After the general strike of July-August 1916, the closure of the Casa, and the prosecution of many of its most active members, syndicalist organizing was stymied in the Mexico City area. Workers’ meetings were not tolerated. On one occasion Jacinto Huitrón was arrested for holding a memorial gathering on the anniversary of Ferrer Guardia’s execution. The syndicates fragmented. Nine months passed before new anarchist groups felt confident enough to surface in the capital.
1
In June 1917 a new Grupo Luz was formed headed by Huitrón. Only a handful of the old leaders were willing to participate openly in Luz. Among them were José López Dónez, Luis Méndez, and Enrique Arce. Despite the lack of overt support, its newspaper, Luz, was popular and distributed four to five thousand copies per edition for a price of five centavos each. Among the writers who contributed articles—besides López Dónez, Méndez, and Arce—was Amadeo Ferrés, who sent an article from Tarragona, Spain.
2 By 1918 Luz was holding public meetings, cultural events, and fiestas. Sometimes the crowds numbered several hundred.
3 Luz and its newspaper helped sustain anarchosyndicalist morale in central Mexico from 1917 through 1920.
Other relatively less important and almost anonymous anarchist groups that formed in Mexico City during 1917–1918 were the Jovenes Socialistas Rojos, Los Autónomos, and Solidaridad. The latter was composed almost entirely of former members of the Federation of Federal District Syndicates. Luz and the other groups, in their totality, represented residual anarchist strength that would lead to the formation of the anarchosyndicalist General Confederation of Workers (Confederación General de Trabajadores, CGT) in 1921. The CGT, predictably, found the greater part of its hard-core forty-thousand membership strength during most of the 1920’s and its peak enrollment of eighty thousand in 1928–1929 in the long-organized and traditionally militant Mexico City area.
While the capital was in flux, no less than twenty anarchosyndicalist groups continued to function or were formed in other parts of the country. They were the
casas del obrero mundial of Guadalajara, Tampico, and Saltillo; Cultura Racional (1918) and Rebeldía (1918) of Aguascalientes; Germinal (1917), Vida Libre (1918), and Fuerza y Cerebro (1917–1918) of Tampico; Hermanos Rojos of Villa Cecilia near Tampico (1918) ; Alba Roja of Ciudad Victoria (1918) ; Francisco Ferrer Guardia of Nuevo Laredo (1918) ; Acción Consciente of Monterrey (1918); Acracia and Ni Dios Ni Amo of Ciudad Juárez (1918); Acción Cultural Sindicalista of Zacatecas (1917); Ciencia y Libertad and Luz y Fuerza of Toluca (1917); Emancipación of Saltillo (1917); Hermandad Acrata of Orizaba (1918); and Grupo Cultural Libertario of Léon (1919).
4The most successful anarchosyndicalist organizing efforts outside Mexico City were in the Tampico area where sixteen syndicates were affiliated with the local Casa. Among the Tampico workers that organized were the day laborers, harbor boat crews, barbers, electrical workers, metal workers, carpenters, tailors, and
tipógrafos. They formed a Federation of Syndicates (Federación de Sindicatos). The Tampico Casa and federation leadership formed its own control unit, the Grupo Casa del Obrero Mundial. In an editorial the leadership announced through its newspaper,
Tribuna Roja, the desire to “break the hold of the bourgeois vermin [
bicho]” and to attain “class equality.”
5Germinal, one of the anarchist organizing groups in Tampico, was largely composed of the Tampico Casa directorate. Its purpose was the propagation of anarchist ideology and revolutionary theories to the working class of the area. One of its more spirited and controversial organizing efforts took place among the employees of the American-owned Texas Oil Company of Mexico. Only a small number of its workers were unionized, however, and those who openly acknowledged affiliation with the radicals were dismissed.
6As a part of their effort to influence the development of the Mexican labor movement, the Tampico Casa and Germinal sponsored the Second National Labor Congress, which convened on October 13, 1917, the anniversary of Ferrer Guardia’s execution. Invitations were extended to all the remaining syndicates and anarchist organizing groups in Mexico.
7 The majority of the syndicates still allowed to exist in the central area of the country were dominated by the government and Luis Morones. He attended the Tampico congress with a host of cohorts, claiming to represent the working class of Mexico City and the “reorganized” workers of the state of Hidalgo. A head count revealed that Morones’ supporters slightly outnumbered the anarcho-syndicalists in attendance.
Morones, aided by Ricardo Trevino, who quit the IWW-affiliated Tampico Petroleum Workers shortly before the meeting got under way in order to support Morones, engaged in an extensive debate over the contents of the congress report with the principal leader of the Tampico labor groups, Jorge D. Borrán, a Spanish anarchist. Borrán wanted the usual anarchist antipolitical declaration calling for “revolutionary syndicalism, rationalist education and popular libraries
(bibliotecas populares), and common ownership of private property.” Morones, with the Federal District and Hidalgo delegations supporting him, narrowly defeated Borrán and the Tampico delegates on every vote. The result was a 10-point resolution that recognized the workers’ need for better working, health, and educational conditions; that stated their right to whatever form of political expression they deemed convenient; and that called for the formation of a central committee (Comité Central) to direct a new Mexican “regional” labor organization, the General Confederation of Labor (Confederación General Obrera). The committee’s headquarters were to be located in Torreón, but, because of the deep divisions within the congress, the committee never received sufficient support from its constituents and the project was abandoned six months later.
8 Following the convention, the Carranza government expelled Borrán from the country.
9 The anarchosyndicalists were outvoted in a major organized labor assembly for the first time since the creation of the Casa. They would never again successfully challenge Luis Morones and his government-supported followers in a fully attended national urban working-class assembly. They had to create an alternative organization.
During and after the confrontation between the Casa anarchosyndicalist old guard and the Carranza government, newer syndicate leaders, led by Luis Morones and fearing the ultimate defeat of organized labor, stressed the success of earlier cooperation with the government and suggested its continuation. In the discouraging urban labor vacuum of late 1917, most of the less ideologically oriented syndicates, leaders, and rank-and-file that had rushed to join the Casa in 1915 and 1916 were now looking to Morones for leadership in the creation of a new labor organization.
