By Peter Baird and Ed McCaughan, 1979
Summary by Josef Skoldeberg
Summary of Entire Book: As Mexico enters the 1980s it faces greater political and economic trouble than it has any other time in the last 40 years. Mexico has one of the highest foreign debts and worst trade imbalances in the world. Less than half of Mexicans are fully employed and the distribution of wealth in the country is very unequal. 45 percent of the country lives in the country side but they earn only six percent of the national income. In the first three months of 1978 there were over 400 strikes protesting the working conditions of Mexicans. The U.S. has become increasingly concerned about all the unrest in Mexico, especially since huge oil reserves have just been discovered in Mexico. With the increase in big agricultural business in Mexico, mostly US owned, Mexicans are finding the have to fight even harder to provide for their families and survive. Met with harsh labor conditions and colluding governments and businesses the Mexican worker is fighting a tough fight.
Chapter by Chapter Summary:
Connected in Crises- with a world economic crises and attacks on labor in both countries Mexico and the US grow more closely connected.
Land and Freedom- Early capitalist development in the Mexican countryside initiates Indian resistance and finally the great peasant revolution of 1910.
Unmaking the Mexican Revolution- after the Revolution a new Mexican state emerges to represent the interests of the modern day entrepreneurs by consolidating capitalist agriculture and silencing rural class conflict.
Runaway Crops- US agribusiness and Mexico’s rural elites invest millions of dollars in export vegetables and greatly increase their control over land and wealth and the Mexican Northwest.
From Peasant to Proletariat*-(in depth summary at bottom of page) Seasonally employed farm workers, forced from their lands by the expansion of capitalist agriculture, follow migrant paths to work the fields of Mexico and the U.S. southwest.
Harvest of Anger- Thousands of angry peasant and farm workers occupy farmlands throughout Mexico in the mid-seventies and challenge the combined power of international agribusiness and the Mexican state.
New Forms of Struggle- new class relations in the countryside increase efforts at rural unionization, new political organizations and an increased consciousness of the need for international planning are created.
What Price Power?- International monopolies dominate electrical power and other early Mexican industries, spawning unionization, nationalism and the modernization of the Mexican state.
Transnational Banking Trap- The foreign owned power companies are bought out by the state in 1960, but subsidized prices to big business help give Mexico its almost $30 billion foreign debt.
Foreign Profit Circuit- Transnational corporations like GE and Westinghouse export profits, make the trade deficit worse and denationalize Mexico’s economy. A case study of the US dominated electrical manufacturing industry.
Capital Shapes a New Workforce- US capital uses speedups, periodical layoffs, anti-union tactics and automation induced unemployment to get more profits from Mexican workers in electric power and equipment industries.
State Labor Bureaucracy- Mexico’s government-controlled labor leaders make Mexico “safe” for capitalist development by limiting the power of the average worker.
Who Will Control Labor’s Power?- Tens of thousands of electrical and other workers revolt in the seventies, forcing the state to use first reforms and then open repression to silence them.
Work Across the Border
The Reserve Army of Labor- The expansion of US capital into the US Southwest since 1848 has required the immigration of huge numbers of Chinese, Japanese and Mexican workers.
Runaway Shops- US electronics and garment factories run away from domestic workers after 1967 to profit from the non-union, low wage and 80 percent female labor on Mexico’s Border Industrialization Program.
Shifting the Border Crises- The border “boom” violently busts in the mid- 70s, radicalizing the border workforce and touching off a successful big business campaign to slash Mexican wages in half.
Beyond the Border- Mexican workers’ fast growing role in US workplaces and the US governments attack on undocumented immigrants, plus the constant threat of runaway shops, require a multinational workers movement to organize and unite across the border.
The Mexican Revolution never resolved the class conflicts that it was meant to eliminate. Instead class conflicts have grown even stronger as capitalist agriculture had divided the Mexican countryside into severely different social classes. The number of farm workers not working on their own farms but someone elses has soared during the last 30 years. Most of these people are members of the proletariat- they are not permanently employed but they are permanently landless and have no other means of income. Not all are without land, about 40 percent are still considered ejidatarios, meaning they own land. However, most of the time the land does not produce enough for survival so they rent the land out to large land owners and then work someone elses land. The farmers who do try to farm their own land are usually met with great difficulty since they do not have the technology or tools that the large farms have and they cannot get them because banks will not lend to them. There have been some changes to try to get ejidos more loans but even when they do get loans it is usually poor seed, poor equipment and since the bank sells the crops, they skim a good percentage of the price for themselves. Sometimes instead of getting loans from banks the ejidos will get loans from private business but this can be even worse since the business dictate the price and how much they will buy.
The migration within the continent is increasing rapidly with people moving around desperately trying to find work. Many of these people move to Mexico City but most find none. Following the streams of different crops has become increasingly popular. People spend the entire year going from one harvest to another all over Mexico and very likely crossing into the US. Most of the time pay and work conditions are horrible. The farm owners provide no shelter for the workers. Cardboard villages usually spring up and the same streams that drinking water comes from usually have to double as the latrines. Much of this labor is concentrated in northern Mexico. With the devaluation of the peso and the worsening economy many people are finding it harder to find jobs which allows the land owners to treat their employees even worse. But labor is starting to organize at great speeds to combat these conditions. Those who are not staying in Mexico and organizing themselves for better conditions are heading to the US where they have to worry about low wages and the border patrol hunting for them and sending them back to Mexico.