US Labor, The CIA, and the Coup at Ford in Mexico

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

"On Jan. 8, 1990, 300 armed thugs linked to the CIA entered a Mexican Ford plant hoping to suppress a worker insurrection. Workers fought back and drove them away but several were wounded. 3 of the attackers were caught and turned over to the police.

These thugs told police they had been hired by a gangster and Hector Uriarte the head of the Ford CTM union. The workers occupied the Ford plant for 2 weeks before being forced out by police. A prolonged strike over pay, discharges and democratic reforms to the CTM followed.

Just months before Uriarte had been at mysterious meetings in Washington D. C. with a few others from Mexico. He left D.C. on a private jet in the company of Tom Donohue (AFL-CIO), Owen Bieber (UAW), Bill Doherty (CIA) and 2 union staff people headed for San Diego.

After the strike was defeated, Ford fired 600 workers breaking the worker’s rebellion in Mexico. It would take 30 years before an independent union movement reorganizes and challenges auto employers in Mexico." Rob McKenzie

Rob McKenzie, was working at the Ford Twin Cities Assembly plant when he heard of the situation in Mexico City and decided to investigate further.  He writes:
"My United Auto Worker (UAW) local union in St. Paul, Mn was involved in support efforts for these Mexican workers at the time. In 1996 while I was attending a meeting of the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras in Texas a staff person for the newly elected president of the AFL-CIO, John Sweeney, told me that the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) had been involved at Cuautitlán.”

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"AIFLD was widely believed to have been used by the CIA as a front for their operations.  The staff person told me that was their concern and they were trying to find out what had happened. Within months the AFL-CIO abolished AIFLD.  Over the next few years I heard from another good source that AIFLD had been involved in the events at Ford Cuautitlán in 1990."

McKenzie's research took much longer than he thought and it resulted in a book about the events. The book is titled El Golpe: US Labor, The CIA, and the Coup at Ford in Mexico published by Pluto Press. (right)