The Impact of United States Railroad Unions on Organized Labor and Government Policy in Mexico (1880-1911) Open Access

Before the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, over half of all railroad workers participated in labor unions, making the railroads the most highly organized industry in Mexico. An examination of this development provides a vital insight into the growth of labor associations and the complexities of government labor policy in dependent countries. In Mexico, as in other Latin American nations, foreign companies and managers controlled the railroads by the turn of the century. In the early stages of operation, these companies, along with those in the mining and smelting industries, brought in foreign skilled workers who soon monopolized the better-paying positions. What appears to distinguish the railroad industry is the presence of United States labor unions that came to Mexico, not to organize Mexican workers, but to protect United States workers who were in Mexico in sufficient numbers to warrant opening local chapters there.¹ These railroad brotherhoods affected not only the development of Mexican labor associations in the industry but also the government’s labor policy under Porfirio Díaz.

The nature of the Mexican labor associations during the Porfiriato (1876-1911) has been the subject of heated debate. On the one hand, scholars argue that European anarchist influence was suppressed by the Díaz government, allowing a strong tradition of mutual-aid societies to persist. Early labor organizations engaged in nonpolitical, defensive actions, lacked an ideological orientation, and adhered to paternalism—all of which allowed them to be manipulated by the government. For these scholars, the upsurgence of highly combative strikes in 1906 was due largely to “outside” influences, such as the deteriorating economic situation or nationalist fervor.² On the other hand, there are scholars who claim that the highly combative nature of the Mexican labor movement in 1906 can be attributed to the increasing level of consciousness among workers and the influence of the Partido Liberal Mexicano’s (Mexican Liberal party) program of social and political reform.³

A close study of the Mexican railroad unions sheds new light on the debate. Although the railroad unions retained some mutualist characteristics, they incorporated the goals of more militant trade unionism as well. By the turn of the century, the early organizing activities of the railroad unions represented an attempt to politicize the Mexican railroad worker on the basis of class consciousness and solidarity against capital and its defender, the Díaz government.⁴ Yet, while these early labor associations recognized the need to struggle against capitalists to gain their rights, they did not question, in essence, the capitalist system. Thus, they continued to embrace goals similar to those found in the 1906 reformist program of the Partido Liberal Mexicano, but did not move in the direction of revolutionary anarcho-syndicalism, as did Enrique and Ricardo Flores Magón after 1908.

Scholars have attributed the failure of Mexican unions to radicalize during the Porfiriato to government repression or to the lack of consciousness among the workers themselves. Although these factors played a role, in the case of the railroad industry, the presence of United States brotherhoods also retarded this development. While it can be argued that the monopoly of United States workers over skilled positions actually increased the militancy and sense of national solidarity among Mexican workers, this same nationalist sentiment allowed the government temporarily to neutralize the more radical tendencies within the railroad labor associations.

Attempts to characterize Díaz’s policy toward organized labor in Mexico have also engendered much controversy. In this sense, the railroad industry provides an excellent vehicle for analyzing the complexities of labor policy in an industry dominated by foreign capital. In Mexico, as in other dependent countries, the government’s labor policy cannot be understood solely as protection of the interests of capital against labor, because this relationship is affected by the interplay between foreign and national interests. This is a vital factor to which scholars have not devoted sufficient attention.

In his struggle to exercise a degree of control over foreign companies in Mexico, Díaz, a staunch defender of capital, at times found it expedient to take the side of the Mexican labor organizations in their claims against foreign firms. The change in Díaz’s policy toward Mexican workers in 1906 reflected not only a need to counter developments within the working class movement, as many scholars argue, but also variations in the relationship between the administration and the foreign railroad companies.⁵ Similarly, scholars have ignored the fact that Díaz’s policy toward United States brotherhoods in Mexico differed substantially from his policy toward Mexican labor associations. These differences reflected the administration’s relationship with foreign interests rather than with labor. Thus, after 1906, the interests of the Díaz government and the Mexican railroad workers temporarily coincided in their desire to share in the benefits monopolized by foreign intruders. Ironically, this effort by Díaz to impose national control over United States economic interests in Mexico would be taken up as a battle cry of the Mexican revolutionaries who unseated Díaz in 1911.

1

From the early years of railroad construction, the Díaz government was aware of the need for foreign investment and the dangers that it held for Mexican sovereignty. In 1880, after much debate, the administration gave concessions to the financial backers of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad to organize the Ferrocarril Central de México and the Ferrocarril de Sonora. The same year the financiers of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad formed the Ferrocarril Constructora Nacional, which was reorganized as the Camino de Fierro Nacional and later as the Ferrocarril Nacional de México.⁶ By the turn of the century, these two United States companies controlled over half of the railroad track in Mexico and operated the only rail links between the Distrito Federal and the northern border.⁷ Ten years later, United States investors controlled all the major railroad lines in Mexico, except for routes connecting the Distrito with Veracruz and the line across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. United States capital represented 80 percent of all investment in Mexican railroads.⁸

The United States companies built and operated the Mexican railroads as feeders to their lines north of the border. To design and build the Mexican lines, they initially hired United States civil engineers and contractors, who, in turn, recruited their construction crews in the United States. Company officials explained that this was necessary because dealing with workers who neither spoke English nor understood the “American way of getting things done” caused irritating delays in construction.⁹ In addition, they professed their belief that Mexicans were not as productive or reliable as their United States counterparts.¹⁰

Naturally, the companies’ recruiting policy angered Mexican laborers, who expected to have the jobs of building the railroads. In 1880, El Hijo del Trabajo, a Mexico City labor newspaper with anarchist leanings, strongly protested when the Ferrocarril Central, “degrading the Mexican laborer and considering him inept, even for the ‘science’ of laying the rails, brought in workers from the United States, who took the jobs needed by a thousand intelligent, honorable and industrious heads-of-household here.” Further, if the Ferrocarril Central typified “the instruments of progress and civilization” heralded by Mexican government officials, the article concluded that “it would be better if they [the foreign railroad companies] do not come, but rather, leave us alone in our ‘barbarity’.”¹¹

By early 1881 competition from railroad construction in the south-western United States made it increasingly difficult and unprofitable to recruit unskilled workers to go to Mexico. Although the companies continued to contract Black laborers in New Orleans and Jamaica to work in the tropical lowlands, they began to hire Mexican crews to prepare roadbeds and to lay track.¹² As a rule, the firms employed Mexicans from the areas transversed by the railroads. By 1886 the Secretary of Development reported shortages of agricultural laborers in ninety-two districts because the railroad companies paid higher wages than did the hacendados.¹³ Nevertheless, Mexican laborers walked off their jobs several times during the early years of railroad construction to protest company abuses. Like mining and textile workers, they complained that officials did not pay them on time and often required them to spend half their earnings in company stores.¹⁴ In addition, the workers protested that the engineers and contractors frequently struck them with sticks or pistol butts to force them to work long hours into the night.¹⁵

