Collapse of Dignity (32 page)

In its aim of co-opting the national press and discrediting me, Grupo México had hired García Puebla Consultores, a top publicity firm that has represented many politicians—and is owned by Eduardo García Puebla, a former PRI press secretary—on top of its stable of consultants, counselors, and psychologists. The company even directly hired mercenary media outlets to publish its words. One of our own publicists obtained a copy of an “order for publicity” through which García Puebla Consultores purchased a 10-by-15-inch space in the publication
Milenio
and provided the paper with the full text of an article to be published. The space purchased by Grupo México was in the paper's first section and included text and a photograph. The order for publicity is dated July 23, 2007, and indicates that the space is for publication on the following day. The title of the ordered article to be published is “Napistas [a term used to refer to followers of Napoleón] Continue to Take Advantage of the Pasta de Conchos Widows”; as the title suggests, it was a biased, fallacious story about how Los Mineros themselves were exploiting the widows of the lost miners for political reasons.

In the order for publicity, the publicist from García Puebla Consultores had the nerve to write the following: “Once the design of the page has been done please send it to the following email address:
[email protected]
.” The request to approve an advertisement is common; the problem is that this was no regular advertisement. It appeared on an odd-numbered page (ads typically appear on even-numbered pages, on the left side of a spread), and it was laid out in
Milenio
's typography, the type used for serious stories. There is absolutely no indication that the article was paid for, leading the reader to believe that this is a “news” article researched and reported by
Milenio
rather than PR for Grupo México.

This form of deception has been systematically employed throughout the conflict and up to the present day, using several different newspapers that allow this misleading practice. One newspaper,
El Universal
, one of the most widely read in Mexico, called a meeting with one of the union's lawyers and offered to publish articles favorable to me and
the union—if we paid them. Over lunch in a bustling Mexico City mall, the
El Universal
representative told our lawyer that to make it believable, they'd have to start with small references to the conflict and short articles but then gradually move to longer articles giving the union's side. According to this man, Grupo México had paid them $800,000 for a year's worth of attacks against us, but that the agreement had been terminated and had not yet been renewed. Our lawyer was then told that for the same amount—and without the need for any kind of paperwork or receipt—they would publish articles in my favor, and they would also air stories that showed the union's side on the radio stations belonging to their group.

During this conversation, our lawyer noticed a small red dot of light hovering near their table, looking a lot like the laser sight of a gun. It soon disappeared without event, but after talking to a friend in the government, the lawyer realized it hadn't been a gun sight but a device for eavesdropping. That was the level of obsession the union's enemies had fallen to.

Before he refused
El Universal
's offer (a given, since we would never resort to the same tactics employed by our enemies), our lawyer asked the paper's representative about Pedro Ferriz, a radio host under their corporate umbrella who systematically attacked me on his radio program while refusing to listen to my version of events. The man simply said that Ferriz was paid his professional fees and that he had to follow the politics of the company. Plus, one strict stipulation of the owners was that no hosts or guests could attack the president or any member of the clergy. Sadly, and to the detriment of the Mexican press in general, many other employees have similarly complied with immoral orders from their bosses.

We, of course, summarily turned down
El Universal
's offer to sell us the “privilege” of fair reporting. Grupo México did however eventually renew its contract, and antiunion articles continued to run in the paper. In fact,
El Universal
may have solicited us for a deal only to wrest even higher payments from Grupo México. Surely Grupo México's arrangement with
El Universal
wasn't unique. We heard that the company had in fact paid an even larger sum to money and investing newspaper
El
Financiero
for positive coverage: $3,000,0000 per year. We have no doubt that they similarly contracted many other Mexican news outlets.

Adding to these attacks in major newspapers and TV stations, there were some new publications created solely for the purpose of attacking the Miners' Union. The most prominent of these was a magazine called
MX
, created jointly by Grupo México, PAN politicians, and President Fox himself. They tried to disguise the periodical as serious by including a handful of other features, but its main topic was always Los Mineros. Only five or six issues came out in 2006 before
MX
disappeared from the market, unable to sustain itself on lies alone.

During this time, the government, too, did its part to turn public opinion against the leaders of the Miners' Union. They sent out prejudiced press releases and distorted reports regarding the miners, many of which were prepared in the Department of Labor and in the office of President Calderón himself. From there, these reports went straight into the media, with all the government's false statements and errors duplicated. Their efforts were partially a success: slander against the Miners' Union and myself was apparent in nearly all the Mexican media's coverage of our conflict with Grupo México and the government.

The Mexican government's control over the communication media is nothing new. But today, with television stations privatized, many observers rightly point out that the reverse now seems to be true—the media outlets, now properties of corporate giants, dictate to politicians what their next move should be. Through the official news agency of the government, Notimex, the institutional leadership—backed by wealthy businessmen—disseminates information that is aimed at cultivating a very specific image. Notimex, in the hands of the right-wing government, has become a sectarian instrument to manipulate public opinion. Their obsessive reporting of distortions and half-truths harks back to the statement by Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propagandist: “A lie repeated one hundred times becomes the truth for the masses.”

At times, the television stations, the government, and the powerful companies of Mexico seem to make up one large criminal organization in charge of manipulating the “truth” that reaches the Mexican
people. In the twenty-first century, television in Mexico has become the opium of the people. Ownership of the largest media properties in Mexico, including Televisa and TV Azteca, is concentrated in the hands of nine families. The Department of the Interior grants concessions to these families, and in exchange, the government gets the kind of glowing coverage it wants in the national media. They mobilized this abusive system to enhance their attack on the Miners' Union and to turn the public against us.

