Collapse of Dignity

by Napoleon Gomez

  That wasn’t the only news we would receive on the road. On March 6, I got a call from Celso Nájera, a lawyer I knew personally, mainly because we were both from Monterrey. Nájera had agreed to represent the union once the accusation of fraud involving the Mining Trust had emerged. The union had many legal professionals who were experts in labor law, but none who had any experience with banking crimes or fraud; the union had never been in a situation like this. Over the phone, Nájera told me that Morales, along with two accomplices, Miguel Castilleja Mendiola and José Martín Perales, had done precisely what we expected them to, given all the lies they were spreading in the press. The three of them, supposedly on behalf of the union members, had officially presented a complaint with the federal district attorney’s office against us, using the lawyers Antonio O’Farrill and his brother Patricio. The attorneys were borrowed from Julio Villarreal of Grupo Villacero, a massive steel company that was, like Grupo México, troubled by the strength and independence of Los Mineros. (Of course, Morales and his fellow traitors could never have afforded to hire a lawyer on their own; Grupo Villacero and Grupo México gave them unlimited resources to use in this new legal battle against us.)

  Nájera explained that I, three other union leaders (Héctor Félix Estrella, Juan Linares Montúfar, and José Angel Rocha Pérez), and Gregorio Pérez Romo, a motorcycle courier who they claimed had been involved in making deliveries of illicit money, were accused of diverting funds from the $55 million Mining Trust. It was a banking law violation completely invented by Grupo México. The company had indeed agreed in 1990 to turn over 5 percent of the shares of each of those companies to a trust controlled by the union for its own social and educational programs, but it was only after years of struggle that we had finally forced them to honor their commitment and turn over the present value of the shares—$55 million—to the union in 2004. Now, we were accused at the federal level of illegally extinguishing the trust and making use of the funds derived from it, all under the false presumption that the “workers”—Elías Morales and his accomplices, who were not even union members—were the owners of the funds, and not the Miners’ Union itself. The technical charge was “illegally disposing of the funds of a banking client,” as referred to in Article 113 bis of the Mexican Credit Institutions Act. In fact, the trust had been legally extinguished; some funds were paid out to the workers of Cananea, some was used to pay legitimate union expenses, and the rest was in the union’s rightful possession.

  Also named in the complaint were about forty supposed accomplices, among them friends and family. They claimed we had given money to our friends, family, and several company presidents with whom Los Mineros had had good relations at the time, among them Sergio and Raúl Gutiérrez of the steel company Deacero and Alonso Ancira Elizondo of Altos Hornos de México (AHMSA), Mexico’s largest steel producer. (Of course, it’s no accident that these supposed accomplices head two of Grupo Villacero’s biggest competitors.)

  We have come to call this first spurious accusation the “mother criminal claim.” For this type of banking charge, the attorney general’s office is required to request a review from Mexico’s National Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV) through official letter. The request was made on the very same day Morales and his cohort officially filed their complaint.

  It took less than a week for the CNBV to come back with its technical opinion. By now we were in Albuquerque, having been warmly received by the representatives of the USW’s District 12 section, including Terry Bonds, Robert LaVenture, and Manny Armenta. I was relieved to read the commission’s finding: “From the official documents reviewed, and particularly as it refers to the cancellation of the aforementioned Trust agreement, and the transfer of the funds that formed part of the trust, no conduct is established that is consistent with any of the special criminal typical actions referred to in the Credit Institutions Act and specially, that which is referred to in Article 113 Bis, as stated by the party making the petition.”

  This response, issued by the highest banking authority of the country, categorically clears me and the other members of the executive committee of any wrongdoing. The CNBV also requested the opinion of Juan Velásquez, a respected attorney who acted as a counselor to that organization, and after having reviewed the documents pertaining to the extinction of the Mining Trust, he confirmed that no crime had been committed.

  At the moment, it seemed that my name and those of my colleagues had been cleared. It seemed like a positive step toward officially stripping Elías Morales of his artificial title, and perhaps toward a return to Mexico. But for the time being, I was still being portrayed as a criminal in Mexican media, and it would take time to reverse the damage.

  Fortunately, the USW were gracious and supportive hosts to me and to Oralia, who arrived in New Mexico soon after I did. Marcelo, Hector, and I worked from the District 12 offices in Albuquerque, New Mexico, every day, and I made calls to my union colleagues back in Mexico and made arrangements with Leo Gerard, Ken Neumann, Steve Hunt, and other leaders in the USW.

  Oralia was devastated by the recent events, and I did my best to make life in New Mexico normal for us. The full extent of our situation was setting in, and I saw that we might not return to Mexico for some time. I was determined to not let our family fall apart. Terry Bonds, the USW’s director for District 12, and his assistant director, Manny Armenta, took us out to play billiards, and Oralia and I took a quick trip to Santa Fe to have a break and see some of the beautiful Native American art. Even as I strove for normalcy during our time in Albuquerque, Los Mineros and their families were with me every minute. It was my constant priority that they keep their spirits up and continue insisting that Grupo México and the government be held responsible for Pasta de Conchos.