From the outset, company officials reported paying their Mexican employees “a considerably lower salary than that paid to individuals of other nationalities.”¹⁶ In 1882 the Ferrocarril Central disclosed that its Mexican laborers earned between $.75 and $2.00 per day for laying track, while its foreign employees received from $1.25 to $2.50, plus food, for the same work.¹⁷ In later years, when Mexicans made up the majority of unskilled workers on the railroads, the companies adjusted their salaries downward, taking advantage of the lower wage scale in Mexico. From 1896 to 1910 the railroad companies paid only from $.33 to $.75 per day for unskilled labor, depending upon the location on the road. These wages were comparable to those paid in mines and factories in Mexico. They remained relatively stationary throughout this period despite devaluation of the peso and rising inflation.¹⁸ As Secretary of the Treasury, Matías Romero, observed, the foreign companies gave Mexicans wages equal to those of “their poorly-paid unfortunate brethren in the United States . . . the Negroes in the South, the garment workers in New York, and women.”¹⁹

By the mid-1880s when the railroads began to operate, the companies decided to experiment with lower-paid Mexican workers in positions requiring some responsibility and training. In 1884 the Nacional and the Central employed Mexicans as flagmen, switchmen, track and bridge guards, and repairmen.²⁰ One year later, the Central hired a few Mexicans as section foremen but required them to submit monthly reports in English, detailing the work done in their section, the state of the track, and the number of accidents, if any.²¹

For the operation of the trains, however, the companies hired experienced railroadmen from the United States. Both the Nacional and the Central actively recruited train engineers and conductors north of the border from the lines of their competitors or from the ranks of the unemployed. Labor contractors, in conjunction with railroad management, stipulated the wages and working conditions in Mexico before the workers left the United States.²² The Díaz administration encouraged this immigration, arguing that Mexicans would learn quickly from the example set by the “efficient American work methods.”²³

Many railroadmen were willing to go to Mexico because they had not found jobs in the United States or had been fired or forced to work under undesirable conditions. Others went because, given the great demand for skilled workers in Mexico, they found the requirements for advancement into the best-paid positions less rigorous than in the United States. Additionally, the publications of the railroad brotherhoods contained numerous letters from members in Mexico urging their fellow workers to come to the “land of sunshine and flowers, of good government, good treatment, good wages, and good living. . .. If you want a good job and good money, come down here. . .. It isn’t hard to get a train [i.e., advance to conductor] here.”²⁴

Many workers who lost their jobs for participating in labor organizations and strikes in the United States journeyed to Mexico to escape company blacklists. As the number of experienced railroadmen in Mexico increased, however, the blacklists also began to function there to prevent the more radical members of the work force from finding jobs in either country. By 1900 the railroad companies in Mexico required all potential employees to present documentation of their entire record of employment, including any merits or demerits they had received.²⁵

When United States railroadmen arrived in Mexico, they generally settled in colonies in cities along the main lines. Often accompanied by their families, they formed close-knit neighborhoods in which they maintained their native language and cultural patterns.²⁶ By 1890 two thousand United States citizens resided in the city of Chihuahua, most of them employed by the Ferrocarril Central and on nearby ranches.²⁷ Soon there were large colonies of United States railroad workers in Monterrey, San Luis Potosí, Aguascalientes, Torreón, and México, D.F., causing travelers to comment on the “americanization” of these cities. As one United States tourist observed, “Mexico may one day seem more like a great southern extension of our country than a foreign land.”²⁸

As soon as they had sufficient numbers in Mexico, the United States railroadmen established local chapters of their trade unions.²⁹ In 1884 the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers founded its first local in Mexico, followed a year later by the Order of Railway Conductors, and in 1886 by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen. Of the “Big Four” brotherhoods, only the Railway Trainmen did not expand into Mexico, mainly because the Railway Conductors continued to recruit from their ranks in the United States. By 1910 the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers had fifteen chapters in Mexico; the Order of Railway Conductors, eight; and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen, four.³⁰ Other railroad trade unions with chapters in Mexico included the Maintenance-of-Way Employees, the Railway and Steamship Clerks, the Order of Railroad Telegraph Operators, and the Switchmen’s Union. None of these labor associations in Mexico received company or government recognition of their right to represent workers.

Since the railroad brotherhoods were organized by craft, their chapters in Mexico reinforced the isolation of United States workers. Mexicans, at first, did not have the skills necessary to qualify for membership in the brotherhoods, and the apprenticeship policies of these organizations discriminated against Mexican advancement.³¹ Recognizing that their nationality and experience ensured them an advantageous position on the Mexican railroads, United States railroadmen showed little interest in helping Mexicans advance to a level where they could compete for jobs. At the same time, brotherhood members often exhibited attitudes of superiority toward Mexicans, referring to their Mexican co-workers as “greasers” or “our peons.”³² Travelers reported hearing United States railroad workers boast that a few hundred of their compatriots would soon defeat the whole Mexican army and conquer the land.³³ One United States consul observed that “so many loud-talking aggressive Americans [engaged in railroad work] brought a feeling of dread to the Mexicans.”³⁴

Company policy reinforced the separatism and privileged position of the foreign employees. The companies made little effort to teach United States workers Spanish or to train Mexican workers. In the mid-1890s, however, because of complaints by Mexican passengers, the Ferrocarril Central began offering $5 monthly bonuses to pullman porters on the Chicago-Mexico City run if they could speak Spanish.³⁵ In general, however, since the skilled workers and management personnel spoke only English, Mexicans were at a decided disadvantage in acquiring new skills on the job. In addition, all railroad terminology, technical manuals, rule books, timetables, safety regulations, company reports, correspondence, and examinations for promotion were in English.³⁶

Despite the formidable obstacles they confronted, some Mexican workers accumulated enough on-the-job experience and picked up enough English to qualify for skilled positions. A few had gained experience working on lines in the United States, particularly as firemen, brakemen, or mechanics.³⁷ Others, who were blacksmiths and carpenters, had skills that could be easily adapted for work in the railroad repair shops.³⁸ Former government employees reported considerable success in obtaining jobs in the railroad company offices or as telegraph operators.³⁹ All employees had to be able to understand the English orders and bulletins concerning train movements. As a result, the United States conductors and engineers began to rely heavily on Mexican brakemen and firemen to translate their orders to train crews.⁴⁰

As Mexican railroadmen gained more experience in train operations, the railroad companies tried to exploit for their own benefit the divisions between United States and Mexican workers.⁴¹ As early as 1886 the Ferrocarril Central began to use its Mexican employees as strikebreakers. In that year, a company wage-reduction measure caused 185 United States engineers on the Ferrocarril Central to walk off their jobs, demanding higher wages and control over promotions. When the company retaliated by bringing in engineers from other lines and by promoting twenty Mexican firemen to fill their positions, the strikers derailed several trains and physically attacked the firemen.⁴²

In one of the few incidents during which force was used against foreign workers in Mexico, President Díaz ordered federal and state troops to suppress the disorders and put an end to the strike. None of the strikers’ demands was met. The company fired all of the strike organizers but allowed other strikers to return to their jobs, reporting that “they were mainly good men . . . misled by professional agitators.”⁴³ The company then demoted the Mexican strikebreakers to their former positions.

