Collapse of Dignity Read online

  It was a troubling report, but it fit with my growing doubts about Rivero. I now suspected that his true clients were not the union but Alonso Ancira, Germán Larrea, and Javier Lozano. No doubt someone, most likely Lozano, made Rivero believe that if he could get me to step down, he would be appointed as head of Los Mineros—as long as he kept the workers subjugated, of course. The thought of this lawyer as leader of a union is absurd: first of all, the workers would never accept him (he was not even a member of the union) and second, Rivero was absolutely ignorant of our organization’s procedures, its bylaws, its internal regulations, and the practice of true union democracy. He took Lozano’s bait but fell in the trap of his own unbridled ambition.

  Now that we’d seen through Rivero’s game, we knew we couldn’t let him do any more damage to the organization. Already, he was trying to win the loyalty of some executive committee members, and his actions were provoking internal confrontations. In February of 2008, Rivero made a trip to Vancouver, and I told him bluntly that I didn’t like the way he was acting and that he was in no way authorized to make decisions on my behalf or on the behalf of anyone in the union. I told him it was not his job to be involved with the labor negotiations; he had been hired as a criminal defense lawyer, and his job was to vigorously fight to clear the names of those falsely accused. He thanked me for relieving him of involvement in those meetings and said he would start concentrating more on the criminal side. We said good-bye without event.

  I suspect that he left that meeting and immediately called up Lozano and Ancira to tell them what had happened. With no involvement in the labor negotiations, Rivero would be useless to them. When the lawyer got back to Mexico City, and without speaking to me, he made a public announcement claiming that I had fired him as defense lawyer, and he complained that the union and I had treated him unfairly. The media, being sponsored by Larrea, Lozano, and Ancira, picked up the story, portraying Rivero in a sympathetic light.

  It was absolutely infuriating, but at least we had expelled an internal enemy. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the last we would see of Rivero.

  In May of 2008, the union held its biannual convention in Mexico City, in the union’s 11 de Julio hall. Once again, I opened the ceremony via videoconference, giving the more than one thousand assembled members of Los Mineros an overview of the past two years and entreating them to hold fast. Miners at Taxco, Sombrerete, and Cananea were now in their tenth month of striking; the banking fraud charges against me and the others were still on their seemingly endless journey through the Mexican legal system; and we had lost several union sections to the threats and harassment of Lozano and Grupo México in the last year. Yet the vast majority of the union’s rank and file remained energized and steadfast in their belief in the union’s purpose. Over the course of that convention, I was once again reelected unanimously as general secretary of Los Mineros. It was the third time I’d been unanimously elected to lead the union, and I had now been in Canada for over two years. There was no end to my exile in sight.

  It was at this 2008 convention that Francisco Hernández Juárez, head of the Telephone Workers’ Union and president of the National Workers’ Union, repeated his claim about the long-brewing conspiracy against the union, stating that Carlos María Abascal had told him back in 2005 that “they were coming to get” me. The 2008 convention also marked our final decision to officially leave Mexico’s Labor Congress—the umbrella organization made up of mainly PRI-associated unions. In the two years since Pasta de Conchos, it had become clear that our dire struggle for democracy and the rights of workers threatened the Congress’s comfortable relationship with the administrations of Fox and then Calderón. Though we’d received enthusiastic support from around the globe, the Labor Congress never once expressed a single word of solidarity or encouragement. We knew why: the Labor Congress depended on the existing power structure for its own power, and thus it did not matter to them that the Miners’ Union was one of its founding members, nor that I had served as president of different commissions of the Congress in the past—it had to preserve the status quo at all costs. The Congress had shown clearly that its loyalty lay with the government, whatever its ideology was, not with the workers whose rights it was established to protect.

  In the days after the convention, we gathered the paperwork regarding my reelection and sent it off to the labor department; Labor Secretary Lozano would then have sixty days to either present me with the toma de nota that would officially recognize my leadership of the union or deny it to me. Given that the courts had, just a little more than a year before, forced Lozano to recognize me, one would think he would do the right thing and honor the miners’ democratic choice. But in the final week of June 2008, Lozano called a press conference and, to a crowd of reporters, announced that the labor department was denying Napoleón Gómez Urrutia the toma de nota. The announcement was broadcast live on Televisa and TV Azteca, as well as on several radio stations. NOTIMEX, the government news agency carried the story as well, without finding any problem in Lozano’s announcement. Not one story pointed out that his denial of the toma de nota was a flagrant violation of both labor law and the principles set forth by the International Labor Organization, an agency of the United Nations that deals with international labor standards. The ILO’s Convention 87 clearly establishes the right of workers to freely elect their union representatives, and furthermore, its Committee on Freedom of Association has stated in its “Digest of Decisions” that “in order to avoid the danger of serious limitation on the right of workers to elect their representatives in full freedom, complaints brought before labor courts by an administrative authority challenging the results of trade union elections should not—pending the final outcome of the judicial proceedings—have the effect of suspending the validity of such elections.”