  The union held its Extraordinary National Convention on March 16 and 17, 2006, in Monclova, Coahuila. I was able to attend the gathering by videoconference from the USW’s District 12 offices, and I opened the initial ceremony and spoke again on the second day, to close the convention. Since the aggression began, the members of Los Mineros had expressed their full loyalty and solidarity toward me, so it never crossed my mind that they would believe the lies of Elías Morales and endorse him as general secretary. Indeed, during the convention the delegates unanimously agreed that I would continue in my role as general secretary of the union. They declared that they would not recognize the unlawful imposition of any other leader, including Morales, and that I would remain the head of the union’s national leadership—the position to which they had elected me.

  One other major resolution came out of that convention: We would publicly demand that the government immediately stop its aggression against the Miners’ Union, and if the government did not respond immediately and grant full recognition to the union’s true executive committee by April 3, 2006, we would call for a national forty-eight-hour strike that would shut down the country’s entire mining and metalworking sector.

  Our stay in Albuquerque was short. After three weeks, the Steel-workers encouraged me to relocate once again—this time to Canada. They were aware that the ultraconservative U.S. president George W. Bush had no affinity whatsoever for the nation’s labor unions and that he had a close relationship with President Fox, to the point that Fox had taken to dressing like his Texas counterpart. The two had had a friendly meeting at Fox’s ranch soon after they both took office, popularly referred to as the “Boot Summit”; both men showed an affinity for Western-style clothing. Given that closeness between them, the leaders of the USW lacked confidence in their ability to protect a politically persecuted union leader in the United States, especially if the Mexican government were to request my forced return.

  Canada, a country much more sympathetic to the union cause than its southern neighbors, seemed like the best option, though my family and I received invitations to come and live in several other countries, many of them in Latin America. Nestor Kirchner, president of Argentina, and his Minister of Labor Carlos Tomada,
and Brazil’s president, Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva, had both been following the developments in Mexico and showed sympathy for our cause, offering us political asylum in their countries. I am still grateful for their show of support. Lula de Silva was particularly vocal in his encouragement, since he had started his career as a leader of Brazil’s metalworkers’ union. Thus, the crisis had given rise to new friendships, both within the union world in Mexico and, now, with world leaders.

  Before our departure to Canada, Oralia left for Texas, where she would meet our eldest son, Alejandro. I then flew with Marcelo and Hector to Portland, where we rented a car and drove to Seattle to meet my middle son, Ernesto. From there, the four of us drove forth to Vancouver—our new temporary home. We showed up in Vancouver on March 23, 2006, in our rented Ford like a bunch of tourists, driving around downtown and choosing a random hotel to stay at. Underneath the sadness of the circumstances, I felt a growing sense of freedom and safety at being out of reach of my enemies. I felt the beginning of something new—a time for me to reassess and prepare new strategies to keep Los Mineros strong and independent. I felt freshly inspired to strengthen the union against attacks, build international solidarity, and continue making our organization a vital part of the global labor movement.

  Meanwhile, the members of the national executive committee made a decision to support all the legal, travel administrative, and maintenance expenses of my family and our colleagues, as long as the political persecution and the conflict lasted. Their resolution was confirmed unanimously during the next general convention of the Miners’ Union.

  A week later, Ernesto and I were at the Vancouver International Airport waiting for Oralia and Alejandro to arrive. Ernesto and I had found a furnished apartment and met with Steve Hunt, director of USW’s District 3 in Vancouver, and his assistant director, Carol Landry, both of whom would become very close friends. At last we saw Oralia and Alejandro walking toward us through the terminal. We ran toward them, and tears welled in Oralia’s eyes as the four of us embraced. It was a tremendous relief to be with them again, all together except our youngest son, Napoleón, who would be visiting soon.

  That night, over Chinese takeout at the new, rented apartment, we stayed up late talking about our trips and the most recent developments in the campaign against Los Mineros. It pained me to see my family suffer, but at that moment, I felt our unity and commitment to the struggle grow stronger than ever. A week later, our son Napoleón would arrive to be with us in Vancouver, but he would soon decide to fly back to Mexico and continue his studies at the University of Monterrey. I worried about him but agreed that he should stay on at school if that’s what he wanted.

  The move to our new temporary home in Canada was a difficult transition for all of us, particularly Oralia, who’d had to leave her aging mother behind in Monterrey. Each of us was struggling with separation from the land we called home, from our friends and extended family. But we bonded together, committed to fighting a fight we knew was just—even if we had to do it from thousands of miles away.

  SEVEN

  THE RESISTANCE

  The joy is in the struggle, in the effort, in the suffering that accompanies the struggle.

  — MAHATMA GANDHI

  In the early 1990s, three brothers from the border town of Matamoros, Tamaulipas—Julio, Sergio, and Pablo Villarreal Guajardo—inherited a scrap steel business from their father. The operation made its profits by purchasing low-quality steel that had been discarded due to some defect and then reselling it. Jorge Leipen Garay shared the story of these three brothers with me, and it is well-known that as the brothers built up the company, which came to be known as Grupo Villacero, they developed relationships with crooked employees in the purchasing and sales divisions of two of its main suppliers: Fundidora Monterrey, a quasi-governmental iron and steel company, and Hylsa, a Mexican steel mill that today is called Ternium. The brothers pressured these employees into making superficial holes and tears at the heads or tails of the pristine rolled metal sheets, instantly converting high-quality steel to scrap. The Villarreals would then buy this lightly damaged metal for a vastly reduced amount and resell it at premium prices.