In the spring of 1918, Morones and his followers, with government support, arranged a fourth labor convention. The gathering was held in Saltillo between May 1 and 12. About one hundred syndicate delegates from across the nation attended. The represented syndicates had a total national membership of only 38,000. Some anarchosyndicalists attended, and Jacinto Huitrón was a member of the directing Junta, but they were a distinct minority. After many heated debates, which led to the withdrawal of Huitrón and other leftists, the congress created the Confederación Regional Obrera Mexicana (CROM). Despite the convention’s declared allegiance to the “principles of the Casa,” and the presence of some anarchosyndicalist members in CROM, many workers refused to join it. The anarchist concept of a “Mexican region” within a revolutionary international working-class movement lived on in name only. Morones and two of his closest associates, Ricardo Trevino and J. Marcos Tristán, were elected to the three-member Central Committee (Comité Central) of the new Confederation. The threesome soon left Saltillo to attend the meeting of the Samuel Gompers-led American Federation of Labor (AFL) in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where declarations of mutual support and admiration were exchanged.
10 Mexican anarchosyndicalists and nationalists were outraged, and by the end of 1918 CROM membership had dwindled to only a little more than seven thousand. In April 1919,
Luz published a fourteen-point critique of Morones and the CROM.
11The General Confederation of Workers (CGT)
In the spring of 1919, Luz, Cultura Racional of Aguascalientes, and the Hermanos Rojos of Villa Cecilia near Tampico all expressed a growing sense of urgency for the establishment of a “libertarian” alternative to CROM.
12 But no purely anarchosyndicalist convention could be held as long as the hostile Carranza regime was in power. Luz did create a Mexico City-based workers’ organizing group, the Central Workers Corps (Cuerpo Central de Trabajadores), in 1919, which was later renamed the Communist Federation of the Mexican Proletariat (Federación Comunista del Proletariado Mexicano). Its declared objective was to serve as an antipolitical opposition against the Labor party of the CROM and to oppose the new Communist party.
13 But these activities, like those of the Communists, had to be low key.
In 1920, Obregón, a leader more sympathetic toward organized labor, toppled Carranza after a brief struggle. Although he favored Morones and the CROM, the anarchosyndicalists enjoyed a far less intimidating milieu than that which had prevailed since August 1916.
From February 15 to February 22, 1921, an anarchosyndicalist convention was held in Mexico City designed to create a new regional (Mexican) labor organization. It was sponsored by the Communist Federation of the Mexican Proletariat. Fifty representatives from thirty syndicates in the Federal District and twenty from the states attended. They created the CGT. Some of the more important CGT syndicates were a consolidated textile factory workers’ group, the Federación de Obreros de Hilados y Tejidos del Estado de México y del Distrito Federal; the streetcar conductors, plant workers, and right-of-way maintenance employees from the Mexico City Transit Company, the Empleados y Obreros de Tráfico de la Compañia de Tranvías and the Sindicato de Vía Permanente de la Compañia de Tranvías; some telephone workers, the Obreros y Empleados de Telefonos “Ericsson”; textile factory workers, the Obreros Progresistas de Santa Rosa (Orizaba); tobacco factory employees, Tabaqueros (Veracruz); the Obreros de Artes Gráficas Comerciales del D.F.; the Obreros y Obreras del Palacio de Hierro; the
canteros from Coyoacán; and various other groups, largely from Veracruz, Orizaba, Puebla, the state of México, the Federal District, Tampico, and Jalisco. Many were former Casa groups. The newcomers included the Industrial Workers of the World. José Refugio Rodríguez represented a contingent of the IWW in Mexico City, and Michael Paley was the delegate from an IWW unit, the Industrial Petroleum Workers, in Tampico.
14In its constitution the CGT accepted “libertarian communism”
(comunismo libertario), “rationalist education for the working class”
(el sistema racionalista para la instrucción del pueblo trabajador), “class struggle”
(lucha de clases), and “direct action”
(la acción directa, que implica la exclusión de toda clase de política) as fundamental principles because they were necessary for “the complete emancipation of the workers and peasants”
(obreros y campesinos).15Some of the CGT founders were long-time leaders of Mexican anarchosyndicalism, among them Rafael Quintero and Jacinto Huitrón. They were joined by younger but equally aggressive adherents. Typical of these men was the executive committee of the Communist Federation which presided over the first CGT convention. It was composed of Albert Araoz de Léon, José C. Valadés, and Manuel Díaz Ramírez. The latter two members later became rival interpretors of Mexican working-class history, Valadés offering an anti-Marxist radical perspective and Díaz Ramírez the Stalinist viewpoint. The foundling CGT suffered no lack of brainpower or leadership.
The convention passed several significant resolutions, calling for immediate agrarian land reform and creation of
campesino organizing committees. The agrarian program would be pressed by the CGT throughout its history, but with little success. One of the declarations observed that the workers of the United States, Panama, Cuba, and Santo Domingo, among others, were victims of a “White Terror”
(terror bianco) carried out by the “American Capitalists.” The CGT protested the deportation of six of its foreign-born organizers—Sebastián San Vicente, Frank Seaman, Natalia Michaelova, Michael Paley, José Rubio, “Fort Mayer”
[sic], and José Allen. Another resolution denounced the Pan American Federation of Labor (Confederación Panamericana del Trabajo) as an attempt by the American government and the AFL to manipulate the working class of the Western Hemisphere. This was also an attack on Morones and the CROM, which had established close ties with Gompers and the AFL. The CGT, like the PLM before it and unlike the Casa, was deeply aware of and concerned with Yankee imperialism. Consistent with the “popular front” sentiments of anarchists in other countries in 1921, the Communist party was welcomed into CGT membership.
16 The CGT affiliated with the Moscow-led International and sent Díaz Ramírez to Moscow as its representative
17—a mission and experience that would forever reshape his ideology. The CGT even accepted the principle of a “Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” although it was given an anarcho-syndicalist definition. The “dictatorship” was not to be controlled by a political cadre or group claiming to represent the proletariat; rather, it was described as “the working class organized into, and ruling through, councils of workers,
campesinos, and soldiers.” The new Communist party was in attendance at the convention and apparently suffered through it all without complaint. The CGT inaugural conclave signed all its proclamations “Health and Libertarian Communism” (Salud y Comunismo Libertario).