The use of strikebreakers caused the brotherhoods to question the wisdom of excluding Mexicans from membership. In the past, Mexican railroadmen had belonged to mutual-aid societies, which collected low dues to aid members and their families in times of illness, unemployment, or death. These societies sought to protect the economic and social position of their members but opposed collective bargaining and strikes. Generally conservative in nature, they often accepted the patronage of company or government officials.⁴⁴ The most important mutual aid society was the Orden Suprema de Empleados Ferrocarrileros. Organized in 1890 in San Luis Potosí, the Orden Suprema opened its membership to any Mexican railroad employee who could afford to pay the dues.⁴⁵

When the brotherhoods showed interest in opening membership to Mexican railroadmen, company and government officials made it clear that they preferred to keep the Mexicans in the mutualist societies. Mexican workers reported that those who participated in the brotherhoods ran the risk of losing their jobs, being blacklisted, or going to prison.⁴⁶ The brotherhoods complained that the Catholic church also showed hostility toward them, reinforcing the government’s position.⁴⁷ The government’s attitude was in keeping with its earlier activities of encouraging mutualism over the anarchist-influenced labor associations among textile workers and artisans.⁴⁸

Still, the brotherhoods encouraged Mexican membership. In May 1894 United States citizens employed as mechanics in the Ferrocarril Central repair shops in Aguascalientes and San Luis Potosí walked off their jobs, demanding higher pay and better working conditions. This time, they invited their Mexican co-workers to join in the strike. Although some Mexican mechanics participated, not enough did so to prevent strikebreaking activities. In fact, the leaders of the Orden Suprema cooperated with company management against the strikers. They agreed to place Mexican workers in the vacated positions if the Central would pay the Mexicans the same salaries as the foreign mechanics had received. The Orden Suprema considered the issue of equal pay for Mexican workers an important gain. Its victory, however, was short-lived. When the strike ended, the company demoted the Mexicans to their original jobs and salaries.⁴⁹ As a result, Mexican workers began to question the effectiveness of the mutualists’ stance against strikes. Shortly thereafter, dissent within the ranks of the Orden Suprema forced it to disband.

Following the mechanics’ strike and the failure of the Orden Suprema, Mexican railroad workers began to join the brotherhoods in an effort to protect their rights against company abuses. Although the Mexicans supported the idea of a united front against company management, they soon expressed dissatisfaction over discriminatory practices within the brotherhoods. The Mexicans claimed that the United States railroadmen showed more interest in protecting their own jobs from Mexican competition than in improving the working conditions of all members. In the eyes of the Mexicans, the brotherhoods should fight so that all workers, regardless of their nationality, would receive equal compensation for equal work. The Mexican railroadmen wanted the brotherhoods to end their own discriminatory apprenticeship practices and to pressure the companies to end prejudicial promotional policies favoring United States workers.⁵⁰

The brotherhoods in general ignored the grievances of their Mexican members. Throughout the 1890s company and brotherhood policies continued to deny Mexican firemen and brakemen access to the positions of engineer and conductor. In 1901 the Ferrocarril Central had 219 engineers, 199 conductors, and 155 firemen and brakemen from the United States on its payrolls. At the same time, the company reported only 46 Mexican engineers and no Mexican conductors despite the fact that it employed 844 Mexican firemen and brakemen.⁵¹

Wage differences also indicate the discrepancies between the position of Mexican and United States workers on the railroads in Mexico. In 1896 a special commission of the Chicago Trade and Labor Assembly reported that United States locomotive engineers in Mexico earned from $109 to $130 per month, depending upon the number of kilometers run. Conductors earned from $83 to $104 per month. On the other hand, Mexican firemen and brakemen earned from $20 to $24 per month.⁵² Thomas Crittenden, the United States consul general in Mexico, reported similar findings although he indicated that engineers earned as little as $78 per month and conductors $52, while firemen and brakemen earned as much as $52 per month.⁵³ Since the Trade and Labor Assembly specified nationality in its report and Crittenden did not, the difference in range can be attributed to the fact that Mexican railroadmen earned much less than their United States counterparts.⁵⁴

2

Claiming that the United States-dominated brotherhoods did not adequately represent Mexican interests, a group of Mexican mechanics in 1900 decided to form their own organization, the Unión de Mecánicos Mexicanos. Although organized by craft like the brotherhoods, the Unión de Mecánicos reflected other influences as well. One of the principal organizers, Teodoro Larrey, had participated in the strike of the United States mechanics in 1894. Five years later as a mechanic in the shops of the Ferrocarril Interoceánico in Puebla, Larrey joined a Masonic lodge known for its strong anti-Díaz position. There, with the cooperation of a fellow railroadman and dedicated socialist, Francisco Salinas, and a Masonic brother named Bordon, he wrote the by-laws and constitution for the Unión de Mecánicos Mexicanos. In 1901 Larrey went to Tehuantepec to establish a Masonic lodge and a branch of the Club Liberal “Ponciano Arriaga,” an organization of which he was a member and which had close ties to the Flores Magón brothers and the Partido Liberal Mexicano.⁵⁵ The other principal organizer of the Unión de Mecánicos, Silviano Rodríguez, had worked a number of years as a mechanic’s apprentice in the shops of the Southern Pacific Railroad in San Antonio, Texas, where he became an outspoken critic of the Díaz government. Upon returning to his home state of Chihuahua in 1898, he protested that Mexican mechanics in the Ferrocarril Central’s shops were paid half the salary of foreign mechanics. To remedy this ill, he helped form the Chihuahua branch of the Unión de Mecánicos.⁵⁶

Calling for solidarity among workers, the Unión de Mecánicos did not restrict its membership by citizenship or industry. Mechanics of all nationalities in any industry in Mexico were invited to join. The Unión de Mecánicos called upon its members to fight for “just and equitable” remuneration for their labor and to block the “privileges given to foreigners” that made Mexican workers “victims of unjust exploitation” on the part of certain companies, factories, and shops.⁵⁷ Although the Unión de Mecánicos suffered a great deal of repression by company and government officials in its early years, by 1906 it had eighteen local chapters throughout central and northern Mexico, representing 3,000 members, mostly Mexicans.⁵⁸

With the founding of the Unión de Mecánicos, Mexicans from other skilled crafts began to form their own associations. In 1901 a group of firemen formed the Unión de Fogoneros del Ferrocarril Nacional. In 1903, with the aid of the Unión de Mecánicos, the boilermakers founded the Sociedad de Hermanos de Caldereros Mexicanos, which later changed its name to Unión Internacional de Caldereros. Two years later, Mexicans employed by the Ferrocarril Interoceánico and the Ferrocarril Nacional, under the leadership of Ernesto Hernández Espejel and Félix C. Vera, organized the Gran Liga Mexicana de Empleados de Ferrocarril to “fight against tyranny and despotism.”⁵⁹

