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<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/ross10192009.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/ross10192009.html<br>
</a></font><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">October 19,
2009<br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>"With One
Stroke of the Pen Calderon Has Ruined Our Lives" <br><br>
</i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000">
Chronicle of a Tormenta Electrica
</b></font></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>By JOHN ROSS
<br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2>Mexico
City</font><font size=3>.<br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=6 color="#990000">D</font>
<font face="Verdana" size=2>uring the first week of October, the
increasingly unpopular government of Felipe Calderon stepped up its
ongoing war of words against the Mexican Electricity Workers Union (SME),
one of the nation's oldest labor organizations founded at the apogee of
the landmark Mexican Revolution in 1914 when workers repeatedly shut down
the Canadian-owned Mexican Light & Power Company. Now with the
centennial of the Revolution on deck in 2010, the SME's survival as a
union is in jeopardy and it may never make it to the birthday
party.<br><br>
Following the nationalization of electricity generation and distribution
under President Adolfo Lopez Mateos in 1960, the SME ("Esmay")
won collective bargaining agreements for the newly created Luz y Fuerza
Del Centro that distributes about a fifth of the nation's energy to
Mexico City and four surrounding states. Mexico's second power
utility, the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) services the rest of
the country and its workers are represented by a "charro"
(company) union under the thumb of the Institutional Revolutionary Party
(PRI) that ran the lives of Mexicans from the cradle to the grave for 71
years until it was displaced from power by Calderon's rightist PAN in
2000.<br><br>
Although the SME had longstanding ties to the PRI, it maintained a
modicum of critical independence. Communists and Trotskyists
wielded influence in union circles and decorated the walls of the union
headquarters with proletarian murals. The Sindicato Mexicano de
Electricistas has always been good for 40,000 boots on the ground when it
comes to social protest. After the 1985 Mexico City earthquake that
took up to 30,000 lives, SME workers rescued victims trapped in the
rubble of fallen buildings and worked tirelessly around the clock to
restore power in working class colonies. In contrast, the PRI-run
government abandoned "los de abajo" ("those down
below") to their own fate. <br><br>
Three years ago, after hotly contested presidential elections, the SME
cautiously lined up with Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) after
Calderon was awarded victory over the leftist leader in fraud-marred
balloting. Calderon has never forgiven the union's 66,000 members -
44,000 active workers and 22,000 pensioners - for this partisan
sin. <br><br>
The Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas is built on a democratic
structure although it has not always been a paragon of democracy.
Strikes can only be called by referendum and plebiscite and negotiated
settlements are ratified by general assemblies in which every vote is
counted. Union officials and members of its executive board are
elected every three years but the vote-taking is staggered and the union
always seems to be in the process of electing its officials.
<br><br>
When last spring Martin Esparza, a 45 year-old veteran official, sought a
third term as SME secretary-general, he was opposed by union treasurer
Alejandro Munoz in an election that was redolent with mudslinging.
Esparza accused Munoz of playing footsy with Calderon's then-personal
secretary Cesar Nava, now president of the PAN, and Munoz charged that
his rival had pocketed moneys set aside for the construction of a new
union office building. When Esparza was re-elected by a little more
than 300 out of 66,000 votes, Munoz appealed to Calderon's hardnosed
Secretary of Labor Javier Lozano not to recognize Esparza as secretary
general of the SME. Lozano was eager to comply, refusing to sign a
"nota de toma" or official recognition of Esparza's
re-election. As a result, Luz y Fuerza del Centro cut off all
check-off dues and subsidies to the SME and the union was unable to meet
its payroll.<br><br>
As is union tradition, Esparza mobilized his loyalists and 10,000 workers
encamped outside the Labor Secretariat in the south of the city adjacent
to the Periferico or ring road, this megalopolis's most vital traffic
artery, threatening to shut it down. Rumors circulated that SME
workers would "baja el switch" (diminish electricity
distribution) and security forces were put on alert at the end of
September - the criminalization of social protest has been the most
salient feature of Calderon's three rocky years at the wheel of
state. <br><br>
Javier Lozano is Felipe Calderon's hatchet man. For the past few
years, he has been seeking (with little success) to dismember the Miners
and Metalworkers Union that, like the SME, dates back to the Mexican
revolution. His encounters with the Chinese businessman Ye Gon are
the stuff of legend - Mr. Ye alleges that the labor secretary forced him
to stash $200 million USD from a Calderon slush fund in his palatial
Mexico City mansion, ordering the pharmaceutical kingpin who was granted
citizenship by the president's predecessor Vicente Fox, to either
"cooperate" ("coopeles" in fake Mexican Chinese) or
have his throat slashed ("cuello.") When Ye Gon rebelled,
he was jailed.<br><br>
The Lozano-Calderon assault on the SME obeyed the same logic. At
the nub of the dispute is 1100 kilometers of fiber optics that would be
run through Luz y Fuerza power lines by a private Spanish transnational.