The anarchosyndicalist leadership of the CGT soon came into open conflict with the Communist party. The occasion was the First National Workers Congress of the CGT (Primero Congreso Obrero Nacional de la CGT) held in Mexico City from September 4 to September 11, 1921. Debates and ideological disputes during the convention resulted in balloting won by the anarchosyndicalist directorate. Finally, the delegates approved an anarchosyndicalist motion to ask the membership of the syndicates to decide in an election if the CGT should drop or retain its affiliation with the Moscow-based Third International. This action was taken in the context of the repression of Russian anarchists carried out by the Bolsheviks. The Communist party delegation walked out of the CGT convention in protest.
18 The withdrawal of the small Communist party gave the CGT unity, but its anti-Marxism also meant that some of the most active and brilliant of Mexico’s young radicals would look elsewhere for identification. The CGT had begun to isolate itself from Mexico’s future.
An anarchosyndicalist control group, the Libertarian Syndicalist Center (Centro Sindicalista Libertario, CSL), emerged from the September convention with unchallengeable power over the organization. Patterned after La Social of the nineteenth century, the
obreros intelectuales of the Artes Gráficas, and Luz and Lucha of the Casa, the CSL was the organizing and propaganda nucleus of the CGT. It carried the responsibility of ideological direction and organizational impetus. Special subcommittees were formed by the CSL for such duties as the recruitment of new syndicates and to petition for the release of CGT “political prisoners” held without trial by the government. Among the CSL’s members were Quintero, Valadés, Araiza, Salazar, Aguirre, and a number of other former Casa leaders. The CSL published the official CGT newspaper,
Verbo Rojo, under the direction of Araiza. The usual European writers—Bakunin, Proudhon, Kropotkin, Lorenzo, Malatesta, and Reclus—provided the essays on political theory for
Verbo Rojo, while the Mexicans contributed their views regarding contemporary conditions and CGT strategies for their own country. An occasional essay by Ricardo Flores Magón, imprisoned at Leavenworth, Kansas, appeared. To the CGT-CSL his continued struggle for anarchist communism was heroic and he was venerated as a revolutionary martyr.
19On May 13,1922, Huitrón, Quintero, and Alejandro Montoya called a special meeting of the CSL at which Rosendo Salazar and José G. Escobedo were expelled from the CGT directorate for their collaboration with the political movement led by Adolfo de la Huerta in his quest for the presidency of Mexico and for past political activities about which they had been warned. The expelled members defended themselves valiantly and the decisive vote was not taken until 6:00
A.M. on May 14.
20 The CGT intended to remain divorced from “politics” although a number of its radical members individually and in secrecy assisted de la Huerta’s efforts among the workers.
The twelve-year history of the CGT as an anarchosyndicalist group was spotted with violence, especially during its militant first six years. These incidents were usually precipitated by the omnipresent, over-zealous authorities, but occasionally the CGT resorted to drastic measures in pursuit of its goals. The 1922 CGT May Day commemoration was one example. A march to the American Consulate was held in order to articulate demands for the release of Ricardo Flores Magón and Librado Rivera from the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth. When the crowd was parading through downtown Mexico City on its way back to the CGT’s headquarters, it passed the Knights of Columbus (Caballeros de Colón) center. The ultraconservative Caballeros were waiting on the balcony and at the windows. An exchange of catcalls and insults was followed by a sniper’s gunshot and the instant death of a CGT marcher’s young son. Dozens in the crowd of about one thousand, many of which were combat veterans of the Red Battalions, drew pistols and charged the building, scaled the walls, and broke down the front door. They sacked the interior of the building and “Rojos” pursued “Cristeros” through the narrow streets of the older downtown section of Mexico City.
21 The police were discreet in their delayed presence.
Four months later violence erupted at an old trouble spot, the textile factory of San Ildefonso in San Angel on the southwestern edge of Mexico City, so often the center of violent workers’ organizing efforts in the nineteenth century. The plant was closed down by a wildcat strike called by the workers. They had no union at the time and appealed to the highly placed government leaders of the CROM and the Mexican Labor party (Partido Laborista Mexicano) of Morones for help. To their dismay their plea was rejected, for the owners of the San Idlefonso plant wielded considerable political influence at the local and national levels. When the CGT was approached for assistance by the strikers, the CSL decided to give them all-out support. CGT organizers and speakers arranged and addressed strike rallies and helped set up picket lines. When these efforts failed to achieve any beneficial results and strikebreakers began to enter the plant, a strike of all CGT textile syndicates in the Federal District was called. In their zeal, the workers at the nearby La Magdalena plant cut the power cables to the factory before walking out in support of their San Ildefonso counterparts. The textile plant operators of the San Angel-Contreras area had defeated the workers before, however, and they demonstrated their determination by declaring a lockout at the six factories in the area.
The confrontation continued into October 1922 and was escalated by the kidnapping of the textile syndicate leader (Federación Hilandera), Julio Márquez. On October 20 a CGT-led rally was held to protest the Márquez disappearance. It culminated at the San Angel City Hall. About five thousand persons were in the crowd when the mounted police fired upon them and charged forward on horseback. One worker was killed and dozens more were injured in the gunfire and panic that ensued. The CGT blamed General Celestino Gasca—military governor of the Federal District, a former member of the Casa, and commander of the Red Battalions—for the attack. They also blamed the national government and President Obregón for allowing a general climate of repression to develop that made the attack possible. On October 22 posters appeared throughout the Federal District protesting the attack, blaming Gasca, and calling for a protest march October 25 to the governor’s palace. The CGT, under uncompromising CSL leadership, was completely isolated from the leftist revolutionaries like Gasca who held power and sided with the pragmatic CROM.
22On October 25 thousand of workers gathered near CGT headquarters on Calle Uruguay in downtown Mexico City and marched from there to the governor’s palace. En route they were joined by about three hundred independently organized but militant railroad workers from the Nonoalco train yards. Huitrón, Araiza, and others delivered speeches in front of the governor’s palace describing the events of October 20 in San Angel. The governor, who looked on impassively, never accepted responsibility for what had transpired. The factories reopened after a few days with the vast majority of employees now members of the CGT, but it was a Pyrrhic victory.
