Collapse of Dignity

by Napoleon Gomez

  Leo W. Gerard

  International President

  United Steelworkers

  Pittsburgh, November 2012

  PROLOGUE

  Deep in the unforgiving terrain of Chile’s Atacama Desert, just north of the town of Copiapó, lies a small copper and gold mine. Now abandoned, the San José mine was the site of one of the most dramatic rescues in recent history. In October of 2010, the world watched as thirty-three Chilean miners, miraculously discovered alive seventeen days after a cave-in had trapped them underground, were brought to the surface one by one after a long and complicated rescue effort. Television stations and computer screens around the globe showed images of the grimy, weary-looking miners joyfully reunited with friends and family.

  In the days after the collapse of the roof of the San José mine, on August 5, 2010, dozens of family members set themselves up near the mine’s entrance, calling their encampment Camp Hope. Though they were originally told by the mine’s operators that air and food in the mine would last only about forty-eight hours, the relatives of the miners nevertheless stayed at the mine, desperately hoping for good news. It came over two weeks later, when a drill that was breaking a borehole to the cavity where the miners were thought to be located came back up with a note attached to it. It read, in bright red letters, “Estamos bien en el refugio los 33”—All 33 of us are well inside the shelter.

  Despite the elation of the moment, there was still no certainty of the miners’ safe rescue. Some estimated it would take four months to drill a hole wide enough to pull the men up, and many were worried about the mental state of the miners if they had to stay underground much longer, as well as about the possibility of further collapse. Nevertheless, the rescue effort—nicknamed “Operation San Lorenzo” after the patron saint of miners—went forward, and less than two months later, drilling was complete. On Tuesday, October 12, the first rescue worker made the eighteen-minute descent in a one-person capsule, and over the next twenty-four hours, the miners made their way to the surface they hadn’t seen in sixty-nine days.

  It was a rousing victory, cheered on by the world. But for a group of people in Mexico who had witnessed a similar situation four years earlier, happiness for the Chilean miners and their families was tinged with pain. In 2006, thousands of miles to the north of the San José mine, a similar collapse had happened in a coal mine called Pasta de Conchos, near the town of Nueva Rosita in the northeastern Mexico state of Coahuila. In the early morning hours of February 19, a methane explosion caused a collapse that blocked off the sole entry to the mine. Two bodies were recovered a few months after the disaster, but sixty-three others remain on the other side of the cave-in, sealed within the mine’s main tunnel.

  Though the Pasta de Conchos miners were estimated to be about three hundred feet below the surface—less than a seventh of the 2,300-foot depth from which the Chilean miners would later be recovered—Grupo México, the company that operated the mine, was unable to mount an effective rescue effort. At the San José mine, caving to strong pressure from the families, the workers, the unions and their communities, the government and the company had stepped in reluctantly, spending millions of dollars and using state-of-the-art technology to penetrate the cavity that held the miners. President Sebastián Piñera, a conservative, had been at the site, along with a throng of reporters and family members, to greet each one of the miners.

  But four years earlier at Pasta de Conchos, the people laboring to save the lost men were their fellow colleagues working with whatever tools they had, and Mexican president Vicente Fox never once visited the scene. Germán Feliciano Larrea, owner of Grupo México, also avoided the site. A few labor department officials and company officials did rush to Coahuila to be present at the scene, but it soon became clear that they were more interested in damage control and covering up their own starring role in the shameful series of events that led up to the explosion than in saving any lives. The landscape around Pasta de Conchos was smooth and flat, much more manageable than the rocky, mountainous terrain the Chilean rescuers would later face. Yet the sense of responsibility and ethical obligation wasn’t there. After five days, the rescue effort was abandoned and the miners left to their fates, with no clear indication of whether they were alive or dead.

  Some of these miners were members of the National Union of Mine, Metal, and Steel Workers of the Mexican Republic, an organization I had led for five years at the time of the explosion. In that span of time, I had seen firsthand the systemic abuse and exploitation of our members, at Pasta de Conchos and far beyond. Vicente Fox’s National Action Party (PAN) had taken control in 2000, and his administration was characterized by its close ties to business interests, including many of the men who owned the mines and steel plants our union’s workers labored in. There was constant pressure for the lowest wages possible, and an unmistakable favoritism shown toward these companies. The PAN government allowed them to take up huge concessions and run them with no regard for safety, fairness, or environmental impact.

  Union members at Pasta de Conchos had repeatedly decried the conditions at the coal mine in the years before the collapse, realizing that it was a disaster waiting to happen. Their extensive reports did no good with Fox’s fiercely antiunion labor department; the mine’s operators simply prepared separate reports with government inspectors showing that there were no major safety concerns.

  The Chilean miners, too, complained about the safety of the San José mine for years before the 2010 disaster. The mine had been the site of various deaths and dismemberments and had briefly been closed before being reopened—without the critical safety issues being addressed. Its operator, the San Esteban Mining Company, had also failed to equip the mine with safety ladders, which are supposed to be present in every mine in Chile. Had these been installed in the San José mine, the miners likely would have gained their freedom much more quickly.