The concession was handed down by 1998 by then president Ernesto Zedillo
to the Madrid-based WS Communications Corporation whose chief Mexican
stockholders are two ex-energy secretaries Ernesto Martens and Fernando
Canales Clariond. For arcane reasons probably related to the
reluctance of Carlos Slim, owner of the near-monopoly phone company
Telmex and the richest tycoon in Latin America, the concession was
repeatedly modified and did not kick in until 2008. By then,
Esparza, in his second term as boss of the SME, was proposing that Luz y
Fuerza be awarded the fiber optics concession for the so-called
"triple play" (telephone, television, and internet)
connection. WS Communications' legal representative Diego Fernandez
de Cevallos, the bristly-bearded PAN fixer and former presidential
candidate from whose law firm Calderon has drawn two key cabinet members
- Interior Secretary Fernando Gomez Montt, the second most powerful
politico in Mexico, and Attorney General Arturo Chavez Chavez - went to
work. Calderon and Fernandez offered the union two options:
"Cooperate or Cuello." The stage was set for an epic
showdown.<br><br>
Saturday, October 10: Something odd was in the air. Weather
forecasts prognosed a 40 per cent chance of "tormentas
electricas" (electric storms.) That afternoon, Mexico would
face off against El Salvador at the mammoth Azteca Stadium in the run-up
to next year's World football Cup in South Africa. The home team
had already clinched a ticket to Jo'berg and the outcome against the
hopelessly outgunned Central Americans was never in doubt.
Nonetheless, the nation's two-headed television monster Televisa and TV
Azteca, both of which had spent the past week trashing the SME for its
workers' "exorbitant" salaries (6000 pesos a month, about $500
Americano) and Luz y Fuerza's over-the-top rates (the government sets the
rates), launched into hours of relentless ballyhoo replete with
Mariachis, fight songs, and scantily-clad cheerleaders.<br><br>
The contest cted was no contest, with Mexico's national team
pouring in four quick goals. After the lopsided victory, as is
traditional is this football-obsessed country, tens of thousands of fans
descended on the monument to the Angel of Independence on posh Reforma
boulevard to celebrate and Mexico City mayor Marcelo Ebrard
dispatched city cops to police the party which often gets unruly.
Around 11 PM, the police moved in to wind down the fiesta.<br><br>
At the same hour and just blocks away, 5000 Army and Federal Police
troops (the Federal Police is drawn from the military) were forcing their
way into the central Luz y Fuerza installation and 103 other power
stations in the capital and adjoining states at gunpoint. They met
with little resistance from the SME skeleton crews inside the plants on a
Saturday night. One worker, Fernando H., a 22-year veteran of Luz y
Fuerza, had only time to grab his jacket before he was pushed into the
street, leaving a mountain of memorabilia he had accumulated down the
years behind. Once the plants were cleared, the Army threw up metal
barricades to keep the workers at bay. <br><br>
By midnight, an extraordinary edition of the Official Diary (one had
never been published on a weekend before) was rolling off government
presses containing President Felipe Calderon's decree dissolving Luz y
Fuerza del Centro and, as a consequence, the union that kept the state
company running. Striking such a low blow on a Saturday night when no one
was watching constitutes a "Sabadazo." Remember Richard Nixon's
Saturday Night Massacre?<br><br>
Sunday, October 11: Word of the takeover flared like wildfire in the
colonias where SME workers live. Everyone in Mexico but me has a
cell phone now and the shocking news spread from ear to ear.