From 1904 to 1906, Vera served as editor of a biweekly, Mexico City newspaper, El Ferrocarrilero, dedicated to the defense of the railroad worker against “those who got rich off his labor without so much as offering guarantees for his wages or compensation on his life.” Further, the newspaper attacked the “terrible foreign element that is trying to take over everything and occupy all jobs.”⁶⁰ While discussions were under way to form the Gran Liga, Vera explained that its organizers “neither advocated socialism nor planned to poison the brains of the worker with ideas of uprisings,” but company abuses were sufficient to cause the “consciences of honorable men to cry out and join the struggle to defend the workers.”⁶¹ Despite this statement, and the fact that earlier El Ferrocarrilero had endorsed Díaz’s candidacy, the government was not convinced of Vera’s loyalty. Accused of having direct links with the Flores Magón brothers, Vera was jailed in July 1906 for seventeen months because of the allegedly socialist nature of his newspaper.⁶²

In contrast to the earlier unions founded by Mexican railroadmen, the Gran Liga allowed only Mexicans to join, claiming that “the hour had arrived for true liberty, for true protection of Mexican employees. . ..” The Gran Liga’s statutes explained that “this exclusivism is necessary because, unfortunately, in practice Mexican employees are victimized by their bosses and even the foreign railroad brotherhoods, which in order to save their own compatriots have ignored the needs of Mexican workers to the point of treating all Mexicans with contempt.”⁶³ The Gran Liga also differed from the other labor associations in that it embraced the entire range of skilled railroad workers and some white-collar workers. Its directors included representatives of the telegraph agents, office employees, conductors, engineers, firemen, brakemen, mechanics, and other shop personnel. By 1908 the Gran Liga was the largest union in Mexico with 10,000 to 15,000 members, mostly brakemen and mechanics.⁶⁴

Another union that decided to exclude foreigners was the Alianza de Ferrocarrileros Mexicanos. Interestingly, the founding members of the Alianza had belonged to the Brotherhood of Railway Clerks. Although the brotherhood had allowed its Mexican members to form their own local in 1903, the Mexicans expressed dissatisfaction when the matrix of the brotherhood would not support their claims against racial discrimination by the railroad companies. Thus, in 1907, under the leadership of a Freemason named Manuel Muñoz, Local #182 separated from the brotherhood and formed the Alianza de Ferrocarrileros Mexicanos.⁶⁵

Although these early Mexican railroad unions adhered to the ideas of mutualism concerning the need to provide benefits for members in times of unemployment, sickness, or death, they took a much more militant stand than the traditional mutualist societies in their defense of the workers against management. The by-laws of the early unions showed some influence from the Masonic lodges in defining the obligations of members toward family, country, and religious and political freedom.⁶⁶ The Mexican railroad unions also reflected the influence of United States brotherhoods. In contrast to the mining and textile industries, craft unionism prevailed on the railroads during the Porfiriato. Even attempts to form industry-wide alliances, like the Gran Liga, did not include unskilled workers.

The demands of the Mexican labor associations were broader than those of the more conservative brotherhoods that in the United States were fighting “to eliminate class conflict and keep the trade unions free of ‘socialist’ influence.”⁶⁷ The Mexican unions called for an end to discrimination against Mexican workers, for union recognition, collective bargaining, the use of strikes if they were just and orderly, and the importance of solidarity to protect the interests of labor against management. Most of their demands reflected similar concerns to those found in the 1906 program of the Partido Liberal Mexicano.

At first, the Mexican workers’ associations understandably encountered more difficulties than the brotherhoods in organizing strikes. Because of their lower wages, Mexican workers lived from day to day, frequently indebted to the company stores or local merchants. The extremely modest union dues did not generate enough money to sustain extended strikes. To go on strike meant to be “without funds” so that “to walk off the job meant to condemn oneself voluntarily to misery.”⁶⁸ In times of strikes, the unions solicited aid from the public, which often proved sympathetic to their cause against discrimination by foreign companies. Still, the financial burdens often impeded the successful culmination of early union activities.⁶⁹ More important, since the Mexicans were blocked from advancing into the best-paid positions, the number of workers locked into certain jobs soon exceeded the number of available positions. “Scabs” could be quickly found among the pool of unemployed.

In the first strikes of the Mexican labor associations, the Díaz government consistently intervened in support of the foreign companies. Union leaders and strike organizers were jailed or threatened with violence. State and federal troops or police were immediately dispatched into troubled areas as a precautionary measure to protect company property and prevent outbreaks of violence. Thus, the firemen’s strikes on the Ferrocarril Nacional in October 1902 and on the Monterrey al Golfo in October 1905, and the brakemen’s strikes on the Interoceánico in early 1903 and on the Mexicano in January 1905 all followed the same pattern. Strike leaders were jailed; strikers were dismissed; troops were called in; new employees were hired; and the demands for wage increases and better working conditions were ignored.⁷⁰

The strikes of the brotherhoods were more successful. Although experiencing some of the same difficulties, United States workers in Mexico earned higher wages, paid higher dues, and often had some savings to support them during strikes. In addition, the brotherhoods received money from chapters in the United States, particularly those in the West and the South, to help them sustain their strikes. They also reported considerable success in generating funds from residents in border towns such as El Paso, Laredo, and Nogales.⁷¹ The monopoly that the United States workers held on the best-paid positions, particularly those of engineer and conductor, added strength to their strikes. Although the companies brought in Mexican strikebreakers, officials generally were reluctant to fire United States railroadmen. Instead, the companies used strikebreakers to pressure United States employees to go back to their jobs and then dismissed the Mexicans. This can be attributed, in part, to the strength of the brotherhoods and, in part, to the prejudices of company officials against Mexicans and their preferences for English-speaking workers.

In contrast to its policy toward Mexican strikers, the Díaz government did not intervene in the strikes of foreign railroadmen unless violence broke out that threatened company property, as happened during the engineers’ strike on the Ferrocarril Central in 1886. The other case in which government troops moved against United States workers was the July 1901 engineers’ strike on the Internacional. At that time, Díaz sent troops to prevent the possibility of a general strike after the company’s Mexican and United States telegraph operators threatened to walk off their jobs in support of the engineers. The brutal repression of the strike caused an immediate reaction in the United States where major newspapers claimed that Díaz planned to prohibit all railroad strikes. Díaz immediately denied the rumors.⁷² During pacific strikes involving only foreign workers, such as those of United States engineers in November 1902 on the Internacional and in mid-1903 on the Ferrocarril Coahuila al Pacífico, the government did not deploy troops, and strikers achieved their demands for salary increases despite the use of Mexican firemen as “scabs.”⁷³

Government repression and company policies that discriminated against Mexicans and used them as strikebreakers, made actions of solidarity on the part of railroadmen increasingly difficult. As Mexicans gained new skills and improved their organizational effectiveness, the hostilities between United States and Mexican railroadmen became more marked. Despite calls for unification, for all practical purposes the railroad labor organizations gradually became divided by nationality. Strikes generally represented attempts by each nationality to defend its own interests, often against the other. Any attempts at mutual support, such as the 1901 engineers’ strike on the Internacional and the 1902 strike of firemen on the Nacional, were quickly suppressed by government troops.

