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Cananea Copper Mine,
Sonora, Mexico |
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One of the largest
open-pit copper
mines in the world,
the Cananea mine
produced over
164,000 tons of
copper in 2006. The
mine is located
approximately 40
kilometers south of
the border between
Arizona and Sonora,
Mexico. |
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My grandfather came to Superior, Arizona from San Miguel de Horcasitas,
Sonora, Mexico about
1918. He was 21. He stopped for a time in Douglas, Arizona and then walked to
Superior to get a job as a copper miner for the Magma Copper Co. My grandfather
retired at age 65. I followed in my grandfather's foot steps working in the mine
three days after I got back from the US Army during the Vietnam War. I worked 8
months and then starting going to school returning each summer to work until I
finished school.
My other grandfather came from
Madrid, Spain about 1919 and went straight to Jerome, Arizona to work in the
copper mine. About 1921, the mine in Jerome was mined out so my grandfather
along with my dad and uncle moved to Superior, Arizona where my grandfather went
to work for Magma Copper Co. He died before I was born from Silicosis. My other
grandfather also suffered from Silicosis but with treatment in the Arizona State
Santorum, he recovered.
My great grandfather and great great
grandfather worked in the copper mine in Morenci, Arizona. I know very little of
them.
Copper mining has served us well but
the horror stories of the Cananea copper mine are known to many of us.
I for one think, the United States
should impose sanctions against Mexico until Mexico adopts a constitution and a
judicial system with the rule of law similar to the US. Until these very
necessary changes take place in Mexico, Mexico will remain a country most
Mexicans will want to leave for a better life in the USA.
—
Jon Garrido |
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Tear Gas in Cananea, Sonora, Mexico
CANANEA, Sonora, Mexico
(By
David Bacon,
The Nation)
June 20, 2010 —
When the
Mexican government moved to bust the three-year miners' strike in
Cananea on June 6, it brought 2,000 Federal Police into the tiny
mountain town in the state of Sonora — two cops for every striker.
As darkness fell and helicopters clattered overhead, they charged the
gate with riot shields and batons, filling the streets with tear gas.
Miners retreated to the union hall with their families, and the police
followed, barricading the doors and lobbing more tear gas inside.
The
union's leaders were already in
hiding, since the police had
arrest warrants for them all.
Manny Armenta, an organizer for
the United Steel Workers who's
probably spent more time in
Cananea than at home in Arizona,
helped lead women and children
down fire escapes and through
the basement to safety.
The same day, police moved on
the widows of sixty-five miners
who had died in an explosion
four years ago at the Pasta de
Conchos coal mine in Coahuila.
Women were forcibly removed from
the mine gates where they'd been
camping, asking for their
husbands' bodies. Grupo Mexico,
the mining and railroad giant
that owns both facilities, is
closing the mine for good
without recovering the men's
remains.
Both the Cananea strike and the
widows' protests highlight
extremely unsafe conditions in
Mexican mines. At Cananea,
silicosis-causing dust from
crushed copper ore rises to
miners' knees inside the
buildings. Grupo Mexico
disconnected the dust extractors
several years ago, in
retaliation for earlier
protests. At Pasta de Conchos,
dozens of uncorrected violations
for dangerous methane buildup
preceded the 2006 explosion.
But the Cananea strike goes
beyond health and safety issues.
For three years the Mexican
Union of Mine, Metal and Allied
Workers, commonly known as the
Mineros, has challenged the
National Action Party (PAN),
which has governed Mexico since
2000, and its corporate backers,
especially Grupo Mexico and its
owners, the Larrea family. In
turn, Mexican President Felipe
Calderón has systematically
sought to destroy the Mineros,
as well as other unions that
defy him.
Last fall
he fired 44,000 members of the
left-wing Mexican Electrical
Workers Union (SME) and
dissolved their state-owned
employer, the Power and Light
Company of Central Mexico.
Progressive unions believe that
destroying the SME would remove
another union challenge while
preparing the way for
privatizing electrical power
generation. SME members fasted
in protest and were beaten this
spring at the gates to the power
plants.