23 Few concessions were granted by the employers, and the government was more hostile than ever to the CGT. Three years later, in 1925, the CROM would attempt to penetrate the CGT textile workers’ stronghold of San Angel-Contreras, leading to street battles, gunfights, strikes, lockouts, and government military-police intervention on behalf of the CROM minority. The Centro Sindicalista Libertario had established its willingness to confront capital and government whatever the odds, but the national situation was discouraging. Increasing numbers of workers found it more satisfying to enjoy the limited benefits provided by the bloated, government-supported national CROM leaders and their frequently militant local officers than to risk a precarious future with the anarchosyndicalist CGT.
The CSL continued the radical but lonely course of the CGT during 1923. More violence was the result. On January 3 the shop workers for the Mexico City Transit Company went on strike. Three weeks later, when the dispute was not resolved, the CGT called a general strike of all transit employees, and company operations were completely closed down. The CGT and its powerful transit workers’ syndicate, the Federation of Employees and Workers of the Transit Company of Mexico, were the organizers of the strike. The government and CROM opposed it. After company operations had closed down, a joint meeting of company management and the CROM leadership was held with the striking workers in an attempt to lure them back to work. Special cash incentives were used: double-time pay was offered for the first day back (Monday), and those who returned would also be paid for their Sunday holiday. Penalties were threatened for those who refused to meet the established deadline.
24The Centro Sindicalista Libertario’s approach to the situation was aggressive and typical. The CGT called for a general strike of all its members in the Federal District in support of the transit workers. The CGT’s numerical strength in the Federal District was considerable and growing, about forty thousand, but most industries and public services continued to operate. More importantly, the strike call intensified working-class unrest and the transit company remained inoperative. The CGT held strike meetings, and angry newcomers swelled the ranks of its transit workers’ syndicate.
On February 1, 1923, an assembly of the striking transit workers was held at CGT headquarters. While the meeting was in progress, word was received that a CROM member was driving a streetcar toward downtown Mexico City along the route from Tacubaya on the city’s western edge. The streetcar’s route would cause it to pass directly in front of the CGT headquarters where hundreds of the transit company strikers and CGT members were gathered. The street was quickly closed by barricades and red-and-black roji-negra flags were hoisted. When the streetcar, carrying two armed soldiers as an escort, arrived on the scene, it could not pass.
The soldiers and the conductor disembarked and one soldier threatened the CGT members around him with his weapon. At that point José Salgado rushed the man, seized his rifle, and struck him over the head with it. The soldier fell to the ground and died there. The other soldier and the motorman then drew their weapons, but they had no chance. The armed CGT strikers shot them down. The omnipresent plainclothes political police stationed outside CGT headquarters witnessed the beginning of the encounter and rushed to request reinforcements. About two hundred mounted riot police (precursors of the more recent
granaderos) and some cavalry troops were dispatched to the scene in order to restore order. Some five hundred cavalry soldiers had been recently shifted to Mexico City by the government in order to contain the worker unrest.
En route the police and troops encountered a belligerent crowd of CGT telephone company workers and other transit strike supporters in front of the Ericsson Telephone Company offices. The police, swinging their clubs, charged the crowd with their horses, easily dispersing it and seizing its red-and-black flag. However, it was a different story when the contingent of galloping mounted police reached the CGT barricades on Calle Uruguay and attempted the same tactics. Accustomed to dealing with intimidated and unarmed civilians, they rode down the street directly into withering gunfire. Several were killed and wounded in the first few moments. An hour-long street battle then ensued with CGT gunmen firing from behind their barricades and from the windows and doorways of nearby buildings. At the conclusion of hostilities, the one hundred CGT members who had not escaped surrendered to the police and military reinforcements under the command of General de Brigada Arnulfo R. Gómez. They surrendered in return for a guarantee of safe conduct, but they were arrested and the building was sacked. Thirteen CGT members were wounded; five mounted riot police, two soldiers, and one CROM motor-man were killed; and an unknown quantity of police and military personnel were wounded. On February 3 the government announced the expulsion from Mexico of four foreign-born CGT prisoners arrested at the scene. They were all Spaniards: Sebastián San Vicente, Alejandro Montoya, J. Pérez Gil, and Urbano Legaspi. AU four had been prominent transit strike leaders.
The resort to arms within the context of the international anarcho-syndicalist movement was a common tactic at the time. These tactics were put in vogue by contemporary Spanish anarchists who resorted to the use of pistoleros in retaliation against assassinations carried out by semiofficial, police-sponsored, right-wing terrorist groups and the police themselves in Spain. A moderated form of these tactics was adopted in Mexico where the Spaniards were numerous and active. On March 10 the CGT marched in protest against the assassination in Spain of the prominent anarchosyndicalist ideologue and writer Salvador Seguí (pseud., Noy del Sucre), who was shot down in a Barcelona street by unknown assailants.
Following the street battle in front of CGT headquarters, General Plutarcho Elías Calles, then minister of government
(secretario de gobernación), decreed the strike ended and stated that the army would tolerate no more civil disobedience or strike activity. With one hundred members already in custody and facing serious prosecution, the CGT backed away and the strike ended. During the next few years the majority of transit company workers were affiliated with the CROM. The release of the one hundred CGT prisoners by the national government was facilitated by Adolfo de la Huerta, the new leader of the military left wing and perhaps the second most powerful individual in Mexico. He pleaded the CGT prisoners’ cause with President Obregón.
25The fact that the CGT suffered very little direct punitive action as a result of its tactics can be understood in light of three factors. First, its surrender during the seige came when its gunners enjoyed strong firing positions and could have embarrassed the government with heavy fighting and casualties. Second, the CGT’s strike capitulation left the government, CROM, and the transit company victorious. And, finally, because de la Huerta was a strong challenger for the presidency and commanded the allegiance of a significant portion of the army, Obregón was trying to forestall his inclination to revolt and thus avoid civil war. That revolt came later the same year when Obregón selected Calles, a close confidant and friend, to succeed him in office. De la Huerta was defeated militarily, and the CGT, although it avoided overt support of the de la Huerta revolt and condemned it on January 3, 1924, found itself in dire straits confronted by an openly hostile and more powerful government.
