Copper Miners Get Help from Women in Long Strike in Mexico
The miners of Local 65 of the Mexican Mine and Metal Workers Union at Cananea marked their ninth month of striking against Grupo Mexico, the country’s largest mining corporation and third-largest copper producer in the world. Despite new pressure on the union and its members—including a threatened closure of the mine—the 1,200 miners have found additional support during the last few months from the Cananea Women’s Front, a local women’s group mostly made up of family members of strikers.
“We lead 1,100 women and our purpose is to fight side by side with our miners and give them all the support and solidarity they need in this difficult struggle in defense of their labor rights,” Dinamichel Ávila Gómez said in a speech at the 2008 Labor Notes conference.
“We have taken on the task of organizing to pressure governments by holding protests at schools. We have also gone door to door to visit miners’ wives so that they don’t pressure their husbands to go back to work.”
Grupo Mexico announced on April 24 that it would close the Cananea copper mine. The Mexican Miners Union responded saying that it is illegal to close the mine during a strike, and that the law requires that outstanding labor disputes first be resolved.
The Mexican Miners Union struck in Cananea last July over health and safety issues. The strike, however, forms part of a larger struggle between the union and the government over who will run the union.
The government removed the union’s general secretary, Napoleón Gómez Urrutia, from office last year (an action later overturned by the courts) and also indicted him for allegedly embezzling $55 million. Miners have engaged in a series of local as well as national strikes over the right to control their own union.
Gómez Urrutia, fearing imprisonment in Mexico, fled to Canada and has been leading the union from Vancouver, British Columbia, since March 2006. Members re-elected him in absentia to the union’s top office in May 2006. Criminal charges also hang over the heads of other mine union leaders. Such charges are frequently used to intimidate workers during strikes in Mexico.
Cananea holds a special significance in Mexico as the birthplace of the Mexican labor movement during a strike in 1906 there against then-owner William C. Greene, an American. Mexican school children are taught about the strike, which was a precursor of the revolution of 1910-1920.
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The Cananea Women’s Front was formed after the Mexican government declared the strike illegal and on January 11 sent 800 federal police to occupy the mining town. The police took control of the mine, near the Arizona border. Since then the women have carried their message throughout the region.
“We have visited cities in the state of Sonora to spread the real message of the struggle because some of the media have misinformed the public, following the instructions of Grupo Mexico,” Ávila Gómez said. “We request from those we visit the financial and moral support that this movement and our people so desperately need.”
The Cananea Women’s Front also took over 45 local schools in northern Sonora in January. Griselda Bracamontes told Caracol, an electronic magazine, that they did so “as a form of pressure because we were not being listened to.”
Another member of the Women’s Front, Miriam Sierra Soto, told the local press that they were tired of the miners being ignored, and called upon others in Sonora to defend Cananea, which forms “part of the national patrimony.”
The occupation of the schools, however, led to conflicts between the Women’s Front and schoolteachers, members of the Mexican Teachers Union. The Women’s Front returned the schools to the teachers after three days.
The National Union of Workers, Mexico’s independent union federation, supports the striking miners, as do many unions in the state of Sonora. Miners and metalworkers unions throughout Latin America, Europe and around the world have also given support.
The International Metalworkers’ Federation, which includes unions in 100 countries, launched on April 23 a campaign to pressure the Mexican government and Grupo Mexico to end their repression of the strikers.
Dan La Botz edits Mexican Labor News and Analysis, which reports regularly on Mexican workers’ movements. Back issues that discuss Cananea are available at United Electrical Workers International Solidarity. More information is at International Metalworkers’ campaign.