Thousands were gathered outside the Sindicato's downtown offices on
Antonio Caso Street by 3 AM. Martin Esparza closeted with his
executive committee to decide on a plan of action. By first light,
the crowd had spilled out onto the nearby esplanade of the Monument of
the Revolution where the bones of the heroes of that glorious struggle
are entombed. <br><br>
In mid-morning, the Secretary General emerged from his inner sanctum
arm-in-arm with his rival Alejandro Munoz and the two led 20,000 SME
members to the heavily barricaded Interior Secretariat several blocks
away. Fenced off from the old colonial building by thousands of
police and army troops, the workers sat down in the street.<br><br>
Meanwhile, inside the complex, Calderon's braintrust was trying to put a
happy face on the seizure of Luz y Fuerza at a tightly controlled press
conference during which only the "prensa vendida" (bought-off
press) was allowed to ask questions. <br><br>
Gomez Montt, Cevallos's burly law partner, postulated that the President
had been forced by limited government resources to shut down the company
because it had become a bottomless sinkhole of subsidies in the midst of
a crushing economic downturn that had left the government without
sufficient funds to even buy a fresh batch of swine flu vaccine.
The President would no longer tolerate throwing good money after bad to
sustain the privileges of "elite" workers at the expense of
26,000,000 poverty-stricken Mexicans. The Calderon bureaucracy counts
26,000,000 extreme poor but most workers live in and around the poverty
line and would indeed themselves descend into "extreme poverty"
if deprived of their jobs as Calderon had just ordered.<br><br>
Then the 350-pound finance minister Augusto Carstens took the mic to
sweeten the pot. Workers who signed off on their own liquidation
would receive two and a half years worth of salary - an additional bonus
if they did so in the next 30 days. Carstens presented a blizzard
of data to justify the 20,000,000 peso boodle that it would cost the
government to shut down Luz y Fuerza - the money is thought to be drawn
down from nearly a billion dollars in World Bank credits granted last
April for environmental mitigation. The World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund have a track record for favoring the privatization of state
electricity companies in Latin America. <br><br>
There were few questions from the prensa vendida.<br><br>
By nightfall, once the workers had retreated from the Interior
Secretariat, Felipe Calderon went on national television to explain the
flimflam to the nation. His conscience was clear. He was doing the
right thing for Mexico - despite the fact that he had just deprived
66,000 workers of their livelihood (the number is closer to 300,000 since
each Mexican family has an average five members) in a country that has
been whacked by the steepest economic downslide since the Great
Depression and where unemployment now exceeds 16 per cent.<br><br>
SME veteran Fernando H. stood stiffly across the avenue from the central
Mexico City Luz y Fuerza plant, staring forlornly at his now
police-occupied former place of employment. "With one stroke of his
pen, Calderon has ruined our lives." <br><br>
<i>To be continued.<br><br>
</i><b>John Ross's</b> "El Monstruo - Dread & Redemption in
Mexico City" will be published by Nation Books November 3.
Northern Californians can get an earful Friday the 13th at Northtown
Books in Arcata and Modern Times on the 18th in San Francisco's Mission
District. Ross, who will also be traveling with his recently published
"Iraqigirl", the highly praised diary of a teenager growing up
under U.S. occupation, is scouting venues for 2010. Write
<a href="mailto:johnross@igc.org">johnross@igc.org</a> if you have any
bright ideas. <br><br>
<br><br>
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