Rob McKenzie and Patrick Dunne, El Golpe: US Labor, the CIA, and the Coup at Ford in Mexico (review)

Labour / Le Travail
Issue 93 (2024)

Reviews / Comptes rendus

Rob McKenzie and Patrick Dunne, El Golpe: US Labor, the cia, and the Coup at Ford in Mexico (London: Pluto Press, 2022)

In January 1990, when the maquiladora industry was still in its infancy, a gang of thugs sporting Ford badges and uniforms attacked a team of unionized workers at the Ford Assembly Plant of Cuautitlán, leaving nine men injured and one of them dead. Located in the Estado de México, a Mexican state near the national capital of Mexico City, Cuautitlán remains a pillar of the modern automobile industry. In El Golpe: US Labor, the cia, and the Coup at Ford in Mexico, retired US labour leader Rob McKenzie and professionally trained historian Patrick Dunne reconstruct the hidden history of the 1990 assault on Mexican workers in Cuautitlán. Drawing on US periodicals, archival materials, oral interviews, and secondary literature, McKenzie and Dunne conclude that the cia likely orchestrated the attack. In the process, they reveal a larger story of collusion between the US labour movement and the cia in Latin America.

Why did Ford operatives or their affiliates attack the Cuautitlán workers? To answer this question, McKenzie and Dunne examine the inner workings of the American Institute for Free Labor Development (aifld), a secretive organization founded in 1961 in response to the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. By connecting the dots between seemingly disparate players, they show that the aifld enjoyed substantial material and moral support from both the cia and the afl-cio. They further argue that these organizations successfully conspired to overthrow multiple leftist governments in Central and South America, specifically in British Guiana, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, and (less successfully) Nicaragua. After cutting its tenth on these countries, McKenzie and Dunne reason, the aifld intervened in Cuautitlán to suppress a dissident union movement that ostensibly challenged decades of Mexican corporatism.

McKenzie and Dunne’s thesis rests on a revisionist reading of the US labour movement that distinguishes between institutional leaders and popular actors on the one hand, and union autonomy versus government cooptation, on the other hand. This mirrors recent trends in the historiography of Latin American labour movements. However, McKenzie and Dunne are primarily interested in analyzing the linkages between the afl-cio and the cia vis-à-vis the aifld. The organization’s objective was simple. Like the afl-cio, the aifld sought to combat suspected forms of communism with trade unionism. Although the authors reference the US labour movement in the singular, they identify several internal splits within “the movement” over the afl-cio’s foreign policy in Latin America. They also emphasize that there were more continuities than changes between John F. Kennedy’s “Alliance for Progress” and George H.W. Bush’s activities in the region, reminding general readers that partisan affiliations are often less consequential than policy outcomes.

Against this broader backdrop, McKenzie and Dunne turn to the 1990 assault on the Ford plant in Cuautitlán. They argue that the transition to “lean production” undermined union organizing efforts in both countries. In April 1988, delegates from the afl-cio and the Confederación de Trabajadores de México (ctm) — one of Mexico’s largest labour federations — held joint meetings in Brownsville, Texas and Matamoros, Tamaulipas to discuss their concerns about the maquiladora industry. Since its founding in 1936 as part of a larger corporatist system that emerged in the wake of the Mexican Revolution, the ctm has had a dubious reputation among dissident unionists. This distrust reached new heights after July 1988, when Mexico’s “official” party narrowly re-stole the presidency. Amid this context, the Ford automobile workers of the Cuautitlán assembly plant demanded union democracy. They elected four independent representatives to the plant’s six-person union board, which had been formerly controlled by ctm (and by extension, government) surrogates. In early 1989, Ford and the ctm retaliated by terminating the four autonomous union leaders. Further complaints against Ford and the ctm led to a work stoppage. Instead of negotiating with the workers, McKenzie and Dunne deduce that the cia, via the aifld, advised Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari to attack the Ford employees in January 1990. They further suggest that the aifld colluded with the ctm (they did share an office building) and possibly Ford to retake the plant.

While scholars should recognize that El Golpe is not an academic monograph, the evidence presented behind the purported afl-cio and cia connection is often speculative or underdeveloped. To be sure, the cia almost certainly funded the aifld as one of many development programs in Latin America that more accurately functioned as smokescreens for counterinsurgency. But McKenzie and Dunne overgeneralize in claiming that “In most Latin American countries, aifld built or supported anti-leftist, pro-American unions among urban and industrial workers.” (59) Their analysis of the 1990 assault in Cuautitlán also raises questions about the relative complicity of the Mexican state. Although they assume that Salinas de Gortari lacked the resources to coordinate the attack, and that he instead acted at the behest of Ronald Reagan, the Mexican federal government unfortunately had ample experience in committing acts of state violence. This presents a deeper problem. While most studies of the Latin American Cold War have sought to integrate the internal and international dimensions of the conflict, McKenzie and Dunne privilege the aifld. Latin American voices — both primary and secondary — are largely missing from the narrative. The authors also neglect the use of diacritical marks and incorrectly cite several Latin American surnames. A deeper awareness of Latin American culture and history, then, would have significantly enhanced the book.

Despite these shortcomings, El Golpe reflects a collaborative approach to popular historical writing that will resonate with many general readers. Rob McKenzie learned about the 1990 assault in Cuautitlán while working at a Ford assembly plant in the Twin Cities. He was also an active member of his uaw chapter, where he later served as president. Appalled by what he discovered, McKenzie invited two survivors of the attack to speak at a local uaw event. Through activist circles and dogged sleuthing, including many foia requests, he eventually found the evidence that led him to his conclusions. While poring over aifld records at the University of Maryland on the anniversary of the Pinochet coup, McKenzie met Patrick Dunne, who was completing his dissertation on the aifld’s involvement in Chile. Dunne later helped McKenzie revise El Golpe, and the two writers also enlisted support from historian Paula Cuellar Cuellar, who interviewed some of the participants in the Ford Cuautitlán strike. Together, they helped shed light not only on the aifld’s operations in Mexico but also in other parts of Latin America. For as McKenzie and Dunne rightly recognize, “Organized labor has much soul searching to do regarding this past with the cia.” (x)

Carlos R. Hernández

Wayne State University

DOI: https://doi.org/10.52975/llt.2024v93.032.