Union Leader’s Arrest: The Day Sun Set for Many Mexican Oil Workers : Energy: The government-owned Pemex has cut tens of thousands of jobs at the bloated operation since it ousted ‘La Quina.’

Like most Mexican towns, Ciudad Madero is built around a tree-lined central square where men, old and young, gather to mull over the day as the beating tropical heat gives way to a cool nightfall.

But there is little relief in this town square, dubbed the “Wailing Plaza” by the men who meet here each evening to lament their layoffs from the national petroleum monopoly, Pemex.

They sit in the shadow of the giant oil workers union hall--a monument to times past--and trade war stories about trying to find a job.

“I haven’t worked in five months,” said Ambrosio Cabrera, 59, who has labored most of his life for Pemex or its suppliers and still wears a company shirt. “There are a lot of us. One day you have a way to make a living, and the next, you have nothing. I’m in a panic, falling into a hole.”

This oil port on the Gulf of Mexico was the headquarters of Joaquin Hernandez Galicia, chief of Latin America’s largest, wealthiest union for more than a quarter century until President Carlos Salinas de Gortari sent the military to arrest him in January, 1989.

Removal of the mighty “La Quina,” as the labor boss was called, made way for a long-overdue streamlining of the bloated oil company. In keeping with the government’s economic modernization program, Pemex has dismissed tens of thousands of employees over the last three years--nearly a third of the work force, which now numbers about 150,000.

The government has also broken the union’s hold over much of the oil business. For example, the old-style patronage system that once gave 2% of all Pemex contracts to the union has been abolished. And, making way for North American free trade, the government has opened much of the petrochemical industry to private and foreign businesses.

While these changes have had a healthy impact on the industry, they have devastated towns, such as this one, that once thrived on Mexico’s rich oil industry. In Ciudad Madero, an estimated 8,000 workers have lost their jobs at Pemex and related industries. As a result, residents say they are suffering a wave of burglaries and robberies. Merchants complain that sales have dropped 25% to 40% and consumers are not paying their debts. Some stores have begun to repossess televisions, refrigerators and other goods.

Former oil workers with a bit of cash opened chicken and taco stands or moved into the underground street economy to sell wares. Many young men have headed north to look for work in the United States.

But others say they don’t know where to turn.

“I never expected this,” said Juan Manuel Castro, 27, a father of three whose last contract with Pemex expired April 2. “Four or five years ago, they used to come looking for people to do the work. This is going on everywhere, not just Pemex. It’s the government’s strategy with the free trade agreement. But people resent the unemployment. What are the people who were laid off going to do?”

Under Hernandez Galicia, Ciudad Madero was the seat of an empire. Each day, the humble and powerful alike lined up outside his middle-class house to beg favors of the union boss. His multimillion-dollar union belonged to the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, and his workers were among the most privileged in Mexico. The government ignored his alleged corruption as long as he provided votes at election time and stability in the strategic oil industry.

But La Quina did not support Salinas in the 1988 election, which opposition parties say Salinas won by fraud. La Quina’s modus operandi and Pemex inefficiency clashed with the new president’s neo-liberal economic program.

Residents refer to La Quina’s arrest by about 300 soldiers and federal police as the quinazo, or the big blow, against La Quina. They recite the date it happened, Jan. 10, as if it marked Armageddon--the day everything changed in Ciudad Madero.

“This town had money before, when La Quina was here, and now we don’t,” said Jose Maria Gonzalez, a former Pemex worker suing the company to get his job back. “I don’t know if he was a robber or Robin Hood or what, but he maintained a lot of workers.”

Gonzalez provided a tour of La Quina’s fallen empire. He drove past a now-closed union grocery and an appliance and furniture emporium with rusted trucks in the parking lot. He pointed to shuttered soap and glass factories, an abandoned five-story office building and an amusement park, closed behind a corroded gate.

La Quina’s ranch, beach house and favored restaurants sat in ruins, along with what were once pork, fish and dairy farms.

“Everyone called him El Senor, like God. All you had to say was that you went to see El Senor, and everyone knew what you were talking about. It was like you went to church,” Gonzalez said.

Even those who never paid their respects to El Senor recognize what his arrest has meant for the town economy: fewer jobs, less money, less business.

“Our sales are down, and what I am telling you, everyone will tell you,” said Maria del Carmen Marquez, manager of the Centro Vidriero hardware store.

Maria Estela Casados, of Elektra appliance store, added: “Many of our clients can’t pay their debts. We’re left with no alternative but to repossess.”

The several hundred thousand residents here have not protested the government’s new economic policies because they are afraid, insisted Jose Puente Leon, a leader of the tiny opposition Authentic Party of the Mexican Revolution. Since two army Hercules airplanes landed here with the soldiers to arrest La Quina, residents have an airplane phobia, Puente said. He even hit the ground last August when a low-flying plane passed over his house bringing Salinas to town for a visit.

“The government created Joaquin, elevated him to a superlative and crushed him. This has crushed people psychologically. They think, ‘If this happened to the boss, the strong and powerful man, what couldn’t they (the government) do to me?’ ” Puente said.

A few protests can be heard in the Wailing Plaza. Retired Pemex workers Andres Narvaez and Roberto Navarrette lead their local’s Committee in Defense of Rights and Goods. They maintain that the new union leadership, installed by the government after La Quina’s arrest, is not representing workers’ interests.

Narvaez, a rotund man who inherited his father’s Pemex job at 14 and worked there for “34 years, three months and 23 days,” lamented that the union leadership agreed to management’s decision to eliminate the time-honored tradition of passing one’s job to an heir.

“They’re signing agreements behind our backs,” Narvaez said at sunset in the central square. “It’s all changed now, and it’s never going to be the same.”

The white-haired Navarrette nodded in agreement.

“When La Quina was arrested, we thought changing leaders would be good, but we were surprised,” he said. “At least with La Quina, the administration of Pemex was not so tyrannical. Now the administration makes decisions, not the union.”