The Hidden History of Mexico/U.S. Labor Solidarity http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/4606

In this first installment of David Bacon’s series on cross-border solidarity, the author lays out the questions that informed the series and takes a look at some of the notable campaigns and figures of the often overlooked history of US-Mexican labor solidarity.In the period since the North American Free Trade Agreement has come into effect, the economies of the United States and Mexico have become more integrated than ever. Through Plan Merida and partnerships on security, the military and the drug war,

the political and economic policies pursued by the U.S. and Mexican governments are more coordinated than they’ve ever been.Working people on both sides of the border are not only affected by this integration. Workers and their unions in many ways are its object. These policies seek to maximize profits and push wages and benefits to the bottom, manage the flow of people displaced as a result, roll back rights and social benefits achieved over decades, and weaken working class movements in both countries.All this makes cooperation and solidarity across the U.S./Mexico border more important than ever.  

After a quarter century in which the development of solidarity relationships was interrupted during the cold war, unions and workers are once again searching out their counterparts and finding effective and appropriate ways to support each other.  Conversely, the cold war, nationalism, and anti-immigrant hysteria in the U.S., and repression on both sides of the border, were the tools used to break those bonds and proscribe those ideas. Today those threats are growing again. Ties between workers and unions in the U.S. and Mexico must grow stronger to defeat them.