  Some criticized the Chilean government for turning the San José rescue into a self-promotional circus, but the wide attention the disaster received meant that important reforms were set in motion. President Piñera fired some of the officials responsible for the oversight of the mine, and the San Esteban Mining Company is still on the verge of bankruptcy, facing huge repayments to the government and thirty-one lawsuits from the rescued miners. Several small mines in the Atacama desert were closed out of fear of a repeat.

  The Mexican government and the operators of the Pasta de Conchos mine had known they would face a wave of criticism and reform were a rescue to drag on for too long and get too much attention. Two men were already confirmed dead at Pasta de Conchos, and there was a long, indisputable history of flagrant misconduct in the managing of the work site. Had any miners been rescued alive, surely they would have told the story of this misconduct in great detail, and the media would have listened. Thus, it was easier to close off the mine, throw a pittance of a few thousand dollars at each of the families, and move on. To help people forget about their arrogance and irresponsibility, they needed a diversion. I, leader of the Miners’ Union, was quickly chosen to fill that need.

  It was an obvious choice: I had been troublesome from the start, insisting as I did that our organization would not be one of the complacent and yielding unions of Mexico. Germán Larrea, owner of Grupo México, the company that operated Pasta de Conchos, and his good friends in the Fox administration immediately began publicizing a set of bogus charges against me and the union’s national executive committee, peddling their lies to a corporate-controlled media. They thought we would immediately give in, but as you’ll see in the following pages, we have matched every one of their underhanded tactics with honesty and commitment, and we are still fighting to this day.

  I have never allowed—and never will—any offense or disrespect against any worker in our union, or to their families. That extends from the criminally low wages so many wealthy mining and metal magnates want to pay us, to the exploitation and inhuman conditions that have led to many of our colleagues�
� deaths, to the reprehensible insinuations of the smear campaign launched against the union’s leadership. Each worker who helps to create the wealth of Mexico deserves respect and dignity, and I am uncompromising on that point. As you’ll see, I’ve paid a high price for holding such a seemingly radical notion, but I would never have done it differently.

  The seven years since Pasta de Conchos have seen a cowardly attack on our union and the Mexican working class at large, carried out by a wide cast of right-wing extremists from both the public and private sectors. Together, a group of businessmen and leaders in the rotted head of the Mexican government have sought at all costs to trample democratic trade unions, using unscrupulous individuals to do their bidding and help bring down the leadership of one of the most fiercely independent unions in Mexican history. The aggressors include Presidents Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón, the former of whom said upon taking office that his government would be “of businessmen, by businessmen and for businessmen.” He kept that promise, thereby betraying the citizens who voted for him in the hope of a financial recovery, development, expansion of opportunity, and the building of a better future for the whole country. His successor was no better. Calderón, a religious fundamentalist, likes to say that unions are like a cancer on society that should be removed immediately.

  This book is my account of our struggle, which has now stretched on nearly seven years. It is a story of repression, arbitrary accusations and imprisonments, deep conspiracies, and of strikes, solidarity, and courage. It is the product of my own experiences, my own reflections, and the many long conversations I’ve had with the world’s foremost labor leaders, my fellow Mexican workers, my wife, and the rest of my family. I hope to distill and record all that we have experienced in our battle and bring to light the extraordinary misdeeds of a few powerful individuals, actions that have for so long been absent from the large majority of the media’s coverage of Pasta de Conchos, the union’s ongoing strikes, and the criminal charges against me and my colleagues. This story has both innocent and guilty parties, and my hope is to give a new perspective on the conflict and to encourage those who may have unwittingly bought the lies from the top of Mexico’s power structure to consider the mining conflict with a fresh, more objective viewpoint.

  The aggression against the National Union of Mine, Metal, and Steel Workers and me is a vivid demonstration of how unbridled capitalism erodes the rights of workers, especially those of the most neglected social classes. Our fight has not been just to preserve one Mexican union. It has been a fight for human rights and human dignity. It has been a fight to show the world that we, the miners and steelworkers of Mexico, will not yield to my inconceivably powerful enemy, even with a deadly corporate mafia and the entire political apparatus against us. To do so would be to tarnish the legacy of the outstanding labor leaders like my father, who came before us, who fought and in many cases died for the rights of workers. We are proud of our wide base of international supporters—most of whom refer to us as simply “Los Mineros”—and of the great steps forward we have taken.

  I have endured atrocities over the course of the seven-year conflict, as have many members of the union. We have faced appallingly unsafe work sites, physical abuse at the hands of police and government forces, threats of violence and job loss—and we have lost lives. Yet we continue on in our fight against the politicians and industrialists who want us to simply vanish, allowing them to continue at their game of squeezing every last drop of blood and profit from Mexico’s workers and natural resources. We know that our cause is just. It would be unthinkable for us to not stand up to this exploitation. It would spell the end of one of the strongest unions in Mexican history, and represent a victory for the global effort to crush the labor movement.