In the face of these attacks,
the Obama administration has
been silent. Armenta believes
the attack on Cananea's miners
is the consequence not just of
Calderón's antilabor policies
but also of tacit US support for
them. "Our government continues
to give the Mexican government
millions and millions of
dollars, saying it will be used
to fight drugs," says Armenta.
"But we see here clearly that
this money is going to fight
workers and progressive people."
On May 19 Calderón was feted at
a state dinner at the White
House. Leaders of the Steel
Workers union met with
administration officials, asking
them to tell Calderón they
wouldn't tolerate an attack on
the miners. AFL-CIO president
Richard Trumka and Canadian
Labor Congress president Ken
Georgetti wrote to Washington
and Ottawa with the same demand.
According to Armenta, officials
"assured us they were not
turning their heads away. That
was totally false." Eighteen
days after the banquet, police
attacked the Cananea miners.
The Mineros used to be a loyal
ally of the old Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI), which
governed Mexico for seventy
years. But Napoleón Gómez
Urrutia, who took over the union
in 2001 from his father, a PRI
stalwart, had much more militant
and democratic ideas. He quickly
forced employers, including
Grupo Mexico, to concede much
higher wage increases than those
mandated by then-President
Vicente Fox. Gómez helped defeat
Fox's reform of Mexico's labor
laws, a proposal recommended by
the World Bank that would have
eliminated the right to strike
and other protections and social
benefits for workers. After the
Pasta de Conchos explosion, he
accused Grupo Mexico of
"industrial homicide."
The government reacted
violently. It accused Gómez of
corruption, forcing him to flee
to Canada to avoid arrest, where
he has lived ever since. A
government-backed effort to
install a pro-company union
leader was twice rejected by the
workers, who re-elected Gómez in
exile. All the legal actions
against him led to his
exoneration, but the government
still threatens to jail him if
he returns to Mexico.
In June 2007 the Mineros struck
the Cananea mine over safety
conditions. The following
January, after police beat
dozens of workers in an attempt
to break the strike, 25,000
Mineros members struck in
protest at ten mines and at the
huge steel mill in the port city
of Lázaro Cárdenas. Two workers
were shot and killed there,
where the turmoil continues.
This year twenty more were
beaten when they shut the mill
down again and marched in the
streets.
Government-dominated courts and
labor boards have repeatedly
declared the strike at Cananea
legally "nonexistent," a
decision allowing Grupo Mexico
to fire the strikers and install
a company union. After Calderón
won election in 2006, with major
contributions from the Larrea
family, the labor board gave
legal status to a new "charro,"
or company, union. A rump
election and the firing of 1,500
workers at a neighboring copper
mine in Nacozari led to
recognition there of the company
union, followed by similar moves
at several other mines.
According to the Mineros, Labor
Secretary Javier Lozano recently
held meetings with mine owners,
offering government recognition
of the "charro" union in order
to get out of contracts with the
Mineros. Calderón himself was
recently the guest of honor at a
Mexico City bash hosted by the
Chamber of Mines. "The
government and the Larreas are
making history, but backwards,"
the union responded after the
occupation of Cananea, "trying
to return to an era when we had
no right to strike or right to
industrial safety."
Smashing the Cananea strike will
lead to the same massive firings
that followed an earlier lost
strike in 1998, and the
destruction of the union in
Nacozari in 2006. When that
happened, waves of desperate
miners, unable to find other
employment, crossed the border
into the United States as
undocumented workers.
"Especially here in Arizona with
the new law, all we hear about
is illegal immigrants," Armenta
says. "But our own government is
creating this problem. I condemn
the Mexican government, and
Grupo Mexico. But I also condemn
the US government for allowing
this to happen, for not taking
any action. What do they think
will happen here? Where do they
think all the miners will have
to go?"
David
Bacon is a California-based
writer and photographer. His
latest book is Illegal People:
How Globalization Creates
Migration and Criminalizes
Immigrants.
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