Mexican Labor Leader and Kingmaker Dies at 97

MEXICO CITY — Fidel Velazquez, a monolithic figure in Mexico’s labor movement and ruling party for most of this century, died Saturday at 97, plunging the nation into mourning and leaving the future of his 5 1/2-million- member union federation in doubt.

Velazquez, who recently said he had defied death despite months of illness by continuing to work with his powerful Federation of Mexican Workers, died in a Mexico City hospital, apparently of complications from an infection.

A stalwart of the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party to the end, Velazquez was a kingmaker in the party, known as the PRI. It was a role grounded in his ability to deliver millions of union votes and to maintain labor peace for decades.

The death two weeks before major midterm elections of the man known universally here as “Don Fidel” may well hurt the PRI, analysts said, and it could leave a power vacuum that could debilitate Mexico’s largest federation of unions.

*

Although Leonardo Rodriguez Alcaine replaced Velazquez as the day-to-day head of the federation--known by its Spanish acronym, CTM--when the union boss’ health began to fail earlier this year, most analysts agreed that he won’t be able to command the loyalty that Velazquez did.

“Fidel Velazquez, the PRI and the CTM are all one in the same,” Salvador Corro, who wrote a book on Velazquez this year, said after the union leader’s death. “He was the symbol and the main figure of the Mexican political system that exercised power for more than a half-century.

“His death marks the end of that era. It’s a liberation of Mexico’s labor movement.”

In the 61 years since Velazquez founded the 11,000-union federation, the organization has been one of the key pillars supporting the ruling party. But in recent years, as Mexico suffered one of its worst economic crises in modern times, dissent has grown within organized labor. And Velazquez’s role had become controversial.

In pacts that were crucial to Mexico’s continuing economic recovery, the labor boss signed off on agreements with the government and big business that kept wages lagging far behind inflation after the crisis began with a sharp peso devaluation in December 1994.

Fearing unrest and possible violence, Velazquez canceled the nation’s traditional Labor Day parade for the last three years. In its place, hundreds of thousands of members of independent labor groups filled the streets that day--May 1--waving red banners and shouting slogans against the government and Velazquez himself.

As labor dissent has grown, support for the PRI has waned. After seven decades in power, the party has lost important state and local elections nationwide in the last two years. On July 6, the PRI faces a tough battle to retain its majority in the Chamber of Deputies, the nation’s lower house, and it is lagging far behind in the first-ever race for Mexico City’s mayor.

*

On Saturday, ruling party officials said they expected Velazquez’s death to have no effect on the upcoming polls. But some analysts sharply disagreed.

“It’s very probable that next July 6, the PRI will suffer one of its worst defeats ever,” Corro said. “Fidel Velazquez’s death coincides exactly with the problems the PRI is having, and it definitely will affect everything. And that includes the elections, because the CTM guaranteed a certain number of votes that are no longer guaranteed without him.”

Born poor on April 25, 1900, in a rural village in Mexico state, Velazquez led his millions of union members by example. He started working at 7, tending crops before and after school, and he prided himself on the long days he put in building Mexico’s organized labor movement as the country moved through the era of industrialization.

His union career began at 21, when he was fired from his job as a milkman after organizing his co-workers.

Throughout his career, however, he remained fiercely anti-communist, often inviting criticism for being too close to a government that controlled most of the nation’s jobs through state-owned industries.

When he was asked about his unwavering pro-government stand, the union boss replied, “He who moves will not appear in the photo.”