Despite their favored treatment, the United States engineers and conductors feared that the administration was becoming unsympathetic toward their continued presence in Mexico. The engineers and conductors alleged that the Mexican legal system discriminated against them, particularly through a law that held them, rather than the railroad companies, responsible for injuries, fatalities, or pecuniary damages resulting from train accidents. Since the majority of engineers and conductors were United States citizens, they contended that the law gave local police and judiciary officials an excuse to harass them or imprison them without bail for unreasonable lengths of time.⁷⁴ To support their claims, the railroadmen tried to arouse nationalist sentiment in the United States against the Mexican officials, maintaining that the Mexicans possessed a “natural hatred of the Gringo, whom they wish to exclude from their country.”⁷⁵ The brotherhoods appealed to the public and the major labor organizations in the United States to pressure administrators in Washington “to see that we get fair play in Mexico.”⁷⁶

To strengthen their position in Mexico further, the brotherhoods called on the railroad companies and the United States government for support. They soon found, however, that neither had any interest in backing them. Company reports continually denied the existence of discrimination or mistreatment of United States workers by the Mexican government.⁷⁷ Clearly, the brotherhoods noted, the companies greatly benefited from the Mexican law holding the employees, not the companies, liable for accidents. As for the United States government, the railroadmen pointed out that diplomatic representatives in Mexico, “are mixed up in mining or development schemes of various kinds for which they get concessions or other favors from the Mexican government.” Obviously, consular representatives would not “jeopardize their own interests by antagonizing the Mexican government” over complaints of the railroad workers. Thus, in 1903 a State Department investigation conducted by the consular officials concluded that the railroadmen had no reason to complain since all United States citizens in Mexico were treated well.⁷⁸

Other factors added to the uneasiness of United States workers about maintaining their status on the Mexican railroads. Membership in the Mexican labor associations was growing rapidly. By 1907 more than 16,000 Mexican railroadmen belonged to labor organizations.⁷⁹ As the labor unions grew stronger and more active, Mexican workers espoused a staunch antiforeign sentiment, which was echoed in other industries throughout the nation where United States capital predominated. In 1906 in mines and railroads, strike organizers appealed to racial and national pride to unify Mexican workers against United States companies. Strikers decreed that Mexicans deserved the same treatment as foreign workers. Similarly, the Partido Liberal Mexicano stepped up its activities throughout the republic, verbally attacking foreign companies and supporting the workers’ demands for justice.

3

In June 1906, Mexican miners in Cananea, Sonora, walked off their jobs demanding, among other things, that the United States mine owners give Mexicans the same considerations as foreign workers. The strike was brutally repressed, causing criticism of Díaz’s labor policy and public sympathy for the cause of the Mexican miners. One month later, the Unión de Mecánicos Mexicanos organized a strike on the Ferrocarril Central, making demands similar to those of the Cananea miners.

The railroad strike began when the Central hired thirty-three Hungarian mechanics in its Aguascalientes shops, offering them 6 pesos per day; Mexican mechanics only received 4.5 pesos.⁸⁰ The Unión de Mecánicos demanded equal pay for Mexicans. When management retaliated by firing union leaders, mechanics in Aguascalientes, Chihuahua, Silao, Cárdenas, Tampico, and Monterrey walked off their jobs. Then, exemplifying the rising level of consciousness among Mexican railroad workers, other labor associations began to support the mechanics’ strike. The Unión Internacional de Caldereros declared a sympathy strike, while shop employees and all foremen and maintenance crews between Chihuahua and Ciudad Juárez suspended their work. Members of the Gran Liga strongly supported the strike. The government reported that the Gran Liga was distributing flyers aboard the trains telling Mexican railroadmen to demand equal pay and the dismissal of all foreign employees.⁸¹ Miners in the region, particularly those in Santa Eulalia, began preparations for a similar strike.⁸²

The strikers’ list of grievances presented to Ferrocarril Central officials on August 1, 1906, clearly demonstrated that the workers’ concerns went far beyond the issue of equal compensation for equal work. The Unión de Mecánicos demanded company recognition of the union’s right to represent workers. The mechanics called for control over apprenticeship and promotional practices within the company, the establishment of fixed hours with time-and-a-half pay for overtime, and company recognition of worker seniority. In addition, the strikers wanted assurances that the company would end blacklisting practices, take no action against union members, and rehire all workers participating in the strike.⁸³

Within a week, more than 3,000 Mexican railroad workers employed by the Ferrocarril Central had walked off their jobs, completely paralyzing the nation’s largest rail network. The strikers remained very disciplined, and the movement was pacific. The Unión de Mecánicos had approximately seventy thousand pesos in its treasury and received additional contributions from the Mexican public, the other unions, and organizations like the Freemasons. During the entire strike, the Unión de Mecánicos paid its members half their regular salaries. Prohibiting members from entering cantinas or gambling, the union emphasized that members should use all funds to support their families and maintain the strike as long as possible.⁸⁴

Soon the Cananea miners’ strike and the railroad mechanics’ strike became focal points for anti-United States sentiments throughout Mexico. Newspapers reported that many Mexican labor associations now brandished the slogan “Mexico for the Mexicans.”⁸⁵ Posters appeared in Guadalajara, Aguascalientes, and Silao warning all “gringos” to leave the country. When United States consuls in northern Mexico reported the formation of the “Grand Anti-Yankee League,” rumors spread in the border towns of a movement in Mexico to oust all United States citizens.⁸⁶

Companies north of the border, fearful of a political upheaval in Mexico, began to withhold shipments of goods into that country. To calm their fears, the railroad companies in Mexico distributed thousands of leaflets, denying the anti-United States rumors.⁸⁷ Supporting this view, the United States ambassador, David Thompson, reported that the antiforeign activities were confined to a small group of radical troublemakers. The strikes, he assured his compatriots, did not signal the beginning of a general uprising in Mexico against United States citizens. A revolution, he pointed out, needed money and “the Mexicans who have funds would not want to expel the foreigners whose capital and activities contribute a substantial amount to the general progress of the country.”⁸⁸

The Mexican government and the railroad companies were surprised at the strength and effectiveness of the mechanics’ strike. The major Mexico City newspaper, El Imparcial, called it “the most important strike we have seen to date.”⁸⁹ Company officials, claiming that the movement had more “radical elements” behind it, hired local detectives to infiltrate the Mexican workers’ organizations to “sound the situation.”⁹⁰ Ambassador Thompson instructed the consuls throughout the nation to “keep an eye” on all Mexican labor organizations, particularly those possessing “incendiary literature” full of antigovernment and anti-United States rhetoric, supplied by Mexican revolutionary juntas in the United States and Canada.⁹¹

The Mexican government took steps to suppress any radical tendencies within the labor movement. Anyone caught carrying “subversive literature” was arrested.⁹² Government raids took place against Liberal clubs throughout the nation, and members were imprisoned or deported. Labor leaders suspected of having ties with the Partido Liberal Mexicano were persecuted. The administration imprisoned the organizers of the Cananea strike, the leaders of the textile workers’ union, the Gran Círculo de Obreros Libres, and the president of the Gran Liga Mexicana de Empleados de Ferrocarril, Félix C. Vera.⁹³

