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The Genesis of the Mexican Labor Relations System: Federal Labor Policy and the Textile Industry 1925-19401

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Jeffrey Bortz
Jeffrey Bortz*
Affiliation:
Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina
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Extract

By comparison with the rest of Latin America, Mexico's post-revolutionary political stability has long fascinated historians and social scientists. One explanation for relative political peace is the comprehensive land and labor reforms President Lázaro Cárdenas implemented in the 1930s. These created a base of social support for post-revolutionary elites. In contrast, the absence of significant land reforms and the failure to devise hegemonic labor regimes in South America resulted in class stalemates, forcing elites to fall back on the militarized state. Land and labor explain the difference between Mexican stability and South American instability since 1920.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , July 1995 , pp. 43 - 69
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1995

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Footnotes

1

Research for this article was carried out with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Social Science Research Council. The author would like to thank Ma. José C. Martínez and Itzel Monge Martínez for their help in the Archivo General de la Nación and Professor Richard Haunton for his singular comments.

References

2 Simpson, Eyler N., The Ejido: Mexico’s Way Out (Chapel Hill, 1937)Google Scholar; Janvry, Alain de, The Agrarian Question and Reformism in Latin America (Baltimore, 1981)Google Scholar

3 There is no definitive volume on Mexican labor despite a core literature of mostly institutional history. Examples are Marjorie Ruth Clark, who emphasizes the importance of union federations and their ties to the national government; Joe C. Ashby, who focuses on Cardenas’ relationship with the newly-established Confederación de Trabajadores de México (CTM); and Hart, who studies anarchist unions. Clark, Marjorie Ruth, La Organización Obrera en México (Mexico, 1988),Google Scholar Ashby, Joe C., Organized Labor and the Mexican Revolution under Lázaro Cárdenas (Chapel Hill, 1967),Google Scholar Hart, John M., Anarchism and the Mexican Working Class, 1860–1931 (Austin, 1987).Google Scholar In the 1980s, Pablo González Casanova led the research team that wrote a comprehensive history of Mexico's working class, but the multivolume work published by Siglo XXI continues the earlier institutional focus, with each volume defined by a presidential term of office.

4 The 1931 Federal Labor Code formalized the right of the Mexican President to make a labor contract applicable to a whole industry and to enforce it through presidential decree. He could do this if two-thirds of employers and workers in an industry in a given region had already signed a collective contract. Cormack, Joseph M. and Barker, Frederick F., “The Mexican Labor Law,” Southern California Law Review (March 1934), 264.Google Scholar

5 See, for example, Archivo General de la Nación (AGN), Departamento Autónomo de Trabajo (DAT), Caja 203, Exp. 14, Apuntes, 2/27/39, 1–3.

6 Secretaría de la Economía Nacional, Departamento de Estudios Económicos, La Industria Textil en México, El Problema Obrero y Los Problemas Económicos (México, 1934), p.43. For a more recent view of the 1912 Convention, see Rancaño, Marío Ramírez, Burguesía textil y política en la revolución mexicana (Mexico, 1987).Google Scholar

7 “Nuestra masa trabajadora carece de toda cultura y toda aptitud para el trabajo…” Martínez, Roberto Quirós, El Problema del Proletariado en México (México, 1934), 32.Google Scholar

8 AGN, DAT, Caja 203, Exp. 14, Apuntes, 2/27/39, 1.

9 The state of Veracruz was a center of revolutionary activity. Not incidentally, it had one of the most radical working classes in Mexico. In the decade following 1910, Veracruz textile workers led countless challenges to authority, in the factories and in the mill towns. In a typical example, textile workers from the Cocolapam factory walked off the job on the morning of March 29, 1916, without advising management, which found it did not have the authority to fire them. The company was forced to beg the workers to return. Archivo Municipal de Orizaba (AMO), Caja 563, exp. s/n, Peyrot to Ayuntamiento de Orizaba, 3/29/16.