  The brothers ran this scam on hundreds of thousands of tons of Fundidora Monterrey and Hylsa’s metal, shamelessly amassing their ill-gotten gains in the coffers of Grupo Villacero. As the company grew, they began to regard themselves as masters of industry, but they were in reality little more than corrupt intermediaries and tawdry salesmen.

  Their fraud played a large role in the eventual bankruptcy and dissolution of Fundidora Monterrey in 1986, though the brothers Villarreal proclaimed that it was the union’s fault—according to them, it was the workers’ demands for wage and benefit increases that had sent Fundidora under. Of course the true cause was the brothers’ mafia-like style of business that had brought Fundidora Monterrey to bankruptcy. The company, which had previously belonged to the Mexican people, was sold off at ridiculously low prices. Fundidora’s main subsidiary, Aceros Planos de Mexico, despite having the best and most modern sheet mill in Latin America, was auctioned off at an absurd price of less than $100 million.

  In 1991, Grupo Villacero bought a company called Sicartsa from the government, during the presidency of Carlos Salinas, champion of privatization. Sicartsa, since its foundation in 1969, operated a steel mill complex in the industrial port of Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán, located on the Pacific coast of Mexico. (The port town was named after the Mexican president who in the 1930s had fought for workers’ rights, nationalized the oil industry in 1938, and placed many of the country’s resources back in the hands of the Mexican people.) Though the government had invested over $8 billion in Sicartsa over the years preceding the sale, Grupo Villacero picked it up for a mere $170 million, according to Jorge Leipen Garay, former undersecretary of Energy and Mines and former director of the government’s steel holding company, Sidermex. Retaining the Sicartsa name, the Villarreal brothers set about ensuring the fattest profits possible at their new operation. By the time I became head of the union in 2002, they had about sixty subcontracting companies at the Sicartsa mill complex in Lázaro Cárdenas, fifty-seven of which were owned primarily by the Villarreal brothers themselves.

  In Mexico, this is a common arrangement. A company is granted a concession, and it then hires contracting companies also owned by the company. The contract workers might make eighty pesos a day, while the contracting company charges the concession holder eight hundred pesos for the same job. It’s a criminal arrangement by which companies like Grupo Villacero simultaneously steal Mexico’s resources and get rich off the workers who labor in their facilities.

  The leaders of Los Mineros, knowing the brothers hadn’t changed since their steel-scamming days, had taken the incorporation papers of Grupo Villacero’s contracting companies at the Sicartsa complex to Labor Secretary Abascal, demanding an investigation. Predictably, nothing was done. Adding to the atrocious situation at Lázaro Cárdenas, Grupo Villacero pretended that its contract workers had a union of their own, but no trace of this supposed union could be found. The “organization” wasn’t registered, and it certainly didn’t advocate for its members.

  When open aggression toward Los Mineros began in February 2006, Grupo Villacero partnered with Grupo México and President Fox to carry out a wave of intimidation and repression. It was the Villarreals’ lawyers, the scheming, discredited Patricio and Antonio O’Farrill brothers, who filed the “mother claim” on Elías Morales’s behalf against me and my colleagues in March. Grupo Villacero had been more than willing to lend its help to Elías Morales as a way of weakening the union that troubled their operation at Lázaro Cárdenas.

  As it turned out, the workers of Los Mineros were not prepared to accept these lies and welcome a backstabber like Morales as their leader. Union Local 271 from Lázaro Cárdenas would protest the attempted imposition most loudly of all, and in doing so would become the focus of the next major confrontation in the war against us. />
  Following the union’s convention in March, we continued demanding that the government cease its attacks and hold Grupo México accountable for its fatal abuses at Pasta de Conchos. They utterly disregarded us. The lies and slander continued, legal action against me and my colleagues was continued, and Germán Larrea continued leading his destructive company with no repercussions for causing the death of sixty-five men. As agreed, we prepared for a national two-day strike in protest, to be held on April 3 and 4.

  The members of the union’s national executive committee developed a plan and arranged the massive strike. Meanwhile, I had started to grow accustomed to organizing and directing union business through email, phone calls, videoconferences, and frequent visits from my colleagues. In advance of the event, we elected a strike committee that would work with local union heads and the leaders of the executive committee on the logistics of each work site, as well as on how to handle negotiations.

  Early on the morning of April 3, hundreds of thousands of workers around the country showed up at their plants and mines, preparing the picketing line and blocking the entrance and exit gates so company representatives couldn’t get in. At each operation, workers organized into teams that worked in shifts to maintain the demonstration. The national strike was observed by all members in all the union locals, and because Los Mineros are such an integral part of the country’s hundreds of thousands of mining and steel workers, the entire chain of production ground to a halt. Without the unionized workers, no one could work, regardless of whether they were part of Los Mineros.