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New Book by Prof. Dan La Botz on Nicaraguan Revolution

Dan La Botz, an Adjunct Professor at the Murphy Institute, on the publication of his new book, The Nicaraguan Revolution: What Went Wrong: A Marxist Analysis, published by Brill.  In this volume, La Botz argues that the FSLN—the Sandinistas—failed to maintain a commitment to democracy, thus undermining the promise of the revolution.

Dan La Botz has a Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati and is the author of ten books on labor, social movements, and politics in the United States, Mexico, Indonesia and Nicaragua. Dan teaches the Capstone and Perspectives in the Labor Movement course at the Murphy Institute. He has also taught in the History Department and Labor Studies program at Queens College and in the Sociology Department of Brooklyn College. Additionally, he serves as editor of the Mexican Labor News and Analysis and is the co-editor of New Politics.

Photo by William Neuheisel via flickr (CC-BY)

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The Champ in Our Corner

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By Dan La Botz

After Muhammad Ali refused induction — we had the champ in our corner.

When in June of 1963 I graduated from Mar Vista High School in Imperial Beach, just south of San Diego, California, I went to my local Selective Service Board—the draft board—and registered as a conscientious objector. My paternal grandfather, a Dutch immigrant and baker, was a socialist pacifist and his four sons had registered as conscientious objectors (C.O.s) in World War II and two of them—my father Herb and my uncle Bert—had been drafted and had done what was called alternative service (the alternative to serving in the military) at a former Civilian Conservation Corps camp in Big Flats, near Elmira, New York.

At the camp, my uncle Bert had become involved with a group associated with leftist Dwight McDonald and pacifist Dave Dellinger, and so when at the end of the war in August 1945t the C.O.s weren’t released from the camps, he joined the protests, strikes, and walk-outs among the 12,000 men around the country still being held. It was called the “End Slave Labor in America” movement. The federal government put Bert in prison for short while, but then all of the C.O.s were finally let go.

So, as you can see, it was fundamentally my upbringing that led me to register as a conscientious objector. Continue reading The Champ in Our Corner →

Home, Labor Studies

Mexican Labor News and Analysis: February, 2016

Dan La Botz continues to bring us fascinating commentary on labor in Mexico with the February edition of Mexican Labor News & Analysis. Check out the contents below & read on:

Contents for this issue:

  • The Pope in Mexico
  • Twenty Years since the San Andres Accords
  • Mexican Economic Situation Leads to Deep Budget Cuts
  • U.S., Mexican Unions Accuse Asarco and Subsidiary of Workers Rights’ Violations
  • Teachers March Against Education Reform
  • Miners Win Back Jobs—then Beaten by Company Union Thugs
  • CTM Unions Demand Contracts Building New Airport
  • Mexicana Flight Attendants Protest at U.S. Embassy
  • New Head of the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM)
  • Pasta Deconchos: Ten Years of Impunity
  • Book Review – Drugs, War, and Capitalism

Photo by Aleteia Image Department via flickr (CC-BY)

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Mexico Labor Year in Review

This article was first published in Mexican Labor News and Analysis.

By Dan La Botz

2015 was another in a series of very bad years for Mexico. Mexican working people continued to experience in 2015 the difficulties of a stagnant economy, the violence of the drug war, repression of the labor and social movements, and the rule of corrupt political parties. Few workers had legitimate labor unions with which to resist employer and government policies, and fewer had the desire to engage in strikes. Yet some workers—teachers in southern Mexico, farm workers in Baja California, and maquiladora workers in Juarez—did courageously attempt to fight for their rights and for greater power. We begin this report with the drug wars that have so dominated Mexican life for the last decade.

The Drug War, Crime, Justice

Mexico remains a killing field. The Mexican New Year, January 1, 2016, opened with the assassination of Gisela Raquel Mota Ocampo, the 33-year old woman who had just taken office as mayor of Temixco, Morelos. She was killed by four armed men who arrived in a black van and shot her gangland style. Senators and congressional representatives of her party, the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), asserted that she had been murdered by organized crime. Her assassination was one of the 100 city council members and 1,000 municipal officials who have been killed in the last decade, principally by organized crime.  In addition to government officials murdered, three reporters were killed in Mexico in 2015 and 35 have been killed since 1992, most by drug dealers. Continue reading Mexico Labor Year in Review →