10 Moisés de la Peña, a contemporary economist, used the phrase “wage anarchy” to describe wage differentials in the cotton textile industry. It is a standard phrase in the documents of the period. de la Peña, Moisés, La industria textil del algodón (Mexico, 1938), 21.Google Scholar

11 AGN, DAT, Caja 12, Exp. 3, Delegación Patronal de Orizaba to Villalobos, 8/24/38, 4.

12 La Industria Textil en México, 48.

13 AGN, DAT, Caja 12, Exp. 2, Signed Catarino Palacios, 2/21/39, 2.

14 La Industria Textil en México, p. 48.

15 Departamento del Trabajo, Convención Colectiva de Trabajo y Tarifas Mínimas…aprobadas por la convención industrial obrera del ramo textil, efectuada en la ciudad de México, del 6 de octubre de 1925 al 18 de marzo de 1927 (Mexico, 1927), p. 5.

16 Lombardo authored many books and articles and was the subject of an even greater number of publications. See, for example, Salazar, Rosendo, Líderes y Sindicatos (México, 1953).Google Scholar Torres has been less studied by historians. There is a monument to him in front of the Río Blanco factory in the municipio of the same name. He is dressed as a book-holding lawyer, not a pistol in sight; the book is titled ‘Derecho Obrero.’

17 Díaz, Bernardo García, “Acción Directa y Poder Obrero, 1915–1924”, in Textiles del Valle de Orizaba (1880–1925) (Veracruz, 1990).Google Scholar

18 A Labor Department memo admitted this argument fifteen years later, AGN, DAT, Caja 12, Exp. 2, signed Catarino Palacios, 2/21/39, 2.

19 Minority factories included 15 to 30 of the labor force in the cotton textile industry. AGN, DAT, Caja 12, Exp. 3, Delegación Patronal de Orizaba to Villalobos, 8/24/38, 2.

20 La Industria Textil en México, p. 52.

21 Only the passage of the LFT in 1931 allowed the government to make the contract formally obligatory, which it did on July 9, 1932. AGN, Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social (STyPS), Caja 1173, exp. 4.1/200(07)/1, Ing. Carlos Arroyo, “Desarrollo de la Industria Textil del Algodón de México,” p. 47.

22 The CTM and the Confederación General de Trabajadores (CGT) also claimed important support in the industry. There is an extensive and growing literature on labor in the 1930s, especially its relationship to Cárdenas. In some ways, Ashby (1967) remains the most comprehensive. Anguiano, Arturo, El estado y la política obrera del cardenismo (Mexico, 1975)Google Scholar, contains an important critique, shared by an interesting recent work, Botz, Dan La, The Crisis of Mexican Labor (New York, 1988).Google Scholar For the politics of the left, Carr, Barry, Marxism and Communism in Twentieth-Century Mexico (Lincoln, 1992).Google Scholar Like the vast majority of labor studies on Mexico, these analyses are innocent of the new labor history and its concerns.

23 Ashby, , Organized Labor, pp. 107–108.Google Scholar

24 C.R.O.M., memoria de los trabajos llevados a cabo por el Comité Central de la Confederación Regional Obrera Mexicana durante el ejercicio del 10 de agosto de 1937 al 24 de julio de 1939 (México, 1939), p. 340.

25 The core of the Minority consisted of the Orizaba factories of Río Blanco, Santa Rosa, Cocolapam, San Lorenzo, Cerrritos, and Mirafuentes, as well as El León in Puebla. These mills accounted for 15 to 20 percent of national production. AGN, DAT, Caja 12, Exp. 3, Delegación Patronal de Orizaba to Villalobos, 8/24/38, 2.

26 Excelsior, 5/13/39, Segunda Seccion, 8. Basurto represented important mills in Mexico City and Puebla, including La Magdalena, San Antonio Abad, El Carmen, Río Hondo, and La Hormiga. Doria Paz represented more than forty mills. AGN, DAT, Caja 10, Exp. 18, Torres, Alfaro, Ramírez, Carballido, Doria Paz, Basurto, Mac arty, Amuchástegui, and Cuellar to Jefe del Depto. del Trabajo, 7/7/39.

27 AGN, DAT, Caja 203, Exp. 14, Apuntes, 2/27/39, 12–16.

28 Antonio Castillo was a typical union leader. An ex-textile worker, he rose to “diputado local” in Puebla. After an angry exchange of words with textile worker Aaron Tufino, Castillo and six gun man ambushed Tufino, killing him instantly. He then bragged about it at a dance he later organized. Excelsior, 7/13/39.

