David W. Walker

Porfirian Labor Politics: Working Class Organizations in Mexico City and Porfirio Diaz, 1876-1902

Most studies of relations between government and organized labor in Mexico stand firmly on the supposition that the Revolution of 1910 marked a sharp break with the past. The labor policies of the Diaz regime have alternately been described as either brutally repressive or as neutral and aloof in keeping with nineteenth century liberal doctrine (especially before 1906). If either of these somewhat contradictory characterizations are true, then the case for discontinuity in labor policies is clearly confirmed. This essay will argue that neither description of labor policies during the Diaz regime is accurate. Rather, patterns of interaction between the Diaz government and urban working class organizations, especially in Mexico City, shaped the evolution of the Mexican labor movement and national labor policy along lines followed ever since. The Diaz government developed a flexible and sophisticated array of labor policy instruments that was based upon cooperation with and subsidies to progovernment labor organizations as well as political rewards and the other fruits of cooptation for labor leaders loyal to the regime. With its labor allies, the Diaz government promoted modes of organization which retarded labor militancy, sponsored informal as well as official mediation between workers and employers during strikes and other conflicts, and disseminated propaganda and instituted educational programs, including pro-government labor newspapers and schools for the working class, designed to promote labors identification of its own well-being with the interests of the state. While the Revolution of 1910 and the later developments of the Cardenas era institutionalized statelabor relations as never before, the objectives and instrumentalities of contemporary labor relations have their origin in the Porfiriato.