A miner incident

We need another Lazaro Cardenas:

(From Sterlingbennet.com:  “Seven Murdered Miners“)

While the organizers were being murdered, a truck with men, women and children drove by, witnessing everything. The mine management wanted to crush efforts at organizing, an activity that was necessary because conditions in the mine was terribly dangerous because of unnecessary cave-ins and the lack of ventilation—which meant miners suffered terribly from silicosis by breathing particles hanging in the air.

Some time later, a miner by the name of Vicente Uribe managed to murder Mr. Quinn at the Dolores Mine. The union whisked Uribe off to Mexico City and hid him there, protecting him from the authorities—who, it was said, accepted the murder of union organizers but not of American mine managers. As the story goes, American President Roosevelt complained to Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas that miners had murdered an American mine manager, and Lázaro Cárdenas had replied that the American-controlled mine had murdered seven Mexicans.

Sterling is writing about the “incident” in April 1937, in which seven stike leaders at Cubo mine in Hidalgo, Guanajuato State were murderdered while trying to organize for better safety and working conditions. Conditions have somewhat improved since 1937, but not all that much. And the authorities still tend to overlook violence against labor, especially when foreign interests are involved.