  Following Lozano’s press conference, I was flooded with calls from our lawyers and my executive committee colleagues. Lozano’s denial was blatantly abusive, but in truth, we’d seen it coming. The labor secretary was Larrea’s “cat,” after all. He was Calderón’s reward to that businessman for all the financial support that had put him in Los Pinos. We were too used to Lozano’s rabidly antiunion obsessions to be surprised.

  Regardless of the denial of toma de nota, the union continued working as it had before, with me performing all the duties of general secretary. Los Mineros had decided that I would continue in that capacity whether we had Calderón’s meaningless stamp of approval or not. My fellow union members have understood from the start that a simple document does not make any difference on whom they elected, and they unwaveringly supported me as general secretary.

  A couple of months after the announcement, the Miners’ Union went on to press criminal charges against Lozano and his undersecretary, Castro Estrada, for this blatant of abuse of authority. In interviews on national radio and television programs, Lozano said that the accusation made him laugh. What he wasn’t taking into account was that, even though he had used his influences to shelve the charge, we have won all the amparo trials thus far, and the complaint was in effect once he leaves his appointment. Once he no longer has the privileges that come with being labor secretary, he will stop laughing.

  Indeed, any impartial organization that examines our case is quick to condemn the government’s action. At the beginning of June 2008, the IMF and the Miners’ Union presented a complaint to the Committee on Freedom of Association of the International Labor Organization (ILO). Our complaint, which the ILO classified as Case 2478, details all the aggressions of the Mexican government against the union and its leaders, collecting all the maneuvers, aggressions, and violations of the law that had been perpetrated thus far: the withdrawal of the toma de nota, the freezing of the bank accounts, the violent repression and murder of striking workers, death threats, the establishment of a company union, the detention and torture of union members, and all the rest.

  On June 12, our colleague Marcello Malentacchi, general secretary of the IMF, spoke at
an ILO conference in Geneva and gave a passionate denunciation of the political persecution that we have suffered since 2006. After detailing all the episodes that have made up the mining conflict since its beginnings in February 2006, he ended his speech by saying:

  We call on the government of Mexico to:

  lift all pending charges against Napoleón Gómez and other members of the Mexican Miners’ Union;

  process immediately and transparently in a court all those responsible for the corruption of documents and events;

  recover the sixty-three bodies from the Pasta de Conchos mine and investigate and bring to justice those responsible;

  investigate the involvement of Grupo México in the murder of Reynaldo Hernández González and in the detention and torture of twenty members of the Union in Nacozari, Sonora; and

  release all Union funds, which are illegally embargoed by the government.

  The Mexican Miners’ Union has actively promoted a democratic and independent labor movement in Mexico. The Union has obtained important benefits for its members and has assumed a posture of speaking openly against negative labor reforms in Mexico. This Union deserves the backing of the international community and I urge every one of the delegates to this Conference to support the Mexican Miners’ Union in the struggle for union independence in Mexico.

  The ILO committee, after reviewing Case 2478, issued a statement on June 22, 2008, ordering the government of Mexico to respond to the accusations made by the Miners’ Union and the IMF. The committee also directly criticized the actions of the Mexican government, saying the ILO “considers that the labor authorities engaged in conduct that is incompatible with Article 3 of Convention No. 87, which establishes the right of workers to elect their representatives in full freedom.” In addition, it demanded that the government quickly resolve the mining conflict, a demand the Mexican government is required by law to follow.

  I was immensely grateful for this vindication from the International Labor Organization, but I didn’t hold out much hope that it would change the Mexican government’s approach to the conflict. Calderón, like Fox before him, displayed a pervasive and complete disregard for justice. Indeed, the contrast between the current government of my homeland and the government of Canada—the first largely corrupt, the second free and democratic—was stark.

  The government of Mexico had attempted to use the Canadian government to make my situation abroad quite difficult and complex, publicly stating that they had repeatedly requested my deportation and then extradition, demonizing me the whole time. But the truth is that the Mexican government had never requested my extradition; they would only do this later, when I decided, with the advice of my legal counselors, to submit a lawsuit against the Mexican government to formally request my extradition. I knew that if Canada accepted the extradition request, it would be reviewed by the courts in Canada, not in Mexico, where I could win the case and make a shame of Calderón and the Mexican government for their lack of grounds and the conspiracy of the Mexican judiciary system. Thankfully, the Canadian government refused both measures. The first step in the extradition process would have been for Canada to review the case and find that it had merit—but, Canadian officials being honest and seeing the truth, it never passed this first stage. Canada is not willing to tolerate the transfer of Mexican misconduct to its own legal system, and officials rebuffed pressure to pervert the rule of law and help persecute me for a crime I did not commit. We worked hard to communicate clearly and often with Canadian officials about the progress of the case. Every time we received a favorable ruling, Marco del Toro would draft a report explaining the new developments and send official translated documents showing the court proceedings. Even when we were denied amparo now and then, his reports would explain that we were appealing and were confident that we’d win in the next round.

  So, as the attack on the union and my leadership continued in earnest during 2008, we were glad to have in Vancouver something of a safe haven. From Mexico, though, we were still receiving threats from politicians and businessmen. Anonymous email, letters, and phone calls came to our home, all warning me to step down from the union and stop fighting Grupo México.