26 That hostility was prophetically announced on March 10, 1923, when Calles’ assistant, Undersecretary of Government Gilberto Valenzuela, ominously declared that
“acción directa” was not necessarily a legitimate working-class tactic and that it had to conform to existing law.
During 1922 and 1923 the Veracruz-Orizaba area was a major center of CGT conflict with the government. In 1922 a massive anarchist-organized rent strike swept the city of Veracruz precipitating conflicts between groups that represented a cross section of society. The groups involved included the mass-based several-thousand-member renters’ union and allied CGT syndicates, the CROM-affiliated labor unions whose hostile leadership and sympathetic rank-and-file were divided by the conflict, the property owners’ association, and elements of the city, state, and national governments.
Socioeconomic conditions in Veracruz, while similar to the pattern of demographic growth, unemployment, and rising prices common to other cities in central Mexico, were extreme and contributed immensely to the strife that afflicted the city. The population had almost doubled in the metropolitan area from 29,164 to 58,225 in the previous twenty years, and new housing, with few exceptions, consisted of crowded, filth-ridden
vecindades. Slightly more than 96 percent of the population were non-property-owning renters. The influx of
campesinos to the city in search of opportunity increased the pressure on available housing and encouraged a continual upward spiral in rental fees. The owners of rental housing organized themselves in the Unión de Proprietaros and resorted to a special police force, the
policía privada de comercio, to evict tenants whose unstable employment or inadequate wages rendered them unable to match the rising rent rates.
27The appearance in 1922 in Veracruz of a revolutionary union for the defense of tenant interests, however, was not only due to general conditions, but also because the city had a nucleus of experienced artisan and other working-class organized labor activists led by the anarchist tailor Herón Proal. Proal was born on October 17,1881, in Tulancingo, Hidalgo, where his father, Victor, a Frenchman, and his mother, Amada Islas, from Mexico City, had settled. In 1897 Heron joined the Marine Corps, an experience that was useful in 1906 when he became a PLM revolutionary and learned his anarchism. When Madero became president, Proal settled down in Veracruz and opened a tailor shop.
28During the revolution the port city was the site of considerable labor unrest and in 1912 the Casa had created the Confederación de Sindicatos Obreros there. Led by Pedro Junco, it was “anticapitalist, anti-militarist, and anti-Catholic.”
29 A sizeable number of artisans joined as individuals and some of them, including Proal, held positions in the directorate. But Veracruz was a key Constitutionalist stronghold during the civil war with Villa and Zapata and by 1916 some of the syndicate leaders in the city had close ties with the government. They failed to support the Mexico City and local
casas in their fateful confrontation with the Carranza regime. Still, the militancy and loyalty to Casa principles of many workers in the port city caused the Federation of Federal District Syndicates to choose Veracruz in late 1916 as the site for the convening of the Congreso Preliminar Obrero, the first post-Casa attempt to reorganize the urban working-class movement at the national level. Proal served as president of the Congreso’s executive committee.
30Working-class organizing continued in the city and in 1919 the Federación de Trabajadores del Puerto de Veracruz was founded. It later became the principle CGT affiliate in the port area and Proal was a member of its directorate. In January 1922, Proal and a group of CGT anarchists convened a series of public meetings to protest what were regarded as exorbitant increases in rental rates and alleged abusive behavior on the part of the property owners’ private police force in the eviction of delinquent renters. Angry and increasingly larger crowds, including a contingent of prostitutes, attended the meetings while the authorities ignored the protestors’ pleas for the redress of their grievances.
The renters’ union was formally created on February 3,1922, when a group of indignant members of the CROM Unión de Marineros y Fogoneros walked out of their union meeting after their leaders refused to support the developing rent strike. They joined Proal and his group in the street and formalized their alliance by inaugurating the Sindicato Revolucionario de Inquilinos. Proal was elected president of the new union.
31During the next months special groups of Inquilino syndicate members organized a growing rent strike and battled the private property owners’ “police force” in the streets in order to prevent evictions. Simón Cáceres, the chief of the
policía privada and owner of several apartment buildings, was Proal’s principal protagonist during the struggle. As the size and violence of the renters’ union contingents, which included men and women, young and old, increased, they gradually drove the
policía privada from the streets.
32The local authorities, under pressure from the Unión de Proprietarios, were belatedly anxious to end the strike, but they had allowed it to get out of control before giving it their attention. Now, they could not gain the cooperation of governor Adalberto Tejada, who was one of the “socialist governors of the Gulf coast” and did not wish to alienate the great majority of Veracruz citizens who paid rents and sympathized with or participated in the mass demonstrations that periodically marched across the city in numbers that on several occasions exceeded ten thousand, an estimated 20 percent of the city’s population. Tejada stalled action by a concerned President Obregón while the “socialist governors” pressed an embarrassed president to select Calles as the presidential successor instead of de la Huerta. Proal, surrounded in his living quarters and at the syndicate meeting hall by armed supporters, was inaccessible to the local authorities as long as they lacked military assistance.
33In the wake of the rent strike, mass demonstrations, and armed renters’ “defense” groups, rental rates were stabilized and even reduced in wide areas of the city. By May, Proal and the Sindicato de Inquilinos sensed an even greater potential for their movement. Ursulo Galván was given the job of mobilizing the peasantry as the first step in creating an even more powerful mass-based “antipolitical” working-class organization.
34On May 9 the long-planned and largest demonstration yet held took place. Proal announced that the victory over the property owners was just the beginning. Now, the syndicate intended to bring about lowered and stabilized prices for essential foodstuffs and clothing. On the same day federal troops finally moved into the city but took no action. At that point the syndicate’s new campaign was delayed by a conflict in the directorate between the “antipolitical” anarchist majority and several members of the new Mexican Communist party, who insisted that the movement should participate in both local and national political campaigns. The result of the dissension was the departure of the Communists and Proal’s public declaration on June 30 that the renters’ syndicate would remain “revolutionary, antipolitical, and
genuinely communist.”
35By July 5 the Inquilinos were ready to begin the campaign to stabilize and reduce food and clothing prices. A demonstration involving several thousand participants began under threatening skies that soon unleashed a deluge. As the rain fell the crowd broke up and Proal, his associates, and guards made their way back to the syndicate’s headquarters. As night fell troops closed off the area, surrounded the building, and began to close in. The syndicate personnel were taken by surprise. An intense but uneven gunfight ensued.
