Vicente Lombardo Toledano (July 16, 1894 – November 16, 1968) was one of the foremost
MexicanThe United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
labor leaders of the 20th century. He founded the
Confederation of Mexican WorkersThe Confederation of Mexican Workers is the largest confederation of labor unions in Mexico. For many years it was one of the essential pillars of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional , which ruled Mexico for more than seventy years...
(CTM), the national labor federation most closely associated with the ruling party, the
Institutional Revolutionary PartyThe Institutional Revolutionary Party is a Mexican political party that wielded power in the country—under a succession of names—for more than 70 years. The PRI is a member of the Socialist International, as is the rival Party of the Democratic Revolution , making Mexico one of the...
(PRI), for most of the last sixty-five years of that century. Purged from the union after
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, he co-founded, along with
Narciso BassolsNarciso Bassols García was a Mexican lawyer, socialist politician, ambassador to France, Russia, and the United Kingdom, and professor of law at the National University of Mexico. He co-founded the Popular Party , and the League of Political Action...
, the political party, "Partido Popular", later known as the
Partido Popular SocialistaThe Popular Socialist Party is a communist party in Mexico. It was founded in 1948 as the Popular Party by Vicente Lombardo Toledano....
.
Lombardo Toledano was born in
TeziutlánTeziutlán is a small city in the northeast of the Mexican state of Puebla. Its 2005 census population was 60,597. It also serves as the municipal seat for the surrounding municipality of the same name. The municipality has an area of 84.2 km² and a population of 88,970.Teziutlán is located at ,...
,
PueblaPuebla is a Mexican state located in the south-central part of the country, to the east of Mexico City. The state borders Veracruz to the east, Hidalgo, Mexico State, Tlaxcala, and Morelos to the west, and Guerrero and Oaxaca to the south. The state's largest cities are Puebla and Tehuacan, it has...
, to middle-class parents.
Vicente Lombardo Toledano (July 16, 1894 – November 16, 1968) was one of the foremost
MexicanThe United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
labor leaders of the 20th century. He founded the
Confederation of Mexican WorkersThe Confederation of Mexican Workers is the largest confederation of labor unions in Mexico. For many years it was one of the essential pillars of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional , which ruled Mexico for more than seventy years...
(CTM), the national labor federation most closely associated with the ruling party, the
Institutional Revolutionary PartyThe Institutional Revolutionary Party is a Mexican political party that wielded power in the country—under a succession of names—for more than 70 years. The PRI is a member of the Socialist International, as is the rival Party of the Democratic Revolution , making Mexico one of the...
(PRI), for most of the last sixty-five years of that century. Purged from the union after
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, he co-founded, along with
Narciso BassolsNarciso Bassols García was a Mexican lawyer, socialist politician, ambassador to France, Russia, and the United Kingdom, and professor of law at the National University of Mexico. He co-founded the Popular Party , and the League of Political Action...
, the political party, "Partido Popular", later known as the
Partido Popular SocialistaThe Popular Socialist Party is a communist party in Mexico. It was founded in 1948 as the Popular Party by Vicente Lombardo Toledano....
.
Early career
Lombardo Toledano was born in
TeziutlánTeziutlán is a small city in the northeast of the Mexican state of Puebla. Its 2005 census population was 60,597. It also serves as the municipal seat for the surrounding municipality of the same name. The municipality has an area of 84.2 km² and a population of 88,970.Teziutlán is located at ,...
,
PueblaPuebla is a Mexican state located in the south-central part of the country, to the east of Mexico City. The state borders Veracruz to the east, Hidalgo, Mexico State, Tlaxcala, and Morelos to the west, and Guerrero and Oaxaca to the south. The state's largest cities are Puebla and Tehuacan, it has...
, to middle-class parents. After obtaining his law degree from the
National Autonomous University of MexicoThe National Autonomous University of Mexico is a public university based primarily in Mexico City and generally considered to be the largest one-campus university in the Americas in terms of student population...
(UNAM) in 1919, he pursued a master's degree in philosophy and letters there, and he began teaching at both the Popular University and at UNAM. He taught at UNAM until 1933 and it was there that he became a member of an informal group known as
los siete sabios (the seven sages). It was while teaching there he helped organize a teachers' union. In 1921 he joined the Labor Party.
As leader of that teacher's union he entered the
Confederación Regional Obrera MexicanaThe Confederación Regional Obrera Mexicana is a federation of labor unions in Mexico....
