The tenth volume of the massive project on the history of the working class in Mexico, directed by Pablo González Casanova, presents us with a populist interpretation of trade union organization during the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas. The authors contend that the workers’ movement was not only the subject of dramatic transformations but also the generator of social and political changes in Mexican society.
Since Joe Ashby’s fine study on organized labor appeared in 1963, many new primary sources on labor history have been made available, including the papers of Vicente Lombardo Toledano, Miguel Ángel Velasco, and Cárdenas himself. Samuel León and Ignacio Marván skillfully use these new materials to describe the efforts to create a national workers’ organization built on the concept of a popular front. The objectives of the trade union movement are discussed, along with its battles for vital demands, its relationship with peasant organizations and other social sectors, its position vis-à-vis the state and imperialism, and its participation in the political process.
The monograph is divided into two parts: the first presents the events leading up to the creation of the Confederación de Trabajadores de México (CTM) in February 1936, and the second details the CTM’s offensive during 1936 and 1937 to fight for the rights of labor and its efforts to forge a political alliance with the official party, the PNR. The authors rightly assert that the formation of the Comité Nacional de Defensa Proletaria (CNDP) in 1935 was most importantly a response on the part of the Confederación General de Obreros y Campesinos de México (CGOCM), the Communist-controlled Confederación Sindical Unitaria de México (CSUM), and the most powerful industrial unions to the antilabor stance of former president Plutarco Calles and the Monterrey industrialists. The creation of the CTM is attributed first and foremost to the efforts of such leaders as Vicente Lombardo Toledano, Fidel Velázquez, Miguel Ángel Velasco, and Juan Gutiérrez all working toward a common goal of the unification of the labor movement, although admittedly through different means. The second part of this study puts less emphasis on labor theory and more on the actual offensive seized by the railroad, oil, and electrical worker unions in 1936 and 1937 to win specific demands. The authors declare that organized labor’s power reached a peak in 1938 when it forged an “organic political link” with the restructured official party, the PRM, thus entering into a multiclass popular front, albeit one based on the terms established by the Cárdenas state, rather than those originally set forth by the now marginalized Mexican Communist party.
The fine scholarship of this study is only slightly marred by the fact that it has a distinctly prolabor approach which makes it difficult for the authors to critically analyze the roles of individual leaders or unions in the labor movement. To complement this study, I suggest that readers turn to the earlier volume in this series by Arnaldo Córdova or Joe Ashby’s work to discover how the state subordinated organized labor and made it into its own instrument.
