On this day in 1906, Mexican employees of the US-owned Cananea Copper Company went on strike, demanding an end to pay discrimination and an eight-hour day. The strike’s repression was a key precursor to the Mexican Revolution of 1910.
The Cananea Consolidated Copper Company (CCCC) was owned by American Colonel William Greene, whose capitalist enterprise was greatly aided by the corrupt Mexican government of Porfirio Díaz. CCCC employed both American and Mexican workers, however senior positions could only be held by Americans and Mexicans were paid 3.5 pesos a day to the Americans’ 5.
Cananea was a company town in which workers were forced to live in company housing and buy necessities at the company store. Despite this, the wages offered to Mexican workers were among the highest in the region, making the jobs competitive.
On June 1st, 1906, nearly all of the Mexican employees of CCCC went on strike. Among their demands were an end to pay discrimination, an eight hour day (down from ten), and a guaranteed representation of Mexicans in the workforce. One slogan was “Ocho horas! cinco pesos!” (eight hours, five pesos).
The company flatly rejected all of the workers’ demands, and thousands of laborers began to march in protest. Upon arriving at the company’s lumber yard, protesters were hosed down by armed management. Violence broke out, and three workers and both managers were killed, the latter stabbed to death with mining implements. Workers then set fire to the lumber yard, causing ~$100,000 in damages.
The strike devolved into a de facto war after deputized company men fired on workers approaching the local bank, jail, and company store. The crowd, mostly unarmed, raided local pawnshops for weapons and proceeded to engage in firefights with a combined force of Mexican Federal Troops, 275 volunteers from Arizona, and CCCC forces.
Estimates of casualties vary, but at least 23 were killed and more than 50 were arrested before the workers were defeated. Green blamed the uprising on “a Socialistic organization that has been formed by malcontents opposed to the Díaz government.”; literature of the pro-labor Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM) was found in the workers’ settlements.
The Cananea Riot became linked with the Río Blanco Strike of January 1907 as symbols of Díaz’s corruption and subservience to foreign capital. According to historian Leslie Bethell, both became “household words for hundreds of thousands of Mexicans”. Díaz would be forced to resign in 1911.
The mine in Cananea currently continues to be worked for copper and was subject to a miners’ strike as recently as 2008.
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You gotta give Brianna Joy Gray credit for her loyalty. She still has Virgil on her podcast picture.
I check this every so often out of curiosity, and it always blows my mind that she hasn’t changed it. It’s almost been two full years at this point.
:lenin-sure: Wow, time traveller! This internet device sounds incredible! What do you use it for?
Me: Mostly getting called a cracker by somebody who is impersonating my hamster on an obscure internet forum
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Happy Pride month.
If they keep ramping up vengeance shall come. I’m not fed posting, it’s a fact. In a country with gun rights we are going to strike back eventually.
I feel like the :vote: crowd needs to reckon that with every electoral loss the far right has only become more militant and a bigger threat.