Some administration supporters argued, however, that repression of the Mexican workers would neither quiet the unrest nor gain Díaz the popular support he needed. On August 3, 1906, Rafael Zayas Enríquez, a close associate of Díaz, warned the president about the growing influence of the socialists within the nation’s labor movement. Given the strong public support for Mexican workers’ claims in Cananea and Aguascalientes against racial discrimination, he called for “energetic and patriotic action” on the part of the government. Zayas suggested that Díaz should form a commission to investigate the Cananea incident, instruct the newspapers of the dangers inherent in criticizing the administration’s labor policies, and try to arbitrate the railroad workers’ strike.⁹⁴ Shortly thereafter, articles began to appear in the major English and Spanish newspapers in Mexico City, urging workers to follow paths of “decency and clean living” and to realize that violent confrontations never benefited the working class.⁹⁵

In sharp contrast to the government’s past position toward Mexican labor unions, Díaz adopted a seemingly sympathetic attitude toward the railroad strikers. This change in tactic may have been in part because of Zayas’s advice, but it also coincided with the administration’s policy toward the foreign railroad companies. The nationalistic, antiforeign appeal of the striking mechanics reinforced the government’s efforts to gain control over the United States railroad companies in Mexico, thus minimizing government-labor conflict at a time when repression characterized the government’s actions in the mining and textile industries. With the railroad consolidations in the United States in the late 1890s, Díaz feared that a large United States trust company would gain control of the entire transportation system in northern Mexico.⁹⁶ Consequently, in 1902 the administration began to buy shares in the major railroad companies in north-central Mexico: the Interoceánico, the Nacional, and the Internacional. By 1904 the Mexican government held majority shares in the last two. In 1906 the administration was negotiating for controlling interests in the Ferrocarril Central. As a result, during the mechanics’ strike against the Ferrocarril Central, the government and the press began to focus on the demand for equal treatment for Mexicans as if it were the only issue at stake.⁹⁷

On August 8, 1906, in an unprecedented move, Díaz granted a private audience to the delegates of the Unión de Mecánicos to discuss the strike. At this meeting Díaz promised to support the strikers’ efforts to receive the same wages as foreign workers in Mexico. To avoid any misinterpretation of the government’s position, however, Díaz explained that the administration found it “indispensable to guarantee capital, whether national or foreign. . .. Only in this way will we achieve the industrial growth on which . . . the well-being of the working classes ultimately depends.” Anything that blocked or placed “unjust demands on foreign capital,” he explained, “would result in great harm to the entire country.”⁹⁸ The president said he would study the matter of fixed hours and wages if the mechanics immediately returned to work. If the strikers refused, Díaz warned, the administration would not hesitate to employ “whatever means necessary” to maintain order. As far as the other demands of the strikers, including formal union recognition, control over promotions, and an end to blacklisting, Díaz called them “notoriously unjust and unacceptable.” He warned that the union could not hope “to manipulate the interests and affairs of the railroad company” or regulate working conditions since each individual employee was free to accept or refuse the terms offered by the company.⁹⁹

In light of Díaz’s conditional support, and the threat of government reprisals, the striking mechanics decided to accept a partial gain rather than risk losing everything. They returned to their jobs on August 13, 1906. Although Díaz assured the strikers that the Ferrocarril Central would take no reprisals against them, the company refused to rehire those strikers who had participated in “violent acts.” Company officials did, however, agree to raise the salaries of “those who deserved it” and to treat all workers justly, regardless of nationality. Significantly, the company ignored the strikers’ other demands.¹⁰⁰ Thus, government support of the nationalistic tone of the strike temporarily neutralized the workers’ more far-reaching concerns, such as formal recognition of the union, control over apprenticeship and promotional practices, or the establishment of fixed hours.

Taking advantage of the administration’s position, however, Mexican railroadmen became increasingly militant in their opposition to the favored treatment afforded foreign workers in Mexico. In January 1907, the Gran Liga, impatient with the lack of progress in this area, called for the complete mexicanization of the railroads: i.e., that Mexicans should take over all positions and the companies should conduct all business in Spanish. The Gran Liga also called for a federal labor law to regulate maximum hours, accident compensation, and promotional procedures. To help qualify Mexican workers for all positions, the Gran Liga, with the aid of the Unión de Mecánicos, published the railroad manuals in Spanish and opened technical training schools. For its part, the Unión de Mecánicos celebrated a national convention in the spring of 1907 calling for “an end to racial prejudice,” and the establishment of a 48-hour work week, government technical schools, child labor laws, and a national labor day.¹⁰¹ The union’s president reminded members that labor’s real problem lay with “the capitalists’ insatiable lust for gold and the fact that at the slightest opportunity they exploited the worker for their own profit.” For this reason, workers often “had no choice but to declare themselves on strike time and time again.”¹⁰² By June 1907 the Alianza de Ferrocarrileros Mexicanos and the Unión Internacional de Caldereros joined in the call for mexicanization.

The Mexican unions pointed to the continued monopoly of the best-paid jobs by United States citizens. Mexican workers had made few inroads into the positions of engineer or conductor, and those that had were the first to be fired in times of economic downswings. In 1907 the Ferrocarril Nacional reported that 87 percent of its conductors, 80 percent of its engineers, and 85 percent of management were foreign.¹⁰³ (See Table I.) The large gap between salaries paid to train engineers and conductors and those paid to firemen and brakemen had not improved significantly over the years. (See Table II.) To alleviate growing discontent, Díaz urged the railroad companies to fill any new vacancies with qualified Mexican workers but not to fire foreign employees unjustly.¹⁰⁴

When violence broke out during a strike by the Unión Internacional de Caldereros in June 1907, a special commission sent by President Díaz reported that the injustices experienced by Mexican workers were becoming insupportable.¹⁰⁵ By 1908 the public expressed “great alarm as a result of the agitations and violence within the labor movement.”¹⁰⁶ Newspapers called for moderation on the part of the workers. Díaz tried to calm his critics. In an interview with journalist James Creelman, the president explained that his administration was not “an enemy of the working class”; in fact, he said: “We encourage Mexican workers to form associations to improve their conditions, but we have stipulated the terms under which these unions should act.”¹⁰⁷ In April Díaz reassured Mexican congressional members that while the labor agitations had not disappeared, they “had continued to diminish considerably in frequency and importance.”¹⁰⁸

Díaz, however, had not read the labor scene correctly. The administration’s lukewarm support did not appease the Mexican railroadmen. Three weeks after Díaz’s speech to Congress, 300 members of the Gran Liga in the San Luis Potosí shops of the Ferrocarril Nacional called a strike when the company refused to fire the United States foreman in the shops or deal with the issue of discrimination. In response, company officials began dismissing any members of the Gran Liga they could identify on company payrolls, regardless of whether they had gone on strike. Immediately, the strike spread along the northern division of the line, stopping all traffic from San Luis Potosí to the United States border. Within a matter of days, 2,000 Gran Liga members walked off their jobs, demanding the complete mexicanization of the railroads.¹⁰⁹ When the management of the Nacional refused to accept the list of grievances or meet with the Gran Liga representatives, union leader Félix C. Vera, sent a telegram to President Díaz asking him to mediate. Thus, Vera, a strong opponent of Díaz, found it necessary to turn to the president for support. At the same time company officials from the Nacional, Interoceánico, and Central warned Díaz about the gravity of the situation, citing the movement’s strong anti-United States tone, and asked for government protection.¹¹⁰