(CROM), the largest and most powerful union confederation of the day and a key supporter of the regimes of
Plutarco Elías CallesPlutarco Elías Calles was a Mexican general and politician. He was president of Mexico from 1924 to 1928, but he continued to be the de facto ruler from 1928-1935, a period known as the maximato...
and
Álvaro ObregónGeneral Álvaro Obregón Salido was President of Mexico from 1920 to 1924. He was assassinated in 1928.A successful Sonoran chickpea farmer and municipal president of Huatabampo, Obregón first volunteered for military service in 1912, when he supported the regime of Francisco I. Madero against a...
. Lombardo Toledano served as the house intellectual for CROM, not benefiting directly from its corruption, but acquiring access to power instead. Lombardo Toledano served as interim Governor of Puebla in 1923, was a councilman in the
Federal DistrictMexico City is the capital city of Mexico. It is the economic, industrial, and cultural center in the country, and the most populous city, with about 8,836,045 inhabitants in 2008...
in 1924 to 1925 and was a
congressionalCongress is the legislative branch of the Mexican government. Its structure and responsibilities are defined in Articles 50 to 79 of the 1917 Constitution....
deputyThe Chamber of Representatives is the lower house of the Congress of the Union, Mexico's bicameral legislature...
from 1926 to 1928.
CROM lost most of its influence in 1928, after a right-wing Roman Catholic associated with the
Cristero movementThe Cristero War of 1926 to 1929 was an uprising and counter-revolution against the Mexican government of the time, set off by religious persecution of Catholics, specifially the strict enforcement of the anti-clerical provisions of the Mexican Constitution of 1917 and the expansion of further...
assassinated Obregón. Lombardo Toledano left CROM and the Labor Party in 1932. He had organized a faction called "Purified CROM" that left the CROM
en mass in 1932, which left the CROM representing only a few unions in the textile industry. The Purified CROM became the
Confederation of Mexican WorkersThe Confederation of Mexican Workers is the largest confederation of labor unions in Mexico. For many years it was one of the essential pillars of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional , which ruled Mexico for more than seventy years...
(CTM) in 1936, allying with the
populistPopulism is a political discourse that juxtaposes "the people" with "the elites." Populism may comprise an ideology urging social and political system changes and/or a rhetorical style deployed by members of political or social movements...
President
Lázaro CárdenasLázaro Cárdenas del Río was President of Mexico from 1934 to 1940.Lázaro Cárdenas was born into a lower-middle class family in the village of Jiquilpan, Michoacán. He supported his family from age 16 after the death of his father...
and the ruling Party of the Mexican Revoluion (PRM), a rival to the Labor Party associated with CROM. Lombardo Toledano was the secretary general of the CTM from 1936 to 1940.
Formation of the CTM and alliance with Cárdenas
Outside the CROM, Lombardo Toledano began to build a rival federation that combined his "purified" CROM with other labor groups, Among the first with whom he allied was the Confederación Sindical de Trabajadores del Distrito Federal, a union that included among its members not only low-wage workers, but professionals, strikebreakers, some street vendors and other members of the informal economy.
Fidel Velázquez SánchezFidel Velázquez Sánchez was the preeminent Mexican union leader of the 20th century. In 1936 he was one of the original founders, along with Vicente Lombardo Toledano, of the Confederation of Mexican Workers , the national labor federation most closely associated with the ruling party, the...
was one of
los cinco lobitos, or five wolf cubs, who led the CSTDF.
With Velázquez's group and the CGT Lombardo Toledano formed a new federation, the Confederación General de Obreros y Campesinos de México (CGOCM). That group subsequently transformed itself into the CTM in 1936.
The CTM had a strong relationship with the government of
Lázaro Cárdenas del RíoLázaro Cárdenas del Río was President of Mexico from 1934 to 1940.Lázaro Cárdenas was born into a lower-middle class family in the village of Jiquilpan, Michoacán. He supported his family from age 16 after the death of his father...
from its creation. While Lombardo Toledano had opposed Cárdenas' candidacy in 1934, the CTM was the chief beneficiary of Cárdenas' need for labor support for his government, after the employers of Monterrey, Nuevo León, called an employers' strike on February 5, 1936. Cárdenas led a demonstration in Monterrey in which he called for unification of the various labor organizations into one national body associated with the PRI, then named the Partido Revolucionario Mexicano.
