Leonardo Rodriguez Alcaine, 86; Led Largest Mexican Labor Union

Leonardo Rodriguez Alcaine, 86, the leader of Mexico’s largest and most politically influential labor organization, died Saturday at a hospital in Mexico City of a heart illness, union officials said.

Rodriguez Alcaine served as secretary-general of the Mexican Workers’ Confederation since the death in 1997 of Fidel Vazquez, who had dominated Mexico’s union movement since the late 1930s.

Under Rodriguez Alcaine, the confederation continued to maintain close ties to Mexico’s former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which held the presidency from 1929 until Vicente Fox’s election in 2000.

Rodriguez Alcaine was a native of Texcoco in Mexico state who went to work at 19 for the government-owned power utility, the Federal Electricity Commission.

He climbed through the ranks of Mexico’s national electricians union to become its secretary-general in 1975.

Rodriguez Alcaine headed the electricians’ wing of the Mexican Workers’ Confederation before his election as that group’s secretary-general. He was elected to a second six-year term in 2004.

He will be buried Monday in Mexico City.