  The government was still using unlawful tactics against us too, for no reason other than punishment for my standing up to them. In one of its most cowardly moves, the PGR seized a real estate property belonging to my son Ernesto that had been acquired long before the conflict began. We filed an amparo in a federal court against the confiscation of Ernesto’s home, and when my defense lawyers consulted the file, they found a page that had by mistake not been removed at court. The top of the page read

  . . . FEDERAL JUDICIARY POWER

  Indirect Constitutional Rights Protection Trial 410/2007

  SON OF NAPOLEÓN GÓMEZ URRUTIA . . .”

  They hadn’t even bothered to use the actual name of my son, the owner of the property! It was a clear confirmation that the confiscation was about one thing only: putting pressure on me and threatening me into giving up leadership of the union. There is no reason I should’ve been mentioned in that file. The legal action was against my son and supposedly had nothing to do with me, but when Ernesto went to court to defend himself against this arbitrary seizure, he was seen only as a relative of the political enemy.

  My own home in Mexico City was still seized as well, though Rivero had been lying to us and saying that he was making progress on it. But in the hands of Rivero’s former partner, Marco del Toro, we did eventually get a ruling from a judge declaring that the home was no longer in the government’s control. When the PGR first took the property over in April of 2006, it had sent heavily armed men to surround it, and the government had called in news crews to cover the scandalous story. Now, years later, when Marco went to take back the house pursuant to the judge’s ruling, the PGR was ready to put on another show of intimidation. As Marco pulled up to the house with the court order in hand and a notary public in the passenger’s seat, he saw a car full of armed police forces (who’d been sent by the PGR) waiting for him. As he exited his car, they got out of theirs as well, looking stern and displaying their weapons. Marco charged toward the house anyway, shouting for the notary to make an official record of the police intimidation.

  More threats were to come. October 2008 brought their most dire move up to that point, according to retired military general Arturo Acosta Chaparro. He said that in that month, a group of government officials and retired military officers had held a meeting in Mexico City. Some of the attendees were participants in the massacre of peasants in Aguas Blancas, Guerrero, in June 1995. PAN senator Ulises Ramírez—former mayor of Tlalnepantla, chief of staff of Interior Secretary Juan Camilo Mouriño, and according to many books, an El Yunque member—was at the meeting along with Mouriño himself. Ramírez offered General Acosta millions of dollars to travel to Canada and perform a “dirty job”: that is, kidnap me, take me to a private place, and make me disappear. The offer was made on behalf of—who else?—the Department of the Interior and Grupo México. General Acosta had a controversial background; in addition to spending six years in military prison for alleged ties to a drug cartel, he was known for his involvement in the Dirty War of the late 1960s and 1970s, during which the ruling PRI government sought to suppress the left-wing student movement and bands of associated rebels. Over a period of nearly eighteen years, the government tortured and killed untold numbers of suspected rebels. General Acosta was rumored to have been among the most ruthless of the leftists’ persecutors, kidnapping and murdering hundreds of dissidents in the state of Guerrero. In La Jornada, Andrés Nájera—president of the Eureka Committee, an organization dedicated to finding justice for the detainees and casualties of the Dirty War—attributed a full 30 percent of the deaths to Acosta. Needless to say, hearing that such a man was out of prison and being enticed to come after me was unsettling.

  Julio Pomar, head of the union’s press department, had heard the story straight from General Acosta’s mouth, a
t a breakfast meeting of around ten people. Acosta told the group that he’d refused the assignment and advised Mouriño and Ramirez that he considered it extremely dangerous and difficult to perform such an operation in Canada, a country that has very advanced security systems, particularly after September 11, 2001. After the terrorist attack, the governments of Canada and the United States had decided tighten controls on people coming into the country, and their security measures were now beefed up and intertwined. It would take considerable effort for the general to pull off the proposed mission.

  Pomar told General Acosta after that breakfast meeting that he was going to tell me this story. The general said that was fine—all of it was true. (Further, General Acosta didn’t care about angering the current administration; apparently Calderón had promised him an appointment to a high-level position but hadn’t kept his word.) As soon as Pomar’s tale got back to us, the lawyers drafted an affidavit describing the incident. We presented it before a Canada’s Minister of Justice as evidence of the ongoing institutional persecution against me and my family.

  The Canadian government reacted immediately. From the beginning, my family had received help from a sergeant from the intelligence unit of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police; this sergeant had a strong relationship with several members of the USW, and he’d been extremely kind and supportive in the many meetings we’d had since my arrival in Vancouver. Now that federal officials had seen the affidavit regarding the hit man who was almost sent to kill me, they arranged a meeting between me and an RCMP special detective from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The detective told me that the safety of me and my family was a priority for him, and he helped set up alerts in my home, on my office telephones, and in my vehicles that I could use to rapidly call authorities should any of us encounter trouble. To this day, my family enjoys the added security of these measures, and we deeply appreciate the Canadian government’s actions in this regard.