The political crisis deepened when Calles launched a series of verbal attacks on Cárdenas that amounted to a call for his overthrow. The "Purified" CROM, the CSTDF, other labor bodies and the PCM rallied to defend Cárdenas. With their support Cárdenas had Calles and Morones arrested and deported that year.
The CTM was formed shortly thereafter, absorbing the major petroleum workers and railroad workers unions. It also had the support of the Partido Comunista de México and the industrial unions it had founded. Those unions nearly walked out of the CTM twice in its early years, however— the first time at the founding convention of the CTM in 1936, when Lombardo Toledano chose Velázquez, rather than the individual from their wing who had been promised the position, as organizational secretary of the new organization and a second time the following year. In both cases, however, the unions returned under orders to accept unity at any cost as part of the party's
Popular FrontA popular front is a broad coalition of different political groupings, often made up of leftists and centrists. Being very broad, they can sometimes include centrist and liberal forces as well as socialist and communist groups...
policy.
Lombardo Toledano was never, as far as it is possible to determine, a member of the PCM. He had, however, even stronger support from the
Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
during the
Popular FrontA popular front is a broad coalition of different political groupings, often made up of leftists and centrists. Being very broad, they can sometimes include centrist and liberal forces as well as socialist and communist groups...
era than the nominal leaders of the PCM. Following the policy of that era, he and the CTM supported the Cárdenas administration enthusiastically, intervening to moderate union demands during the railroad and electrical workers' strikes in 1936 and the petroleum workers' strike in 1937. Lombardo Toledano and the CTM were vocal supporters for Cárdenas' nationalization of the oil industry in 1938.
Lombardo Toledano also formed the Confederación de Trabajadores de América Latina in 1938.
John L. LewisJohn Llewellyn Lewis was an American leader of organized labor who served as president of the United Mine Workers of America from 1920 to 1960. He was a major player in the history of coal mining...
from the
Congress of Industrial OrganizationsThe Congress of Industrial Organizations, or CIO, proposed by John L. Lewis in 1932, was a federation of unions that organized workers in industrial unions in the United States and Canada from 1935 to 1955. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 required union leaders to swear that they were not...
attended its founding; the
U.S.The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
American Federation of LaborThe American Federation of Labor was one of the first federations of labor unions in the United States. It was founded in Columbus, Ohio in 1886 by Samuel Gompers as a reorganization of its predecessor, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions...
boycotted it.
Fall from power
Cárdenas' successor,
Manuel Ávila CamachoManuel Ávila Camacho served as the President of Mexico from 1940 to 1946.Manuel Ávila was born in the city of Teziutlán, a small town in Puebla, to middle-class parents, Manuel Ávila Castillo and Eufrosina Camacho Bello. He had several siblings, among them sister María Jovita Ávila Camacho and...
, had been a protégé of Cárdenas, but was more conservative. He engineered Velázquez's appointment as head of the CTM when Lombardo Toledano did not stand for reelection in 1941. Lombardo Toledano remained influential in CTM, pursuing a course of support for the war effort and opposition to strikes when Mexico entered the war against Hitler.
Lombardo Toledano soon fell out, however, with the CTM and the government. Although the CTM had (along with the CGT, CROM and the electrical workers union) formally aligned with the PRI in 1938, Lombardo Toledano concluded that the PRI, now led by
Miguel Alemán ValdésMiguel Alemán Valdés served as the President of Mexico from 1946 to 1952.-Life:Alemán was born in Sayula in the state of Veracruz as the son of General Miguel Alemán González and Tomasa Valdés Ledezma...
, was too conservative and formed his own party, the Partido Popular, to run against it. The Partido Popular never achieved more than fringe party status; it was renamed the
Partido Popular SocialistaThe Popular Socialist Party is a communist party in Mexico. It was founded in 1948 as the Popular Party by Vicente Lombardo Toledano....
in 1960.
The CTM refused, however, to support Lombardo Toledano's new party. Velázquez formally expelled Lombardo Toledano from the CTM in 1948. Lombardo Toledano left the union, but only after delivering a bitter denunciation of those who had brought about his downfall. He also referred to himself in the first person ("yo") sixty-four times in that speech — a fact noted by some newspapers, which proceeded to nickname him the "Yo-yo Champion".
Lombardo Toledano launched two publications, a magazine called
América Latina and a daily called
El Popular, while continuing to publish books, pamphlets and newspaper articles. He also founded the Workers' University in 1936, which he headed until his death.
External references
Further reading
- La Botz, Dan, The Crisis in Mexican Labor, New York: Praeger, 1988. ISBN 0-275-92600-1