#mining mexico

Nearly a decade ago, 63 miners died in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila after a methane explosion in a coal mine left them trapped underground.  Police authorities, firefighters and the mine’s owners and administrators not only failed, notoriously, in the rescue and recovery effort, but in providing a feasible explanation as to why the event took place.  Both the governor of Coahuila, and the Pasta de Concha’s mine owners, Grupo Mexcio - the largest mining corporation in Mexico to date -, issued varying statements on the matter.  Yet, nobody successfully addressed reports from actual miners, their families and the families of those who, to this date, remain trapped underground.  It became apparent, then, that the safety conditions of the mine were poor; in fact, an unaddressed gas leak had been bothering dozens of workers shortly before the accident took place.  

Indeed, the workers of Pasta de Conchos, at that point, had gone on strike against Grupo Mexico over a dozen times precisely because the company had failed to address concerning security and health issues for the workers associated with the coal mine.  The National Union of Mine and Metal Workers of the Mexican Republic, led by Napoleón Gómez Urrutia, according to Grupo Mexico, however, signed an agreement, interestingly enough, two weeks prior to the accident, assuring their recognition that the mine's working conditions were safe.  Both the Miners’ Union and González Urrutia, naturally, have failed to address Grupo Mexico’s claim.

Mining, historically, as it is well known, has always been and continues to be a dangerous endeavor.  Yet, Napoleón González Urrutia, in fact, issued a series of public statements - including two articles for Mexican newspaper La Jornada - in which he speaks out against Grupo Mexico and Mexico’s then-president Vicente Fox and the Partido de Accion Nacional, PAN for “staging the scenography of a rescue effort for five days” and for committing “industrial homicide” in what he claims is a “historical embarrassment” for Mexico.  He speaks and writes against “impunity, corrupt politicians, journalists” and “sold-out workers” and demands a public explanation and clarification for the families of the deceased miners and even draws a provocative contrast between the Pasta de Conchos incident to the successful rescue effort of the 33 miners in Chile that were brought back onto the surface alive, capturing prominent international attention.

Ironically enough - and to González Urrutia’s dismay -, however, it is precisely during the Pasta de Conchos explosion incident that a series of individual investigations against him culminated.  Dozens of accusations were brought to public and national attention: it was exactly in 2006, indeed, that Interpol in fact issued a red flag against the Mexican union leader, which lasted for six years, until 2012, when his lawyer solicited an appeal for removal in Lyon, France.  Up until that date, at least three arrest warrants remained active against González Urrutia.  

The principal - and perhaps the most serious - case against González Urrutia involves the disappearance of at least 55 million dollars that in 2005 were deposited into his personal bank account, 0146591035, Bancomer, S.A. The funds were later transferred to several domestic and international accounts held by González Urrutia and his wife Oralia Casso Valdés, his sons Alejandro and Ernesto Gómez Castro and his brother-in-law Humberto Felipe de Jesús Torres.  Miners' Union secretary and treasurer, Héctor Felix Estrella and Juan Linares Montúfar, amongst others, were likewise investigated for potential involvement with the monetary scam.  

It goes like this: in 1988, the Miners’ Union sold a hefty amount of the workers' retirement fund of which 5% of generated capital - according to the deal between the union and the workers - belonged to 10 thousand miners scattered across eleven Mexican states. That sum, of course, amounted to the 55 million dollars that were deposited into González Urrutia’s account and then split up across several other personal and familial accounts in 2006.  Though the union leader has publicly claimed “that money was never meant to go to the workers, and they know it”, over 200 lawsuits were filed against him across the Mexican Republic.  Interestingly enough, however, the investigations, to a large degree conducted by the PGR, Mexico’s principal agency in charge of criminal prosecutions, did not just include the workers’ retirement fund.  

The union leader also faced charges of fraud, using funds from illicit sources, embezzlement, money laundering, influence trafficking, trust breach and the falsification of official documents, amongst others.  Much like the dubious career of PEMEX union leader Carlos Romero Deschamps, González Urrutia was caught in the middle of a national embezzlement scandal where the most heavily affected party are Mexican miners - the group of people he was supposed to represent and whose interests he claimed and continues to claim he looks after.

There is an interesting connection between the infamous Pemexgate case in which Romero Deschamps was accused of embezzling 90 million dollars - from PEMEX workers’ retirement funds - in order to illegally fund Francisco Labastidas’ presidential campaign during the 2000 presidential elections.  Needless to say, Labastida didn’t win: charges against Romero Deschamps were dismissed for “lacking sufficient evidence” against him and because “too much time had elapsed” by the time he was proven guilty, six years later, in 2006, precisely when the case against González Urrutia - almost linearly - became a serious national matter.  Again, legal and political impunity for a Mexican union leader, rather than an isolated incident, is a constant, historical trend.  Deschamps’ case was shelved while Gómez Urrutia’s surfaced.

As we’ve previously reported, though Mexican law guarantees every union member the right to access the financial activities, decisions, and political engagement of the union, the political autonomy granted to such labor organs has been predominantly used to favor union’s bureaucratic elite, which amounts to a small amount of leaders and other administrative members; notwithstanding, of course, an ever recycling discourse that revolves around workers’ rights and protection and that is proven time after time to be only minimally congruent.

It should come as a surprise, then, not only that Napoleón González Urrutia actually inherited his position as union leader from his father Napoleón Gómez Sada - who ran the Miners’ Union for 30 years - but that Romero Deschamps’ lawyer, Marco Antonio Del Toro Carazo, who has defended him for decades against a myriad of intricate legal cases and scandals, has also been in charge of legally representing González Urrutia himself.  

In 2007, after the accusations against him were brought to light and in order to evade federal Mexican authorities, the union leader left Mexico for Canada where he continued to remotely run the Miners’ Union.  He presumably remains installed there to this day, after strategically convincing not only Canadian authorities but also other pro-union international organizations that he is innocent and that the charges against him are proof of the Mexican government’s notorious political and economic corruption.  

There is no denying that latter part: the Mexican political and labor climate is and has been marked by corruption and impunity for decades.  The irony of González Urrutia’s defense, however, is that he denies his own involvement in such activities, his own participation in an intricate system of corruption.  The union leader has masterfully prayed on the Canadian government’s ignorance in regards to such domestic Mexican issues and his very position, indeed, as an undeniable privileged political actor precisely because of his post as the director of the Miner’s Union.

The corporatist structure of workers’ unions in Mexico has worked hand-in-hand with Mexico’s banking structure and volatile political climate in order to facilitate money laundering and other illicit activities.  It doesn’t begin or end with Romero Deschamps, Gabino Fraga Peña, or Napoleón González Urrutia, the latter is merely a current example worth approximation precisely because of its historical and familial connections in the matters of corruption and impunity.  The case of González Urrutia, in fact, is interesting because he appears to be disenfranchised from a particular political party: he is neither explicitly partnered with the PAN nor the PRI.

Exile, then, seems to be the perfect state of affairs for the union leader.

Yet, González Urrutia continues to announce a triumphant return to Mexico: it is not certain whether or not it has actually materialized.  Since April of 2015, however, his lawyers requested judges to dismiss federal investigations against him.  They want a suspension in regards to the lawsuits regarding the money taken from mine workers but other ongoing money laundering investigations stemming from millionaire accounts found in tax havens overseas.  What González Urrutia is worried about, clearly, is pending arrests warrants him.