The following day the local newspaper,
El Dictamen, long sympathetic to the property owners’ cause, reported one policeman and several union members killed, with five soldiers and ten unionists wounded. Proal was taken prisoner, incarcerated in Mexico City, and sent into exile. In 1924, after Obregón left office, and again in 1926, the greatly reduced Sindicato de Inquilinos reported its own estimate, buttressed by “independent assessments,” of “over 150 dead,” and 141 arrested and temporarily held for “sedition and murder.” The estimate of wounded was not given. Most observers reported casualties approximately half-way between the
El Dictamen report and the syndicate’s claim.
36 Galván went on to lead the famous Liga de Comunidades Agrarias y Sindicatos del Estado de Veracruz, founded in March 1923. He soon rejected anarchism, became an avowed Marxist, and enjoyed the support of governor Tejada.
37During the second half of 1923 the scene of CGT action shifted to the Orizaba area. On June 20, Enrique Flores Magón addressed striking textile workers at Orizaba and urged them to use violence in their struggle.
38 The factory owners of Orizaba and Veracruz attempted a lockout, and the result was a CGT-and-CROM-supported general strike. Strikes, sabotage, lockouts, and then internicine labor conflicts spread over the industrialized areas of the state and endured for months. The CROM and CGT factions fought over jurisdictions, strike settlements, and ideology.
39On September 15 the CGT joined the anarchosyndicalist International Workingmen’s Association (Asociación Internacional de Trabajadores, AIT) and announced plans for its third national congress. The congress met in January 1924.
40 The high point came with the release of a research report on textile factory closings in the Federal District. The owners claimed that short-term shutdowns were necessary because of shortages of materials caused by the Veracruz general strike. Prepared by José C. Valadés, the CGT report began a battle that would last eight months. It claimed that some factories had stockpiles of materials sufficient for three months and recommended that, in the context of gross mismanagement by the industrialists, the workers be given control of the factories. The CGT national congress adopted the report. The lockouts continued.
41On March 3, CGT representatives met with the textile factory owners of the Federal District and declared that the plants should remain open or the workers would take them over. The owners asked for additional time in order to prepare a response, and the meeting was adjourned. On March 8, General Manuel Pérez Treviño asserted that the cause of the textile manufacturers was “just,” and the next day the government of the Federal District dispatched troops to guard the textile factories against worker takeovers. The dispute boiled through the spring and early summer with serious strikes and occasional violence. Finally, the CGT textile syndicate leaders Otilo Wences and Ciro Mendoza were invited to government-sponsored arbitration along with two representatives of the industrialists. The disputes were settled and the textile factories of the Federal District experienced relative peace until CROM textile worker organizers challenged CGT hegemony almost a year later.
42The Calles administration came into office in late 1924 and worked more openly than ever with the CROM and against the CGT. On December 2, Morones was appointed secretary of industry, commerce, and labor
(secretario de industria, comercio, y trabajo). Morones’ prestige and the government’s open support of the CROM made it attractive to many workers and employers. During December 1924 important labor legislation was approved by the government which greatly enhanced the position of the CROM and undermined the CGT. The two bills approved that month with the support of Morones and Calles provided that only a union with majority representation among the workers in a given enterprise could be recognized. The new laws were popular with the workers because they provided for mandatory collective bargaining in all labor disputes and guaranteed the employment security of strikers.
43 The larger and officially sanctioned CROM benefited nicely from the new laws. During the two years 1925–1926 the CROM’s claimed membership increased from 1,200,000 to 2,000,000. In reality it was probably more like 100,000, nearly twice as large as the CGT.
44 CGT bargaining and strike activity for dissident minorities or at a facility simply declared to have a CROM majority was now in violation of federal statutes. On January 28,1925, Morones and his department of government, the Secretaría de Industria, Comercio, y Trabajo, named the officials who were to serve in the various states and the Federal District as labor dispute investigators, conciliators, and arbitrators. Almost all thirty-two of the appointees were CROM members. Created by law, the government’s new commissions for labor relations, the Juntas de Conciliación y Arbitraje, were dominated by Morones’ office. They became extremely important, consistently rendering decisions favorable to CROM in labor disputes and usually remaining hostile to and always aloof from the CGT.
45 During 1925 the CGT confronted a combined CROM-government assault in the Federal District that threatened its very existence.
46The trouble began with a series of jurisdictional disputes that culminated in physical assaults and, finally, the sniper killing of a female CROM member during the May Day celebrations.
47 Amid charges that some of its most prominent syndicate leaders were responsible, the CGT convened its fourth national congress from May 4 to May 10. The declarations of the congress intensified the situation. Two new campaigns were announced: First, the CGT declared in favor of the six-hour work day in order to eliminate unemployment. Second, it reasserted long-standing Mexican anarchist support for the agrarian movement and demanded full and immediate hacienda land redistribution to the
campesinaje. Furthermore, it criticised the government for inactivity. Earlier in the year CGT regional groups had declared their support for the far-reaching agrarian reform plan advocated by a former Casa member and Zapatista, Congressional Deputy Antonio Díaz Soto y Gama. The Mexican Congress rejected Díaz Soto y Gama’s measure. Luis León, secretary of development and agriculture, responded angrily to the proposal of the CGT “reds,” declaring that it would “require a new revolution.” He claimed that the Calles regime was doing everything possible within the law to carry out land reform. The CGT congress in its other pronouncements called for
“escuelas racionalistas” and
“acción directa” and rejected the legitimacy, honesty, and authority of the labor Juntas de Conciliación dominated by Morones. A direct confrontation was impending.
48On July 7 the owners of the La Abeja, La Magdalena, and La Hormiga textile plants in the CGT-permeated San Angel-Contreras region of the Federal District officially asked the local Junta de Conciliación to consider “readjusted salaries.” The Junta de Conciliación’s decision was not favorable to the CGT workers at these plants and it provoked the powerful CGT-affiliated Federación General Obrera del Ramo Textil to announce that it would “not recognize the authority of the Federal District Junta de Conciliación y Arbitraje.” On July 14 the national government filed charges in court against the CGT for holding an illegal strike at La Hormiga, for preventing nonunion and CROM workers from entering La Magdalena, and for convening illegal workers’ meetings inside La Magdalena.