29 AGN, DAT, Caja 10, Exp. 18, Torres, Alfaro, Ramírez, Carballido, Doria Paz, Basurto Macarty, Amuchástegui, Cullear

to Jefe del Depto. del Trabajo, 7/7/39.

30 La Prensa, 6/9/37; El Gráfico (Vespertino), 6/11/37; Excelsior, 6/20/37.

31 El Universal, 8/20/37, 9.

32 El Gráfico (Vespertino), 11/3/37, 12.

33 C.R.O.M., 1939, 353–358.

34 Ibid., p.346.

35 C.R.O.M., 1939, 346.

36 El Gráfico (Vespertino), 12/3/37, 12.

37 Excelsior, 2/11/38, 10; Ashby, , Organized Labor, p. 112.Google Scholar

38 AGN, Lázaro Cárdenas, exp. 432.1/2, Cossio to Cardenas, 8/25/37.

39 AGN, DAT, Caja 554, esp. 11. Antonio Villalobos, “Laudo”, 2/23/38, 11.

40 The ILO committed its member states, including Mexico, to the forty-hour week in June 1935. Organización Internacional del Trabajo, Convenios y recomendaciones internacionales del trabajo, 1919–1984, Convenio 47 (Geneva, 1985), 300.

41 In this, as in so many areas, one sees a Cárdenas quite different from the traditional literature which portrays him as a friend of labor. At the Convention, as often as not the President sided with capital.

42 AGN, DAT, Caja 554, exp. 11. Antonio Villalobos, “Laudo,” 2/23/38,50.

43 Ibid., pp. 43–59.

44 “Few men have possessed the qualities of a leader of the masses that Cardenas had.” Ashby, , Organized Labor, p. 19.Google Scholar “President Cárdenas was undoubtedly a sympthizer of workers’ causes.” Basurto, Jorge, Cárdenas y ei poder sindical (Mexico, 1983), p. 65.Google Scholar Sherman and Meyer added that Cárdenas “had seen that the labor movement was cleaned up…” Meyer, Michael C. and Sherman, William L., The Course of Mexican History (New York, 1991), p. 607.Google Scholar

45 See, for example, AGN, DAT, Caja 203, exp. 14, 2/4/39, “Puntos de Vista del C. Martín Torres en Relación con las Tarifas Para la Industria Textil del Algodón, Expuestos ante el C. Lic. Isaac Olive, Oficial Mayor del Departamento del Trabajo, el Día 4 de Febrero de 1939.”

46 AGN, DAT, Caja 203, Exp. 14, Torres to Cárdenas, 1/2/39, 2.

47 AGN, DAT, Caja 203, Exp. 14, Delegación Obrera to Presidente de la Convención, 8/15/38. 4–6. On this point the CROM won the ideological battle; the CTM wage hike of 150 proved pure demagogery.

48 AGN, DAT, Caja 12, Exp. 3, Delegación Patronal de Orizaba to Villalobos, 8/24/38, 1.

49 AGN, Lázaro Cárdenas, expediente 432.1/2, Ing. A. Lobatón, Lic. M. Fernández Landero, and Ing. L. Dubois, to Lázaro Cárdenas, 10/4/38.

50 AGN, DAT, Caja 203, expl. 14, Delegación Obrera to Presidente de la Convención, 8/15/38; Caja 12, Exp. 3, Delegación Patronal de Orizaba to Villalobos, 8/24/38.

51 Ashby, , Organized Labor, p. 112.Google Scholar

52 AGN, DAT, Caja 203, Exp. 14, Apuntes, 2/27/39, 11.

53 AGN, DAT, Caja 203, Exp. 14, Minutes of Bilateral Group, 10/11/38.

54 AGN, DAT, Caja 203, Exp. 14, Piñeda to Villalobos, 10/13/38.

55 CROM, 1939, 356–357.

56 AGN, DAT, Caja 203, Exp. 14, Isaac Olive to Carlos Castillo, 12/24/38.

57 The Minority, of course, repeatedly denied this.

58 AGN, DAT, Caja 203, Exp. 14, Isaac Olive to Carlos Castillo, 12/24/38, 2. This argument restates the Moisés T. de la Peña position on the relationship between wages and technological change.

