Collaboration and Conflict: Organized Labor, Business, and the State in Post-Tlatelolco Mexico
type: CreativeWork
description: 1968 was a year of opportunities and challenges for the Mexican state. While some in government busied themselves with preparations for the Games of the XIX Olympiad to commence in October, others focused on diffusing student unrest that had festered on the nations campuses and was threatening to spread to the streets. In the interest of preserving civil order and conveying an international image of stability in Mexico, authorities opted to confront dissent firmly. Skirmishes between student-led groups and government forces escalated until culminating in the killing of hundreds of protestors in the Tlatelolco district of Mexico City on October 2, 1968. Tlatelolco, henceforth, would be considered by many as a parteaguas, or watershed moment, for the way it exposed the authoritarian nature of the Mexican ruling regime. This dissertation challenges the status of Tlatelolco as watershed by examining changes witnessed in tripartite (state, organized labor, and business) relations in Mexico during the period 1969-1976, or the years that immediately followed the massacre of October 2, 1968. Here it is contended that after that seminal moment it was not students but organized workers, those from the civil sector most ascribed with historical symbolism and that deemed most capable of destabilizing the regime, that became the chief target of state rhetoric and primary beneficiary of public policy. This hypothesis is tested by investigating periodicals, union literature, ministerial records, and labor suits in order to: a. deduce what factors motivated the Mexican state in the creation of labor policy; b. understand the major labor disputes of the era while giving attention to internal rifts within the sectors; and c. analyze the behavior exhibited by state authorities in their functions as mediators between the forces of labor and capital. Moreover, this dissertation shows how organized workers after Tlatelolco reaped real benefits from a history-conscious executive and a ref…
abstract: 1968 was a year of opportunities and challenges for the Mexican state. While some in government busied themselves with preparations for the Games of the XIX Olympiad to commence in October, others focused on diffusing student unrest that had festered on the nations campuses and was threatening to spread to the streets. In the interest of preserving civil order and conveying an international image of stability in Mexico, authorities opted to confront dissent firmly. Skirmishes between student-led groups and government forces escalated until culminating in the killing of hundreds of protestors in the Tlatelolco district of Mexico City on October 2, 1968. Tlatelolco, henceforth, would be considered by many as a parteaguas, or watershed moment, for the way it exposed the authoritarian nature of the Mexican ruling regime. This dissertation challenges the status of Tlatelolco as watershed by examining changes witnessed in tripartite (state, organized labor, and business) relations in Mexico during the period 1969-1976, or the years that immediately followed the massacre of October 2, 1968. Here it is contended that after that seminal moment it was not students but organized workers, those from the civil sector most ascribed with historical symbolism and that deemed most capable of destabilizing the regime, that became the chief target of state rhetoric and primary beneficiary of public policy. This hypothesis is tested by investigating periodicals, union literature, ministerial records, and labor suits in order to: a. deduce what factors motivated the Mexican state in the creation of labor policy; b. understand the major labor disputes of the era while giving attention to internal rifts within the sectors; and c. analyze the behavior exhibited by state authorities in their functions as mediators between the forces of labor and capital. Moreover, this dissertation shows how organized workers after Tlatelolco reaped real benefits from a history-conscious executive and a ref…
author: Lenti, Joseph Umberto
language: English
date published: 2012-02-01T08:00:00Z
date modified: 2026-07-24T05:27:37Z
provider: University of New Mexico
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of New Mexico

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/1928/17489