49On July 20 a wave of violence swept the textile factory area of San Angel-Contreras. Gangs of CROM members, some carrying guns
(pistoleros), attacked CGT workers in the streets outside the plants and at least one CGT worker, a female, was killed. The street battles were fought between the CGT “Rojos” and what they called CROM supporters, “Amarillos” (Yellows). In August the Junta de Conciliación declared that workers at any factory where a majority of their numbers were not organized could not be represented by any union. This was a blow to the CGT, which held the vast majority of unionized workers in the San Angel-Contreras textile plants, as well as the Federal District, but confronted a constant turnover of workers in the factories and thus often fell below the requisite 50 percent. The Junta ruling backfired when the CGT and the owners of the San Antonio de Abad textile plant in Mexico City averted a strike by agreeing to eliminate all workers who refused to join the union.
50In September the CGT once again declared its refusal to recognize the Junta de Conciliación. That agency of the Secretaría de Industria, Comercio, y Trabajo replied in kind and declared the CGT an outlaw organization and all its strikes illegal. The dispute continued in October when the CGT refused to attend a Morones-sponsored conclave of the textile industry under the aegis of his secretariat. The CGT statement said it “did not collaborate with politicians.” In November more violence broke out at La Magdalena between gun-toting CGT and CROM members when the latter were admitted to employment by the owners of the plant. The CGT called a “general strike” of its textile workers to reinforce its demands that the CROM members be ejected. A violent strike ensued with more fighting between the two centrals.
The turning point in the impasse came on December 17 when, with CGT picket lines holding fast outside the factories, the government sent the mounted police into the fray. The picket lines were broken up and scattered. The CGT protested and staged sporadic work stoppages throughout the Federal District, but to no avail. In January 1926, fifty CGT members were fired at La Magdalena and government troops were posted at the factory to protect CROM workers and the physical plant. The owners of La Abeja, suffering property damage and ever lower productivity during the strife, closed down that plant a few days later leaving three hundred unemployed. The CGT vigorously protested and the plant reopened with some increase in CROM personnel.
When it was all over, the San Angel-Contreras textile struggle had led to very marginal shifts in the balance of syndicate power. The CROM gained a few positions but revealed an incredible depth of corruption. The textile workers’ union remained one of CGT’s strongest affiliates, relatively large and militant but on the defensive. In territories farther removed from the Mexico City area and the CGT’s center of strength, the CROM had its way much more easily.
51Throughout the four years of the Calles regime, CGT headquarters and member syndicates suffered bombings, fires, burglaries, and assaults, and its personnel experienced frequent arrests. Only the continued aggressive spirit and posture of the Centro Sindicalista Libertario kept the CGT’s national membership steady at about sixty thousand,
52 but it was on the defensive and dues collections were insufficient to support a permanent office staff. Perhaps the CGT’s persistent defense paid dividends. Whatever the reason, there was a reduction of intraunion violence in 1926 as the CROM turned from intrusions into CGT territories to the organization of nonunionized sectors of the urban work force.
53 At the grass roots levels, there was an abundance of sincere, dedicated CROM labor organizers.
The CGT remained undaunted in the face of adversity. In mid-July 1926 its fifth Mexican regional congress was held. Some of the strongest, most militant, and oldest anarchosyndicalist syndicates represented at the conclave were the textile workers, the transit company workers, the Obreros y Obreras del Palacio de Hierro, the bakers, and the telephone company workers. AU these groups had long-standing records of revolutionary labor activities, some of them dating back to the earliest Casa strikes. Prominent long-time anarchosyndicalist leaders still on the scene were Rafael Quintero and Rodolfo Aguirre, who had signed the fateful Casa-Constitutionalist pact at Veracruz during the revolution, and Luis Araiza, who was prominent during the general strikes of 1916. With Valadés and Araoz de León assisting in the conduct of the convention, the assembly unanimously declared the CGT’s ultimate goal to be anarchist communism
(comunismo anarquista). It continued affiliation with the anarchosyndicalist AIT headquartered in Berlin. It created special committees to work for the release by national and state governments of what it claimed were CGT “political prisoners.” The convention issued yet another call for agrarian reform and announced the creation of special
campesino organizing committees. Finally, it vowed “to decisively and faithfully follow the path toward social revolution and anarchist communism taken by Mikhail Bakunin” and ordered its affiliates to indoctrinate the rank-and-file accordingly.
54During 1927 the CGT’s main efforts involved strike support for its militant petroleum workers’ syndicate in Tampico and for the striking independent Confederation of Railway Societies, which at the height of its effort in February became the better known Confederation of Transportation and Communications Workers (Confederación de Transportes y Comunicaciones). On February 9 the CGT called for a “general strike” of its workers in the Federal District in order to support the railwaymen. The railroad workers had assisted earlier CGT strikes, including the violent textile strike of 1922 and the equally intense transit strike of 1923. The “general strike” heightened the intensity of emotions on all sides but did nothing to resolve the conflict. The strike continued for another month. The Tampico petroleum strike quickly deepened with the dispatch of troops to the scene by President Calles, “to protect” company property. The soldiers were involved in shooting incidents and the strikers retaliated with sabotage. One scholar has observed that troops were used largely because it was a CGT syndicate on strike.
55In 1928 the CGT, despite continued anarchosyndicalist rhetoric and affiliation with the AIT, began to show signs of discouragement and wear and tear in its revolutionary zeal. Despite a wave of CGT- and CROM-sponsored strikes during the spring highlighted by the paralysis of the Río Blanco textile plant for over four months and a serious CGT strike in August at the Ericsson Telephone Company, the most significant events from the standpoint of anarchosyndicalism during the year was the beginning of a CGT shift toward accommodation with the government and the collapse of the CROM.
The latter event came about at the end of 1928 after a lengthy and sometimes bitter feud between Morones and his CROM supporters on one side and Obregón and his followers on the other. The differences between presidential-aspirant Morones and Obregón were aggravated in 1927 when a group of pro-Obregón trade unionists met in Saltillo and considered, among other things, strategies to unseat Morones as the leader of the CROM. Following Obregón’s assassination by a religious fanatic on July 17, 1928, some of his upset followers claimed that Morones was at least “intellectually and morally responsible” for the killing because of the climate of rancor and hate generated during their clash. This criticism destroyed what little chance Morones may have had to gain the presidency.