59 Ibid.

60 AGN, DAT, Caja 203, Exp. 14, Torres to Cárdenas, 1/2/39, 2.

61 Torres is certainly referring to his enemies in the CROM, who had accused him of being a traitor to the working class. Perhaps both were right.

62 AGN, DAT, Caja 203, Exp. 14, Torres to Cárdenas, 1/2/39, 6.

63 Ibid.

64 Ibid.

65 AGN, DAT, Caja 203, Exp. 14, “Puntos principales de la junta celebrada el día 2 de febrero de 1939,” 2/2/39; AGN, Caja 10, Exp. 18, Memorandum, 7/8/39.

66 AGN, DAT, Caja 12, Exp. 2, Catarino Palacios, 2/21/39, 17.

67 Ibid., 20.

68 See AGN, DAT, Caja 203, Exp. 14, Apuntes, 2/27/39.

69 Ibid., p. 16.

70 “el esfuerzo mental o moral que hace para adquirir el conocimiento,” Ibid., p. 4.

71 Ibid.

72 Excelsior, 3/1/39, 9.

73 AGN, DAT, CAja 203, exp. 14, Lobatón and Fernández Landero to Villalobos, 3/2/39.

74 The CROM claimed that Martín Torres framed an otherwise innocent León. True or not, Cárdenas got his contract in part because his enemy, León, finished the Convention behind bars. Excelsior, 3/30/39, 4; 3/31/39, Segunda Sección, 6, El Nacional, 4/1/39, 1.

75 Excelsior, 3/31/39, 1.

76 Ibid.

77 El Nacional, 4/11/39.

78 El Nacional, 4/15/39, 1.

79 Ashby, , Organized Labor, p. 114.Google Scholar

80 El Nacional, 4/13/39, 1, Excelsior, 5/13/39, Segunda Sección, 8.

81 AGN, Presidentes, Manuel Avila Camacho (MAC), Exp. 321.1/6, Decree, Manuel Avila Camacho to the Nation, 7/12/41.

82 82 Secretaría de Trabajo y Previsión Social, Memoria 1939–1940 (Mexico, 1940), 162.

83 AGN, Presidentes, MAC, Exp. 321.1/6, Decree, Manuel Avila Camacho to the Nation, 7/12/41.

84 Excelsior, 5/27/39.

85 Ashby, , Organized Labor, p. 113,Google Scholar and Excelsior, 6/4/39 and 6/6/39.

86 Excelsior, 6/7/39.

87 Excelsior, 6/26/39 and 6/28/39.

88 Excelsior, 7/9/39.

89 Excelsior, 7/11/39.

90 Ashby, 115.

91 Excelsior, 3/29/40.

92 Excelsior, 4/1/40.

93 Excelsior, 4/3/40.

94 AGN, DAT, Caja 12, Exp. 2, Castillo to Oficial Mayor, 1/27/38.

95 AGN, DAT, Caja 12, Exp. 2, Catarino Palacios, 2/21/39, 2.

96 Witness oil in 1948, railroads in 1958, and universities in 1968.

97 AGN, STyPS, Caja 1173, Exp. 4.1/200 (07)/1, Signed Ing. Fernando Pruneda R., 12/1/41.

98 Throughout the life of the Convention, other unions sought to get their contracts turned in contract-law, often successfully. For example, in late April, 1939, the Baker’s Unions met with DAT representatives to ask that “su contrato se eleve a la categoría de Contrato-Ley.” El Nacional, 4/26/39, 1.

99 Bortz, Jeffrey, “La determinación del salario in México”, Coyoacán, (julio-sept. 1981), 56–80.Google Scholar

100 Paz, Francisco Doria, “Segunda Ponencia de la Asociación Textil del Norte,” Memoria de la Primera Convención Mexicana de Empresarios Textiles (Rama de Algodón), Mexico, 1945, p.l12.Google Scholar