  This is the story of Los Mineros, and how we came together following a catastrophe to fight injustice harder than ever. Let our struggle be a warning to workers on any continent who face the same set of challenges we do. Let this conflict be a demonstration that, if we come together in defense of respect, dignity, and human rights, we can match our enemies, no matter how powerful they may seem, as the case of Los Mineros has shown. This is our message of hope, vision, and a better future for all.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the many people who saw me through this book and shared this journey with me. I appreciate the effort of every person who supported me with ideas, passion and creativity in the process of creating Collapse of Dignity. Thank you all for helping me to achieve my objective of sharing the truth about the plight of Los Mineros and their families´ ongoing struggle to defend labor and human rights in Mexico.

  I also want to thank you, the readers, for spending time with this book and sharing its motivational message of truth and hope with others.

  In unity, change is possible. Together we can make a difference.

  ONE

  THE SUCCESSION

  Words are small, examples are huge.

  — SWISS PROVERB

  I spent my childhood in the city of Monterrey, Nuevo León, the second youngest of five children. From the day I first set foot in Nuevo León primary school, my parents drilled into us the importance of education. We knew from a very young age that it was our responsibility to gain as much knowledge as we could, as this would prepare us to be helpful, happy, contributing members of society. These were my first lessons from my charismatic father, Napoleón Gómez Sada, who during my early childhood labored as a unionized mine worker in Mexico.

  My father started work as a smelter in the 1930s, at age eighteen, refining lead, zinc, silver, gold, and other precious metals in a facility in Monterrey. He was devoted to his work, and by the time I was a child, he was becoming increasingly involved in the National Union of Mine, Metal, and Steel Workers, an organization that had been founded in 1934. Its establishment came after decades of work on the part of the miners, including the 1906 strike at a mine in Cananea that served as a precursor to the Mexican Revolution of 1910, the first revolution of the twentieth century, which occurred even before the 1917 Russian Revolution. After twenty years of work, my father became the head of Local 64, the Monterrey section of the Miners’ Union.

  In his early years as a miner, my father had been working when an explosion in a furnace killed two of his colleagues. He was nearby and sustained severe burns on both his legs. He spent six months recovering in the hospital, and afterward was transferred to the warehouse and storage department of the company, where he helped manage mining tools and the raw materials brought up from the mine. I have no doubt that this on-the-job brush with death was with my father in his later years, as he fought alongside his union colleagues for safety reforms.

  As a large family led by a laborer, we had to make do on a modest income. I always attended public schools. My father and my mother, Eloisa (or “Lochis” as my father called her), took pains to see that we used our resources frugally in everything we did as they struggled to support the family. Rather than buying us things, my parents showed us that with knowledge, education, and culture, a person can better appreciate everything from history and art to an excellent meal, a good bottle of wine, or a thought-provoking film or play.

  My father was a man who rejected luxury, who lived modestly and simply. He had good taste, but he exercised it with humility. His discreet elegance was born of an enjoyment of all the pleasures in life—in moderation. He didn’t have the opportunity to go to college as my siblings and I did, but he was a voracious learner, reading and studying in his free time as much as he could. His personal library was full of books—ranging from histories of the Mexican Revolution and World War II to classic literature like Don Quixote and Dante’s Divine Comedy—each with important passages underlined.

  During the National Miners’ Convention in May 1960, my father was elected general secretary of the Miners’ Union, and my family moved from Monterrey to Mexico City. It was the beginning of a phase of my father’s life that would solid
ify him as one of Mexico’s most important union leaders. My three older siblings had left home by then, but my younger brother Roberto and I made the move with my father and mother. I was reluctant to leave school and my friends, but I understood what an honor this was for my father, and I’d soon realize that my educational opportunities were much greater in Mexico City.

  My father turned out to be a natural union leader, and one of my heroes. He was sensitive to the social and economic needs of the workers and their families, and his strong, spontaneous personality and sense of determination won him a high opinion among the union’s members. Though he had a great sense of humor, it was tempered by a certain discipline and firmness. Thus, he was well liked but also deeply respected by all the workers he represented.

  After two years in Mexico City, my passion for economics—micro and macro—led me to enroll in the Faculty of Economics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). I thrived in the atmosphere of constant lively debate and analysis of the most important political, economic, and social questions of the day, including those surrounding the Cuban Revolution, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, French President Charles de Gaulle’s visit to Mexico, and many other subjects related to the social struggle and the study of the impact of capitalism and socialism on the collective reality of Mexico, North America, Latin America, Africa, Europe, Asia, and the entire world.

  Throughout my time at university, I retained my fascination with economics. I yearned to understand how economic fundamentals could make a positive difference in real life, whether in the case of a company, a country, or a continent. Despite the fact that accounting, statistics, and econometrics were not my strongest fields, I never failed a subject and graduated with honors and a high grade point average.

  My career as an economist began in 1965, the fourth year I was at UNAM, when I was offered a position as an analyst at the Economic Studies Department of Banco de Mexico, the nation’s central bank. The following year, my final year at the university, Horacio Flores de la Peña—one of my professors, who was also considered as one of the top five economists in Latin America—offered me a job as analyst and researcher for the Department of National Heritage, where he led the Department of Control of Decentralized Agencies and Government Companies Division of the Department of National Heritage. There, I analyzed the economic situation of state-owned companies, diagnosing problems and making strategic recommendations to increase the companies’ efficiency and productivity.