In a gesture of protest against the criticism, Morones on July 21, just four days after the assassination, resigned his post as secretary of industry, commerce, and labor. Two other CROM and Labor party supporters, Gasca and Eduardo Moneda, also left their high government posts in protest. Morones’ resignation was a strategic error. It eroded his prestige and removed him from the inner circles of government power. It ultimately placed him in an adversary position with the incumbent administration and led to the destruction of the CROM. By August newspapers in the Federal District were criticising the CROM for the first time, and their workers, formerly constituted in CROM syndicates, withdrew.
56Morones came into conflict with President Calles when Emilio Portes Gil was selected to serve as interim president. Morones opposed the choice and continued an incredible series of blunders that left strongman Calles to choose between his former ally Morones and the candidate supported by his new and personally created National Revolutionary party. In retrospect, Calles’ decision seems to have been the only logical alternative. He chose not to risk the disruption of his party and the political control and stability it represented. He supported Portes Gil.
In December 1928, when Calles’ position was known, CROM syndicates, beginning with those whose leaders were most opposed to Morones, began a massive exodus from the organization. By mid 1929 the CROM, which was created on a foundation of government support, had disintegrated. Its political and numerical hegemony over Mexico’s working class was broken. Most of CROM’s deserting units became independent or formed their own local unions while awaiting developments and soliciting government support. Some of the more radical former CROM syndicates joined the CGT, swelling its ranks by another twenty thousand members to a total slightly over eighty thousand. President Portes Gil, who denied claims that he was intent on breaking Morones and the CROM, did nothing to stop the collapse of the enormous labor confederation. Indeed the CGT, the CROM’s historic rival, experienced less government harassment than at any previous time in its history.
57In 1929 the CGT seemed to lose its sense of direction. The great majority of its eighty thousand members were resident in the Federal District, and the leadership enjoyed its closest and most harmonious period of governmental relations. In view of the obviously increasing power and stability of the government, many of the CGT’s older leaders were now in agreement with the newer, formerly CROM, members that
acción directa, anarchy, and revolutionary syndicalism were unrealistic. The capitulation by some of the leadership of their anarcho-syndicalist position was understandable in the context of the CGT’s long and discouraging repression. That discouragement, and also old age, had already caused a number of former CGT-CSL leaders to give up the fight in a manner similar to the defeat of the Casa. The sense of defeat was facilitated by the presence of the former CROM leaders, who preached the virtues of cooperating with the government. From 1929 to 1931 the CGT went through a two-year identity crisis, a time of dissension and flux. Quintero, López Dónez, Arce, and Valadés were now absent. When that time span ended, the bulk of the CGT leadership, despite the opposition of the Tampico affiliates, was ready for the first time to cooperate fully with the government.
58In the meantime the government was taking steps that would ensure its control over the Mexican working class. Under President Portes Gil, a new labor code (Código Federal de Trabajo) was prepared which greatly increased government intervention into the working-class movement and into labor-management relations. Under its provisions, the regime of President Pascual Ortiz Rubio reported that during the period July 1, 1929, to June 30,1930, 402 labor conflicts were intervened, “always to protect the interests of the workers…. The Junta Federal de Conciliación y Arbitraje has come to function normally … establishing equilibrium and harmony among the important sectors of production and always separating itself from political influence and union sectarianism…. there has been a notable decrease in [the number and intensity of] industrial strikes.” The report also mentioned that private enterprise paid 136,278.29 pesos to support the Junta Federal de Conciliación y Arbitraje.
59During 1929–1931 the Ortiz Rubio government prepared an expanded labor code which, among other things, delegated to the government the power to recognize unions, to approve all strikes, and to negotiate binding settlements with the parties concerned. Ortiz Rubio explained: “As president I understood the importance of this law that was demanded as an urgent national necessity. I gave instructions that the secretary of industry, commerce, and labor should make a careful revision of all previous efforts. The new code [
proyecto] was elaborated by a commission presided over by the secretary.”
60At first the CGT and several other labor organizations were opposed to the new code. At a meeting held in the presidential palace the emerging labor leader Vicente Lombardo Toledano read a protest which the CGT endorsed. But on July 20,1931, the Mexican Chamber of Deputies passed the new code and several CGT syndicate leaders, including Wolstano Pineda, Ciro Mendoza, and Luis Araiza, accepted the verdict. On that date, the CGT began breaking up. Enrique Rangel, Rosendo Salazar, and Jacinto Huitrón were among those who led dissident and rival factions. A crucial blow to the hopes for the CGT came when the powerful Federación Obrera del Ramo de Lana withdrew in the midst of the wrangling.
61 Perhaps the cynicism revealed in the comments of a former CGT leader interviewed in 1933 by Marjorie Ruth Clark best explains the thinking of those in charge during the demise of July 1931. Clark reported the conversation in part as follows : “When asked how the workers liked the new collaboration with the government, he replied, The masses are confused, of course, by the changes they see, but that is not important; when the leaders are anarchists they are anarchist; when the leaders are “governmental” they are governmental, too.’”
62Within a year the CGT had divided into at least four major parts.
63 Some of the dissidents, such as Salazar, had already given up on anarchosyndicalism as “unrealistic.” One of them, Jacinto Huitrón, had not. An original member of the Grupo Luz which had founded the Casa, he remained faithful to the teachings of Juan Francisco Moncaleano and to the cause. For the remainder of his life, into the late 1960’s, he led the Mexican Anarchist Federation (Federación Anarquista Mexicana, FAM). The FAM was the only significant anarcho-syndicalist survival of the CGT, but it was small, composed of only individual members. It depended upon dues contributions to print the FAM newspaper,
Regeneración (segunda época), which was published for over thirty years as a weekly and bimonthly. It had a limited circulation, and thus its consistent opposition to the cooperation of the leadership of organized labor wih the government had minimal effect on the Mexican working class.
64 Other small groups, such as the Grupo Cultural Ricardo Flores Magón and Tierra y Libertad, have experienced remarkable longevity, but their impact, too, in the government-dominated era since the demise of the CGT has not been significant.
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