Is any of this reasonable and journalistically ethical? Of course not. But the “art” of manipulating public opinion through shameful financial agreements is allowed in the Mexican culture of deeply rooted political chicanery, to the detriment of the integrity of Mexican journalism. In our country, one can buy the conscience of many journalists, who are the main conduit for bringing information to the public at large. It's entirely possible to conduct a public lynching and print a barrage of deceptive slogans with impunity—as long as you have enough money.

From the start, many companies like Grupo México, Grupo Peñoles, and Altos Hornos de México regularly bribed communications professionals, paying many millions of dollars per year to ensure that they did not publish or broadcast a favorable word about the Miners' Union. They have imposed a news blackout, terrified that the public may one day hear the truth. Not even objective news that presents both sides of the conflict is allowed. The only choices are distorted stories or complete silence on the subject, with no mention of our progress in the battle to defend the rights of workers. The conspirators have created a wall that shields the truth of the conflict from public view. Every time we win a trial, the press simply does not mention it. But whenever one of their falsely founded arrest warrants is issued, the press gives them all the attention they desire.

I have given many long, thoughtful interviews to reporters on the subject of Pasta de Conchos and the mining conflict—interviews that were simply never published. It happened numerous times in the weeks following the disaster and continued to happen in the following years.
At the beginning of the rescue efforts at Pasta de Conchos, I denounced the atrocities and the deplorable safety conditions to many reporters—but in the end these reporters all transmitted their news as if they had never been informed of this. Not a word of my comments reached the public ear. Much later, in the fall of 2008 Javier Alatorre, the well-known journalist and news director of TV Azteca, came to Vancouver with a full team of technicians to interview me. He had also interviewed me the day after the explosion at Pasta de Conchos, but like all the others, the interview had never been published. I was still angry about that, but I attributed the omission not to Alatorre but to TV Azteca's owner, Ricardo Salinas Pliego, a close friend of Germán Larrea. At my second meeting with Alatorre, which took place as we walked down Burrard Street under a light Canadian drizzle, I gave an accurate picture of the conflict and expressed how I felt and how all of Los Mineros felt about the repression we had suffered. The result was a long and in-depth interview in which I challenged Secretary Javier Lozano to a public debate, by himself or with the businessmen who controlled him. Not a single fragment of the entire interview was ever broadcast, and Alatorre never sent me a copy of the article as he promised.

We have battled the media's malignance and lies every day for seven years, and we will continue to do so with complete faith that the truth will shine through sooner or later. The campaign against us created a widespread misunderstanding of the true nature of the conflict between our union and Grupo México, and many well-intentioned but poorly informed people are surprised when they learn the truth of the matter. Once they do, however, they are then quick to change their opinion.

In other countries, a campaign that distorted the truth so blatantly would be punished with all the weight of the law, but in Mexico the perpetrators of lies seem to have complete impunity. Of course, the government of Mexico as a whole should never have permitted this abuse by the communications media companies, since some of them—such as those employing the electrical workers—are state concessions that the owners have used for their own purposes. Administrators and politicians have allowed it, since the power of these groups has grown monstrously.

At the beginning of the conflict, our strategy was to answer and clarify all the accusations and lies. But the more we tried to defend ourselves, the deeper we seemed to fall into the trap that had been laid for us. The only way we could get the truth in front of the public was through paid announcements or reports, but these were extremely expensive; media outlets charged more when the announcement was political in nature. When such attacks originate with the presidency and multinational companies like Grupo México, it is very difficult to carry out a battle in the media. We simply couldn't afford the ruinous price of admission.

The playing field being far from level, we changed our strategy. We decided to strengthen our internal communication, to build unity and solidarity among our workers, and to at the same time improve our communication with other democratic unions, whether in Mexico or abroad. Through honesty, solidarity, and collaboration, we were confident we could convince people of the truth. I'm proud to say that the perverse, one-sided media campaigns only strengthened our resolve, and that none of the union's members—besides those in a small minority of union sections coerced into the opposition by Grupo México—bought the blatant lies propagated by bribable media professionals.

I must mention that even within this great scheme to twist the truth, there were a few notable exceptions in the media—there were some journalists who had the courage to report the truth. Some of these enjoy such prestige that, despite working for the same media companies that attacked us, they were able to publish interviews with me and to write honest columns about the conflict. Among these upstanding journalists are the late Miguel Ángel Granados Chapa of
Reforma
and
Proceso
; Carmen Aristegui from MVS Radio; Javier Solórzano, who publishes in various media, including his radio program; Jacobo and Abraham Zabludovsky and their respective radio programs; Marcela Gómez Zalce of
Milenio
; Ramón Alberto Garza of
Reporte Índigo
; Ricardo Rocha in his “Behind the News” broadcasts; Francisco Rodríguez, an independent journalist; Carmen Lira, Carlos Fernández Vega, and Miguel Ángel Rivera of
La Jornada
; José Gutiérrez Vivó, through his radio show; Juan Bustillos of
Impacto
magazine, and others, to varying degrees. Some
labor lawyers, such as Néstor and Carlos de Buen and Arturo Alcalde Justiniani, have also written outstanding articles about the abuses of Grupo México and their corporate colleagues. These individuals have shown themselves to be true professionals by speaking truthfully about the conflict between the Miners' Union and the Fox and Calderón administrations. They have proven that all is not lost for Mexico.