Mexico 2 Workers Killed in Steel Strike

From Weekly News Update on the Americas #847, 4/23/06

A violent confrontation between 800 federal and state police
agents and more than 500 striking steelworkers left two workers
dead and dozens of workers and police agents injured on Apr. 20
at the Siderurgica Lazaro Cardenas-Las Truchas, SA (Sicartsa)
steel plant in the port city of Lazaro Cardenas in the
southwestern Mexican state of Michoacan. The workers had been
occupying the plant since Apr. 2 as part of a wave of wildcat
strikes against a Feb. 28 decision by the government of center-
right president Vicente Fox Quesada to remove Napoleon Gomez
Urrutia, general secretary of the National Union of Mine and
Metal Workers of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMRM) [see Update
#842]. The Federal Conciliation and Arbitration Council (JFCA)
had declared the Sicartsa wildcat illegal.

Agents of the Federal Preventive Police (PFP), backed by state
judicial police and members of the state's Special Operations
Group (GOE), took the strikers by surprise on Apr. 20 by storming
the plant at about 7 am through a back entrance. The police held
the plant for about two hours before the strikers
counterattacked, hurling rocks, molotov cocktails, steel rods and
steel balls at police and using three backhoes as battering rams.
Workers from the nearby Metal Steel plant and some 300 workers
from the Viga Trefilados plant, located about 5 km away on
Cayacal Island, walked off the job and joined the Sicartsa
workers. Police agents responded with tear gas and gunfire--some
reportedly from a helicopter.

After four hours the workers had regained control of the plant.
Sicartsa worker Jose Luis Castillo Zuniga and Metal Steel union
representative Hector Alvarez Gomez were killed in the fighting,
and some 41 workers were injured and required hospitalization.
PFP officials said on Apr. 23 that 28 police agents were injured,
but denied earlier reports that one had died. One of the plant's
buildings was burned down, and 30 vehicles were destroyed, along
with some heavy equipment. Sicartsa is Latin America's largest
producer of corrugated steel rods used in construction.

In the evening about 1,000 women, mostly relatives of the
strikers, marched through Lazaro Cardenas to the plant to protest
the police attacks.

Francisco Morelos Borja, leader of President Fox's National
Action Party (PAN) in Michoacan, insisted on Apr. 21 that the
government had had to act, since the strike was illegal. On Apr.
22, Alejandro Gonzalez, attorney for Grupo Villacero, which owns
the plant, said management was bringing charges of "terrorism"
against the workers. But Jose Luis Soberanes Fernandez, president
of the government's National Human Rights Commission (CNDH),
which sent 11 investigators to the scene after the confrontation,
said on Apr. 21 that Fox should assume "serious responsibility"
for the killings.

Michoacan public safety secretary Gabriel Mendoza Jimenez and
state police chief Jaime Liera resigned on Apr. 21, the day after
the confrontation. They had claimed that state police weren't
armed and that only federal agents had fired, but Felipe Manuel
Maya Bucio, an official of the union local, produced videos that
reportedly showed Liera giving an order to fire. The state is
governed by the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution
(PRD), and Gov. Lazaro Cardenas Batel clearly wanted to distance
himself from the incident. (The port city is named for Cardenas'
grandfather, who was president of Mexico 1934-1940.)

As of Apr. 22 the strikers and the federal government were
holding negotiations. The strikers remained in control of the
plant, with PFP and military units standing guard outside. [La
Jornada (Mexico) 4/21/06, 4/22/06, 4/23/06; Notimex 4/23/06]

Also in issue #847

--Chile: Mapuche Prisoners Strike
--Brazil: Landless Mark Massacre
--Uruguay: Officers Extradited to Chile
--Venezuela: Andean Trade Bloc Collapsing?
--Haiti: Runoff Vote Held

ISSN#: 1084-922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news
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