Townspeople Wait in Eerie Silence for News of Mine : Mexico Shuts Operation Before Strike

The roar of blast furnaces, the grinding of ore in the crusher room and the rattle of conveyors that have characterized this town for 90 years are no more, silent since the Mexican army closed the Cananea copper mine this past summer.

Only the sounds of birds in the walnut and cottonwood trees of Cananea’s central plaza, of basketballs bouncing on outdoor courts, of dogs barking and of popular music drifting on the breeze remain.

“What an ugly silence,” said Herminia de Tona as she and her husband, a retired miner, watched the sunset from the front porch of their home overlooking the open pit of Mexico’s largest copper mine. “The government left us in the street.”

The Cananea mine has been an icon of the Mexican labor movement since 1906, when strikers who survived bloody military repression went on to become leaders of the Mexican Revolution. Mindful of that, the government sent the army in on Aug. 20, when it announced the bankruptcy of Compania Minera de Cananea (the government owns 90% of the company).

The mine closure threw about 3,000 union mine workers out of jobs, causing worry in the town, whose economy revolves around the mine. “We don’t know what’s going on. We’re all uncertain,” said Maria Elena Lopez, who has two nephews who worked in the mine. “Everybody here is affected.” Cananea’s population is about 35,000.

Sales Drop 90%

Sales in local stores have dropped by 90% because so many of the town’s breadwinners lost their jobs, according to the local chamber of commerce.

“We were selling 2 million pesos’ (about $800) worth a day,” said pharmacy owner Dina Carillo. “We are down to 600,000 now. We have to give credit to people, and we don’t know if they’re going to be able to pay.”

The Cananea mine had been producing 3% of the world’s copper--45% of the country’s production of that metal--at a cost of 90 cents a pound, in times when buyers are paying more than $1 a pound for it. The government has been trying to sell the operation to private investors as part of a national privatization effort.

Since 1982, the number of businesses owned by the state has gone from 1,222 to 744.

Deals Fell Through

Two proposals to sell the mine fell through last year, and the government is now looking to put together a third.

Arturo Borjorquez, Local Section 65 spokesman for the Industrial Union of Miners, Metallurgical Workers and Allied Trades of the Mexican Republic, says the bankruptcy announcement, made one week before the mine workers were to go on strike, was a means to break the union and make the operation more attractive to private investors. “I think the government wants to dress up the bride so she can get married,” he said.

The mine workers were earning $3,000 to $4,000 per year, plus benefits, and they were seeking a renegotiation of their contract. The government says their demands would have amounted to a 330% increase in salary and benefits.

Nacional Financiera, the government bank and majority shareholder in the mine, called the move “a painful measure, but the only viable option.”

President Carlos Salinas de Gortari told labor leaders and lawmakers in Mexico City that privatizing companies should be seen as opportunities for worker ownership, and Labor Secretary Arsenio Farrell subsequently offered miners 25% control of the operation.

No Union Plan to Buy

Union rank-and-file members have talked about assuming ownership in the past but have never made a formal proposal, Borjorquez said.

Miners seeking better pay and conditions in 1906 were brutally put down by Mexican troops and U.S. reinforcements in one of the first trade-union movements in Mexico. More than 20 miners died in the battle and dozens more were imprisoned. The “Martyrs of 1906” have been immortalized in a folk song whose lyrics appear on a signboard inside the Cananea jail where some of the strikers were detained.

This time, said Mario Elizarde, who is in charge of guarding the idle mine, when the army came in “there was not a single case of mistreatment.” Army helicopters dropped leaflets over the town to announce the bankruptcy as 3,000 soldiers were taken into the mine. “The government just wanted to be secure,” Elizarde said of its action.

When the troops arrived, Cananea Security Chief Nick Shaw and Mayor Francisco Javier Taddei agreed to order the town’s 12 cantinas and all its other liquor outlets closed. “It was a preventive measure,” Shaw said.

The weekly dances in the town square were called off too, which upset local youth. “It’s making life hard on us kids,” said Ana Veronica Rojas, whose complaints were echoed by other teen-agers.

The army stayed for six days. The union staged a symbolic takeover of the mine on Aug. 28, the day miners had chosen to begin their strike for contract renegotiation demands.

The company’s bankruptcy administrator, Financiero Nacional Azucarera, has said the miners will receive severance pay in accordance with rates set by federal labor law, although their contract calls for them to get six times the government rate.

The miners have refused to accept the government severance pay and are appealing the bankruptcy decision, demanding that the mine be reopened, their contract observed and that talks for a renegotiated contract be taken up.

Individuals and unions and other organizations in the United States have sent food and clothing to Cananea to help the mine workers and their families.

Union leaders and labor department officials are negotiating in Mexico City as bankruptcy administrators settle the details of the accounts due and the government debates the future of the mine.