In this strike Díaz showed less sympathy toward the workers’ claims than he had in the 1906 strike of the Unión de Mecánicos. The political climate had changed. Unemployment and rising prices plagued the nation. The financial crisis of 1907, coinciding with major droughts in northern Mexico, gravely affected the Mexican economy. Compounding the problem, the United States had deported thousands of Mexican workers as a result of the economic crisis and increasing unemployment there.¹¹¹ Additionally, by the time of the 1908 strike, the government had formed a mixed-company, the Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México, and was in the process of issuing bonds to consolidate the Central, Nacional, Internacional, and Hidalgo y Noroeste lines. As major shareholder, the government reserved for itself the right to intervene in matters of vital importance to the nation, leaving the management and administrative concerns to company officials.¹¹²

Díaz viewed the Gran Liga’s strike as threatening to the government’s interests as major shareholder and took immediate steps to stop the strike. Federal troops were positioned along the Nacional’s line to maintain order, to protect the company’s property, and to prevent the strikers from approaching the stations that were still operating between San Luis Potosí and the Distrito Federal. At the same time Díaz agreed to arbitrate. On April 29, 1908, in a meeting with Vera and other Gran Liga representatives, he promised to help the Mexican railroadmen obtain the positions monopolized by United States citizens. In a word of caution, Díaz called on the workers to be “patriotic” and not make “unreasonable demands” for higher wages, which would jeopardize the newly formed Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México.¹¹³

Following this meeting, the strike began to lose its strength. A strong press campaign against the strike and reprisals by company and government officials against Gran Liga members weakened the movement. Díaz closed down El Ferrocarrilero, and Vera barely escaped arrest.¹¹⁴ Shortly thereafter, Vera told John Kenneth Turner, a United States journalist in Mexico and an early Flores Magón supporter, that “the oppression of the government is terrible. . .. There is no chance for bettering the condition of labor in Mexico until there is a change in the administration.”¹¹⁵ Internal dissension over the tactics the Liga should follow were compounded by the lack of funds to sustain the strike. Fearing reprisals, like those that had taken place in Cananea or Río Blanco, or deciding to concentrate on the issue of mexicanization and temporarily set aside the demands for a federal labor law, Vera called off the strike. Still, the strike continued for another month until federal troops finally suppressed it. Vera went into exile, and the various chapters of the Gran Liga fell into disarray.¹¹⁶ Díaz had made it clear that the government, as the major shareholder in Ferrocarriles Nacionales, would not tolerate any action on the part of the workers that threatened the government’s position with the company.

4

With the final consolidation of the Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México in early 1909, the Mexican railroad unions anxiously watched the government’s moves. On July 1, 1909, the Secretary of the Treasury, José Yves Limantour, announced that the Ferrocarriles Nacionales would officially follow the policy of mexicanization. Attesting, in part, to the strength of the United States brotherhoods and in part to the government’s tenuous position with regard to United States companies making up the Ferrocarriles Nacionales, Limantour added that the company would not unjustly fire foreign employees. At this time, the payrolls of the Ferrocarriles Nacionales indicated that 1,350 (or 6 percent) of its employees were foreigners, almost entirely from the United States. Foreigners still monopolized the best-paid jobs: 83 percent of the management, 86 percent of the conductors, and 68 percent of the train engineers were foreigners. The percentage of foreign firemen, brakemen, mechanics, and telegraph operators ran between 8 and 17 percent.¹¹⁷ Limantour also designated Spanish the official language for the Ferrocarriles Nacionales, except for technical terms that could not be translated. In addition, the administration agreed to establish technical training schools for railroad workers.¹¹⁸

With this announcement, the administration began to follow a complex policy of supporting mexicanization, on the one hand, and of assuring foreign interests, on the other hand, that the administration was not becoming xenophobic. Shortly after Limantour’s announcement, the United States railroadmen expressed fear that their days in Mexico were numbered. In July 1909, the United States train dispatchers on the Ferrocarriles Nacionales called a general strike, protesting the administration’s attempts to place Mexican apprentices under them. The company fired all strikers and replaced them with Mexicans.¹¹⁹ In September 1909, the Ferrocarriles Nacionales agreed to give the United States conductors and engineers a $.10 per hour increase to avoid a threatened strike.¹²⁰ Still, the brotherhoods claimed discrimination and called upon the United States government to protect their interests. In November 1909, when Guadalajara officials jailed a United States conductor for losses when his train was reportedly robbed, President Taft sent his brother, Henry W. Taft, to investigate.¹²¹ Mexican newspapers and railroad unions rallied behind rumors of threatened United States intervention in Mexico. President Díaz quickly denied the rumors and assured Henry Taft that the government’s program of mexicanization was not anti-United States and would not prejudice the rights of foreign workers in Mexico. Henry Taft, a former director on the Ferrocarril Nacional, recommended that the railroadmen accept all government directives.¹²²

Disillusioned, some United States engineers and conductors began to resign in January 1910 and make their way back to the United States or to Central or South America in search of jobs.¹²³ The matrices of the United States brotherhoods sent representatives to Mexico to negotiate with Limantour. The brotherhoods called for official recognition by management of their organizations and assurances that at least 50 percent of railroad employees would continue to be foreigners. Limantour refused, saying that if a Mexican worker was as qualified as a foreign worker, preference should be given to the Mexican.¹²⁴

Despite official support, Mexican railroad workers and their supporters among the Anti-Re-electionists complained that mexicanization was not being implemented. José Vasconcelos reported that the railroad company managers refused to train Mexican brakemen for the job of conductor. Furthermore, he noted that the company’s examination board spoke such poor Spanish that the Mexican workers preferred to take their exams in English.¹²⁵ In May 1909 Mexican train engineers and conductors formed the Asociación de Conductores y Maquinistas Mexicanos to increase the pressures for the mexicanization of the railroads. In February 1910 the Confederación de Sociedades Ferrocarrileras met in an effort to strengthen the existing Mexican railroad unions by uniting them into one industry-wide organization. Despite the fact that the powerful Unión de Mecánicos Mexicanos refused to join, probably because it represented mechanics in industries outside the railroads as well, the Confederación opened its membership with between 3,000 and 4,000 workers.¹²⁶

In April 1910 representatives from the railroad unions met with President Díaz to discuss the slowness of government action concerning mexicanization. While the 1910 payrolls of Ferrocarriles Nacionales reported that 52 percent of train conductors and 37 percent of engineers were Mexican, the president of the Asociación de Conductores y Maquinistas Mexicanos claimed that only 25 percent of conductors and 14 percent of engineers were Mexican.¹²⁷ Two-thirds of all foreign employees were to be found in the top 5 percent of the best-paid jobs.¹²⁸ From 1908 to 1910, the average daily salaries of engineers and conductors had risen from $9.47 to $10.17 and from $9.25 to $9.65, respectively. The wages in positions where Mexicans dominated, however, had declined. Mexican firemen reported a wage decrease from $3.58 per day to $3.31; brakemen, from $4.14 to $3.75; mechanics from $2.30 to $2.29; and telegraph operators from $3.91 to $3.34. Peons, who represented 33 percent of railroad employees, experienced a wage drop from $.72 per day to $.64.¹²⁹

The workers’ appeal for justice fell on deaf ears as President Díaz turned his attention elsewhere on the eve of governmental elections. Fearful of the strength of the Anti-Re-electionists, Díaz exercised extreme vigilance over political and labor activities throughout the nation. The administration’s nationalistic rhetoric and policy of mexicanization became secondary to its immediate concern with political discontent and revolts. As a result, the United States railroad workers remained at their jobs in Mexico. Even the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in November 1910 did not persuade the foreigners to vacate their posts.

