an illegal manner due
to
always being at the service of management. The fortune of an
individual
charro often surpasses that of the factory executive or even its owner.
In
our case, the CTM signed a contract to protect the interests of the
business
against any grievances by the workers."

"We are now unemployed," continued Gonza'lez Nieto. "Some of us have
gone to
find better luck and work in the United States. Others drive taxis.
Still
others find ourselves in a pathetic situation since we are trained to
make
tires. Last year, one of us, Mario Federico Flores Ca'rdenas,
committed
suicide. In his final note, he wrote that it was because he 'had no
more
possibilities for earning a living.' Others have suffered divorces and
psychological problems due to not being able to provide for our
families,
being unable to pay to send our kids to school."

"When the CTM betrayed us, it took over the Union Hall," remembered
Gonza'lez
Nieto. "We fought back. We called an assembly and voted in our
officers. In
October 2005, we took back this hall and the one in Mexico City. We
succeeded in forcing the federal Labor Department to recognize our
legal
leadership. When we took back these offices, we found them abandoned,
looted, our documents were strewn all over the floors. But we have now
reactivated the work of the union and this makes us very happy."

The new workers at the Michelin factories, said Gonza'lez Nieto, "live
under
terrible surveillance. We can't have any contact with them. Their
salaries
are extremely low and they must work twelve hours a day. We've received
news
of injuries and accidents that harmed the under-trained workers. And
we've
learned that this story has happened all over the world."


Another Mexico. a Global Fight

In 2004, some members of the Uniroyal Union were invited by tire
factory
workers in France and Italy to visit and tell their stories. "In the
French
city where 35,000 people worked making Michelin tires in 1985, only
4,000
still have their jobs," said Gonza'lez Nieto. "We found factories
dismantled
and being dismantled still. Their jobs went to India and China and
Eastern
Europe. Yet in 2004, Eduard Michelin, the majority owner of the
company,
announced an 140-percent increase in profits."

Workers in Mexico's factory that makes tires for the Euskadi company
learned
the lesson of the Uniroyal workers and threw out its charro union
bosses,
waging a strike that forced the owners to cede control of the factory
to the
workers and share half the profits with them. "We hear from others
across
the world that their battle is now an international example," smiled
Gonza'lez Nieto. "They democratized their union and expelled the
charros."

On Tuesday afternoon, Subcomandante Marcos came to this revitalized
Union
Hall. There, Gonza'lez Nieto told him: "We are from below and to the
left and
so we have adhered to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle. We
and
the brothers and sisters of the EZLN are together now. We are the
same."

Other labor organizers - teachers, workers in Mexico's Social Security
Institute (IMSS in its Spanish initials), a representative of workers
fighting for their jobs against the Tornel tire company, and others -
took
the microphone to call for national coordination and action between
workers
and unions in the Zapatista "Other Campaign." Then came Marcos' turn at
the
mic.

"We want to understand the struggle of the workers in the city,
particularly
in the industrial sector," said Marcos. "Our roots and our spinal
column are
the indigenous people of Chiapas. We don't come proposing to be the
leaders
for other sectors. But in this first stage of the Other Campaign we
want to
know, and make sure others know, of your resistance and to generate
solidarity and support."

Marcos then made proposals to these workers, as he did two weeks ago to
the
ex-bracero workers in Tlaxcala: "We are asking you as industrial
workers. to
become teachers in the Other Campaign, to teach us and other sectors
what a
workers' movement is. You know how to manage contracts. The indigenous,
the
youths, the others who don't yet know you need to know how to do that.
Give
us classes, please."

"Some see the Zapatista rebellion, or the fight by Euskadi workers, or
your
fight, as defects or exceptions of capitalism," Marcos opined. "But
these
struggles are really suggestions of the possibility of another Mexico.
The
Euskadi fight showed us the importance of building international
support.
The Other Campaign is not only the place of the best damn people in
Mexico,
but it is also a place for people like you to teach us. Because all
the
other organized sectors of society are also at the edge of the same
abyss."

"To the proposal that it is time to demand the expropriation of a
business,
to make this demand specifically. please add the name of the EZLN. In
the
case of the mine in Coahuila where so many workers just died, the
capitalist
is responsible," said Marcos, suggesting that that mine might be the
place
to begin "to take the offensive" and take back businesses into the
hands of
the workers. "To say to the workers 'we're going for your factory now'
is
something new."

Delegate Zero also proposed that the union members join him in Mexico
City
on May 1st - International Workers Day - for a mass march, "but that it
not
just be for one day. We need an Other Worker's May." And he proposed
"a
national gathering" of industrial workers "to be held here in
Quere'taro,
with you as the hosts. And together we can bring together 'The Other
Worker'
in Mexico."

As the meeting ended, the union leaders and members huddled in a back
room
with the Zapatista Subcomandante, making plans for the next steps. Men
and
women who not long ago were thrown out onto the street stepped up onto
a
national center stage from their reconquered Union Hall. From the ashes
of a
terrible defeat in this city, just six years ago, after an
indefatigable
struggle, sprouts the suggestion of an Other Mexico. the expropriation
of a
nation from those that stole it. a national rebellion. an Other Mexico.
not
just planted. but also built. by human hands.



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