By Peter Gellert
MEXICO CITY — May Day was marked here with three mass demonstrations, reflecting divisions and new trends in the country's labour movement.
The official, pro-government labour movement, organised in the Congress of Labour (CT), held a rally in the Zocalo plaza in Mexico City attended by about 250,000 workers. Large attendances at CT rallies are not unusual, since most participants are threatened with loss of a day's pay (or worse) if they don't attend.
While the official labour leadership raised demands such as "Salaries that contribute to the productive effort", "Government economic policies based on social justice" and "Defence of the country's sovereignty, resources and integrity", the rally reflected the CT's slavishly pro-government orientation. President Ernesto Zedillo was on the reviewing stand, and made the customary speech about how the government backed workers' interests.
The official rally was noteworthy because it followed major desertions from the CT's ranks in the past year. In addition, for the past four years the CT — at the time under the six-decade old leadership of Fidel Velasquez — had cancelled the traditional May Day parade, arguing that rank and file discontent could lead to "incidents".
However, the umbrella organisation of the official unions, thrown into an even greater crisis following Velasquez's death last June, is clearly under great pressure to play a more visible role.
Before 1994, there were usually signs of dissent during the CT's May Day parade — quickly and violently repressed by CT goons or the police. This year, there were no such incidents, except for some calls from teachers for a salary increase when their collective bargaining agreement expires on May 15. Much of the potential dissent was siphoned off by the other two, more militant, demonstrations.
The second demonstration, called by the National Workers Union (UNT), was held immediately following the CT rally. The UNT, which is less than six months old, unites the unions that have broken with the CT, as well as independent unions.
The UNT's militant call "For a combative and democratic May 1st" stressed the "priority to construct a labour movement different from what has existed in Mexico for several decades because its structures, practices and relations with the government, business and society no longer represent the Mexican workers and have led to setbacks and a loss of its historical vanguard role".
The UNT march and rally, attended by more than 75,000 workers in well-organised contingents, including some from independent peasant confederations, featured slogans rejecting neo-liberalism and calling for a new economic policy, salary increases, an end to corporatist labour practices, trade union democratisation and autonomy, and opposition to privatisation of the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS), the national health system.
Rally participants included the telephone workers; IMSS, airline, trolley and university unions; dissidents from the Revolutionary Workers Confederation; and strikers from the Nacional Monte de Piedad pawnshop.
Since this was the UNT's first May Day, its ability to mobilise its 150 member unions in the streets was an important test. For many of its affiliated unions, the May Day call included political and social demands not usually raised.
Given that the UNT's main organisational strength is outside Mexico City, Berta Lujan, a leader of the Authentic Labour Front (FAT), the most militant of the labour organisations in the UNT, characterised the march as "a qualified success".
For the fourth consecutive year, the radical left May 1st Inter-union Coordinating Committee (the Intersindical) held a march and rally, which also ended in the Zocalo.
The Intersindical unites independent unions, dissident tendencies within other unions, social organisations such as the El Barzon debtors' movement, the National Indigenous Congress, the far-left Independent Proletarian Movement (MCI) and Francisco Villa Popular Front (FPFV), dozens of neighbourhood groups and political currents such as the Zapatista National Liberation Front and smaller left parties.
This 75,000-strong march and rally featured many of the same demands as the UNT, but also demanded cancellation of Mexico's foreign debt, a new constituent assembly and constitution, freedom for political prisoners and an end to government policy in Chiapas.
While the CT and UNT demonstrations were limited to the organised labour movement, the Intersindical's event was weaker in terms of trade union participation — although it did feature striking workers from Sosa Texcoco, CASA, fired workers from General Motors and the Agrarian Reform Ministry and democratic currents from unions representing subway workers and federal government employees.
Rather, the Intersindical's march and rally were a mobilisation of the independent social movements and radical left. They were also more like a traditional left event, with participants treated to several hours of speeches.
Despite the efforts of some forces, particularly the FAT, to promote a united May Day demonstration between the UNT and the Intersindical, the obstacles were too formidable.
The UNT is reluctant to march with social organisations outside the labour movement, and would be uncomfortable about the presence of dissident currents from its own member unions in the march.
The major stumbling block, however, was the ingrained sectarianism of many sectors of the Intersindical — particularly the MCI and FPFV — which continually denounce the UNT as "neo-charros" (the classic Mexican trade union bureaucrat).
While UNT leaders such as Francisco Hernandez Juarez of the Telephone Workers Union and Antonio Rosado from the Social Security Workers Union remain members of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party and have a history of bureaucratic union practices, the formation of the UNT is nonetheless an important break from Mexico's traditionally corrupt and ineffectual business unionism.
To promote unity in the Mexican workers' movement, the UNT called for an open dialogue with the Intersindical and the CT, although indicating it would have nothing to do with recently selected CT President Joel Lopez Mayren, who it characterised as an opportunist and pseudo-leader.