5

When Díaz resigned the presidency in May 1911, his administration had failed to implement the mexicanization of the work force on the Ferrocarriles Nacionales. Like other Latin American leaders of the period, Díaz found himself caught between the need for foreign investment and technology to spur economic growth and the desire to maintain some degree of national control over these foreign interests.¹³⁰ For a short period, the interests of the government and the Mexican railroad workers coincided against United States control. Once the government formed a partnership with the United States railroad companies within the Ferrocarriles Nacionales, Díaz’s support of the workers’ cause was tempered by the continued power of the foreign companies within the structure of the Ferrocarriles Nacionales.¹³¹ The government made clear that despite its support of mexicanization, it was dedicated to defending the interests of capital, even foreign capital, over labor. Unfortunately for Díaz, this fueled the calls for national justice on the part of Mexican revolutionaries.

Although the Díaz administration failed to mexicanize the work force, its policy designed to give preference to qualified Mexicans over foreign workers sealed the fate of United States railroadmen in Mexico. The nationalistic rhetoric of Mexican revolutionaries added strength to the Mexican labor unions. In August 1911 the management of the Ferrocarriles Nacionales officially recognized the right of the Alianza de Ferrocarrileros Mexicanos to represent office workers in a dispute with the company.¹³² When Francisco I. Madero came to power in November 1911, promising to enforce the mexicanization of the Ferrocarriles Nacionales, the Locomotive Engineers’ Monthly Journal reported to its readers: “the purpose of the Mexican organizations, supported by the Mexican government, is to eliminate American employees from the service of Mexican railways.”¹³³

In February 1912, the United States brotherhoods decided to force the hand of the Madero administration. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and the Order of Railway Conductors demanded that the Ferrocarriles Nacionales recognize their right to represent railroad workers and guarantee that at least half of the engineers and conductors employed by the company would be brotherhood members. They asked that all examinations, train orders, and instructions be given in English as well as Spanish. Although company officials consented to give United States employees six months to learn Spanish, they denied all other petitions. “Despairing of the success of all other efforts,” the United States train engineers and conductors called a general strike in April 1912. The strikers announced that the “determined attitude of the Mexican government to displace Americans” and its inability to guarantee them “fair and just treatment” left them no choice but to take such a “drastic measure.”¹³⁴ The brotherhoods argued that if they did not force the hand of the administration, they would “be displaced in small numbers at a time at the convenience of the authorities . . . and be subject to humiliation and insult at the hands of Mexican employees and organizations.”¹³⁵ As expected, the Ferrocarriles Nacionales hired Mexicans to replace the United States railroadmen and service continued without interruption. With this action, United States railroadmen withdrew en masse from the Ferrocarriles Nacionales, closing all brotherhood chapters in Mexico. By 1913 only 400 United States citizens, mostly in management or workers with personal ties in Mexico, remained on the company payrolls. In April 1914 when anti-United States sentiment reached a peak with the invasion of Veracruz, all but thirty foreign employees left the Ferrocarriles Nacionales, thus, bringing to a close an important period in United States and Mexican labor history.¹³⁶

The presence of United States workers in Mexico had inadvertently encouraged the development of independent Mexican railroad labor organizations with a strong nationalistic base. While the brotherhoods served as examples of trade unions’ effectiveness for defending workers’ rights, they also served as a target for Mexican workers in their organizing efforts to defend themselves against job discrimination. Yet, the hostilities between United States and Mexican railroadmen had allowed Díaz temporarily to neutralize any demands of the Mexican labor organizations that went beyond the issues of mexicanization and equal pay for equal work.

Once most United States railroad workers left Mexico in April 1912, the government, as major shareholder in Ferrocarriles Nacionales, could no longer resort easily to nationalistic rhetoric to appease Mexican workers. Despite the institutionalization of government arbitration through the creation of the Departamento de Trabajo (Department of Labor), Madero soon encountered difficulties in suppressing the far-reaching demands of Mexican railroad workers. In December 1912, the faltering Madero administration, in need of support, stepped in to negotiate a strike of 6,000 members of the Unión de Mecánicos Mexicanos against Ferrocarriles Nacionales. This time, the Unión de Mecánicos had the upper hand. The union gained official recognition to represent Mexican mechanics. The strikers won guarantees of a ten-hour day and a 10 percent increase in wages. In addition, the company promised not to take reprisals against the strikers and agreed to reduce the number of hours worked rather than the number of personnel if economic measures became necessary.¹³⁷ To strengthen their position further, the railroad unions made several attempts after 1912 to organize industry-wide labor associations, but the increase in the military phase of the revolution temporarily halted these efforts. During the revolution, union activities came to a virtual standstill, but the groundwork had been laid for future advances.

Thus, the formative period of the Mexican railroad unions reveals a continual advance from traditional mutualist societies to militant trade unions that reflected a variety of influences. As with other Latin American labor movements, nationalism became an important factor in forging solidarity and class consciousness against foreign managers. In Mexico, however, the presence of United States workers meant that this same nationalistic sentiment at times cut across class lines and allowed temporary alliances between the Mexican government and the Mexican workers. While the government used labor to threaten to increase its control over foreign companies, the railroad workers also used the government to further their own ends. Significantly, during this period the Mexican railroad unions remained nonpolitical in their goals and did not take up the cry of the anarchists against the capitalist system. Government repression, the presence of the United States brotherhoods in Mexico, and the fact that the Mexican railroad unions chose to rely on the government in their claims against foreign companies all functioned to neutralize radical tendencies within the railroad labor movement during the Porfiriato.

In 1906 Porfirio Díaz set the precedent for future administrations by assuming an active role as mediator between national and foreign interests. The ties of the Mexican government to foreign capital, and the nationalistic pride and calls for justice that were voiced so vehemently by the labor unions and their intellectual supporters, meant that the government could not formulate its labor policy solely as a response to problems of labor versus management. Despite the nationalistic rhetoric of the Mexican Revolution, future administrations increased rather than cut Mexico’s ties with foreign capital, allowing the labor unions to continue to express their class interests in nationalistic terms. Thus, the government’s labor policy in Mexico, as in other nations dependent upon foreign capital, reflects a constant juggling between its relationship to foreign capital and the nationalistic demands of the labor movement.