Collapse of Dignity (37 page)

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:

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

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, at 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.